POPLARVILLE — As an eventful week in a county budget crisis drew to a close, during which demonstrators here took to the streets in a rare public demonstration, supervisors are hoping that matters have eased surrounding what they termed a dwindling cash balance in the current budget, as the financial doors slowly close on the current 2011-12 budget, which expires on Sept. 30.

Now supervisors face drafting a new 2012-13 budget, and it won’t be easy.

Supervisors on Monday at 9 a.m. will take the next steps in drafting a new 2012-13 fiscal year budget that has to be completed on Sept. 15, ready for adoption before it takes effect on Oct. 1. The county’s fiscal year runs from Oct. 1, 2012, to Sept. 30, 2013. It will be the first of a series of budget workshops, which are open to the press and public.

County Administrator Adrain Lumpkin, Jr., said on Friday the “sessions will pretty much deal only with the budget.”

Last week, political activist Donna Knezevich appeared before supervisors, representing a group she called bipartisan and made a number of recommendations about cuts, but just how much that will influence the board remains to be seen. Knezevich was placed on the agenda after about 30 of her supporters picketed the board on Monday morning.

After her presentation, two supervisors, Anthony Hales, Sr., and J. Patrick Lee, said a certain level of support has to be maintained, and they did not want to take what Lee termed a “meat-ax” to government programs.

But it remains to be seen if supervisors  can rein in the budget requests from department heads to match a $1 million shortfall expected in revenues, forecasted by tax assessor-collector Gary Beech, who has told supervisors that property values have fallen and will produce less revenue for the new budget than was produced last year for the current budget, if the same millage is applied.

Officials here can’t remember the last time property values have fallen, and a steady increase in property values have kept county coffers jingling, but that’s not the case now, hence Beech forecast of a $1 million shortfall in expected revenues.

Supervisors will have to cut expenditures, or raise taxes, or do both.

Sources close to the board of supervisors say the board does not have the votes right now to increase taxes. Although none of the supervisors have declared publicly what their intentions are, the sources have told the Item that supervisors Sandy Kane Smith, Dennis Dedeaux and Joyce Culpepper are “tending toward not favoring an increase in taxes, and favor more cuts.”

Asked about that on Friday, Lumpkin said, “The majority of supervisors right now don’t want to raise taxes to make up for a shortfall. . .”

Said Lumpkin, “We’ve got to increase revenue or cut expenditures drastically. It’s one of two things.”

He added, “What started the whole crisis was when Hancock County pulled its inmates out of the jail earlier. We didn’t do anything. . .We had been used to that revenue and it was gone. . .”

Hancock had housed its inmates in the Pearl River County jail in Millard while it was constructing a new jail in Bay St. Louis, and PRC was charging Hancock $45 a day per prisoner.

It will take at least three votes by supervisors to pass a tax increase to raise more revenue. It will also take at least three votes to block it. There are five supervisors.

The budget crisis surfaced in early June when county officials said if county spending remained on the same trajectory, there was a great danger that the county would run out of money by the end of the current budget year on Sept. 30.

On June 23, supervisors took drastic steps by cutting tax-supported agencies, among the cuts Picayune animal shelter by $8,750, the Senior Center in Picayune $2,500, and the Area Agency on Aging $5,000. Later, Picayune businessman Dub Herring sent the county a check for $8,750 to refund the animal shelter, which is run by the local SPCA chapter.

The board also cut the county library system by $50,000, crippling the county’s libraries, which had already laid off five persons, and then after the cut, cut back days of operation to two-days-per-week in Poplarville and three-days-per-week in Picayune.

The board also clamped furloughs on county employees. All the cuts and furloughs was supposed to save the county $278,000 in the fourth quarter of the current budget year, officials said.

Lumpkin told supervisors on Monday that because of the austerity program, expenditures in July were between $300,000 and $400,000 less for the same month last year, and supervisors voted to remove the furlough and to restore the library system $25,000 of its $50,000 cut and to fund the aging council $25,000 of funds that had been held in abeyance. The aging council had threatened to cut off a senior citizen feeding program to three PRC centers if its funding stream was not brought up-to-date.

On Tuesday night, library system director Linda Tufaro told the Poplarville board of aldermen that the county’s two libraries were just weeks away from closing the doors until the $25,000 was restored. “I think we can make it now through September,” she told Poplarville aldermen. She was before the board thanking them for their $24,000 annual contribution.

The total list of cuts made on June 23 were: animal control $3,600; SPCA animal shelter $8,750; Area Agency on Aging $5,000; the county Association of Retarded Citizens $1,250; county library system $50,000; Soil Conservation $5,000; Senior Center $2,500; Picayune Chamber $1,000; Poplarville Chamber $250; and Poplarville Raine Street Center $1,250.

The board on Monday restored $25,000 of the $50,000 cut to the library system, and brought up-to-date funding for the Aging Agency, which is under SMPDD, $25,000. Dub Herring had already restored the animal shelter funding for $8,750. Also on Monday, supervisors cancelled the county employee furloughs.