Leflore County supervisors have passed a 3-percent pay raise for all county employees for the eighth straight year despite a chancery clerk's warning that the decision will lead to higher taxes.
The raise will go to about 150 employees. It doesn't include elected officials, whose salary is set by the Legislature.
The vote came after supervisors balked at a similar proposal two weeks ago by District 4 Supervisor Jimmie Barnes.
District 1 Supervisor Phil Wolfe, who tabled Barnes' March 24 proposal, pushed the unanimous vote forward this time. District 5 Supervisor Arvel Burden seconded it.
"I made it this time because I know now what our finances look like," Wolfe said after the meeting.
Barnes, though, interpreted the delayed vote differently. He said he withdrew his original motion to keep it from dying without majority approval.
"It started with a 'crazy' motion I made two weeks ago, and I knew y'all were going to steal it away when I retracted it," he said.
The salary increase will cost the county about $60,000 for the five months remaining this fiscal year, Chancery Clerk Sam Abraham estimates. For the entirety of next year, that expense will balloon to $150,000, he said. And that's on top of the projected $2.5-$3 million burden of building a new jail, and insurance premiums that have jumped unexpectedly this year by about $320,000, he said.
Considering those unknowns, Abraham said he did not recommend stretching the budget even more. He also said he was reluctant to do anything that could cause a tax increase, given the county's high unemployment rate after a recent slate of manufacturing layoffs.
"It was hard to recommend a raise when a lot of people are out of jobs already and to ask the taxpayers for the additional burden," he said this morning.
In January, supervisors put off a decision on raises, citing an uncertain economic future. They said then they would consider raising salaries later in the year. Abraham says the county's financial outlook hasn't improved since.
"At that time, we had a tight budget, and we have not seen much money from real property taxes, which we are struggling to get in," he said. "Whatever you do, it's going to increase taxes."
The likely result will be a one-mill property tax increase, he predicted. A mill is $1 per $1,000 of assessed value. With that jump, the new rate would be 101.48 mills for residents in the county school district. That would make the tax, with homestead exemption, $714.80 on a $100,000 house - a $10 increase from the current rate.
But Wolfe, even as he lamented already high taxes and rising insurance rates, said, "We can make cuts elsewhere. I feel like the people need a 3-percent pay raise. I, for one, made a promise to the people to do that."
Barnes said his proposal would have saved money by giving raises only to employees below the department-head level. He said the county gives away too much money in donations that could fund pay raises.
Barnes was the only dissenter in a vote Monday to contribute $5,000 to the Greenwood-Leflore County Chamber of Commerce's annual Fourth of July Celebration at Whittington Park.
Also Monday, the board approved:
- A $1,500 sponsorship of Mississippi Valley State University's 53rd anniversary festivities.
- The establishment of a county Underwater Search and Recovery Team. The unit will be under the county's Emergency Management Agency and is projected to cost about $12,000 to set up.
- The appointment of T.W. Cooper as homeland security coordinator for the county. The title was requested by the Mississippi Emergency Management Agency to fit new federal guidelines established in the wake of the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks.
