The Weber Fire took two weeks to contain, depleted firefighting and emergency resources, but at the same time did have an impact on city sales tax in Cortez, according to figures released by the citys finance department.
Sales tax figures increased through the first half of the year by 5.3 percent from the same time last year from $4.11 million in 2011 to $4.33 million for the current year.
The city broke the figure down even further, showing the city received an average of a little more than $894,000 in monthly taxes this year compared to almost $820,000 in 2011.
Finance Director Kathi Moss said the city projected just a 2 percent increase in sales tax number sales from last years figures.
Moss said one of the reasons for the increase was the people involved in fighting the wildfire near Mancos in late June and early July.
Moss said figures in July show that sales tax figures increased by 9 percent and attributed that to fire personnel and emergency teams from out of the area shopping and purchasing supplies and other materials from Cortez businesses.
For July, big-box stores saw a 6.81 percent increase from $330,000 to a little more than $352,300, while restaurants went up another 6.07 percent, $90,000 to $103,000.
Other retail this past July increased 11.4 percent or $40,000 more in sales tax numbers than 2011.
The finance director said big-box stores like City Market, Safeway and Walmart are the biggest tax generators for the city.
According to city figures the big-box stores sales tax numbers increased about $90,000 over last year during the same time period.
Moss said the July figures added almost a 1 percent growth to the overall increase of the 5.3 percent for the year to date.
She said the other reasons for the increase in sales tax numbers has a lot to do with ebbs and flows, though she added a lot of it is the result of food prices rising, meaning when a person pays more for a loaf of bread they will also pay more taxes on that item.
Moss also said the sales of automobiles increased and the purchase of even just one new vehicle can bring in hundreds, if not thousands of dollars in sales tax.
While automobile sales were down in February and March by around $7,000 from $70,311 to almost $63,200, sales increased by $32,000 for the rest of the months in the mid-year report, resulting in a net increase of around $25,000.
Lodgers sales tax numbers also increased from 2011, going from almost $67,000 to $72,300 or an 8 percent increase.
According the city report, the 57 businesses that failed to file for the month of July would not have had a significant effect on the sales tax collected. There were 12 non-filers within the city of all the non filers.
Moss said the additional increase of what the city was projecting will give them more money to operate and provide necessary city services like public works, recreation and police protection.
michaelm@cortezjournal.com
