YOUNGSTOWN – For the second month in a row, the city’s income tax collections exceeded projected amounts, but are slightly below estimate for the first five months of the year.

“The past two months have been positive,” said Kyle Miasek, the city’s chief financial officer. “It shows that we have stabilized. But we haven’t recovered what we lost before the pandemic. “

The payment for March was $ 4,232,800, well above the estimate of $ 3,851,000.

The March payment is made in April because businesses have until the end of that month to remit taxes to the Regional Income Tax Agency, which then remits them to the city a few weeks later.

The February payment was $ 4,156,500, more than the estimate of $ 3,851,000.

These are major rebounds from the first three months of collection, particularly the January payment, which was projected at $ 701,000 and the worst month for income tax collections of 2.75% of the city in more than two years.

With two strong collections since, the city raised $ 19,318,900 in the first five months of the year. The projection was $ 19,435,000 in collections.

The city is $ 116,100 according to the projection, 0.6%.

“If next month is like this, I’ll be on target after six months,” Miasek said. “We may have bottomed out and hope to see job growth in the remaining six months of the year. It’s good news. We didn’t get out of the woods, but I hope it looks up.

For 2021, Miasek has projected an overall drop of 1.81% in income tax collections from 2020. So far this year, the drop is 1.55% from last year, did he declare.

The city had forecast an income tax collection of $ 43,601,000 for 2021. It was $ 44,404,600 in 2020 and $ 47,133,500 in 2019.

“We’re having issues with a second year-over-year drop,” Miasek said.

But with Youngstown receiving $ 82,775,370 from the most recent federal COVID-19 relief program, the city will be allowed to use a portion of those funds to cover shortfalls for 2020 and 2021 from 2019, Miasek said.

Additionally, if the declines continue into 2022 and 2023, the city can also use federal money in those years to make up the differences, he said.

The money would likely be used for purchases of capital goods, Miasek said.

Despite the reduction in income tax collection, the city’s general fund has grown from a surplus of $ 855,000 at the start of 2020 to $ 6,907,322 at the start of this year.

This was largely because the city received $ 5.3 million in federal COVID-19 relief funds, $ 2.8 million in state workers’ compensation rebates, $ 400,000 in voluntary employee leave and an additional $ 400,000 in spending cuts.

The general fund is expected to end this year with a surplus of $ 4,607,322, a loss of $ 2.3 million since Jan. 1.

In addition, funds subsidized by the general fund – police, firefighters, streets, parks, 911 emergency center, health and road improvements – are expected to lose $ 2,212,570 combined and end 2021 with small surpluses.

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