Charlottesville has $5.5 million surplus, may give employees raises

Charlottesville’s government employees may get raises in the new year after the city learned it ended fiscal year 2021 with a $5.5 million surplus.

At a City Council work session on Monday, the city’s Director of Finance, Chris Cullinan presented the results of the city’s annual comprehensive financial report. He said the city’s general fund finished the year with $5.5 million in surplus revenues. While COVID-19 impacted some revenue areas, Cullinan said the city saw better economic performance than the city expected in areas such as real estate tax.

“We were confident that COVID was going to impact our revenues, but we were unsure of exactly how,” Cullinan said. “The more economically sensitive revenues such as personal property tax, meals tax, lodging tax underperformed compared to the budget and underperformed to their actual results in the previous fiscal year. Fortunately, though, the city’s largest revenue source, which is real estate taxes, performed as well, if not actually a little bit better than expected, and then also sales tax performed better than I expected as well.

Cullinan said some of this can be explained by the fact that sales tax is applied to online purchases made within the city, and that people still had to buy groceries and other necessities during the pandemic.

Read more: https://dailyprogress.com/news/local/govt-and-politics/city-has-5-5-million-surplus-may-give-employees-raises/article_fe39c518-5871-11ec-854e-4bf34cb3d319.html
(Charlottesville Daily Progress)