Town Manager Cliff Ogburn will “file” his proposed Town of Southern Shores’ operating budget for fiscal year 2021-22, which begins July 1, with the Town Council at its meeting next Tuesday, and “distribute” it then, too, according to the meeting agenda now on the Town website.
A date for a public hearing on the budget also will be announced at the meeting, according to the agenda, which you may access here, along with the meeting packet:
The Town Council will meet Tuesday at 5:30 p.m. in the Pitts Center. All attendees must wear masks and observe COVID-19 safety protocols. The meeting also will be live-streamed on the Town’s You Tube website. There will be two public-comment periods.
*Also scheduled on the Town Council’s agenda is a second vote on the proposed municipal service district ordinance, as amended and approved by the Council at its April 13 meeting.
In order to establish two MSDs for the purpose of generating revenue for the 2022 beach nourishment by levying higher tax-rate increases on property owners in those districts, a majority of the Town Council members present at two separate meetings must approve the ordinance.
The Town Council approved the amended MSD ordinance, 4-0, with Councilman Jim Conners absent, in April.
You will find the amended text of the ordinance on page 8 of the meeting packet.
*Before the discussion of any town business, according to the agenda, the Town Council will hear a “status update on the Mid-Currituck Bridge,” from Jennifer Harris, an engineer with the N.C. Dept. of Transportation’s Turnpike Authority.
According to the NCDOT’s website, the Mid-Currituck Bridge is a project “in development” that has been delayed “as efforts to fight COVID-19 have greatly impacted the N.C. Dept. of Transportation’s budget.”
The bridge construction, previously estimated to take more than two years, was initially scheduled to begin in summer 2022.
Ms. Harris and engineer Rodger Rochelle gave an update on the project in January 2020, which is available here:
The proposed FY 2021-22 budget is the first that Mr. Ogburn, who formerly served as Nags Head town manager, has prepared since he was hired by the Town last year.
In a break with the procedure observed by former Town Manager Peter Rascoe, Mr. Ogburn did not hold an item-by-item budget workshop in April with the Town Council. Instead, he held a workshop in March in which he sought the Council’s input on how to balance the budget, which, he said at the workshop, had a shortfall in revenues to cover expenses of more than $1 million.
Ann G. Sjoerdsma, 4/30/21
The Southern Shores Beacon 