Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: TUESDAY, March 13, 1990 TAG: 9003132998
SECTION: BUSINESS PAGE: A6 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: GEORGE KEGLEY BUSINESS EDITOR
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
Consumers' plastic credit cards are worn out as people try to catch up and pay off their debts, Schlanger said Monday. Home sales are relatively flat "and everything is kind of limp."
Schlanger said he told City Council this is not a crisis situation but it's not good. As he looks toward budget forecasting for the next fiscal year, he said, "I don't know what will change. I don't see anything in the next six to eight months that will change the economy."
All tax sources are flat, he said, "and everybody has cut back on spending in every category."
In the first seven months of Roanoke's fiscal year, through January, sales tax collections are running .5 percent less than a year ago, Schlanger said.
Collections in the city for December, the big sales month, rose 4.9 percent; the rise recorded a year ago was 18 percent.
Retail sales in Roanoke for the fourth quarter rose $3.2 million, less than in the other two valley jurisdictions for the October-December period. Sales in Roanoke County advanced by $4.4 million and Salem enjoyed a gain of $10.8 million, according to the Virginia Department of Taxation.
Fred Anderson, Roanoke County treasurer, said he would have been surprised by sluggish figures for retail sales. Expansion continues, he said, "and the economy is not the strongest and not the weakest."
Roanoke had been having large taxable sales increases, Anderson said, and he recalled that he had predicted that "once the newness of Valley View Mall wore off, the county's sales tax would start increasing again."
In Salem, Frank Turk, finance director, said business may have peaked and be about to level off. But he expects Salem's tax base to expand slowly but steadily with the addition of the Grove Worldwide aerial work platform plant and the Radisson Hotel in the next year or two.
In dollar volume, sales in the valley were $18.4 million ahead of the last quarter of 1988 and $47.5 million more than in the last period of 1987.
As the state's taxable sales volume for the last quarter rose 2.5 percent to $11.3 billion, most Western Virginia localities recorded gains from a year ago.
The exceptions were Radford, down 4.4 percent to $12.7 million, and Alleghany County, down .3 percent to $8.9 million.
Increases were recorded in Martinsville, up 17.5 percent to $52.6 million; Bedford City, up 2.1 percent to $18 million; Clifton Forge, up 4.3 percent to $6.4 million; and Covington, up 8.4 percent to $22.3 million.
Counties with higher sales included Botetourt, up 7.1 percent to $18.1 million; Bedford, up 29.6 percent to $21.1 million; Craig, up 9.5 percent to $1.4 million; Floyd, up slightly to $5.8 million; Franklin, up .7 percent to $35.5 million; Henry, up .6 percent to $65.1 million; Montgomery, up 10.5 percent to $116.6 million; and Rockbridge, up 18.2 percent to $25.5 million.
\ ***CORRECTION***
Published correction ran on March 16, 1990\ Correction
Because of a reporter's error, the increase in fourth-quarter taxable sales in Salem in 1989 was incorrectly reported in a chart in Tuesday's editions. Salem's figure increased 16.1 percent from 1988.
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Memo: correction