Jay Fisher, left, and Leroy Brooks	   Despite including pay raises for employees and major capital improvement projects, the county’s Fiscal Year 2027 budget will not come with a tax rate increase.
County Administrator Jay Fisher credited the ability to spend more without raising taxes to the county’s industrial base and its impact on increasing property values, including a $4.47 million increase in revenue from fee-in-lieu agreements from industries like Aluminum Dynamics and solar production facilities.
The budget, which the board of supervisors approved Tuesday morning, includes about $86.7 million worth of expenditures, up $12.45 million from FY 2026, to be covered by about $81.8 million in revenues, up nearly $10 million, plus funding the county already has on hand to cover the remaining $4.9 million.
“There are expenses that we plan to spend this year which we have already received money for in prior years, so there’s no new revenue coming in (for those expenses).” Fisher said of the gap between budgeted revenues and expenditures. “We already have the money in hand.”
Overall, the county levied 96.87 mills to fund the full budget, though its operations only account for 44.5 of that total, a 0.5-mill decrease from FY 2026. The budget also includes 2 mills mandated by the state to help fund East Mississippi Community College and 50.37 mills to cover Lowndes County School District’s ad valorem tax request, a decrease of 0.46 mills.
At that rate, homeowners will pay about $5 less in county taxes and about $4.60 less in school taxes per $100,000 of property value while a business owner will pay about $7.50 less in county taxes and $6.90 less in school taxes per $100,000 of property value. Combined, that’s roughly a $9.60 reduction for homeowners and $14.40 reduction for business owners per $100,000 of property value for property owners within the county school district boundaries.
The budget includes roughly $750,000 to cover raises for county employees. Fisher said that equates to about $2,080 per employee, or roughly a 5% cost of living adjustment for an average county employee with a $40,000 salary.
“We’ve got a good group of county employees, and we hope that every opportunity we get to give some iota of a raise – and this is a fairly substantial raise – that it will keep our employees (here),” District 5 Supervisor Leroy Brooks said during the meeting. “We hate to get people and get them trained and they leave.”
Debt service is a major expense driver to the budget, with $10.92 million budgeted – up $3.12 million from last year – to cover ongoing Cinco-related debt payments and BankFirst Yards sportsplex, though Fisher said that payment will be covered by funds withdrawn from the county’s hospital trust fund.
Major capital improvements in the budget include reroofing the Lowndes County Adult Detention Center to the tune of about $900,000, the addition of two new batting cages at BankFirst Yards and vehicle and equipment recapitalization in both the sheriff’s and road departments. McRae is a general assignment and education reporter for The Dispatch.