Sunflower County Board President Glenn Donald finally got the votes to rescind a policy he maintains has been costing the county money.
The board voted 3-1 in its recent meeting to allow the county to begin issuing car tags to those who still owe balances on their residential solid waste accounts.
Supervisor Dennis Holmes cast the lone no vote.
For some time, Donald has positioned himself on the assertion that the county was losing money by prohibiting taxpayers from purchasing tags just because their garbage bill was past due and has been lobbying to get the other board members to side with him.
He maintained that the county would fare better if they allowed the tag purchases and sought other means of collecting from the taxpayers. County Administrator Gloria McIntosh was to contact Mississippi Court Collections to devise an agreement whereby the collection agency could be employed to collect the overdue sums from the citizens.
Holmes said afterwards that holding the car tag was the only way to get some residents to pay their garbage bills, and if that restriction is removed it could prove very difficult to collect the money owed. He said it is especially hard to collect from some county residents who rent even though by law, the amount can be added to the landowners tax bill.
He said that the policy shouldn’t be changed just to accommodate a few who complained about not being able to get tags.
“You need to pay your garbage bill,” he said.
Solid Waste Clerk Clara Phillips, working in conjunction with the county tax assessor’s office, has experienced marked success in collecting past due amounts due in part by refusing to issue tags until payment is made. She reported $6,678.55 in past due monies collected in the last month and a total of over $32,000 collected since the beginning of the year, in past due amounts only.
Donald feels that it is best to allow the collection agency to handle that instead of turning down hundreds of dollars for a tag payment over a $13 garbage bill.
Phillips and a Resourceful Environmental Service (RES) representative have completed a countywide house count and have ascertained that there are 2,169 homes in the county that should be included for collection purposes, plus an additional three homes that have confirmed use of a second receptacle.
The county remits to RES based on the number of homes receiving single-cart service, which is down 82 homes from the last count, and subsequently bills the residents. However, Phillips explained that some residents were using as many as four carts but were only being billed for one, so letters were mailed out to those residents that explained they would be billed for any extra trash carts, beginning Aug 31, if they didn’t notify the county to have them picked up.
A discussion ensued since Donald contended that the extra receptacles should just be picked up and the people shouldn’t be automatically billed. Both RES and Phillips asserted the unlikely success in that since residents often keep the carts behind their homes or further in their yards and RES policy prohibits them from going onto a customer’s property.
In other business,
The board voted to contribute $21,000 to the Ruleville Fire Department to aid in the purchase of a new Jaws of Life rescue tool. The Ruleville chief appeared before the board with a request because their current tool is out of date and would not cut through a car at a recent extrication and the victim ended up needing 13 units of blood because her extraction was delayed.
The board also voted to accept a proposal from Traveler’s Insurance, presented by the county’s consultant Doug Russell, regarding the county’s insurance policy for the upcoming year. Three companies were contacted to tender bids but only two opted to submit, Traveler’s Insurance Company presented the lowest proposal of $171,582 and the current provider, One Beacon, came in with a proposal of $176,452.
Both quotes were more than $20,000 over last year’s cost due to an increase in property value, an increase in general liability related to the budget increase and the purchase of 25 new vehicles, according to Russell. And the $4,870 disparity between the two quotes had to do with the amount of the flood deductible and the earthquake liability.
