UPDATE: After watching the City Council informational meeting today, I have to clarify this post. According to Eugene ‘Montgomery Burns’ Rowenhorst, the reason the June numbers are so low is that the State Department of Revenue cut tax collection 4 days short of the end of the month (June) and added that revenue to July due to end of the year accounting purposes. Not sure we can make much up in 4 days, but according to Gene, the July numbers are good. He admitted that we are -1% down from last year. In other words we are still not showing any growth this year.
I was afraid of this, and if the numbers continue, we may be in trouble. I have been saying that the recession will hit Sioux Falls late and stay longer. For example, in the early 90’s when the rest of the country was pulling out of the Reaganomics disaster, it took SF until the late 90’s before it starting pulling out. The problem we have with SF is since we all live pretty modest lifestyles it takes us a lot longer to pull out of economic downturns. And I’m not talking about business, I’m talking about the people who pay 90% of the taxes in this city, consumers. The June budget numbers are pretty shocking actually. They are as follows (these are aproximates);
TAX COLLECTION
2009 – $3,785,594
2009 – $7,435,005
We are now down from last year (total budget) by approximately $3.7 million (-7.6%)
And the platting fees and arterial road tax (.08%) don’t look any better (These are as of June);
Tax $1,140,091 (Total 1 cent is at $18 million)
Fees $48,112 (Total platting is at $345,000)
And if you look at July in 2009 the numbers are very high also, so I am assuming that we may see the same thing next month. Of course we had a huge impact from the Soccer tournament (supposedly) so the numbers may be okay – time will only tell.
When I watched Munson’s budget address I think he cut the budget by $60 million from last year, but don’t quote me on that. What is frustrating about this is that Munson squandered our tax dollars over the past 7 years on ‘Legacy’ projects and now he is trying to play catchup with infrastructure in a down economy. We should have stayed on top of it all along. Cities should follow a simple rule, roads and infrastructure maintenance first, playgrounds second.
I feel sorry for the next mayor, they will be working some long hours trying to figure out this mess.