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  • TAX ROLLS — The tax rolls are now ready and are at the supervisors board room for review by landowners. Pearl River County chief deputy sheriff Shane Tucker stands across from the rolls as he addresses the board at Monday’s meeting. From left are Tucker, Supervisor Anthony Hales, Sr., board clerk Cyndie Lee and Supervisor Joyce Culpepper. Staff photo by David A. Farrell

    TAX ROLLS
July 3, 2012

Supers face gloom-and doom scenario: dropping revenue and rising expenses

By David A. Farrell, Item Staff Writer The Picayune Item

POPLARVILLE — Pearl River County is being squeezed in a fiscal vise — falling revenue and rising expenses.

Supervisors on Monday said they are facing a seven percent drop in assessed valuation that will cause a $1.2 million shortfall in revenues projected for the 2012-2013 new budget, which the county must have in place by Sept. 15 for adoption by Oct. 1. The county’s fiscal year runs from Oct. 1 to Sept. 30.

On June 11, the board said it was running out of money in the current budget and began cutbacks, freezes, and furloughs to try and bolster an end-of-the-year cash balance that was rapidly dwindling.

Supervisor Anthony Hales, Sr., said current county revenues are short $500,000 as supervisors headed into the last quarter of this year’s budget.

On Monday, County Administrator Adrain Lumpkin, Jr., said the county would have to raise millage rates by three mills just to bring in the same amount of money that this year’s current millage rate generated. That’s because the county’s total assessed valuation has fallen, said tax assessor-collector Gary Beech, who spoke again to the board on Monday about the county’s tax-generating prospects.

If nothing is done, said Lumpkin, current revenue will be an estimated projected $1.2 million below this year’s revenue for next year’s budget.

That means, said board president J. Patrick Lee, that the county will have to cut expenses and, therefore, services, or raise taxes, or do both.

The board faced first a dwindling cash balance for the last quarter and now faces hammering out a budget for the 2012-2013 fiscal year with a looming $1.2 million revenue shortfall, and it does not have a strong cash balance to make up for that shortfall.

Lee said other counties are in the same shape as Pearl River County, but the press is just not reporting their problems. There are 82 counties in the state, and Lee said it was evident at the recent state supervisors’ annual meeting in Biloxi that everyone is facing fiscal problems.

Hales said that last week Lumpkin was what Hales termed “unfairly” criticized for the crisis, but Hales said Lumpkin had kept the board informed on the status of the departments in monthly budget reports and it’s up to the board to make the hard final decisions of where to cut, not the administrator. “He can’t do anything without the board’s approval,” said Hales.

Hales said he and former supervisor Hudson Holliday previously had warned the board that a budget shortfall was fast approaching because of overspending.

Lumpkin pointed to rising expenses that are exacerbating the fiscal problem: An increase from 12 to 14 percent in donations toward state retirement benefits for county employees, a $100,000 rise in insurance premiums, and rising energy costs. He said the county pays Mississippi Power Co. and Coast Electric a combined $500,000 annually for electricity. He said the county is inventorying its meters, and Hales called for an overall energy audit to try to find areas where the county could save on its energy bill.

Beech presented the board with a report that showed assessed value on real property had fallen nine percent, or $21.9 million; on personal property had risen by two percent; on mobile homes had fallen five percent; on motor vehicles a minus four percent; for an overall taxable value decline of a minus seven percent, or a $23.1 million decline. Because the value of the property is lower and the same amount of millage applied to property’s lower values will not produce the same amount of tax money. A mil is one-tenth of a penny.

Beech said motor vehicle valuation peaked in 2007, at the same time as the economic and housing collapse began and the beginning of the Great Recession, and has fallen every year since then for a 20 percent decrease. He said from 1989 motor vehicle valuation steadily climbed, peaking in 2007.

“What that means,” Beech told supervisors, “is that residents, since the beginning of the recession, have put off purchasing new cars because of the downturn. Before 2007 the value kept on climbing, but after that date, it has fallen each year.”

Hales seemed exasperated, and at one point admitted he was tired of wrestling with budget shortfalls, of not having enough money to fully fund a budget and services that he said the public seems to want.

“I don’t understand it sometimes,” he told fellow supervisors. “Residents come up and raise hell with us about taxes, and we try to cut, and then another group hits on us for cutting. Citizens will have to learn and be educated to the fact that if you want the services, you will have to pay the bill.”

He added, “The revenue we have coming in will not maintain the budget we now have, as the county is now being run. It just won’t do it.”

He continued, “We are now facing another round of cuts if we are to rein in spending to match revenues. I really don’t know what to do anymore. I am at my wit’s end.” Budget requests are now coming in from department heads for next year’s budget and the requests are up, supervisors said.

Supervisors zipped through their agenda in about an hour and a half, but the topic gradually and inevitably turned back to the budget, which the board has been addressing all during the month of June.

Supervisors’ first crisis came on June 11 when they faced a dwindling cash balance. Lumpkin told supervisors if they didn’t cut, they would run out of money. Supervisors then clamped on a hiring freeze, froze issuance of purchase orders for departments over budget, and asked Lumpkin for a list of funding cuts.

On June 25, supervisors implemented a furlough program for county employees, requiring them to take one day off every two-week pay period, or two days a month. They said that would save $150,000 between now and the end of the current budget on Sept. 30.

Supervisors also outlined cuts in various entities receiving county funding, with the SPCA and county library system absorbing the largest cuts in the $78,000 total reduction. SPCA absorbed an $8,750 cut and the library $50,000.

Supervisors, in making the cuts, said they were trying to recoup $500,000 in overspending that had put a squeeze on the ending cash balance for the 2011-2012 fiscal year budget, which ends on Sept. 30. Supervisors after the hour and a half session went into executive session to discuss personnel and recessed to July 18 at 9 a.m.

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