By BECKY KISER
Hays Post
Retail sales in Hays in March - as the COVID-19 pandemic gained strength and Kansans stayed home - were much better than predicted.
The unexpected good news was presented during Thursday night's city commission meeting by Kim Rupp, finance director.
Receipts from the city's retail sales tax finance most of the city general fund.
General fund revenues provide funding for city services including police, fire, street, parks, swimming pools, and the municipal golf course. It also provides funding to outside agencies including economic development, such as United Way CARE Council and and the Fort Hays State University City of Hays Scholarship program.
"Given the state's stay-at-home restrictions that began in the middle of March, we originally projected May receipts, which are March collections, to be down about 20 percent," Rupp told the commission.
"Instead, that turned out to be only three and a half percent," he reported. "So we're pretty happy about that. That's about a $97,000 trend upward from the projected."
The actual month-to-date general fund sales tax collections were $570,391, a decrease of $20,819 or just -3.52%.
The report of Top 10 quarter-to- date sales tax collections by classification was up $123,349 or 7.18%.
"The largest categorical increase was in merchant wholesalers up 44 percent with building material/garden supply up 33 percent," Rupp said.
As expected, decreases due to Governor Laura Kelly's stay-at-home orders included food services/restaurants down 6.5% and clothing stores down 16%. Accommodation, including hotels and BNBs, took the biggest hit, down 23%.
"We do have new numbers this week," Rupp added. "Even though it's negative, it's good news.
"We had projected the receipts to be 30 percent down. It turned out they were only about five percent down.
"That's a turnaround of about another $150,000. So we're pretty happy about that.
"It's one of those few times it's good to be wrong," Rupp joked.
Rupp also provided the Top Ten Industry Sales tax collections for May and June.
The sales taxes were collected in March and April.
"If you think back, March as about a half-month of the COVID and April was a full month," he reminded the commission.
The Top Ten Industries in Hays were down 3.66% or $46,816.
"Again, as typical and as we thought, the ones that are down are the restaurants at 30 percent, new and used car dealers down 23 percent, accommodation off 54 percent, and clothing, shoes, jewelry stores off 57 percent," Rupp said.
"Surprisingly, building materials and garden supply are up 55 percent. The one thing that kind of complements that is the merchant wholesalers. They were up about 31 and a half percent.
"So that helped these (Top 10) categories recover a little.
Online shopping or electronic shopping, a category that includes Amazon, is up 56 percent.
With Hays sales tax revenues higher than expected, "we've changed our projection a little and we'll just wait to see what happens," Rupp said.
Year-to-date collections are at $3,121,179, up $132,469 or 4.43%.
City commissioners will begin reviewing the proposed 2021 budget during the July 2 work session.
. The six month average is at 5.77% which is an increase of 3.68% when compared to
a year ago.