Roanoke Rapids City Council will hold its public hearing on the upcoming fiscal year budget at their June 17 meeting at 5:30 p.m. in the Lloyd Andrews City Meeting Hall on Jackson Street.

Tuesday night had been the intended date of the public hearing, City Manager Kelly Traynham told the panel, saying, however, “We have not had enough time to allow ourselves and the public a chance to review and comment on that.”

Instead, she suggested the council hold the public hearing at their next meeting. “Council that night can receive public comments and depending on how that goes if you want to vote on the budget you can vote on the budget that night or you can schedule a separate meeting as long as the budget is approved by July 1st.”

Rex Stainback made the motion to set the public hearing on June 17 followed by a second from Warren Keith Bell.

Discussion of rescheduling the public hearing came after the council approved a budget amendment of $1,422,715 to account for an overprojection in ad valorem tax revenues, which Traynham had addressed in an addendum to her budget message last week.

Finance Director Carmen Johnson told the council that the amendment decreases the current fiscal year revenue projections. “Basically I’m reducing what I projected for revenues because it was overprojected and this is what the auditor suggested I do so at the end of the year we don’t have to report it to the LGC (North Carolina Local Government Commission).”

The impact that the budget amendment will have on the upcoming fiscal year financial plan proposal is a reduction to a projected $18,438,934 operating blueprint, Traynham said following the meeting. “Going into the next year we have conservatively estimated our revenues and expenditures and we are definitely going to need to look at some options for increasing our revenues for the next year.”

Traynham said there were several variables that contributed to the overprojection of ad valorem revenues. “A lot of it has to do with the ways in which we have been processing and preparing our budget over the last 15-plus years where our systems have not been reliable.”

The silver lining, she said however, is that “the city made an investment in a new finance software system that houses all our things on a current basis. The system never takes a sick day, it doesn’t take a day off and it’s accessible from anywhere.”