The Greensboro City Council is holding its public hearing required by state law on the 2020-2021 budget virtually on Tuesday, June 2 at 5:30 p.m.
But unlike public hearings held on zoning issues, the public will not be able to comment during the meeting.
The only comments that are being accepted are written and should be emailed to virtualcomment@greensboro-nc.gov. The Greensboro City Council agenda incorrectly states that the comments should be emailed by “Monday, June 1st at 12:00 p.m.”
According to state law, for a virtual public hearing comments have to be accepted up to 24 hours after the public hearing, so the deadline for comments is actually 5:30 p.m. on Wednesday, June 3.
Greensboro City Clerk Angela Lord said that she intended to send out a press release about this change on Friday afternoon.
However, if you would like to have your comments listed at the meeting, they of course have to submitted before the meeting takes place.
For public hearings, in the past Mayor Nancy Vaughan has simply listed the comments in broad categories, such as the number for and against a rezoning request.
Vaughan could, however, choose to read some of the comments verbatim or could choose to summarize some of the comments. On a budget of $612 million, a comment could certainly be in favor of part of the budget, like the fact that there is no tax increase, and opposed to another part, like giving all city employees a 1.5 percent raise.
Also this budget eliminated the funding for a number of nonprofit organizations that have been receiving city funding for years and there could certainly be comments asking that the funding for a particular organization be reinstated in the budget.
According to the agenda there is no provision for the public to call and leave comments and also no specific address to mail a comment for the public hearing on the budget. The only provision for public comments according to the agenda is to email comments to the address listed above.
The Tuesday City Council meeting will be streamed live on the Greensboro Television Network and can be viewed later on the Greensboro website at https://www.greensboro-nc.gov/
