Sean C. Morgan
Of The New Era
While economic conditions are forcing school districts and the state to look at budget cuts and lower revenue projections, the city of Sweet Home isn’t expecting a big impact this year or next except in its building division.
The last time the city had to deal with significant revenue loss was in 2003 when utility property values were reassessed, Finance Director Pat Gray said. That directly affected property tax receipts.
The state is affected primarily because it relies heavily on income tax, she said.
When she last checked, property tax revenues are running a little ahead of last year, Gray said.
“A recession may not hit us hard.”
The city has collected about 97 percent of property taxes owed this year, she said. That’s a little ahead of revenue in the same quarter last year.
“When I do our property taxes, I’m really conservative,” she said, especially after 2003. She said she was conservative then too, but she wasn’t aware of what the state was doing with utility property values at that time.
“We’re just going to keep offering the services people request,” Gray said. “We’ve saved our money just for these purposes.”
The city’s audit for 2007-08 looks good, she said. Beginning fund balance projections for the next budget, 2009-10, are looking good.
Income from the courts is about what is expected, she said. Some may be paying less on their fines, but the biggest shortfall is in building permit revenue, which will affect personnel.
The city is trying to avoid layoffs by moving personnel to different areas while building activity is slow, Gray said.
The city’s planning assistant is going to part time this month for personal reasons. One building clerk will fill in at that position for the remaining three days a week, reducing her time in the building division.
“If it doesn’t pick up, there’ll be some creative department sharing,” she said. “When it does pick up again, you’ll want (those employees) available.”
Building permit revenues for the third quarter of 2008, July through September, are down to $19,500 from $35,350 in the third quarter in 2007.
Building activity spiked in October, an addition of $14,000 in revenue for the month and a total of $33,000 in revenue from July to October, 2008.
In the same quarter in 2008, the city handled $7.1 million worth of building and construction, including $3.27 million in commercial development and $3.9 million in residential.
Last year, the city handled a total of $11.2 million in building and construction, the bulk of it in residential, approximately $10.3 million, and $839,000 in commercial.
The figures show a shift to commercial this year, with remodeling improvements at Economy Drug at Thriftway, Twin Oaks and McDonald’s, which is building an addition.
Likewise, residential permits are going out for remodeling, Community Development Director Carol Lewis said. “That’s what you see in an economic decline.”
The creation of new lots for residential development spiked from late 2004 to early 2007, with more than 1,100 lots created in 2005 and 2006.
The Planning Commission has stayed busy since then, she said, but it’s primarily handling street vacations, variances and conditional use permits.
The Community Development Department also remains busy with partitions, she said. That’s rather typical too as property owners want to sell off property to raise money.