Quote:
Originally Posted by electricron
Numbers do not lie. While it is true that in 5 of the last months sales tax revenues are higher than the previous year; where you left it as a final thought; what you left out is that it is still true the sales tax revenues still remain below what they projected it would be pre covid.
By how much one may ask, the answer is right there in the charts, just look at the bottom line of the last chart.
I'll repeat it right here so you do not have to take the time to go look:
COVID 19 (% loss)
FY20=$48.3 Million(-5.5%),FY21=$69.2 Million(7.6%),FY22=$72.3 Million(-7.7%)
Of course future projections will not necessarily be the final results, but the important point I wish to point out is that the loses are accruing, seemingly getting larger each following year.
Why are they projecting that? Because they are projecting normal growth and revenues from sales taxes based on top of a new lower starting line.
And that means over the course of accruing over a time period of decades much lower revenues.
The stimulus package passing through Congress will probably make up for the losses for the last year and this year, it will most likely not make up for the accruing loses for the next few decades.
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I already wrote that they expected losses for 3 years to be $190 million. They received $862 million from the March 2020 stimulus bill and will receive something like $850 million from the December 2020 stimulus bill, and they will receive around $1.3 billion from the March 2021 stimulus bill—about $3 billion. That would cover losses for awhile.
I also wrote as my final point that the sales tax revenue projections for Measures R and M are built to assume recessions happening, i.e., only allocating half of projected revenues. The Great Recession did not affect the availability of funding for Measure R projects (Purple Line, Gold Line to Azusa, Expo to Santa Monica, Regional Connector and Crenshaw Line) despite the fact that the Great Recession had a far greater impact on sales tax revenues and there were no federal bailouts of transit agencies during the Great Recession.