ROANOKE AREA'S TAXABLE SALES UP AT YEAR'S END

                         Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: WEDNESDAY, March 3, 1993                   TAG: 9303030049
SECTION: BUSINESS                    PAGE: B6   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: GEORGE KEGLEY STAFF WRITER
DATELINE:                                 LENGTH: Medium
ROANOKE AREA'S TAXABLE SALES UP AT YEAR'S END
Retail sales edged up during last year's final quarter in the Roanoke Valley and most of Western Virginia, according to a report of taxable sales released Tuesday. And some Christmas shopping dollars are expected to be counted in January's totals.
Gains of nearly $12 million reported by Roanoke County and $6.7 million for Salem raised the fourth-quarter total for the metro area $16 million, or 3.1 percent.
Roanoke, showing a $2.3 million decline from the final quarter of 1991, expects "a pop up" in sales for the first quarter when the spillover figures are reported, said Jim Grisso, the city's acting finance director.
Some December sales figures were carried over to January because supermarkets have an automatic 10-day extension that allows them to be added to tax totals for the next month. The state Department of Taxation said delayed food sales accounted for a decline reported in December's sales.
The annual figures showed a 4.1 percent gain in the state taxable sales total for 1992 from the previous year.
The state retail sales total for the fourth quarter was $11.47 billion, up 1.5 percent from $11.29 billion.
Grisso said he expects to see a turnaround in sales beginning with 1993's early numbers. That happened last year, he said, when February sales tax collections "popped up 29 percent" from the preceding year.
Roanoke's sales tax collections for the first seven months of its fiscal year were running 1.4 percent below projections, Grisso said, but he predicted the city will catch up by the end of its fiscal year in June.
Sales tax collections for the city in the past five years declined "if you take inflation out," Grisso said.
"That," he said, "causes some concern."

by Archana Subramaniam by CNB