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MyspaceBed tax revenues for the City of Santa Barbara increased by 3.1 percent in July, roughly half of what city administrators projected it would. No evidence exists linking the disappointing results to the multitude of great white shark sightings. Instead, suggested City Finance Director Bob Samario, the previous July had more weekends than this year’s, creating a higher comparative baseline than city budget analysts anticipated.
Bed Tax Bucks Lower Than Expected
Thursday, August 30, 2012
Previous Month
Comments
Don't put all your eggs in the tourism basket. Oh.. too late.
Ken_Volok (anonymous profile)
August 30, 2012 at 11:54 a.m. (Suggest removal)
Any corporate CFO worth his/her salt knows how to forecast based on number of weekend, number of paydays, etc. Sounds like the city needs better quality people on its payroll - what a shock.
JohnLocke (anonymous profile)
August 30, 2012 at 4:37 p.m. (Suggest removal)
Who suggested an oil extraction tax?
Ken_Volok (anonymous profile)
August 30, 2012 at 5:12 p.m. (Suggest removal)
Don't know, but I think every other oil producing state has one, including Texas. But since Californians hate (envy?) Texas I'm sure we wouldn't want to emulate.
JohnLocke (anonymous profile)
August 31, 2012 at 8:26 a.m. (Suggest removal)
July 2011 had five full weekends, while July 2012 had four weekends plus a Sunday night. For a tourism-driven TOT hotel bed tax, that is a huge difference with that extra Friday and Saturday of TOT revenue in the mix. The problem here is reporting TOT per month instead of per quarter, which would even out the number of total weekends in the totals reported.
The city staff also could report a per-weekend adjusted rolling amount, as a better way to track trends. I am totally sure that all the city finance staff can craft a spreadsheet formula for that, but JohnLocke will bitch about that anyway.
Of course, this became news because a reported TOT number went down instead of up as expected.
John_Adams (anonymous profile)
August 31, 2012 at 11:47 a.m. (Suggest removal)
I will always bitch about government incompetence. And "surprises" to forecasts. Basic financial planning.
JohnLocke (anonymous profile)
August 31, 2012 at 2:50 p.m. (Suggest removal)
If we had 4 weekends instead of five and revenue was still up 3.1 percent for the month, then the actual increase not only met but exceeded expectations. Someone needs to teach these folks to do two things: make projections, and analyze numbers.
blackpoodles (anonymous profile)
September 2, 2012 at 8:32 p.m. (Suggest removal)