Memorandum

City of Lawrence

Finance Department

To:  Dave Corliss, City Manager

From:  Ed Mullins, Finance Director

Date:  December 2, 2009

Subject:  Sales Tax Distribution

The City of Lawrence has recently received its November sales tax distribution.  The distribution is the result of retail sales from mid-September to mid-October.  The distribution of $2,487,719.01 represents a significant increase from the prior year distribution for the same month because of the higher rate.  It also includes $640 from the Free State Transportation Development District and $272 from the Oread 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 November 2009 city 1% sales tax distribution was 3.6% greater than the November 2008 distribution.  The total sales/use tax distributions will 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	1,124,524	12,426,695	89.6%
Infrastructure .3%	2,255,925	339,355	2,035,730	90.2%
Transit .2%	1,503,950	226,236	1,357,155	90.2%
Transit Eq. .05%	375,988	56,559	339,289	90.2%

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.