City still expects $4 million surplus
By KEVIN CHIRI
Slidell news bureau
SLIDELL – The spending fun might be heading to its final round for the Slidell City Council and the city administration as sales tax revenue for fiscal year 2023 has apparently finally hit the wall.
Slidell has always budgeted conservatively, even in the past four to five years when sales tax revenue began skyrocketing.
Thanks to that careful approach to the financing, Slidell Mayor Greg Cromer has enjoyed every year in office with a hefty surplus at the end of the fiscal year for he and the council to decide on, with big supplemental budget totals going from $2 million a year to as much as nearly $7 million in 2021.
It has allowed the city to spend money on a lot of longtime needs, and a few “wants,” such as expanded recreation facilities, infrastructure needs, and pay raises for city employees and police.
But the past eight months of the current fiscal year, which ended on June 30, has made it clear the annual surplus is finally coming to an end, with revenue increases beginning to level out.
Sales tax revenue numbers in 2023 declined in seven of the past eight months, compared to the big totals they saw in fiscal year 2022, taking the city to a 2023 year-end finish of minus 2.13 percent.
That will still leave the city with another sizeable surplus when all the expense and revenue numbers are completely calculated the next two months.
The city had taken in $27.8 million in sales tax money for the 2022 fiscal year, but sonly budgeted for 2023 to take in $22.5 million. Even with a minus 2.13 percent in overall sales tax for the ’23 year, Slidell still brought in $27.2 million.
That means the city will likely have a surplus of around $4 million for the council and mayor to decide on this year. Estimates right now are that the final number could be anywhere from $3.5 million to $5 million.
“We knew that the big increases weren’t going to last forever, and that’s why we have always budgeted conservatively,” Cromer said. “But even with the growth coming back to earth this year, thanks to our budget approach, we will still have around $4 million as a surplus.
“None of this is shocking and we are certainly not panicking about anything,” he added. “We prepared for this all along since we knew that our economy had to follow the national economy to some extent as it usually does. The city is still in very sound financial condition.”
The decline in revenue for 2023 showed a very clear trend as the year went on over the past 12 months.
When the 2023 fiscal year began on July 1, 2022, things still looked quite rosy for the city, with positive gains over the previous year in the first four months. Revenue went up by 4.24 percent in July, 6.57 percent in August and 5.01 percent in September.
Things started sliding in September with a gain of only .31 percent, before the city showed negative reports in seven of the next eight months.
The two normally busy shopping months of November and December in 2022 had negative totals compared to 2021 with losses of 9.15 and 5.99 percent, respectively.
January wasn’t so bad with a 1.93 percent negative number, then February was the only plus month until the end of the fiscal year with a gain of 5.66 percent sales tax revenue compared to February of 2022.
The city then went four straight months of big losses from March to June with declines of 3.38 percent, 7.45 percent, 5.52 percent and then the worst showing of the year in June with a negative 9.57 number.
It still left the city with only a loss of 2.13 percent, easily passing the budget of $22.5 million, with a final total of $27.2 million. However, the trend now makes it clear the city will likely go back to the zero growth years they dealt with before the financial explosion hit.
Mandeville had a good year with an 8.52 percent sales tax increase, Pearl River was up 6.68 percent and Covington had a modest gain of 2.92 percent, all over the past 12 months.
Other parish cities showed Madisonville up 4.56 percent and Abita Springs up 3.22 percent.