Another terrible sales tax receipt showing for Lampasas – DOWN 5% for the month of February [row 585 as always]. The state of Texas as a whole ALSO contracted – but only by 1.72%. This makes NINE months of the last ten where Lampasas sales tax receipts contracted YoY.
The declines are also accelerating. The last four months have seen receipts decline 1.53%, 1.75%, 3.3% and now 5%.
Lampasas is already 3.3% lower year-to-date and we’re only 2 months into the new year. That represents $25,000 less money coming into City coffers versus the first two months of last year. At this rate, the City would see a $150,000 shortfall in receipts over the course of 2024.
Of course, we have the eclipse coming up, which should dump a huge pile of money into the City – much of which has already been spent on Porta-Potties, parking barricades and police overtime.
How did other cities fare?
Burnet: UP 2.76% – crushing us again (up 10% last month) – our sister city must have a REALLY good economic development director!
Marble Falls: UP 6.18% (down 2.81% last month)
Dallas: DOWN 40% (!!) – after a 33% increase last month. Clearly a large project or a calendar effect or something.
Austin: DOWN 3.18% (flat last month)
I remember two years ago when the City borrowed a whopping $6.5 million dollars.
Then-mayor T.J. Monroe told the newspaper “typically, we are able to pay those down within the nine years and have saved a substantial amount of money”
[In fact, they JUST made a huge interest payment last month of nearly $118,000 on that 2022 CO issue – one of several payments made for FIVE previous borrowing sprees and totaling almost half a million bucks:]
I then wrote: “Perhaps. Or perhaps with the Fed finally raising rates back to normal….the City won’t have the ridiculous always-increasing sales tax and other tax revenue to rely on and find themselves screwed by the debt burden.”
Time will tell.