POPLARVILLE — While Pearl River County supervisors wrestle with funding shortfalls and face trimming $1.2 million off of the new 2012-2013 county budget, or raising taxes, or both, Hancock County supervisors in Bay St. Louis this week said they face falling revenue, too, and will have to “trim the fat all the way to the meat,” Hancock County supervisor Steve Seymour told the Sea Coast Echo.

PRC budget woes, which surfaced in June, has caused Pearl River supervisors to clamp a furlough program on county employees and to cut a number of county supported entities to make up a budget shortfall in the current 2011-2012 budget, which expires on Sept. 30. County employees are required to take off one day without pay per each two-week pay period.

The Pearl River County library system absorbed a cut of $50,000 from the county for the last quarter of the current fiscal year, and immediately cut services back to only two days per week in Poplarville and three-and-one-half-days per week in Picayune, after being informed of the cuts. Since the beginning of 2011, the library system has absorbed $122,000 in cuts, library officials recently said in a press release.

And a source close to PRC supervisors say that supervisors are not in a mood to raise taxes and at least three supervisors have said they are not going to vote for a tax hike to support the new 2012-2013 budget. But that could change as reality sets in and projected budget numbers become clearer as supervisors draft a new budget.

Supervisors must have the new budget completed by Sept. 15, for adoption on or before Sept. 30. The new budget takes effect on Oct. 1. The county’s new fiscal year runs from Oct. 1, 2012, to Sept. 30, 2013.

The falling revenue is caused by a drop in property values because of the Great Recession. Therefore, applying the same amount of millage rates for the current year, to the latest assessed valuation results in the collection of less revenue per mill. In other words, the county tax collector collects less revenue per mill applied.

That means if supervisors apply the same millage, they will collect less money. Supervisors would have to apply more millage to collect the same amount of money they got last year, or cut drastically to bring expenditures in line with revenue, or do both.

Looking for additional revenue, PRC supervisor Anthony Hales, Sr., has floated the idea of applying an additional one percent sales tax, countywide, that would be applied to reducing dependence on ad valorem taxes and part of which would be used to also set up a “rainy day” county fund.

PRC supervisors said they plan to place a nonbinding resolution about a sales tax proposal on the November ballot, then try and get it passed through the legislature, and then come back with a special election to see if electors would actually approve it. The proposal has a long way to go, and even if approved, would not help right now. Supervisors need immediate help.

PRC supervisors have indicated they would reduce millage rates on home owners if they could get the one percent countywide sales tax proposal adopted. Currently, supervisors are dependent on land taxes and don’t get any of the sales tax revenue collected by the state, although the cities do get a sales tax rebate from the state. Poplarville and Picayune’s budgets depend on the sales tax rebate monies for almost one-half of their budget revenues.

In an interview with the Item, Hancock County tax assessor-collector Jimmie Ladner, Jr., said that in the 2011-2012 budget cycle the value of a mill in Hancock County was $462,000. “The value now is $444,000,” said Ladner. He said applying, for the new 2012-2013 budget, the same millage as was applied last time, results in a shortfall of approximately $700,000 in expected revenue for Hancock County. Ladner said supervisors will have to cut spending drastically, raise taxes or do both to make revenue and expenditures balance out for the new budget. “Next year, the board of supervisors will have $700,000 less to work with than they had last year with the same millage,” he added. “We have not seen a problem with our collection this year. We are going to meet our expectations.”

PRC tax assessor-collector Gary Beech has told supervisors here the same thing, although Beech told supervisors during their last meeting that the expected shortfall in revenue for the new year for Pearl River County is an estimated $1.2 million. In short, Pearl River and Hancock counties face similar prospects, but Pearl River’s drop in revenue is more severe.

The Echo’s Anthony James reported Ladner as saying of the shortfall in Hancock, “It’s absolutely due to the market. We just don’t have the new construction to counter the loss of value.”

Seymour told the Echo, “We’re going to trim the fat all the way to the meat. We’re going to be looking at everything to be more efficient.”

Ladner said revenues for the current fiscal year were in line with expenditures as budgeted last year.

(Information from the Sea Coast Echo was used in this story with permission.) .