Through September, eight of 12 Wise County cities are ahead of last year on sales tax collections.

That’s good news for most local economies, although the few cities that are down are showing substantial losses as they wait for the economic recovery to come their way.

Decatur, the county’s largest market, is up a modest 1.15 percent through nine months. The city’s 1.5-cent sales tax has brought in $2,912,785.

Bridgeport, the second-largest sales tax collector, shows an increase of nearly 29 percent, having banked $2,473,149 from its 1.5-cent levy in 2012.

Rhome comes in third at $279,090 – the biggest percentage gain in the county at nearly 39 percent over last year’s nine-month total.

Chico, New Fairview and Boyd all show losses compared to last year.

Chico’s $218,877 is 22 percent below the 2011 total; New Fairview’s $210,609 is down one-third, and Boyd at $194,846 is below last year by 17.3 percent.

Alvord, with sales tax income of $99,031 for the year so far, is up 32.3 percent, and of the next four cities – Newark, Paradise, Runaway Bay and Aurora – all but Paradise show double-digit percentage gains.

Lake Bridgeport, with only $8,528 in collections this year, is down 18.5 percent compared to last year.

Altogether, Wise County’s cities took in $747,493 this month and have collected $6,582,667 for the year so far – up 8.1 percent or nearly a half-million dollars.

Sales taxes are collected by local merchants and rebated to the state comptroller’s office each month. Cities receive their portion by electronic deposit the following month, so the September numbers represent taxes collected in July and reported to the state on the August tax return.

A total of $3.325 billion has flowed into the coffers of 1,143 Texas cities so far in 2012, up 8.2 percent from the previous year. The state’s portion of the sales tax is running 10 percent ahead of last year.