After conducting two individual sessions on two consecutive days, the Sunflower County Board of Supervisors has finally come to a consensus regarding the 2017-2018-budget proposal.
Tuesday’s vote was 4-1 to include a request from the Mississippi Delta Community College president and board to increase their maintenance appropriation by an additional half mill, which equates to about $80,000 for the college plus a $25,000 annual appropriation to the Fannie Lou Hamer Cancer Foundation.
The board reconvened on Tuesday after Monday’s meeting had to be suspended when a two-on-two vote yielded no concessions.
Supervisor Anthony Clark, who has been out due to illness, was not present on Monday but had to be teleconferenced into Tuesday’s meeting to break the tie.
That vote was followed by a 3 to 1 vote to accept and submit the budget for a public hearing.
Supervisor Riley Rice voted no in each instance.
Clark hung up before they realized the vote hadn’t been taken. To be in compliance with the law, the notice had to be submitted for publication this week.
The college’s request was inadvertently left out of the budget and the Hamer Foundation failed to appear before the board to request any funds but Supervisor Gloria Dickerson wanted the amount included, which raised the question of whether or not the board was required to give the money to the foundation each year or if it was discretionary. The state legislature gave the county board permission to contribute at its discretion up to $25,000 after the foundation made a special appeal.
County Administrator Gloria McIntosh said they had two available options. One is to take the half mill from general accounting and give to the college or increase the overall budget by half a mill. Board Attorney Johnny McWilliams asked which department’s budget would be affected if the funds were pulled from general accounting.
McWilliams told the board that once the maintenance amount to the college was increased that it could not be decrease without the consent of the college president, so if they increase the amount by a half mill it would have to stay at that amount perpetually. The county is currently contributing 2.58 mills to the college’s maintenance and operation category and the half mill increase would bring that total to 3.08.
They are also donating .74 mills to assist in other college buildings and another half mill that goes towards the college’s general obligation note on the new student union building, which will drop off when the building is paid for.
Based upon the disclosed information, a mill is projected to generate a minimum of $160,000 and a maximum of $170,000 and the overall county budget is based on 118 mills at the minimum amount.
In Tuesday’s meeting, Clark told his peers that he wanted to hear what each of them had to say about the issue before making a decision. He said he wanted what was best for each entity and the people, but cautioned that he was not for adding more taxes to the citizens.
Dickerson said she was against giving the money to MDCC because they would have to continually give it regardless of the county’s financial position but she was for giving to the cancer foundation because they work toward saving lives. She also asserts that the board should take care of its own employees before considering taking care of the college’s employees.
Donald was for adding the items and offered that the half mill could be rescinded if the college president agreed and restated points he made at Monday’s session where he said, “I desire to give MDCC the extra half a mill, because of the fact that it benefits the young people lives of Sunflower County and other neighboring counties,” adding that, “If we’re ever going to grow in our society and be where businesses will come, we have to educate our people.”
Dickerson had rebuffed his statement on Monday and said that people are not going to consider coming here with the infrastructure in as bad a shape as it is currently, she wanted to use the money for roads and bridges. She questioned how the county could have money to give to the college for salaries year after year when the county doesn’t have money to fix the roads.
Rice has held firm to his no vote on the proposal from the onset, “We can’t keep taxing the citizens every time somebody asks for something,” he said. Rice said the state cut their budget and the county needs to cut theirs too. He said the citizens he’s talked to are not for it.
Holmes told Clark he was for it because the college has cut corners and made other concessions to stay operational and it provides a convenience to the citizens of the county and the school wouldn’t be asking if the state hadn’t cut their funding.
Donald told Clark he is convinced that the county will take in more than enough to balance the budget and attempted to explain how $122,000 had been added to the proposed sheriff’s budget as a line item to either hire new employees or pay what he called “Excessive overtime” and the money could be pulled from there.
But Rice abruptly injected that Donald was trying to take away from the sheriff’s budget, ”Let’s tell the truth,” Rice said. Donald denied it asserting that it wouldn’t because it was included as extra. McIntosh said the board had discussed that the sheriff was spending too much money on overtime and the needed money for the two items could be pulled from his projected overtime expenses. It appears that the jail is already $200,000 over budget for the current year.
At times the discussion relegated to shouting and elevated tones as the members continued to inject information that was not originally introduced and at one point Clark asserted that they were putting him at a great disadvantage by expecting him to make a decision without full benefit of all information available.
Clark said he was not for “Robbing Peter to pay Paul” but maintains that if anyone supports MDCC it should be Sunflower County plus he was for donating to the cancer foundation, he asked if there was any way to take from the general fund without raising the taxes.
Holmes finally introduced a proposal to pull the funds from the end of year cash balance and give it to the college and the foundation without changing the budget. Clark told him that if that was what he proposed, then he would vote for that because it wouldn’t add additional taxes to the people.
Donald clarified that any money going to schools had to be levied and couldn’t be taken directly from general accounting. So the motion was to reduce the tax levy by half mill and acquire money from general accounting for the two entities.
The public hearing for the proposed budget and tax levies will be held Friday September 15 at 9 a.m. The county board of supervisors is currently operating with a proposed budget revenue of $16,886,289 of which 58 percent or $9,731,350 is derived from ad valorem taxes. The proposed budget has a total projected revenue of $16,450,186 of that amount 60 percent or $9,870,224 is expected to be financed through ad valorem taxes.
The decision is not to increase the ad valorem tax millage rate for the coming year, which means citizens will not pay more in ad valorem taxes on their automobile tags and property unless the assessed value of the property has increased.
The adoption of the budget and final decision is expected at 10 a.m. on Sept. 15.
