The Joplin City Council held an informal meeting on Monday, April 21, 2025, at 11:15 AM UTC. The meeting included a financial update from Finance Director Mrs. Haas and a police department update from Chief Pearson. Council members asked questions and discussed various topics, but no formal votes were taken.
Council member Carlin asked what “other” consists of in the top 100 categories; Mrs. Haas agreed to investigate and report back.
Chief Pearson presented key statistics, staffing levels, and initiatives. Notable points:
Good evening, everyone, and welcome to the Joblin City Council informal meeting for this Monday, April the 21st, day after Easter. Hope everybody had a great Easter. We are going to get started today with the financial information update. Good evening, Mrs. Haas. Good evening, Mayor, Council. Tonight I'm gonna present sales tax to you for April. That's six months through the year. Sales tax is down just over nine and a quarter percent. And so for the year, we're essentially flat, uh almost exactly where we were at this time last year. Use tax. We're actually up about just over ten and a half percent. So for the year we're up uh just over eight percent uh marijuana tax, um, it's up for the month, uh, but if you look at last month, I think some of this is timing uh between the two months. If you average those, then uh we're in the ballpark of where we normally are, and then we've got our quarterly graphs. So this is just for the quarter, uh February through April, and this uh as a reminder, this is just our top 100 businesses. The top 100 businesses does represent the majority of our sales tax, but if uh one business reported one business qualified as a top 100 in 2024, but not in 2025, it can make uh these comparisons look uh a little odd. Uh so I'll just say that as a disclaimer, but generally speaking, it's a pretty good comparison to look at. Helps explain our our sales tax picture that we're seeing. Uh so you can see uh that discount stores are are doing a lot better in 2025 so in the second quarter than uh 2024. Um construction and home improvement, however, uh doing worse than last year, motor vehicles considerably worse than last year. Convenience stores are down, North Park Crossing is down considerably. Uh that is uh a change in a business that was included in 24 but not 25. Um, and then other is down considerably. And then if you look at year to date, so this would be the whole six months for 2024 compared to 2025. Again, discount stores uh doing well compared to last year. However, restaurants are are not doing as well as they were last year, along with uh construction and home improvement, motor vehicles, uh convenience stores, north park crossing, uh general retail is down a little bit, and other is down. So that gives you a little bit of a picture of what's going on with sales tax, and then I'll move to the the general fund um financials. So for the year, uh we're this is through March, so five months. Uh we are below uh what we budgeted for revenue at this point in time by 387,785 dollars. We are below our operating expenditures by just over 750,000. We're also below our one-time revenue and our one-time expenditures. Um the the gain is better, actually, the loss. We budgeted a loss, so the loss is uh better than what we've budgeted at this point in time. And then you can see the graph. Um again, you can see what we budgeted for 2025, and uh with the projections, uh, you can see the the path that we're on. So with that, I would be happy to answer any questions. Council, any questions for our finance director? Mrs. Carlin. Leslie, what typically makes up other anything that doesn't fall in those other categories? I mean if it's a top 100 business, yeah. It's uh essentially anyone collecting sales tax that doesn't fall in those other categories. Um I don't know that I know an example off the top of my head. Wouldn't it be marijuana? No. Uh well. No. Uh I'll I will look at that and I'll let you know. Yes. I'll I'll I'll find out.