When Warren County supervisors begin plowing through the budget requests of 17 departments and numerous other requests for funding, they will try to avoid a third straight millage increase.

&#8220Last year was my first at-bat,” County Administrator John Smith said. The general fund rose about $1 million and taxes on property and vehicles went up, mostly in the name of funding improvements to emergency dispatch and public safety.

Now, with school funding and more money requested by public safety entities riding on the board’s approval of those requests, Smith admits the general fund will likely rise again – but still reflects the board’s desires to leave taxes alone.

&#8220My goal is to not raise the millage this year,” Smith said.

Supervisors set the levy that funds the Vicksburg Warren School District, which adopted its second record budget in as many years last month with a $73 million operating figure.

This past year, the district has followed a $70.8 million spending plan, which like this year’s budget expected no increase in local taxes. The county’s millage increase, however, included .55 mill to meet the school district’s request. To the owner of a $100,000 home, it meant an extra $5 in school taxes.

As for general county expenses, much of the requests made for extra money this past month have come from the same departments as last year.

Fuel is an added wrinkle this year, pinching county government hard like the people who pay taxes to fund it.

The Sheriff’s Department, Road Department and Buildings and Grounds have asked for thousands more to cover the cost. In the Road Department’s case, it expects spending almost $300,000 for gasoline and diesel fuel and has even toyed with re-establishing a reserve source of fuel at the county barn.

That, Smith said, is an item unlikely to be entertained because of hazards it may pose like fires and general misuse.

Requests for new equipment and technology in those same departments, plus an all-but-expected hike in what the county pays the city for ambulance service, totals $1.1 million, threatening to push this year’s general fund budget past $14 million.

Last year’s $12.9 million general fund budget raised the millage rate to 83.94 mills despite a 4.6 percent hike in revenue from real and personal property taxes. It ended up raising the tax bill of a home with a true value of $100,000 by $24.10, with homestead exemption.

Paring the budget to avoid a repeat could involve some tough cuts, including requests for pay raises in the Tax Collector’s Office and one for paying insurance premiums for deputy clerk’s in the Chancery Clerk’s Office.

Based on assessments taken this year, a 3.5 percent hike is expected to net the county an extra $500,000.

Personnel-related costs are expected to come from emergency dispatch and the emergency management office, which is nearly doubling.

Another expense to the county’s $6.8 million payroll of 251 employees is a second jump in employer contributions to the state’s retirement system.

This year, the board of the Public Employees Retirement System of Mississippi phased in the second of five planned increases in the amount of money state government entities pay toward their employees’ retirement.

Effective July 1, the rate increased to 11.3 percent. In an effort to ensure the financial soundness of the program, the board plans to raise it to 12.5 percent by 2010.

&#8220That will affect every job, obviously. So I expect it (the general fund budget) to rise,” Smith said.

While supervisors’ salaries are expected to remain at $44,812 a year, pay raises for some emergency dispatchers and the continued decline of revenue from fees collected from land line phones will cause a shortfall of more than $200,000 in the E-911 Dispatch Center’s projected $1.36 million budget, director Geoffrey Greetham said.

Initial figures show personnel costs at $895,650.81, up from the $850,000 in last year’s budget.

Sixteen of the 17 authorized dispatch positions are filled, with no plans to add to that, Greetham said.

However, the budget allows for hiring someone full-time to provide on-site technical support.

&#8220They would make sure the new system stays updated, things like that,” Greetham said.

The centralized dispatch center is in the beginning stages of a transformation in both its technology and its physical location.

This year’s $1.8 million budget allowed for an upgrade to the Computer-Aided Dispatch consoles and upgraded Motorola radio equipment that totaled nearly $800,000.

The purchases and the center’s move to the former Southern Printing building at Clay and First North streets, will likely happen in the first quarter of 2007. Architectural services to retrofit the building to draw the plans for an upgraded electrical system and accommodate new software were awarded last week.

Money expected from wired phone surcharges is just $300,000, in a forecast of a continuing trend of people using cell phones as their primary phone.

&#8220Each year fewer people opt for a land-line and choose to use their cell phone or their voice-over IP,” Greetham said, adding that little movement in the projected population of the county as a whole is another factor.

The director and supervisor in the department are paid using surcharge funds. The dispatchers are paid by a 65/35 contribution split between Vicksburg and Warren County.

Costs incurred for training and annual certification conferences are reimbursed by the state, as is the case with emergency management training costs.

The breakdown of income and expenditures was not adopted by the E-911 Commission at the end of June or July, as is customary. After several drafts, the budget request still shows a shortfall of $223,071.41. It is expected to be up for questions and adoption when they meet again Wednesday.

In the Sheriff’s Department, four new hires, newer patrol cars and the cost of fuel running them and the insurance protecting them will make up much of the extra $557,869 it is asking for this year.

This year’s budget request also allows for department-wide pay raises for the department’s 51 employees, not including the sheriff whose salary is set by the state.

Just less than $2 million of the $3.4 million request would cover those raises, plus an extra deputy, a records clerk and a PC technician.

Capital outlay items in the budget include $161,000 to replace seven patrol cars and purchase software that would enable patrol division deputies to file reports directly from the field, geared to cut the time spent driving back to the office to file them.

&#8220Remember we are covering 600 square miles as opposed to the city’s 33 square miles and keeping my units out in the county on patrol is crucial to our overall crime prevention and detection mission,” Sheriff Martin Pace said.

The technology would also allow each deputy to send traffic accident reports to Mississippi Highway Patrol dispatchers in Jackson from their car. Currently, deputies still must return to the Sheriff’s Department offices to send them.

&#8220This is a very efficient way of reporting and at the same time allows the units to stay out in the county,” Pace said.

As for gasoline, the department will ask for $130,000, up about $10,000 from last year.

Also requested is $27,000 to purchase 800-mhz radios for the eight troopers with the Mississippi Highway Patrol assigned to Warren County.

Currently, sheriff’s deputies can communicate with MHP only by outdated low-band radio frequencies and through a county dispatch center contacting MHP’s dispatch. Pace has said purchasing the new radios would greatly improve communication between his department and troopers, particularly during car accident responses on state and federal highways in the county.

The budget does not figure to include Pace’s biggest request the past several years, a new jail to replace the current 100-year-old structure at 1000 Grove Street.

The last six grand juries convened in Warren County have recommended it, with last week’s saying it should be built within five years on a site near the courthouse.

Estimates have put the cost of a new jail around $10 million, likely to be money the county would borrow over a period of 10 to 20 years.

Central Mississippi Planning and Development District is in the midst of preparing the Warren County’s first comprehensive study on its land, roads and public buildings. A draft on land and roads is expected by year’s end.

In its $3,936,875 budget request, the Road Department has asked for 5 percent cost of living increases and a 50 cent-per-hour raise for nine of its 65 full-time employees.

The steady climb of gasoline and diesel fuel prices has prompted the department to request $250,000 for fuel, a jump of more than 50 percent.

The department was the most strained unit of county government in the weeks following Hurricane Katrina when crews cleared untold heaps of trees downed by the killer storm’s winds.

Much of the reimbursements due to county government from FEMA stem from debris cleanup costs and overtime wages paid to Road Department employees. Only $16,870.33 has been paid to date, with $176,155.17 still to come. All money expected from FEMA, county administrator John Smith has said, will return to the department from which it came.

About $691,000 in new equipment would include a half- or quarter-ton pickup, a power tractor with mowers, and other debris-clearing equipment. A funding increase in the bridge and culvert budget would include a new dump truck, a blade tractor for asphalt and an air compressor.

As for road paving and resurfacing, that job is contracted out each year. The contract to perform the first dozen roads on the list to be paved in 2006 was awarded to APAC-Mississippi Inc. earlier this month.

Sections of 328 roads are planned for resurfacing in the next four years, with the contract awarded Monday covering the first 12. Roads are rated according to traffic counts and population density and drop off the list as they are resurfaced during the year.

As for ambulance service, if the city fire department system continues to operate outside city limits, it will cost Warren County more money this fiscal year. Its exact amount will be hashed out when both boards meet Wednesday.

Though disagreements over funding the system have been customary between the two local governing bodies since the city began it in 1967, this year’s has been particularly quarrelsome.

The heart of the matter for the city is finding a way to cover a projected $664,827 shortfall in the $3.2 million budget for the.

Both Mayor Laurence Leyens and South Ward Alderman Sid Beauman have said having the county pay more per fiscal year than the $350,000 outlined in the current interlocal agreement is crucial to continuing the service, one that touches the lives of people living outside the city more than any other covered by agreements between the two governments.

North Ward Alderman Michael Mayfield, a former supervisor for District 2, has been less hard-line on the issue.

His signature was absent from a June letter from the city board that suggested the county pay for about one-third of the total number of ambulance runs. The figure was based on statistics that showed units going outside the city limits between 30 and 35 percent of the time.

For their part, Warren County supervisors took issue with invoices not arriving quarterly as the current agreement states. Bills covering runs over a nine-month period from July 2005 to March 2006 totaled more than $400,000, an amount the county paid earlier this month.

The $1.8 million shortfall resulting from sending ambulances to areas outside city limits stems from a dramatic drop in what Medicare has covered on ambulance bills, which affects the rate of collections by Healthcare Consultants, the private firm contracted to charge ambulance fees to insurance companies.

Officials on both boards have said the percentages have fallen from the low-70s to the mid-50s in the past year.

The collection company is not able to distinguish a city run from a non-city run, making it virtually unknown just which patients are being billed properly.

The fire department’s accounting of ambulance runs also came into question by supervisors, mainly for its accuracy.

The time clock on the agreement is ticking, as both aldermen joined Leyens in voting to renegotiate the agreement once it expires Sept. 30.

So far, both boards have left the negotiating to the numbers crunchers and legal counsel.

County administrator John Smith has taken part in the talks, held sporadically since June. A longtime city auditor before moving over to the county, Smith predicted a new pact is likely to cost at least $600,000 per fiscal year.