With a new mayor and a new member of the City Council, Washington enters 2014 facing many of the same challenges and opportunities it’s faced in recent years.

Balancing the city’s budget without raising taxes, making improvements to Havens Gardens and constructing a new terminal building at Warren Field Airport are just some of the items facing city officials in 2014.

New Mayor Mac Hodges will be going to school to learn how to be an effective mayor.

“I’ll be going to the School of Government for two weeks,” he said.

One thing Hodges already knows is that the city will be seeking several grants to help it pay for improvements to Havens Gardens and other city projects. Some of those grants would require the city to contribute funds, while other grants don’t require city money as part of the grant agreements.

“We’re working on hard on Havens Gardens. There’s a people’s pier we found a grant for. It will be coming up at the Jan. 13 meeting,” Hodges said. “We’re looking at a couple of grants. … I think we’re going to replace the bulkhead at Havens Gardens. … It’s next on the radar, especially if we can get some of these grants to go through.”

Hodges also has an interest in putting utilities in the downtown area underground, something Goldsboro has done. Hodges said he and other city officials likely would visit Goldsboro to investigate how that city changed its downtown streetscape.

The city is preparing to build the new terminal at the airport and new public restrooms at the west end of Stewart Parkway, Hodges said.

Other city officials weighed in on what’s ahead for the city in 2014.

“I think the most important thing is we need to balance the budget without increases in taxes or increasing our electric rates,” said Bobby Roberson, Washington’s mayor pro tempore. “I think that’s fundamentally something we have to look at. We have go to fill in some voids. We sold the old Hamilton Beach property. It sounds great and it was a nice sale, but that’s only short term. Based on what I’ve looked at, it looks like the electric department is going to come up short again because of the estimate (for expected revenues). So, I think that’s a big challenge for us, balancing the budget for the upcoming fiscal year.”

Roberson said the city couldn’t afford to provide funding for additional outside agencies. The city is struggling to fund nonprofit groups such as the Boys & Girls Club of Beaufort County and Purpose of God Annex that it has funded for several years, he said.

Roberson has other concerns.

“I think we need to keep our employee base. We’ve got to take care of our employees. We don’t want to be a training ground for other cities like Greenville or New Bern and places like that,” Roberson said. “We’ve got to pay attention to our work force to keep them happy and make sure they receive the same benefits that other cities (provide their employees). I think that’s a challenge as well.”

Roberson also has an eye on the unemployment situation in the area.

“The third thing is to stabilize our employment base. We’ve had PCS Phosphate the laid some people off. I think it’s important for us to maintain our relationships with industries in Beaufort County and take care of that as well,” he said.