The Unspoken Depression In Scottsdale, Arizona

01-22-2011 • AZcentral.com

Construction sales-tax collections have fallen to $13.4 million in the past fiscal year from $32 million in the 2008 fiscal year, a decline of 58 percent. Scottsdale's construction category includes contracting sales attributable to commercial, residential, industrial and infrastructure work. It also includes speculative building for residential and commercial projects, said Phil Montalvo, city tax audit manager. Construction-category tax collections for 2010 through November were $11 million, off 31 percent from a year earlier. That is on the heels of a 40 percent drop in construction-sales activity in 2009 from the previous year. It's a far cry from the boom years when construction-sales-tax collections were $3.4 million in August 2005, up 66 percent from the previous year. By comparison, the construction category brought in $797,965 last February, less than one-third of where it was at the market peak. It all adds up to a huge decline in revenue for the city's budget. And construction is not the only category that has fallen. Automotive sales were down 41 percent in 2010 from 2008, and hotel sales dropped 27 percent during that time.