For the Greensboro City Council, it’s budget season, which means there are four scheduled council meetings in the next two weeks.

At the regular monthly business meeting on Tuesday, May 16 in the Katie Dorsett Council Chamber, City Manager Tai Jaiyeoba is scheduled to present the manager’s budget for the 2023-2024 fiscal year, which begins on July 1.

Tuesday, May 23 at 2 p.m., the council will meet in the Katie Dorsett Council Chamber for a “Budget Review/Planning Session.”  Usually work sessions are held in the Plaza Level Conference room where the City Council and staff sit around a big U-shaped table and discuss matters in what is supposed to be a more informal manner than at regular meetings.  Votes are rarely taken at work sessions, but the council does take action by consensus.

Mayor Nancy Vaughan said that the Tuesday, May 23 work session had been moved to the Council Chamber because the council will hold a special meeting on the proposed Short Term Rental Ordinance beginning at 5:30 p.m., and it seemed easier to hold both meetings in the same room.

For many years the City Council held work sessions in the Plaza Level Conference Room before the regular meeting and then walked up one flight of stairs, or took a short elevator ride, to the Council Chamber.  It is possible that, with three councilmembers in their 80s, it was decided that holding the two meetings in the same room would be more advisable.

Whatever the reason, holding the work session in the Council Chamber will make it possible for those watching the meetings remotely to actually be able to see and hear what is happening.  The sound quality in the Plaza Level Conference Room is dismal when it works and, at the last work session on Tuesday, May 9, the sound system didn’t work at all for the first hour and 12 minutes of the meeting.

The City Council will hold another “Budget Review/Planning Session” on Thursday, May 25 beginning at 2 p.m. in the Plaza Level Conference Room.

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