Another Menards question answered

Posted: Wed, Oct 31, 2018 12:49 PM

(Tuesday evening, decorahnews.com posted an article called "Your Menards Questions Answered" http://www.decorahnews.com/news-stories/2018/10/20713.html, which attempted to determine what financial impact the Menards decision to drop its application to build a store in the Freeport floodplain would have on City of Decorah finances. City officials had earlier predicted the store would generate $300,000 a year in additional sales tax revenues. That brought this e-mail from Linda: "Is it not correct that one would have to subtract sales tax income lost from existing businesses due to customers shopping at Menards to come to a correct Decorah gain from a Menards building in town? Menards may say there would be a $300,000 sales tax income gain, but other businesses would more than likely see a drop, due to customers going to Menards instead."):

This question involves what would happen in the future, so instead of discussing facts, we're discussing predictions. Those predictions could be accurate--or they could be off the mark. The overall prediction by City of Decorah officials was that the city would "lose" $4.7 million in tax revenues over a ten-year period. But that is only a prediction--and one which, if Menards truly doesn't build a store in Decorah, we'll never be able to fact check.

However, an analysis of where customers of Menards would come from predicted that 35 percent of their sales would come from local transactions, which might draw away from local retailers. That would be $100,000 a year in lower sales tax receipts from other local retailers, or $1 million over ten years.

Again, these are only "guestimates," and no one can accurately predict ahead of time what will happen during a ten-year period.