East Wenatchee Sees Significant Drop in Revenues

The East Wenatchee City Council was recently apprised of how badly revenues have declined this spring.

The council was shown May 2020 revenues as compared to May 2019 revenues.

Finance Director Josh DeLay said sales tax is down 14.94%, gas tax is lower by 37.53%, and hotel/motel revenue was down 50.47%.

DeLay said, "Business licenses thankfully were only down 1%. So that's good news that businesses are still renewing their licenses and attempting to stay in business."

In all, the city experienced an almost 19% drop in May revenues year over year.

DeLay added that he wasn't surprised, nor was he happy, about the new numbers, calling the current situation their "new reality."

City officials have recently been in discussions about next year and whether or not they will need to tap into reserves.

"We're doing well." continued DeLay, "I figure, if we never got another penny of revenue for the next six months, we'd still have six months of operating funds in reserves."

DeLay added that he projects June and July revenues to be even worse off than what they've seen so far.