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Thursday, July 17, 2008

Moriarty Revenues Down

By Laura Nesbitt
Mountain View Telegraph
      Money earned by Moriarty through sales of goods by city businesses has dropped off and city officials are concerned.
    The matter was discussed at a regular Moriarty City Council meeting on July 8 but Mayor Adan Encinias said that officials have noticed revenues have been decreasing for the past year.
    "I think it's something we're concerned with. The price of fuel will affect a lot of things. Maybe people aren't shopping as much because they have to put fuel in their tanks to get to work. Fuel is the thing. It's pretty much the interstate," Encinias said.
    Moriarty's fiscal decrease is related to gross receipts tax revenues, which are distributed to municipalities on a monthly basis from the state Taxation and Revenue Department.
    In New Mexico the gross receipts tax is imposed on, among other things, sales of goods.
    Six months of gross receipts revenues for the city from January through June 2007, and the first six months of 2008 were examined by Encinias. That informal audit revealed the loss of "roughly $40,000" in gross receipts revenues this past year, he said.
    In Moriarty the money brought in from gross receipts, which on an annual basis is about $2 million, is used for general fund services, Encinias said.
    Even though the mayor blames the decrease on fewer travelers on Interstate 40, some of the loss could be attributed to a lot of "delinquent reporting" by businesses, he said. But Encinias was still shocked to see the numbers so low.
    The municipality is dealing with the loss of revenue exactly as an individual taxpayer would.
    "It's like doing your checkbook at home. First you pay what you have to pay," Encinias said.
    That also means waiting to buy some fairly important items.
    "You cut back services. Like right now projects that would come out of general fund reserves or maybe on additional gross receipts, those are extra things that we try to put in, like now we need another police car and some equipment in the fire department, some pickups in the public works, some computers and computer software. Those are things that we're just not plugging them into the budget until we see the money," Encinias said.
   

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