With storm expenses from Hurricane Irene totaling $400,000, Interim City Manager Ed Wyatt told council tonight the city would have to begin carefully watching spending.

While the expenses are reimbursable, he said it takes some time and the city still has not received money spent during the April tornado cleanup from the Federal Emergency Management Agency.

Discussion of the hurricane led Wyatt to tell council that he and department heads are already looking at cost saving measure for the upcoming fiscal year, a new fiscal year which could mean trouble for the city since the reserve fund for the Roanoke Rapids Theatre was depleted this year.

Wyatt said the North Carolina Rural Center has been helpful, contacting other state agencies to help the city find needed equipment.

City officials are still working on getting approval to hold a referendum so the voters of Roanoke Rapids can let their ballots decide if the city should have a sales tax. “We've started in dead earnest to see how we're going to address the budget for next year,” Wyatt said. “The time to deal with that is now.”

That work includes looking at a projection of what he described as the city's reasonable expenses for next year. The city is also looking at how a 1,000 reduction in population from the last census may affect funding.

Mayor Emery Doughtie said the city was fortunate to have a healthy fund balance and be able to pay its employees.

Public works had 793 hours of overtime during and after Irene, putting in 3,680 hours of work as of Saturday.

Other Hurricane Irene facts include:

Two-hundred average loads of debris hauled per day as of Saturday.

Public works, the fire department and parks and recreation cleared 83 blocked city streets.

Approximately 100 stumps still have to be removed from the city right of ways.

Forty rollout trash containers were damaged.

Thirty additional tons of solid waste trash were collected as of Saturday.

Forty traffic cones were lost or misplaced.