Posted 11/13/2008
And it shows no sign of letup
Buda and Kyle and the surrounding areas seem to be immune from the financial woes facing much of the nation
Beth Nelson - Hays Free Press
Despite facing a national credit crisis and a looming federal bailout, consumers of Buda and Kyle opened their pocketbooks in September and contributed to their local economies.
And, for the first time since 2000, Kyle's sales tax revenues surpassed Buda's.
"You have to understand that Buda has been on that rocket for a long time," said Buda Economic Development Director Warren Ketteman, explaining Buda's past fabled sales tax performance that has plunged in 12 of the last 13 months.
According to reports from the Texas Comptroller released recently, Buda's sales tax revenues jumped 3.27 percent to $288,515 from last September's $279,353. The increase comes at the tail end of a year where Buda hemorrhaged about $400,000 in sales tax revenue, forcing the City Council to make wide-scale budget cuts.
"I think it's important to show as a city that if everyone has to cut back at home, we're going to do that here," Councilmember Sandra Tenorio said at the time.
While this release from the Comptroller is good news for this part of the state, all quarters of government warn against getting too excited. Buda City Manager Kenneth Williams put his years of experience to analyzing Buda's September numbers.
"It's much too early to tell," Williams cautioned. "Typically you have four spikes in the year and one of them is when people go back to school."
Over in Kyle, revenues made a significant hike, climbing 32.83 percent to $392,361 from $220,840 the previous year. Though Kyle city officials are optimistic that this might signify an upward trend, Kyle City Manager Tom Mattis said they won't be changing their financial strategy just yet.
"It's obviously good news on its face," Mattis said, but cautioned that minor fluctuations may exaggerate Kyle's good news. "We're still small enough that any blip or late payment can make it look better than it is," Mattis said.
Kyle's August sales tax revenues were down about 13 percent from the same time last year and homebuilding has slowed to about half what it was in 2006. Though Kyle hasn't been as impacted as Buda by peaks and valleys in sales tax revenue, they've joined their neighbor to the north in implementing precautionary financial measures.
Mattis recently unveiled city cutbacks, including deferral of capital purchases, delay of pay adjustments and selective hiring for open positions until January when the city will reassess its financial standing. If conditions worsen, the city will minimize discretionary spending, put a freeze on hiring for open positions and get to work identifying other ways to cut costs.
"The main thing for us is to wait until January to see how property tax is coming in," Mattis said. "Then we'll be confident we can weather any storm on the sales tax front."
The rest of the cities in Hays County turned in a mixed bag of sales tax revenues for September. Dripping Springs showed the most promising returns with a 42.33 percent jump from September 2007. On the more dismal end were Uhland, Wimberley and Woodcreek, which were down 41.88, 19.54 and 17.08 percent respectively.
The San Marcos population center tallied $1.559 million in sales tax returns, up 7.61 percent from the same time last year. On the whole, Hays County saw a 9.53 percent increase in sales tax returns from September 2007 to September 2008, taking in $2.269 million overall.
