Memorandum

City of Lawrence

Finance Department

To:  Dave Corliss, City Manager

From:  Ed Mullins, Finance Director

Date:  November 4, 2009

Subject:  Sales Tax Distribution

The City of Lawrence has recently received its October sales tax distribution.  The distribution is the result of retail sales from mid-August to mid-September.  The distribution of $2,624,947 represents a significant increase from the prior year distribution for the same month because of the higher rate.  It also includes $567 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 October 2009 city 1% sales tax distribution was 0.6% greater than the October 2008 distribution.  The latest distribution indicates that 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	1,202,803	11,302,171	81.4%
Infrastructure .3%	2,255,925	358,953	1,696,375	75.2%
Transit .2%	1,503,950	239,302	1,130,919	75.2%
Transit Eq. .05%	375,988	59,826	282,730	75.2%

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.