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Staff adds 'drinking places' subcategory to sales-tax report to track alcohol sales
Summary
Finance staff added a 'drinking places' line to the sales-tax report to try to detect alcohol-sales trends potentially linked to the entertainment district, but council cautioned the line is citywide and not district-specific.
Michael said he pulled out a 'drinking places' subcategory from the sales-tax report to monitor alcohol sales. "One thing that we have done here is there is a subcategory for drinking places ... so we have pulled that out to start tracking that," he said, listing drinking places at 1.95% of the report's total for the period covered.
Councilmembers questioned whether the citywide pullout would reflect sales in a specific entertainment district. "I'm assuming this is a citywide pullout, which is not accurate," one member said; Michael acknowledged the limitation and said it's the closest available indicator in the current report format. Members asked for clearer labeling so data users understand the metric tracks citywide alcohol sales rather than district-level activity.
