This year’s city council retreat is likely to be a preview of upcoming budget deliberations, Mayor Emery Doughtie said today.

Council will hold two retreats this year, one on February 10 at 9 a.m. at the Roanoke Rapids Theatre. That retreat will be a half day meeting which will focus on the theater.

The full day retreat will also be held at the theater and starts at 8 a.m. on February 17.

The full day retreat is expected to differ from the one last year, the mayor said, with the upcoming one focusing on budget matters for the upcoming fiscal year.

The budget, however, cannot be discussed without bringing up the theater matter, Doughtie said.

“We’ve had some disagreements,” he said. “Most of council feels like if we can keep it open people will have more interest in it. We have to look at how much it costs to keep it open.”

Doughtie likened discussions of the upcoming budget to scenes of the American home front during World War II. “All are going to have to do more with less to get the fund balance up. That will make a huge difference down the road.”

Honestly, the mayor said, “I don’t feel good where we are, especially with that big debt out there. If we can hold back levels of service to where it is and have employees leave (through retirement) that will save us some money.”

The expected retirement of police Chief Jeff Hinton is a good example of that, the mayor said. Promoting someone within the department to deputy or interim position would help the budget situation.

While the mayor has no vote, except in ties, he said, “I feel fairly comfortable we’re going to do everything we can, I know council will do everything it can to adopt a budget and not have a tax increase. We don’t want the tax rate so high businesses won’t come here. They already know we’ve got a supplemental (school) tax. Looking at the budget, we can’t continue to pay out $2 million to the theater forever.”

While department heads last year presented a list of what they need, the mayor hopes this year they will present a list of, “How little can you get by with? Look at a budget of what we can provide. There’s no need for anybody to come and say we need two trucks. They need to say what can we do to get through this economic crisis.”

Sources of revenue are down, Doughtie said. “Building permits are still down, sales taxes are down. People are not spending. I think last year we talked about roles. This year will be more objective, where can we cut money and improve efficiencies.”