County Finance Director Kitty Crow, top right, gives a presentation to members of the legislature’s Audit and Control Committee.

Like counties all over New York as well as the United States, Chautauqua County’s budget has been impacted by the COVID-19 pandemic, however, so far they’re managing OK.

Kitty Crow, the county’s finance director, gave a presentation on sales tax at the last Audit and Control Committee meeting. “Year to date we are down about 4% through the same period last year,” she said. “It is very difficult to project how our (sales tax) payments will compare to the prior year for the remaining year’s payment so we’ve been adjusting our forecast as we go.”

Chautauqua County cut budgets and furloughed a number of employees earlier this year in anticipation of budget shortfalls. Those moves seem to have paid off.

“Our best estimate show that the reduction in sales tax that we are currently projecting has been offset by the budget amendments that we have already made to date.”

“We’re somewhat in a good position but we kind of look at all the things that are impacting budget,” Crow said. “As we go forward if there’s areas that we think we need to further adjust the budget we’ll be doing that, but right now we feel that most of the adjustments that we’ve made including the furloughs, have been what we needed to put us in a good spot right now.”

Even though the sales tax budget is down 4% from last year, it is slightly worse on the 2020 budget, because the county anticipated more revenue. “We budgeted 2 1/2% increase,” she said.

Legislator Chuck Nazzaro noted that the county is now receiving internet sales tax, which it wasn’t before last June. He believes this has helped the county’s sales tax receipts.

Crow explained that so far, Chautauqua County is down $1.2 million in sales tax revenue, excluding the planned increase for 2020. Including the planned revenue, the county is down $1.9 million.

With the cuts previously enacted, the county reduced its planned spending by $4 million, which may be enough for 2020. “We are currently projecting that we will be at least $4 million less in sales tax revenue,” she said.

Crow added that there are other areas in the budget that may fall short as well, including uncollected property taxes, and less revenue in mortgage taxes, Department of Motor Vehicle fees, and the occupancy tax which is generated when vacationers rent properties in the county.

“There’s a lot of areas that are still unknown for us,” she said.

Legislator Terry Niebel was pleased at the work the county has done to address this.

“So far the appropriation cuts that we have made in the 2020 budget, at least for the first half of this year, does seem to offset our reduction in the sales tax,” he said. “Going forward we have to keep a close tab on the sales tax for the second half of 2020 and then make whatever adjustments we have to.”

Nazzaro said the other big unknown is if the federal government will help fund local governments with their shortfall.

County Executive PJ Wendel, who also participated in the meeting, said U.S. Rep. Tom Reed and U.S. Senator Chuck Schumer have both discussed options to help local governments, but no agreements have been reached.

He further added that the travel ban from Ohio will likely hurt Chautauqua County, because many people from that state will visit the local area during their personal vacations. “We’ll be watching this to see how that’s going to affect us. … As everybody knows, this is a very fluid situation,” he said.

He thanked the county lawmakers for their work in making cuts earlier this year. “We’ve put ourselves in a good position,” he said. “We will be watching all of this, but I am cautiously optimistic.”