At least that was the consensus council reached during a budget work session Wednesday afternoon, the last before council is scheduled to adopt the new budget next Thursday.

A second budget proposal, this one totaling $14.43 million, presented to council by City Manager Jon Barlow, reflected no change in the current tax rate of 61.4 cents per $100 valuation, but did propose, for the first time, a garbage collection fee of $3.50 per month for all water and sewer customers within the city limits. That was the plan that a majority of council favored last month over Barlow’s intitial budget recommendation that called for a 2.6-cent increase in the city tax rate but no garbage fee.

Councilmen Mark Phillips, Sandy Stigall and Henry Daniel favored the plan with the garbage fee last month, but Councilwoman Merilyn Newell and Councilman Sam Spencer opposed it. Mayor Tom Brown, who does not have a vote on the issue, also voiced displeasure with the garbage fee approach.

Newell, Spencer and Brown all preferred the original budget proposal submitted by Barlow, which would have increased the city property tax rate to 64 cents per $100 valuation.

The $3.50 per month garbage collection fee would cost city residents $42 annually. The fee, however, would not cover the entire cost of garbage collection, according to Barlow, who said the General Fund would be used to fund the remaining cost.

If the tax rate were increased to 64 cents as initially proposed by Barlow, a property owner with a home valued at $100,000 would see a tax increase of $26. The last tax increase for city residents was in 2003.

This week’s budget session came on the heels of a June 10 budget public hearing, during which residents voiced opposition to the garbage fee.

Mayor Brown said this week that council had heard from citizens and should thus find a way to balance the budget without new fees or taxes.

According to options presented to council by Barlow, $138,000 would have to be cut from the budget in order to avoid the tax increase or garbage fee.

Options for saving the money included deleting the purchase of a backhoe, a car for the Roxboro Police Department, a fence to expand a portion of the yard at the Public Services building that is used to store equipment and supplies and possible additional tax revenue of $20,000.

Barlow told council members that the tax collection rate would be about 97 percent for the year. That is up slightly from a historical rate of 96 percent.

A majority of council seemed more inclined toward that approach, identified as Option One.

A second option would delete the $80,000 backhoe purchase and reduce the tax rate increase to .016.

Option Three allowed for leaving the tax rate at 61.4 per hundred and keeping the garbage fee.

Option Four would stick to the original budget, setting the tax rate at 64 cents per hundred, leaving off the garbage fee.

At the end of a meeting that lasted just over an hour, council members instructed Barlow to delete the police car and the fence and to look into the cost of debt service if the city purchased the backhoe and a truck for Public Works and financed it over a three-year period.

The car and fence alone would delete $56,000. That and financing the backhoe and service truck would likely shave $122,500 from the budget.

City Council is scheduled to adopt a budget at a special meeting on Thursday, June 26, at 7 p.m. at City Hall.