By Andrew Knittle
The Norman Transcript
NORMAN — For the third straight month, the City of Norman’s sales tax check from the Oklahoma Tax Commission has shown a year-over-year improvement.
The July sales tax check, representing business done last month, totaled $4,548,707.36, a 1.77 percent increase from July 2009.
In May and June of this year, sales tax collections for Norman rose more sharply when compared with the same month in 2009, by 7.37 percent and 7.38 percent, respectively.
This streak of three straight months — although encouraging — should be taken with a grain of salt, City of Norman Finance Director Anthony Francisco said Monday afternoon.
Francisco, who has said in the past that three straight months is a trend, wasn’t ready to declare the end of the Great Recession for the city.
“It’s better than being down, but I’m concerned about the growth rate itself,” Francisco said. “That’s the main conclusion to draw from this.”
Francisco said the year-over-year increases of the past three months are tempered because 2009 was such a disastrous year, both in Oklahoma and across the nation.
“The long-term problem we’ve been having is still there regarding revenues and expenditures,” he said. “We’re still spending more than we’re taking in.”
Councilman Tom Kovach, Ward 2, said the three-month streak has him feeling more confident about the 26 city jobs that were spared at the last minute in early June.
He said the city can hardly afford to cut from its current staff and he was among a group of council members that found a way to save the more than two dozens workers from the unemployment ranks.
“When you have the leanest staff in the state and cut jobs from that, you’re going to cut services,” Kovach said.
“The last three months of sales tax collections average out (5.5 percent) to a normal growth rate ... and we have projected zero percent growth for this fiscal year,” he said.
For now, Kovach said he’ll remain “cautiously optimistic” about the economy and its affect on the city and hopes the job cuts avoided in June can be avoided forever.
“The economy could probably go either way at this point, but it’s trending up right now,” he said. “We’re showing some good signs ... sales tax collections are up ... so we’ll just have to wait and see what happens.”
Andrew Knittle 366-3540 aknittle@normantranscript.com
