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Wednesday, January 19

Ivins confident $8.7 mil budgeted sales tax has been reached

At last night's City Council meeting, after the planning/building department fee schedules were approved, Finance Commissioner Ken Ivins Jr. gave his customary report on city finances with some good news.

First, the final numbers for 2010 occupancy tax are in for a total of $417,000, that's a 9.6 percent increase over the $400,000 collected in 2009.

Ivins also said he was feeling "pretty good" about making the budgeted $8,700,000 in sales tax revenue, a sentiment he repeated on the phone Wednesday afternoon.

"I am pretty confident that we will meet that $8.7 million figure at this point," he said, "Maybe even a little bit higher, especially with gas prices."

Comparing the figures from the 2010 and 2011 budgets; in the 2010 budget, $7,094,399.62 was budgeted as "2009 Actual" income, or the total for the year reported at the time the budget was passed. In the 2011 budget, the "2010 Actual" line is 6,771,525.25.

That leaves around $1,928,500 left in 2010 to realize the $8.7 mil. budgeted; while in 2009 the gap was only $998,574 to hit a projected $8,092,973.

Ivins explained that when the 2010 budget was drafted (the copy I have from the city website is dated Dec. 16, 2009), sales tax numbers were in through October, 2009 while for the 2011 budget (copy dated Dec. 2, 2010) the numbers had only been reported through August, 2010.

He also gave two other figures to illustrate his confidence in the projection: $6,506,000 and $6,771,000, the year-to-date returns reported at the end of September 2009 and September 2010, respectively.

That $265,000 bump was going into the holiday season, a positive indicator, Ivins said, as downtown businesses report strong sales through the end of the year.

4 Comments:

Anonymous Anonymous said...

Also he choose to raise the property tax rate.

January 19, 2011 at 6:19 PM 
Anonymous Anonymous said...

Something strange or confusing here. The budgeted sales tax number for 2010 was $8,000,000. If we hit $8.7 million that line item would be $700,000 over budget. I think if you recheck your numbers or the commissioner's commentay you can clear this up.

January 19, 2011 at 7:28 PM 
Anonymous Anonymous said...

Patrick - Have you reviewed the legal fees with the Accounts Dept. on the Saratoga Citizen issue??

January 20, 2011 at 5:04 AM 
Blogger The Saratogian City Desk said...

Yes, the "2010 Original Budget" line is $8 mil; the $8.7 mil refers to the "2010 Projection" line, looking at the 2011 Adopted Budget posted on http://www.saratoga-springs.org.

Also, I have an email stating the money spent on lawyers by the Accounts Dept. in the Saratoga Citizen case. Look for an update on that later today.

January 20, 2011 at 6:14 AM 

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