Supervisors want to reduce property tax rates

OXFORD — The draft 2012 budget reduces tax rates for Lafayette County property owners from 2011′s 33.79 mills to 26.5 mills.

The Northeast Mississippi Daily Journal reports supervisors hope to reduce the budget by eliminating most periodic bond payments, using part of the county’s $30-million hospital-sale proceeds to pay off long-term debts. The county and the City of Oxford last month sold the hospital they had jointly owned since the 1960s to Baptist Memorial Health Care Corporation.

The draft 2012 budget projects $16.25 million in revenue, of which $9.5 million is local tax revenues and another $2.5 million in fees for services. Expenditures, including debt payoff, will be $32.2 million.