By Jocelyn Pedersen
NOBLE -- The City of Noble is running about $95,000 under budget. Sales tax revenues are down, and there's cause for concern.
"We've been concerned for two to three months," said Bob Wade, Noble City Manager. "We're probably like most cities, although we'd have thought Noble would be a little more immune because we don't have as many retail opportunities [to produce tax revenue]."
Noble's tax rate is 4 percent. On top of that, the state gets 4.5 percent and Cleveland County gets a quarter of a percent for the new detention center). The city's total operating budget is $ 5,071,112.
Wade speculated that the decline in tax revenue from retail sales could simply be a "genuine reflection of people not spending."
Wade said that he and the city council are concerned enough about it that for the rest of this fiscal year, they are going to be very careful about spending. Several capital projects for the City of Noble have been cancelled, including the purchase of the fire department's new pumper truck, performing major repair work at the sewer plant and installing new flooring at city hall.
A few capital ventures in Noble, such as the Safe Routes to School and the recreational trails projects have been partially funded by monies received from matching grants, which obligates the city to move forward and complete them.
The outlook on the current tax situation is somewhat grim.
"If this trend holds, we will probably consider no raises for anybody, including the union people. Perhaps even personnel cutbacks," Wade said. "We just don't have any margin for error, we just don't have any reserves. We operate too close to the edge."
New businesses opening their doors in Noble should help produce tax revenue, but some haven't been open long enough to see any real trends yet and it's been hard to know the percentage of tax revenues produced by any given business.
However, recently, the Oklahoma Tax Commission has let Noble city officials pull up more-detailed tax information. Wade said this information will be helpful because in the past, tax information was grouped by type of business, making it hard to determine how much revenue was being produced by any given business. With the new system, city officials will be able to view information by permit, allowing them to track who the major tax payers are.
Currently, the city knows that compared to last year, Thanksgiving grocery sales were down $4,000, but it's hard to know if sales were down just at the grocery store or if sales were down across the board at other Noble locations where groceries are sold. The new Tax Commission reports will be able to pinpoint exactly where decreases are occurring.
Wade pointed out that Tulsa recently terminated 130 firefighters and Oklahoma City has laid off city employees as well. He hopes that tightening the belt in Noble will suffice and see the city through its budget woes.
"We're not talking anything drastic like that [laying off people]," Wade said. "We're just cutting out spending that we [currently] have in the budget and we're hoping that it doesn't translate into layoffs of personnel."
