On Tuesday the Roanoke Rapids City Council will open the floor to public input on its proposed budget for the upcoming fiscal year.

We know at least one person is expected to speak on the financial plan and believe it may be in the city’s best interest to heed that person’s words — a request for the governing panel to adjust the tax rate.

Ephraim Brodsky, in his letter to the editor on June 6, made a very compelling argument as to why this should be done.

We won’t follow his comments with an analytical approach to the matter. Instead, we’ll try to address this issue from a right-brained, if you will, approach.

Many elected officials love patting themselves on the back when they say they played a part in keeping taxes low for the past few fiscal years. It’s a noble statement in good times but in lean times it isn’t so noble and can often work to a municipality’s detriment in those times, which the city currently finds itself stewing in.

These same officials, even when they vote to reduce the tax rate in a property revaluation year and the value of real estate increases, often give themselves an attaboy when in reality it’s all a financial smoke and mirrors game and is not a true tax decrease.

This upcoming fiscal year promises to be tight for the city, especially in light of an overestimation of ad valorem tax revenues.

The city has already adopted a $1,422,715 budget amendment to account for that and also approved a $250,000 budget amendment that addresses cleanup in the aftermath of last month’s storm.

We understand there was a mistake made. We also understand that it is the council who gives the charge to city management to prepare a budget with no tax increase.

Again, that’s fine in good times, but it’s poor advice in lean times and leads to many necessary and often crucial departmental requests not being addressed.

It becomes problematic when this practice continues.

But in the tougher financial times these well-meaning public servants who want to keep the tax burden light on their constituents could very well in the near future be doing them a disservice through less than acceptable levels of service and the possibility of employee furloughs.

City Manager Kelly Traynham noted in her budget message that $698,383 is being pulled from the general fund balance to balance the financial plan.

She cautioned in the budget message, however, that uses of the general fund balance should be limited to one-time or non-recurring expenses. 

Using these funds, she said, “will still keep us with a very healthy fund balance. We built it up over the last several years. If we felt it was going to put us in significant risk we would certainly have a different plan in place.”

We’re living in a time when prices are up and governments are not immune to these increases.

To us it makes sense for the city council to at least consider these factors and to adjust accordingly.

We understand an upward adjustment in the tax rate is not the popular thing to do but running for public office and keeping that office shouldn’t be a popularity contest.

Sometimes doing the unpopular thing becomes the prudent and business-savvy course to take.

And there is no time like now to consider taking that prudent and savvy action — Editor