One local economic indicator record was broken and another was a very close second.
We receive monthly reports from the City of Cape Girardeau revealing sales tax numbers. They are always a month or two behind actual receipts and provide an excellent year over year comparison a month at a time. So the April report received in May likely covered the month of March activities.
As my teaser indicated, we experienced the largest receipts ever for restaurants and the second largest receipts ever for hotels. You have heard me speak often about the efforts of the Chamber and VisitCape in bringing people to the area. Add the success and partnership of the Cape Parks and Recreation Department in recruiting tournaments, and we are seeing the fruits of our labor. Certainly one month is not a trend, but the combined receipts are up 3.4% for the first ten months of this fiscal year over last year – which was also a record setting year.
In easy to understand numbers, the city collected $147,359.97 in April for its 1% gross receipts tax. That means roughly $14.7 million dollars were spent in city restaurants in March. I’ll let that sink in a minute but any way you slice it, that’s a lot of food and beverages.
Rest assured, we will continue to work hard to keep these numbers going in the right direction.
