Sales tax outlook improves for Garland County
A recommendation to re-appropriate money removed from the Garland County Sheriff’s Department’s budget in May advanced Monday night, a sign that sales tax revenues haven’t fallen as sharply as officials feared in the spring.
The Garland County Quorum Court Finance Committee gave a dopass recommendation to a budget adjustment that included a $97,984 appropriation for the sheriff’s department’s general fund-supported budget. The money would purchase two outfitted police-package Chevrolet Tahoes if the full quorum court adopts the recommendation next week.
The quorum court unappropriated $178,609 from the department’s capital line item in May, removing funds for four Tahoes budgeted for the department in 2020. The county said the department purchased two Tahoes earlier this summer with money from a restricted fund not subject to the quorum court’s appropriating authority.
The department will have four of the five vehicles budgeted for 2020 if the budget adjustment is adopted next week, with two of the vehicles purchased with general fund money. More than 82% of the general fund’s $21.8 million in 2020 projected revenue will have been appropriated if the quorum court adopts the budget adjustments the Finance Committee recommended Monday night.
Counties are prohibited from appropriating more than 90% of a fund’s projected annual revenue. Approval of Monday’s budget adjustments will leave a $1,629,542 cushion between appropriations and the spending cap, according to information provided to the Finance Committee.
May collections of the county’s 0.50% sales tax supporting its general and solid waste funds were up 14.40%, or $115,548, compared to last year, according to information provided by the county’s finance department. The $4,103,116 collected through the first five months was up 5%, or $194,127, from last year and 21.79%, or $734,058, ahead of the 2020 budget’s revenue projection. The forecast is about 85% of the $9,931,557 the tax raised in 2019.
“Going into this, we really didn’t have a good handle on how badly we were going to be affected by the shutdown,” County Judge Darryl Mahoney said Tuesday. “Our numbers have not been near as bad
as was anticipated nor as bad as what the state had anticipated for us. We felt comfortable with going ahead and trying to provide at least part of what we had appropriated in last year’s budget. And we’ll continue to watch the sales tax numbers as we go on through the year.”
The county received no money from April collections of its
8% share of the 13% tax applied to Oaklawn Racing Casino Resort’s net gaming receipts, as the Arkansas Department of Health shutdown casinos from March 16 to May 18. They were allowed to reopen at a third of their physical capacity in late May and at twothirds capacity June 15.
Receipts from March and May were $71,468 and $52,462, compared to $150,527 in February. The county’s 2020 budget projected more than $1 million in casino revenue. Collections through May were less than
$400,000.
Businesses pay casino and local sales tax collections to the state revenue agency, which remits the payments to cities and counties about 60 days after taxes are collected at the point of sale.
The Tahoes that money was advanced for on Monday are expected to be more reliable than the Ford sport utility vehicles the department purchased in previous budget cycles.
“We got away from the Explorers,” Mahoney said. “They didn’t seem to hold up well for us. We had some problems with them. The Tahoe is a full-size SUV. I think we’ll have better longevity from them.
“If we don’t try to at least provide some this year out of our capital outlay it will put a burden on us next year. We’ve tried to adopt a policy of renewing every vehicle we can. Years back everything we had had over 200,000 miles on it. They’re just not safe. We’re trying to keep our fleet updated and make sure that as few of them as possible have that many miles on them.”