But City Manager Greg Burris on Monday urged patience -- asking citizens and city employees not to read too much into the March figures.
Burris hinted that any potential budget cuts may not be as deep as he once suggested.
A hiring freeze has been in place for more than a year now, and the city this fiscal year already responded in September and December to sales tax revenue shortfalls -- a new quarterly approach to making budget adjustments.
March's check ends the third quarter, which is off $783,553 from the same period of a year ago, and means the city must turn to the budget again.
However, Burris is optimistic that savings from the hiring freeze -- $664,000 -- could eat up most of it.
"Obviously, we're disappointed it's down," Burris said. "The bright side of this is we continue to live within our means. We adjust the budget quarterly and we're not relying on stimulus money (to balance the general fund)."
Greene County officials got a similar grim sales tax news.
Budget officer Jeff Reinold said the county's March sales tax check was 17.6 percent lower than the same time a year ago -- a decrease of $393,000.
"With our budget, we anticipated we would be 5 percent down for the year," Reinold said. "So far we're down a total of $156,000 -- about 9.3 percent to date."
Reinold said a hiring freeze remains in effect and could be extended longer if sales tax revenue continues to decline.
The March check represents sales that occurred in January.
Reinold said the county "will wait for more data" to come in before deciding what actions it may need to take.
Last year's March sales tax check was $2.2 million. This year's check was almost $1.8 million, according to Reinold.
"We've cut 7 percent out of our budget so far," Reinold said. "We talked about the sales tax check this morning. We need to be very careful with our spending."
Springfield's March check totaled $3,177,811.Compared to the check of March 2009 -- it was $3,870,811 -- that equaled a 17.9 percent decrease from the year before.
With only one more quarter to go in fiscal 2010, the city has collected slightly more than $26.459 million in sales tax revenue.
But the March check also represents a punch in the city's collective gut.
Not only does the March check drop the city's sales tax revenue differential to 9.16 percent, it follows a pair of checks that showed some promise and hinted that the city could see some economic stability.
February's check showed an increase, of 1.35 percent, and followed a January check that was off 3.53 percent from the year before.
Those checks arrived after Burris warned the City Council in early January that further budget cuts could "get real ugly" if the sales tax picture did not improve.
At the time, the city already addressed a more than $1.042 million sales tax revenue shortfall after the first quarter and a $1.273 million shortfall in the second quarter.
The first-quarter cuts included the elimination of four jobs in Planning and Development and two furlough days for 158 managers and supervisors, including Burris.
The second quarter focused instead on expenses that city departments agreed to forgo, such as Public Works equipment purchases.
Burris said Monday that he anticipates rolling out a budget adjustment within two weeks.
By then, the city anticipates it will know whether some retailers did not file their revenue on time or the state ended its revenue accounting before the arrival of those receipts. Both instances would mean that revenue being distributed in the April check.
The city also will canvass a laundry list of other revenue sources that are directed to the general fund and determine if they show shortfalls.
Sales tax revenue comprises a large portion of the general fund, but so do a number of other funds such as City Utilities' payments in lieu of taxes, or Pilot revenue.
In the second quarter, CU's Pilot revenues from natural gas were down $121,000, and Municipal Court fines were down $150,000. Building Development Services' fees and permits showed a $110,000 decrease.
All those figures were off compared to the same period as a year before and contributed to the $1.273 million shortfall in the second quarter.
That is why the city on Monday could not forecast with certainty the potential depth of the third-quarter cuts.
"We need some time to look at the big picture," Finance Director Mary Mannix Decker said.
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