While it won’t likely make headlines in tomorrow’s newspaper, I am proud of recent forward progress on a proposal that Director Bill Christopher and I made for RTD to adopt a region-specific sales tax forecasting model.

A memorandum detailing our proposal is attached.  In summary, though, it has become clear in recent years that the method RTD staff uses to project the agency’s sales tax revenue is unreliable.  The consequence of using this unreliable forecast has been significant negative budget variances in each of the past five years, forcing RTD into painful mid-year budget cuts. 

In recognition of these shortcoming with the current forecasting system, RTD staff announced at tonight’s Finance Committee meeting that they agreed to create a new region-specific sales tax forecasting model.  They tell us that this new tool should be available for use in creating the 2009 annual budget.

Memo: Proposed RTD Region-Specific Sale Tax Forecasting Model