By Debby Woodin
dwoodin@joplinglobe.com
The sales-tax decline seems to be narrowing slightly for the city of Joplin, but the brakes are still on some spending.
Revenue from the city’s 1-cent sales tax for the general fund is down about 2.5 percent for the fiscal year, which started Nov. 1. That tax has produced $7,876,760 so far this year, compared with $8,075,692 at this time last year. It is budgeted to bring in $12,607,700 for the fiscal year.
Lagging collections started in December, when an 18.5 percent drop startled city officials. Most of that amount was made up in January, but in February, collections dipped nearly 5 percent below those of the previous year.
That gap has narrowed.
In April, revenue from the 1-cent tax was 3.93 percent behind for the year. In May, when $100,000 more was collected than was generated a year earlier, the percentage tightened to 2.12 percent below the previous year’s tally.
By April, the downward trend spurred City Manager Mark Rohr to order a reduction in city spending. In a memo to the staff, he asked department heads to save 2 percent of their budgets by the end of the fiscal year.
“With the city budget, if you don’t react soon enough, then there’s no time left to react,” said Leslie Jones, the city’s finance director. “If we had waited until August, then it would be too late.
“When that came out in March, we had formed a trend. We were down several months and, judging by the economy, wouldn’t turn around.”
David Hertzberg, director of public works, said he has reduced expenditures in ways that don’t affect residents.
He has saved money in the categories of wages, training and travel, as have most departments per the city manager’s direction.
“Some of the positions in our department that were vacant are being left vacant for a time period for cost reduction,” Hertzberg said. “And we are only sending staff to training if it’s tied with their license or certification. So we’ve cut back on those areas.”
Both he and Jones said city services to residents have not been affected.
“We’re going full steam ahead on our commitments to the voters as far as our projects,” Hertzberg said.
Added Jones: “We’re still providing the same services. We have not laid off anybody. Right now we’re in good shape, and that’s because we had been tightening our belts the last several years. I consider us to be typically frugal.”
She said she cannot predict what the rest of the year will bring, and the city’s staff will soon be framing next year’s budget. That may pose a bit of a quandary.
“We’ll keep watching it, and we’ll have to figure out how to budget it for next year,” Jones said.
City sales taxes
In addition to the 1-cent sales tax that goes to the general fund, the city has a half-cent tax for transportation projects, a half-cent tax for public safety, a three-eighths-cent tax for capital improvement projects, and a quarter-cent tax for parks and storm-water projects.
