Washington’s City Council is chomping at the bit when it comes to beginning work on the 2015-2016 fiscal year budget, which takes effect July 1, 2015.

For many years, the council and other city officials would get serious about preparing the upcoming budget in the early months of the calendar year. That’s not soon enough these days, according to council members. During a recent council meeting, council members indicated they are not happy that they and other city officials are not further along in the budget-preparation process.

Councilman Doug Mercer believes the council is dragging its feet when it comes to addressing upcoming budget issues.

“We’re four months into our fiscal year and we’re still discussing the first area (fees for people who use city sports facilities). We’ve got about 10 areas that we need to discuss. We need to speed this process up, or come January or February when it comes time to start talking about the budget, we’re still not going to have an idea of what we need to do with fees,” he said during the council’s Oct. 27 meeting.

(The council adopted a sports-participation fee schedule last week. City residents will pay $25 a person per sport, while non-city residents will pay $35 a person per sport.)

Councilman Bobby Roberson concurs with Mercer.

“At the rate we’re going, we won’t get the budget in until September of 2015, at the rate we’re going. My suggestion is we need to step up the pace; we need to call special meetings and let’s get on with the budget. I don’t want to be rolling in January of 2015 and not have any direction for the manager about where we’re going to go with the budget,” Roberson said. “This upcoming budget is going to be very difficult for us. It’s going to be time-consuming. The sooner we get into it, the better off I think we’re going to be in terms of making rational decisions in the budget process for all of our citizens.”

Mercer added: “We’re running at a snail’s pace when we need to be at a fast gallop. We’ve got to have more activities along the budget preparation to give the staff the direction they need. We need to start having meetings this month or next month to address some of the budget items. … We can’t continue at the present rate we’re going … or we wouldn’t finish the budget by January of 2016.”

One specific budget concern centers on the loss of revenue from business licenses, which the city will not receive after June 30, 2015.

On May 29, the N.C. General Assembly passed, and the governor signed, a law that affected privilege licenses taxes in North Carolina. The legislation repealed the authority of a city and county to levy future privilege license taxes beginning with the 2015-2016 tax year. As a result, this is the last year the privilege license tax will be levied, however, the tax collector remains empowered to collect delinquent taxes and audit prior year taxes beyond the next year.

During a recent council meeting, City Manager Brian Alligood said it would take an increase of 1.5 cents on the city’s property-tax rate to replace the revenue the city would lose when it no longer can impose business-license fees. Currently, the city’s property-tax rate is 50 cents per $100 valuation. A penny on the tax rate generates about $83,000 in revenue for the city, according to Matt Rauschenbach, the city’s assistant city manager and chief financial office.

The business-license fees used to bring in about $200,000 in revenue each year for the city, Rauschenbach noted. The amount fell to about $120,000 a few years ago after the city modified its fee schedule for business licenses, he said.

The city took in about $123,000 in such revenue during the past fiscal year, he noted.

The council has addressed one item related to the upcoming budget.

Council member William Pitt said the council dragged its feet on the sports-fee issue. He does not want that to happen in other areas of budget concerns.

The council imposed a fee of $25 for each youth sports participant who lives in the city and a $35 fee for each participant who is not a city resident. The change came after the recreation fee review committee, having concluded its study of the sport facility and other facility rentals charged by the Recreation Department, recommended bringing back a $30-per-player fee (the amount charged prior to the City Council’s approval of the “kids play free” program) as a way of helping offset some of the costs associated with maintaining the sports facilities instead of increasing the use of tax dollars to pay for such costs.

In a previous council meeting, City Manager Brian Alligood told the council the issue before it was whether to impose a fee or use tax dollars to pay for maintenance of city recreation facilities, including those used by sports leagues. Council members also noted that some sports programs that use city facilities have many players who do not live in the city but use city facilities while playing sports. Their parents are not city taxpayers, city officials noted.