Tiburon monthly financial reports begin as audits lag

Tiburon’s Town Council received its first monthly financial report Aug. 19, a package that summed up the fiscal year that ended June 30, tallied the town’s cash and investments through July and laid out a decade of revenue and spending. Town Manager Greg Chanis cautioned that the year-end numbers are preliminary.

The presentation followed months of pressure from residents for more financial transparency, including calls to speed up the town’s audits and to create an independent finance committee like Belvedere’s.

Earlier in the meeting, on a separate item, Chanis addressed a question that has run through the criticism. Letters to the council had flagged revenue from hotel taxes, known as the transient occupancy tax, as coming in light for the year — the reports show the town’s two hotels generating $604,458 against $875,000 budgeted, a gap of $270,542. Chanis said that gap is an artifact of timing, not a shortfall. The tax arrives quarterly, in large chunks, and the final quarter ran six weeks late.

“Long story short, it looks like we’re going to exceed the budgeted revenue by several thousand dollars in (transient occupancy taxes),” Chanis said. “So the concern about a dramatic drop in (the tax) is not reality.”

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