Windy City Cannabis opened a store on W. Jackson St. in mid-April of 2021. Mayor Mike Inman is satisfied with the amount of money it brought in during the city’s May 1, 2021 to April 30, 2022 fiscal year.
“We really didn’t know what to expect. For our fiscal year that just ended we had no estimated collection of that tax because we didn’t know what the sales would be,” Inman said.
“It’s good for us, good for the community. At the end of the day, it’s a thriving business it would appear.”
He said adult-use cannabis sales in Macomb looked to be pretty consistent throughout the past fiscal year.
Macomb receives cannabis tax revenue from two sources: the local 3% cannabis tax and the state cannabis use tax. “We share in a slight percentage of that tax that’s collected statewide,” the mayor said.
He said cannabis tax income along with the revenue raised from video gaming and liquor licenses brought in more than $500,000 for Macomb last fiscal year. Those revenues go into the city’s general fund. There are no restrictions on how they can be spent.
Offsetting the loss of other revenue
Inman said the revenue generated from those three sources is helping make up for a loss of some federal funding due to the city’s population decline. The federal government distributes funding for roads, schools, and more based on a community’s population.
Inman said Macomb city leaders are not satisfied with the results of the 2020 headcount and intend to apply with the U.S. Census Bureau for a special census.
“We’re still diligent in reaching out to the census bureau and making sure we know when the window (for a recount) is going to open,” he said.
“We don’t believe it’s going to be this year. The first opportunity for us to take full advantage of that would appear to be in the fall of 2023. It makes sense from our past history with special censuses that we have the most students enrolled in the fall semester at Western Illinois University. We know that’s an undercounted population historically.”
Before the 2020 census, city leaders projected Macomb’s population would drop, potentially to as low as 16,000.
But the census bureau came up with an even lower figure of 15,051.
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