Windsor Beacon – By Ashley Keesis-Wood
The sales tax numbers look good for Windsor through the end of the first quarter, town officials say.
“We’re up 1.43 percent over last year, which is right where we need to be,” Windsor Director of Finance Dean Moyer said during last Monday night’s regular town board meeting.
The town board, concerned because of the recession, has requested monthly progress reports on the town’s financial situation to use as a gauge of whether or not to go ahead with several capital improvement projects.
During the October 2008 budget discussions, the board set a target of 5 percent growth in sales tax revenue over 2008, which would have placed the sales tax estimate for 2009 at just over $5 million.
However, the sales tax revenue for 2008 came in higher than expected, ending at about $4.93 million. So to meet the original target of $5 million, the town’s increase is really only about 1.5 percent.
“There’s been some confusion and I wanted to clear that up,” Moyer said.
The number of building permits is not as positive, with just 13 single-family home permits and one industrial pulled through March.
There were 41 single-family and two commercials pulled through March 2008, Moyer said.
“We had projected a total of 112 new construction permits, including single-family, multi-family, commercial and industrial permits in 2009,” Moyer said.
Oddly enough, even though the physical number of permits isn’t good, the fees collected on those permits is only about $4,175 less in 2009 than in 2008.
That, according to Moyer, is because of the industrial permit.
“The industrial permits bring in significantly more money,” he said.
There have also been seven single-family building permits pulled in the first week of April.
Even though Windsor is hurting for building permits, according to Windsor Town Manager Kelly Arnold, surrounding communities are hurting more.
“There have been three single-family permits pulled in Greeley, one in Loveland and four in Fort Collins,” Arnold said. “I was actually surprised to see how low the numbers are in the region.”
The town is also a little behind in use tax revenue collected, being just $10,000 short of where it was at this time last year.
“In actuality, that’s pretty close,” Moyer said. “It’s a big pot of money we’re talking about.”