by BOB BARTON
Sales tax receipts this month for Hays County’s 10 cities dipped a bit below last year’s March totals, with only San Marcos, the City of Hays, Mountain City and Woodcreek showing a slight uptick in statistics released over the weekend by State Comptroller Susan Combs.
Based on January sales of taxable goods, Buda’s $194,079 was nearly 17 percent below last year’s take for the same month while Kyle registered a smaller drop of a little more than five percent. Kyle’s receipts for the month totalled nearly $184,000.
Kyle, which now benefits by the presence of both Kohl’s and Target, is still showing an increase of 18 percent for the year, and probably will catch Buda in total revenues by the year’s end. After three months of receipts, this year’s analysis shows Buda with a little more than $790,000 in income versus $711,000 plus for Kyle.
San Marcos finally ended a spell of lower monthly totals by banking $1.3 million. It still is running slightly behind last year’s three month totals, but only by half of one percent.
Dripping Springs has a slight increase for the year of two plus percent and a total income of nearly $187,000. Wimberley did not fare nearly as well, and now has total receipts this year of only $143,000. That’s a decrease of more than 14 percent below last year’s totals.
Other three-month totals for county cities show Uhland with $9,388; Woodcreek with $8,592; Niederwald with $4,817; Hays with $3,080; and Mountain City with $1,253.
At the countywide level, Hays took in slightly more than $690,000 for the month, bringing the total for the year to $2.54 million. That is a tiny improvement of less than one percent for the year.
On a brighter note nine of the 20 largest cities in the state improved their sales tax cut in March, the best improvement of the year. Falling into that category were Dallas, Austin, Arlington, El Paso, Round Rock, Plano, Irving, Frisco and Mesquite. A big downer was drops of more than 11 percent in Houston, 12 percent in Corpus Christi and 15 percent in Midland.
