The recent released numbers for Julys sales tax revenue coming to the Lynchburg-region were smaller than last year's, but not as bad as expected, according to an article in The Lynchburg News & Advance.

Lynchburg officials were expecting sales tax income to fall 12 percent, instead it only fell 7 percet. Sometimes good news can be "better than expected" bad news.

Any additional income localities can receive, like the sales tax income can help to keep property taxes down. So, this is also "better than expected" news for homeowners.

"A few hours after Gov. Timothy M. Kaine this week announced layoffs and other measures to address the state’s $1.35 billion revenue shortfall, the state released data on July sales tax revenue going to localities.

Lynchburg-area localities are receiving just less than $2 million in sales tax revenue for July, a 17 percent drop from the $2.4 million the region received in July 2008.

The revenue decrease was not a surprise, and in some cases was not as bad as had been expected.

'The new way to talk about economic good news is to say it’s not as bad as we thought it was going to be,' said Kimball Payne, Lynchburg’s city manager.

The numbers show Amherst County had the largest decrease at 58 percent, although county officials said that resulted from an anomaly.

In July 2008, the state collected a large sales tax payment from a county business that had not paid sales tax for some time, said Brenda Campbell, accounting director. That makes the drop in sales tax revenue seem larger than it actually is.

'Our sales tax may be down, but it isn’t down 58 percent,' she said.

Payne said that Lynchburg’s budget estimated that July’s sales tax income would fall 12 percent. Instead, it only fell 7 percent.

'It’s well within budget; It’s better than budget,' he said.

Although he did not have exact numbers on Wednesday for lodging and meals tax revenues, Payne said he believes those collections were on budget in July."

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