Alameda Cineplex and Parking Garage Sales Tax Chart
Updated 11/20/09 to Include Second Quarter of 2009
Alameda Theater District Year-over-Year Quarterly Changes in Sales Tax
The first green bar in Q2′08 represents the first quarter that the parking garage was open…
The Theater District's share of sales tax revenue is not growing...
Well, ain’t no surprise! When most of the places on Park street are yogurt joints, coffee houses, other food places, salons and boutiques (where the least expensive items are $40.00-60.00), it just figures there ain’t gonna be much sales tax happening from families trying to stretch their dollars in this economy! On the up side, my friends who drive tell me that there is plenty of prime daytime parking on Park street now that most people have got in the habit of using the garage.
If only it were so easy to blame it on the economy! But as the second chart shows, sales tax in the theater’s district isn’t growing relative to other districts, which are also hurting – nobody’s buying cars on Park St. anymore either, due to the economy, and dwindling dealers.
The reality is that Alameda residents spend about $500 million per year in taxable sales in Alameda, and that’s it. Movie tickets don’t charge sales tax, so there’s no new tax from that. So all that the theater and garage has done is just dilute some of the existing spending into some shops beside the theater – retail sales tax from a burger joint two blocks up now is generated at BurgerMeister – but that’s not NEW retail sales tax, it’s the same that would have been spent anyway. The pie isn’t getting any bigger, it’s just different people enjoying a slice.
As for the parking garage, the budget documents approved by council in August show that the garage costs about $100K more per year to maintain than it generates in revenue. At least, that’s the forecast for 2009-2010 and 2010-2011, as presented by City Staff and approved by Alameda City Council.