File photo
File photo
Richardson's sales tax revenue has hit a bump as the city's tourism industry is paused due to the COVID-19 pandemic, resulting in an estimated loss of $18 million.
“At the beginning of the year, sales tax was tracking pretty well,” Assistant City Manger Shanna Sims-Bradish told Community Impact Newspaper. “After May, we are projecting to have a gap or a delta between what we are projecting and what we are budgeting.”
The city had a favorable sales tax for the month of March, but is still expecting to lose 13.4% of the original budget, or $5.1 million in sales tax revenue, Community Impact reported. But losses in the city's hotel fund have increased since March, with hotel/motel taxes and Eisemann Center sales decreasing due to the economic shutdown, the newspaper reported.
“We are definitely seeing reduced occupancy in all of our hotels as well as the ability of our hotels just to pay,” Sims-Bradish told Community Impact.
The city already expects the hotel fund to lose $3.2 million due to the shutdown, according to the newspaper, and Sims-Bradish said the full impact of the pandemic is still unknown.
“For us, there is a real question of, ‘What does the economic recovery look like for our community?” she said. “How strong is it? How long is it?”
Alerts Sign-up