There is good news in the city’s December sales tax collections — we were only 6.2 percent under budget, the best performance of the fiscal year. Yes, that would be sarcasm.
For 2009-10, we’re 9.5 percent behind the forecast, which insists that we will collect more than we did in 2008-09 — even though the bosses downtown have repeatedly told us this year would be worse than last year. So far, we’re 9.8 percent behind last year. The rest of the bad news? The total for December was the lowest since December 2005. Will we ever be able to fill a pot hole again?
Here is our handy clip and save sales tax chart for the 2009-10 fiscal year. The basics: The sales tax accounts for abut 22 percent of the city general budget; another 43 percent comes from property tax receipts. The official figures are on the state comptroller Web site. The months listed on that site are, for accounting purposes, about two months ahead, so the February result that is listed is for December.
