Washington’s City Council begins a series of workshops on the upcoming 2016-2016 budget next week.

The workshops are scheduled to run Monday through Thursday. Monday’s workshop will be part of the council’s regular meeting. The sessions will be held in the Council Chambers at the Municipal Building. Each of the remaining sessions begins at 5:30 p.m. and is expected to end about 9 p.m. The sessions are open to the public.

The council received City Manager Bobby Roberson’s proposed $75 million budget April 11. That budget includes a general-fund (day-to-day operations) budget of $15 million and enterprise-fund budgets (water, sewer, stormwater, electric, airport and others) of $44 million. The electric-fund budget is $35 million.

The proposed budget, likely to be changed by the council, calls for increase the city’s property-tax rate by 2 cents, from 50 cents per $100 valuation to 52 cents per $100 valuation. It also recommends a half-percent increase in water rates and a 2-percent increase in sewer rates for the upcoming fiscal year. The increases are needed to provide for the operation and maintenance of those services, according to Roberson. Under the proposed budget, electric rates would not increase during the fiscal year. The city’s stormwater fees would increase by 50 cents monthly for each residential customer, with commercial customers seeing their monthly charges increase by 50 percent, according to the proposed budget. The increases in the stormwater fees would be used to pay for more drainage improvements in the city.

The council has final say on the budget.

“Transfers from revenues have a slight increase. It was the desire of the City Council to again reduce the amount of the electric-fund transfer this year, however, due to substantial recurring loss of revenue from other sources, this transfer is recommended to meet out obligations,” according to Roberson.

In recent years, the city worked toward decreasing the revenue transfer from the electric fund. The proposed budget increases that transfer amount from $654,281 to $908,723, a $254,442 increase over the transfer made this fiscal year.

Roberson said the main factor behind the city having to increase its transfer from the electric fund to the general fund for the next fiscal year is the failure of the N.C. General Assembly to keep its promise to provide an alternate revenue source after it took away the city’s authority to generate revenue by issuing business privilege licenses. That decision by the legislature cost the city at least $100,000 in annual revenue. The city took in about $123,000 in such revenue during the 2013-2014 fiscal year, according to city officials.

The council meets at 5:30 p.m. Monday in the Council Chambers in the Municipal Building, 102 E. Second St. To view the council’s agenda for a specific meeting, visit the city’s web­site at www.washingtonnc.gov, click “Government” then “City Council” heading, then click “Meeting Agendas” on the menu to the right. Then click on the date for the appropriate agenda.