Watertown’s sales tax revenues down for month, but up for year

WATERTOWN, N.Y. (WWNY) - The city of Watertown's revenue from sales tax was down last month, but it's still healthy for the year so far.

City manger Rick Finn on Monday reported numbers from the comptroller's office that show sales tax revenues are down a little more than 9 percent for June compared to last June.

June's figures, however, are down 9.5 percent from what the city had budgeted for the month.

The good news is that year-to-date receipts are up 1.7 percent from a year ago and up 1.3 percent from what was budgeted.

In this case, “year-to-date” covers the entire fiscal year, which ended June 30.

Sales tax receipts totaled about $18.7 million for the 2018-2019 fiscal year.

Also on the good news front, the city’s income from its hydroelectric plant in June was way up from the same month last year.

That's mainly because a year ago the plant was shut down for repairs.

Revenues for June were up 1,220 percent from the previous June.

Based on budget projections, revenues were up 87.3 percent.

As far as the whole fiscal year, hydroelectric revenues were down 9.4 percent compared with 2017-2018.

The 2018-2019 revenues were 6 percent higher than expected, because the facility was scheduled to be shut down in August and September.

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