Memorandum

City of Lawrence

Finance Department

To:  Dave Corliss, City Manager

From:  Ed Mullins, Finance Director

Date:  September 29, 2009

Subject:  Sales Tax Distribution

The City of Lawrence has recently received its September sales tax distribution.  The distribution is the result of retail sales from mid-July to mid-August.  The distribution of $2,378,837 represents a significant increase from the prior year distribution for the same month because of the higher rate.  It also includes $1,441 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 September 2009 city 1% sales tax distribution was 4.9% less than the September 2008 distribution.  The latest distribution indicates that total sales/use tax distributions will likely 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	1,086,149	10,098,046	72.8%
Infrastructure .3%	2,255,925	321,473	1,337,422	59.3%
Transit .2%	1,503,950	214,316	891,616	59.3%
Transit Eq. .05%	375,988	53,579	222,904	59.3%

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.