After a holiday-season surge, business in Ketchum has reverted back to its yearlong slump.
This was determined by looking at the city's collection of monthly sales taxes, called local-option taxes, coming from a 2 percent tax on lodging and by-the-glass liquor sales, and a 1 percent tax on retail sales and building materials.
The city has released the numbers for business done in January, and despite a fair-weathered December, the beginning of 2010 signaled a return of the storm clouds.
Ketchum collected $114,000 in January, a drop of $26,000, or 19 percent compared to January 2009. The average year-over-year change for the past 12 months has been a little worse at negative 22 percent.
Despite LOT collections in January doing a few percentage points better than the past 12 months' average decline, it's nowhere near December's improvement when business almost matched that of December 2008, lagging by only 3 percent.
The news is even more disheartening if January is compared to the month's long-term average, computed by using data going back to the 1998-99 fiscal year. This January lagged behind its long-term average by 28 percent, or $44,000. The past 12 months have been tailing their long-term averages by negative 27 percent, meaning the situation didn't improve in January.
So, what sectors are this $44,000 loss for January coming from? The city makes the answer easy to find. It separates LOT collections into five categories: hotel rooms, condominiums, liquor, building materials and other retail.
All sectors are down, but three categories—condos, hotel rooms and building materials—are consistently off the most, whether compared to their long-term averages or year-over-year figures. In comparison to long-term averages, hotel room revenue in January was off by 43 percent, condos by 42 percent and building materials by 36 percent.
Trevon Milliard: tmilliard@mtexpress.com
