0 thoughts on “Sales taxes up 15 percent across San Marcos, county”

1. It would be interesting to know how the performance of the stores in Stone Creek affected that number. I wonder how much Penney’s, Target, Beall’s etc are up. Also, thank you Academy.

2. I have a similar question. These numbers, as I understand them, are what we get from the state. Any rebates back to the retailers, come out of those numbers. What do our tax revenues look like, *after* whatever rebates are paid out? I never see that number.

3. For example, I believe 80% of Stone Creek’s sales tax revenue gets rebated back, through 2013. Link to follow, since it will take awhile for the moderated comment to show up.

4. Here is a link to an article with the Stone Creek rebates. I can’t recall who all is supposed to get rebates, or for how long. It would really help, from a transparency standpoint, to have the city provide that information somewhere. Maybe they do, but I don’t know where that would be.

   http://www.newstreamz.com/2008/10/22/san-marcos-city-council-meeting-dominated-by-4-million-development-incentive-increase-and-wonder-world-drive-extension-contract/

5. The rebates didn’t prevent Stone Creek form being posted for foreclosure in January.

6. I hadn’t heard that. It would certainly be unfortunate, if that is the case.

7. don’t know if they actually foreclosed, but it was posted.

8. That would be unfortunate. Even more so, if the one across the street, which was put at a competitive disadvantage by the incentives, is also struggling.

9. Thanks Ted. The article is a bit cryptic but it looks like the city gets all the city sales tax (.015%) on the first $33.3 million of sales at all the businesses in Stone Creek. And then 20% of the city sales tax thereafter and then it is not clear to me. Anyway, the deal is done. Looking at Wikipedia it looks like the average Target store runs $76.8 million in a year. I’m betting this one is below average. I think we’re getting most of the sales tax. Quite an administrative headache for someone at the city to keep track of though. All in all I’m glad Stone Creek happened though I doubt the second round of incentives was neccesary to keep them in the deal.

10. It’s not super clear to me, either. It is hard to keep track of these deals and we never really hear how they pan out. Another one that I am really curious about, is the Wonder World extension. We get reimbursed per vehicle/mile of use and there are permanent traffic counters embedded in the road, so we ought to be able to see the usage and project the repayment. I suspect that the numbers are pretty impressive and might help justify a northwest segment, but that’s another matter.

    It would just be nice to see some numbers from these various deals, to see which ones work well and which ones don’t. That bit of information could go a long way toward building consensus and making more informed decisions in the future.

11. And the conference center. Is that paying for itself? I guess if it’s not they would use the economy as a defense and rightly so. You’re right about using success stories as ammunition to sell future incentives.

12. I wonder also how the 2am closing times might have affected sales tax receipts.

13. Probably negligible, based on the liquor sales numbers reported (coincidentally) on “the other site.” Granted, those are mixed drink sales, but they only add up to $120,000 in taxes, through November. At least I think I got that right. It’s been a long day.

    Some percentage of that would be from the extended hours and then some multiplier would come from beer sales.

    Have police costs gone up or down as a result, and by how much?

    These are all important issues. I just don’t know if a thorough post-mortem is being done after any of these decisions are carried out.