NATCHEZ, Miss. – Adams County supervisors are looking at 10 percent across-the-board spending cuts throughout county government as revenues are projected to fall short in the coming year.
In instructing their budget advisor Monday to draft the reductions, they did exempt the Adams County Sheriff’s Office and county road department from the resolution.
The cuts are being planned as expenses ingrained in the county budget exceed the $38 million in revenues being projected for the fiscal year that starts Oct. 1.
“It’s painful, … but it has to be done,” said county Supervisor Kevin Wilson, who prompted his colleagues to vote for the 10-percent-cut directive. “We really don’t have another way to get money for the county other than to raise taxes.”
As the five-member county Board of Supervisors voted unanimously to craft the 10 percent cuts “across the board,” it discussed the potential elimination of some county jobs – including those to run the partially uninhabitable county jail.
Adams County has about 200 or so county government employees.
Few details were openly presented Monday on the envisioned cuts and how they would impact services the county provides the public. Supervisors closed the public out of their meeting for two hours for discussions that included personnel at the jail and other county departments. Adams County Sheriff Travis Patten and budget advisor Chuck Lambert were in the closed-door session with the board.
While Lambert has been instructed to draw up the 10 percent budget cuts, county board President Warren Gaines said he hopes they don’t minimize the delivery of county services.
“At the end of the day, we want Adams County to run smoothly. We don’t want to decrease services,” Gaines said.
While the board voted to exempt the sheriff’s office from the planned across-the-board budget ax, supervisors did publicly discuss reducing the number of jail employees from 16 to eight. Adams County and Natchez are sending criminal detainees to the Concordia Parish Correctional Facility because of the county jail’s deteriorating conditions.
Natchez and Adams County pay Concordia Parish $30-a-day-per-inmate to house prisoners that would otherwise be in the county jail that had the capacity for more than 80 criminal occupants.
As more Adams County prisoners get incarcerated in the nearby Louisiana facility, Lambert has suggested cutting the county’s 16-employee jail staff by half. However, with the increased costs of paying Concordia Parish to house more inmates, reducing the county jail staff would net only about $80,000 next year in savings, he said.
Patten noted he’s suggested ways to cut spending in his office, and he urged the board to consider options “before just chopping” his budget. He noted some jailers perform other duties for the sheriff’s department, which is the county’s largest agency with about 75 employees.
County supervisors are trying to avoid imposing a general property tax increase on all Adams County residents, but they must decide on making those outside the city pay more to have their garbage picked up. With expenses going up “drastically” to a projected $2.6 million annually for the county’s curbside trash pickup service, Lambert has recommended the board increase the $15-a-month fee now charged to 6,000 Adams County households outside Natchez to have their trash picked up twice a week. An alternative, he said, is to increase property taxes.
The board voted earlier this year to contract United Infrastructure Services as the county’s garbage collector – a controversial decision that split supervisors 3-2 as they debated whether to reduce garbage collection to once a week to save money. The increased costs of the contract has put Adams County $540,000 “in the hole,” said Lambert, citing the expenses exceeding revenues for the county garbage budget.
There are two other notable budget increases facing supervisors: higher expenses for employees’ health insurance and pensions provided by the county. The projected cost of health insurance is about $2.8 million for the coming fiscal year.
Lambert – a former Pike County supervisor and administrator – was hired by Adams County supervisors to help hammer out the budget that’s to be finalized in September. He’s performing the job that’s been done for years by Adams County’s chief budget officer, but supervisors voted out county administrator Angie King in January, citing her poor job performance.
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