Memorandum

City of Lawrence

Finance Department

To:  Dave Corliss, City Manager

From:  Ed Mullins, Finance Director

Date:  September 2, 2009

Subject:  Sales Tax Distribution

The City of Lawrence has recently received its August sales tax distribution.  The distribution is the result of retail sales from mid-June to mid-July.  As a result, most of the reported sales tax was at the higher rate approved by the voters.  The distribution of $2,321,405 and represents a significant increase from the prior year distribution for the same month because of the higher rate.  It also includes $1,320 from the Free State Transportation Development District.  Because of variations in monthly distributions, primarily due to late filings by vendors, it is advisable to not read too much into disparities between months.  The adjusted August 2009 city 1% sales/use tax distribution was 11.7% less than the August 2008 distribution.  The latest distribution indicates that total sales/use tax distributions may end the year below budget in 2009. 

A summary of the recent city sales/use tax receipts is shown in the table below.

Sales/Use Tax	Budget	Month	Year to Date	% of Budget
City 1%	13,871,685	1,063,068	9,013,219	65.0%
Infrastructure .3%	2,255,925	315,021	1,015,949	45.0%
Transit .2%	1,503,950	210,015	677,300	45.0%
Transit Eq. .05%	375,988	52,504	169,325	45.0%

A spreadsheet showing total monthly sales tax distributions since 2001 is attached.

The amounts from the new sales taxes were calculated by applying the relevant percentages to the sales that occurred after April 1, 2009.