Lowndes Workers to Get Raises

LOWNDES COUNTY, Miss. (WCBI) — Lowndes County’s new $42,181,522 budget includes pay raises for county employees, two new community centers and new debt service for an industrial park…but no tax increase.

The spending plan will provide 75-cent an hour raises to sheriff’s deputies and E-911 staff and 50-cent per hour raises for other workers. That will cost taxpayers about $380,000.

New community centers — at an estimated cost of $500,000 with the money coming from interest on the county’s $30 million hospital-sale trust fund — will be built in the Caledonia and Blaylock Road areas. And the county will start paying $481,000 a year in debt for part of the county’s Global Aerospace Park west of Golden Triangle Airport.

The county and county schools combined tax rates will remain at 86 point 72 mills. The budget takes effect Oct. 1.

County supervisors added $25,000 to match a similar amount provided by the city of Columbus so the Columbus Lowndes Recreation Authority could buy two new vans to transport everyone from senior citizens to youth groups to CLRA programs. They rejected Supervisor Jeff Smith’s efforts to add $14,000 for a part-time recreation coordinator at the rural community center in Plum Grove.

All told, the budget will re4quire the county to take about $585,000 from its $2 million reserves to balance the budget without a tax increase. County Administrator Ralph Billingsley said some of that deficit could be erased by a new county liability insurance partnership through the Mississippi Association of Supervisors that could save the county between $80,000 and $100,000.