POPLARVILLE —
If proposed millage increases, which includes the county and school millage rates combined, are adopted on Wednesday by the board of supervisors, most county taxpayers will face between a 10-and-11-mill increase on their tax bills in December.
Supervisors will hold a public hearing on the proposed county millage rates on Wednesday at 9 a.m. in the supervisors board meeting room in the Chancery Court Annex.
Although the county has advertised a proposal to raise millage rates to support the county general fund budget by 5.37 mills, that does not mean it has to raise those rates. The state law governing the procedure does not allow them to raise millage rates unless they have advertised the proposal and allowed taxpayers to speak.
During the hearing, supervisors will entertain short presentations by citizens who want to address the board before it takes a vote on the new 2012-13 county budget, and the proposed funding requests from the Poplarville and Pearl River County school districts.
Supervisors have discretion only on its own proposed millage hike. On the school millage rates, supervisors are required by state law to implement a millage rate that will generate the amount of money requested by the two school boards which depend on supervisors to levy that millage.
Besides millage to support the general fund, also included in the 5.37 mills are a one-mill countywide tax to support the Pearl River County Hospital, 0.7 mill for reappraisal and a 0.5 mill to help fund Pearl River Community College. The hospital tax is set to replace a three-mill tax levy in old beats one, two and three. The levy, by law, now has to cover the entire county.
Both the Poplarville and Pearl River County school boards requested the same amount of money as last year, and that means that supervisors have to raise millage to generate the same amount of money this year because property values have fallen, and a mill this year won’t raise the same amount of money as a mill did last year.
It was not clear whether the proposed millage rate to generate Poplarville’s funding request would remain in place. The Poplarville school board was supposed to meet Monday, and it had on its agenda an “ad valorem tax” discussion.County administrator Adrain Lumpkin, Jr., said at the Monday supervisors’ meeting that officials with the Poplarville district told him they might adjust their funding request to help reduce the amount of millage needed by the district before the millage rate for the district is set. Poplarville school district has a strong cash balance and might dip more deeply into that balance to reduce the need for more millage, officials said.
Supervisors mentioned the Wednesday hearing briefly on Monday and entertained no discussion on the proposed budget. In fact, a proposed budget has not been released by the board so far during the discussion process. The last time a recommendation was made to the board was in August, when Lumpkin proposed a $15.5 million general fund budget and a 3.66 millage increase to support it, which was about $1 million more than the current budget. Since then no public discussion of the budget has taken place and no one knows what supervisors plan to cut, or plan to fund.
It is still evident that the board is sensitive to budget matters. On Monday the board denied Sheriff David Allison’s request to hire two jailers after three quit. The request died for lack of a motion.
The taxing notice and hearing advertisement in the Picayune Item on Aug. 29 said that the board plans to raise county millage by 5.37 mills to support the county budget. A portion of that is discretionary and how the board will vote was unclear Monday. Once in August Lumpkin told the Item that the votes to raise taxes were not there. If that has changed it’s not clear.
At a meeting in late August, board president J. Patrick Lee said five county elected officials appeared before the board and backed a tax increase by the board, saying the county had cut as much as possible out of county administrative budgets.
Both Pearl River County school board at Carriere and the Poplarville city school board requested from supervisors the same amount of funding that they received last year. That means that supervisors in the PRC case will have to levy an additional 4.64 mills to generate the same amount of money from the school district as last year, and an additional 4.96 mills to generate the same amount of money from the Poplarville school district as last year. That’s because of falling property values.
Couple those rates with the county proposed millage hike of 5.37 mills and the combined tax increase of 10.01 mills in the PRC district, and 10.33 mills in the Poplarville school district.
That’s on top of a three-mill tax hike last year by supervisors.
It will take at least three of five votes to approve the proposed millage hike or to send supervisors back to the drawing board to cut some more to bring the proposed millage rate down to match last year’s.
Supervisors are supposed to adopt by Sept. 15 a proposed new budget and set the millage rate to support it. By law it must be balanced. The new budget when finally adopted will take effect on Oct. 1.
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