Long Beach, Ilwaco buoyed by strong sales tax revenue in 2025<\/p>\n
Published 2:28 pm Saturday, March 7, 2026<\/p>\n
New sales and lodging tax collection figures brought mostly welcome news for the Long Beach Peninsula\u2019s two cities, which are enjoying stronger year-round revenues in the years following the covid-19 pandemic.<\/p>\n
Along with providing an important source of revenue for Long Beach and Ilwaco, sales and lodging tax collections are one indicator that can be used to measure the health and growth of an area\u2019s economy.<\/p>\n
Long Beach brought in $928,233 in sales tax revenue in 2025, according to lagging monthly data from the Washington State Department of Revenue, the second-highest of the past five years for the city. Last year\u2019s sales tax collections are up 92% compared to a decade prior in 2015, which checked in at $483,025.<\/p>\n
David Glasson, Long Beach city administrator, believes an increase in construction helped boost the city\u2019s sales tax revenues in 2025. Collections were steady all year long, and revenues in both the first and last three months of the year outpaced that of recent years for those stretches of the calendar.<\/p>\n
Buoyed by stronger-than-usual spring collections, sales tax revenue in 2025 set a new high for Ilwaco, clocking in at $344,663. Like its neighbor to the north, collections are up substantially \u2014 nearly 122% \u2014 compared to 2015, when revenue for that year was just $155,451.<\/p>\n
Ilwaco City Administrator Holly Beller said last year continued the trend of year-over-year increases in sales tax revenue.<\/p>\n
\u201cI think 2025 may have been an even further exceptional year because of sales tax collected from the Baker Bay Stormwater Improvement Project,\u201d she said. Getting underway at the Port of Ilwaco in the fall of 2024 and wrapping up last spring, the joint project between the city, port and Lower Columbia Estuary Partnership sought to prevent untreated stormwater from being discharged into and polluting the bay.<\/p>\n
Lodging tax collections, however, proved to be somewhat underwhelming for both cities last year. While the $1.16 million collected by Long Beach in 2025 was up more than 83% from 2015 revenue, it was still the least amount of money brought in by the city since 2021. The $65,597 brought in by Ilwaco was the second-lowest of the past five years, but still up nearly 34% compared to a decade earlier.<\/p>\n
Peak vs. off-season gains<\/p>\n
Coming at no surprise to anyone, the \u201cpeak season\u201d spring and summer months running from April through September continue to be the strongest on the calendar for both Long Beach and Ilwaco. But increased activity in the shoulder and off-season months has helped both cities \u2014 especially Long Beach \u2014 make considerable revenue gains in the 2020s.<\/p>\n
Over the five-year period from 2015 to 2019, Long Beach collected a cumulative $1.74 million in sales taxes during the peak season months. In the most recent five-year stretch, from 2021 to 2025, that peak-season revenue swelled to $2.69 million \u2014 an increase of just over 55%.<\/p>\n
Lodging tax collections during the peak season saw even larger growth in Long Beach, increasing from a total of $2.46 million from 2015-19 to $4.04 million in these last five years for an increase of 64%.<\/p>\n
But the off-season, when tourism and visitation to the area is generally at its lowest, is where Long Beach has seen the most growth over the past decade. The $1.83 million that the city has collected in sales tax revenue from October through March since 2021 is up nearly 62% compared to the $1.14 million that it brought in from 2015-19.<\/p>\n
Gains in lodging tax revenue during the fall and winter months has been even sharper for the city. The $2.38 million that Long Beach collected in the off-season from 2021-25 is more than double \u2014 over 111%, to be exact \u2014 of the $1.13 million that was brought in from 2015-19.<\/p>\n
The off-season figures, Glasson said, line up with what he has seen in Long Beach over the past decade.<\/p>\n
\u201cI agree with the numbers, we are much busier year round than we used to be,\u201d said Glasson, adding that he thinks it\u2019s more affordable for people to visit during the fall and winter when they don\u2019t have to compete as much for room rates and availability.<\/p>\n
\u201cThis is important, as it allows merchants to survive the off-season and keep some employees throughout the year.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Long Beach, Ilwaco buoyed by strong sales tax revenue in 2025 Published 2:28 pm Saturday, March 7, 2026…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":209609,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[33],"tags":[131,133,132],"class_list":["post-209608","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-long-beach","tag-long-beach","tag-long-beach-headlines","tag-long-beach-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/209608","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=209608"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/209608\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/209609"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=209608"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=209608"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=209608"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}