The city recently celebrated its May sales tax numbers with a self-congratulatory entry on its web site, but, upon closer inspection, the figures are even better than the city claimed.
On the web site the city celebrated its receipts for May were 41.57 percent higher than what the city collected in May of 2014. And that is certainly reason to celebrate, but it doesn’t tell the whole story.
In preparing its fiscal year budget, the city will project anticipated monthly income and its sales tax expectations for May were $353,404. That means it anticipated a rather robust 10.8 percent increase over the 2014 figures. The actual percentage was more than twice that, a 26.24 percent increase over what was anticipated. To me, that’s what’s so special about the May numbers, not just what was reported on the web site: In May, the city collected $92,732.33 more to spend on city services than it expected.
It’s also interesting to speculate how much higher those numbers might have been had it not been for the heavy rains and floods that hit the area in the last days of May and the fact that no sales tax was collected on certain big ticket electrical appliances purchased during Memorial Day weekend.
The web site mentioned that 22 businesses had opened within the city so far this calendar year, but the elephant in that room is obviously Wal-Mart and it opened in late March so its problematic to tie the good May numbers to that opening.
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