MJ revenue.. it's not in the 2022 budget
I know I have written about this so many times over the years that it may be boring to some. But when we all started this some 30 years ago, we proclaimed that if the government taxed us stoners, you'd save hundred of millions in prosecutions of mostly black people and realize 1 billion dollars in tax revenue.
So when the ballot question to legalize was passed by the voters, I thought it would be a year or two before Framingham would start to see real money coming in. In other communities that beat us to the finish line, they have used that tax revenue for water improvements, roads and sidewalks, police, schools and various projects in their community.... but not here.
At last weeks FinCom meeting, MEK told the public that there was about 273k in tax revenue for this past reporting period and that there was no projected pot shop revenue included in 2022 budget forecast. And if you watch this part you will see just how out of touch about the industry, host agreements and taxes, the member's of FinCom are even after all the years of meetings and more meetings
1:08.21 to 1:18:00
http://207.172.210.8:5002/CablecastPublicSite/show/2306?channel=1
Compare that to what the Globe reported last week. Since Nov 2018 sales of mj products was 1.5 Billion, 140 pot shops on April 20, 2021 sold 5 million dollars of products. Experts expect 1 Billion in sales for 2021, so far this year sales are at 359 million dollars.
At a time when the Mayor proposes a 2.5 tax increase and a 12% water rate increase, the Fuller School override and the CPA charge, I can only think about the lost opportunity that mj revenue might have had in offsetting the tax increase. I hope I live long enough to see substantial revenue impacts on our budget.
posted by Jim Pillsbury @ 3:45 PM
16 Comments
16 Comments:
You could give janet leombruno the budget 9 months in advance and she would still be utterly clueless. A complete waste of a seat on the fincom.
Are you saying these shops have not been paying what they are required to pay or are you saying that the City is not being honest about the money they have received?
Sounds like an awful lot of money that is unaccounted for. So how do we find out what is really going on here?
If we are getting 3% of the sales directly paid to the city then that should be a pretty easy number for the city to share publicly. Why is that not happening?
Besides the local tax option we should be getting money from the state for the sales and excise taxes they have collected from dispensaries in out city. I think it can only go into the general fund, but we should know what that amount is. Time to file a FOIA?
There is not enough pot to be sold in all of MA to bail Framingham out of the financial mess we find ourselves in. We need to start selling off property, and a few elected officials
Have you asked the Finance sub-committee to ask the CFO for this information? They should be demanding they have access to review every single revenue stream available to the city before they sign off on any budget. You can't make good, informed decisions without information
How money do you think we are talking about here Jim?
The fact we don't know how much we have coming in on this makes it impossible to come up with a balanced budget
Is there anyplace that a resident of Framingham can take a look at the budget to see what is going on?
Any other hidden sources of revenue the city may be keeping from us? Seems like if there is one, there are probably many
there are two totally different piles of money.. the host agreement money is to be used to offset any extra costs this Town incurs because of traffic. The host agreement money (which equates to extortion anywhere else in the country) is can be no more than 3% of sales. MEK tells us that we have 350K in total host agreement money that will need to be appropriated to a fund or else it goes into the general fund.
The 3% of sales tax is part of the overall 20% state tax on non medical mj sales. We get that 3% back from the DOR on a quarterly bases. The State takes their share and spends it on alcohol and drug awareness programs, cops, the Cannabis Control Commission and whatever is left it goes into the states general fund that may come back to us in unrestricted aid.
According to MEK, Framingham has received 273K in sales tax revenue from the State with only two stores open last year. MEK also projects each store will produce 260K per year. And if all mj businesses are open, she thinks the total 1.56 million a year.
Personally I think that's low as each store should have revenue of 300K or more each year until the market is saturated, year from now. And that doesn't include the grow operations. Last time I asked the solicitor, the grow at Eastleigh Farm was in land court.
Bottom line is we missed a golden opportunity to get in when the market was just beginning. The revenue generated will go into a reserve fund, but I don't think it should be EDIC. I'd rather see it go to water enterprise fund or trash and recycling expenses.
If you look under general fund category on the new software you can see how MEK is accounted for the tax revenue and host agreement but you have to dig a little to find it.
Everyone can view the budget at
https://stories.opengov.com/framinghamma/published/IUZm7FmSd
It takes some getting used to and from what I see already there are gaps in the presentations for each department. It's definitely not your fathers spread sheets.
Yes.. there's one source that always unknown and secret. It's the forfeiture money from drug busts that is never accounted for on any police budget. It has been hundreds of thousands of dollars of money in the past that seems to be floating around the police station.. all cash along with proceeds from auctions the DEA hold often.
Who is required to keep track of the forfeiture money? Someone must be responsible for giving an accounting of that!
the only person who ever answered that question was MEK years ago. It doesn't show up anywhere in the budget.
Jim reading some of the comments here it is clear that many of these commenters did not watch the video portion you told them to watch. MEK explained where the money was and how much. Mike Cannon kept asking for where the money was that did not exist yet. Maybe he thinks the pot dispensaries have been open for years. Why is everything so adversarial with this man?
Post a Comment
Subscribe to Post Comments [Atom]
<< Home