City of Greensboro Loaned Hotel/Motel Tax Fund $250,000?
December 6, 2009 – 11:10 amHere is a copy of the Dec 2009 report on the status of the Hotel/Motel Tax Fund. This is the fund we’re attempting to borrow $6.7M from to finish the Aquatic Center.
It appears the City of Greensboro loaned this fund $250K in 2009 due to a 9.6% deficit. Why no mention of this small detail so far? Look at “Note 4…City is loaning funds to Hotel/Motel Tax Fund to pay a portion of debt service due to decline in revenue FY 01-02 to date”.
I’d request someone in blogtown much smarter than me look at this and analyze. Dave Ribar is the numbers man. Plus we’ve got a CPA mayor. I’m going to request Dave look at this and see if the money is even available to borrow at this time and if the Greensboro taxpayers could again be left holding the bag.
There is also a pending decision to be made by the Guilford County Commissioners…and that’s no piece of cake.
Update: N&R’s Amanda Lehmert has more, and Joe Guarino posts on the subject. Sam Hieb here. Jordan Green of Yes Weekly here.
4 Responses to “City of Greensboro Loaned Hotel/Motel Tax Fund $250,000?”
I only glanced at the numbers for a few seconds, but it appears the “available balance” declined consistently since the 90’s then the 08/09 projections started going up. I’d assume this was due to the 2% increase that seems to be allotted. My first assumption (again, didn’t look at the numbers very long) is that the money isn’t there.
There are a lot of things that seem very wrong with this project.
Ryan
PS - your fiscally conservative friend.
By ryan Shell on Dec 6, 2009
Tony:
Hi. I’m not an accountant, but I’ll try to take a stab at this.
It appears that the city loaned/advanced the fund $188,000 in FY 02-03 (note 2) and $250,000 in FY 08-09 (note 4). In addition, the city is planning on advancing another $140,000 in FY 11-12. The figures indicate that the advances will be repaid to the city account in FY 12-13 once a big wave of debt service payments passes.
With respect to whether there is money in the fund to borrow, it all depends on when the borrowing would take place. According to the figures, the fund is expected to begin accruing sizeable balances starting in FY 13-14. The city could start “borrowing” funds at that time.
By Dave Ribar on Dec 6, 2009
Is this what is called “creative accounting?”
By diane on Dec 7, 2009
Now this is exactly what we the citizens of Greensboro need to hear in these difficult times.
It seems that certain folks try to conceal the facts, and in a lot of cases they do. However it looks as if the monkey is out of the closet.
You guy’s keep on investigating, and you will pull the monkey or monkey’s names out, and I do hope you will post same.
By Reece Coble on Dec 7, 2009