WALTHALL — The Board of Supervisors adopted Webster County’s budget with a millage increase for the upcoming fiscal year following a public hearing.
Supervisors worked on the budget during at least five recessed meetings in July and August. The hearing on the 2023-24 budget was held Sept. 11 as advertised and the county’s new fiscal year begins Saturday, Oct. 1.
Former Board Attorney Buchanan Meek Jr. gave a page-by-page overview of the printed budget, including the tax levy worksheet, during the hearing. Citizens in attendance who asked questions and made comments were Leah Nail Yeatman and Henry and Anne Ross. Tax Assessor-Collector Barbara Gore also sat in during the hearing and answered questions as needed.
In separate motions following the hearing, the board unanimously adopted the budget and the levy sheet as submitted by the chancery clerk. The combined budget for the fiscal year ending Sept. 30, 2024, and the order levying 2024 taxes for the county were both published Sept. 15 in this newspaper.
Total projected revenue for the next fiscal year is $10.44 million, with about 76.69% ($8.01 million) to be financed through ad valorem taxes.
The county plans to increase the ad valorem millage rate by 2.74 mills from 114.16 to 116.90 mills. Board President Pat Cummings noted this exceeds a goal set by supervisors about 10 years ago not to exceed 115 mills.
Two tax levies comprise the increase — an additional 2.73 mills for School Maintenance to 50.14 mills and another 0.01 mills for School Shortfall to 0.73 mills. An additional homestead credit from the state of $194,000 for the Webster County School District requires no millage increase.
The School Board approved its tax levy request in the amount of $3.6 million in August. The Board of Supervisors had to set the number of mills, or the tax rate, necessary to collect that amount.
“The increases in state funding and the school district’s ad valorem tax request will enable us to purchase desperately needed school buses and pay for increases caused by inflation,” Superintendent James Mason stated Aug. 23. “We currently have 16 school buses that are over 20 years old. The increase in the district’s ad valorem tax request will be used to purchase one new bus.”
The tax levy for the General Fund remains at 38 mills. All other millage rates also have no change excluding that for the E-911 System, which is up 0.50 mills, and Reappraisal, which is down the same amount. The county's net assessed valuation is $73.96 million. The projected value of a general county mill is $68,244 while that of a school mill is $70,266. One mill is equal to $1 per $1,000 of a property’s assessed value.
Questions asked by Yeatman during the county budget hearing included how much gas tax money goes to roads in the county and how much Weyerhaueser pays in taxes here. Gore said Weyerhaueser does have the most timber in the county and is taxed under the agricultural use classification.
“The state has lowered those values every year,” she said.
Henry Ross said the county effectively increased taxes through the most recent reappraisal update for the entire county, which is required every four years. The board could help landowners, especially commercial landowners, by not increasing taxes, he said. Ross acknowledged that the board had to levy the requested amount for school operations each year but said, “Nothing prevents the county from lowering other mills.”
Cummings said the board did make budget cuts that kept the total tax levy from being nearly a mill higher. General County departmental budgets with decreases in expenditures from 2022-23 included Circuit Clerk, down $22,106 (20.37% decrease); Elections, down $19,585 (16.32% decrease); Maintenance of Courthouse, down $7,885 (7.75% decrease); Justice Court Building, down $3,250 (3.25% decrease); and Sheriff, down nearly $16,000 (1.79% decrease).
Ross, a former county prosecutor, suggested that one way the county could bring in more money would be to focus more on collecting from those with past-due Justice Court fines. According to the discussion, Justice Court has over half a million dollars in delinquent fines outstanding.
“There’s a few ways to harass them,” Ross told supervisors.
He said money spent on hiring another deputy court clerk whose primary duty would be to work in attempting to collect past-due fines by preparing related documents would be money well spent.
Possible steps he said the county could explore would be levying judgments against those with past-due fines or having judges order attachments for vehicles they own. Attachment is a legal process by which a court of law, at the request of a creditor, designates specific property owned by the debtor to be transferred to the creditor or sold for the benefit of the creditor.
