Lower sales tax revenue causing more headaches for City of Tulsa

The city of Tulsa gets the final numbers for this yearâ€™s budget shortfall - a sales tax check a million dollars less than first expected. <br><br>It's not the smallest check of the year, which was

Wednesday, June 12th 2002, 12:00 am

By: News On 6

The city of Tulsa gets the final numbers for this yearâ€™s budget shortfall - a sales tax check a million dollars less than first expected.

It's not the smallest check of the year, which was back in March - but the latest sales tax figures for the city show the economy continues to stumble along.

Over in the city finance department - they've received the latest numbers - that reflect sales from April and part of May. They're the final numbers for the current budget that now will be about $203-million. City budget director, Pat Connelly, "We started the year thinking we would collect $216-million, so it's been a substantial reduction, $15-14-million less than we thought we would, that's significant."

The Tulsa City Council has already made the cuts for this current budget year. Next year doesn't look much better - and that's prompted the mayor to ask city employees to take days off without pay - and forced other reductions in every city department.