"The city has not changed its millage, but the county when they reappraised has changed the land values," said City Clerk Mike Jinks. "As of right now we haven't set millage for this year."

The millage rate is used in conjunction with property values to determine how much citizens pay in property taxes each year.

Each year city lawmakers set the millage rate during budget hearings, so it will have to be set this year by their projected date of completion, Sept. 15. Jinks said he feels fairly comfortable saying the current millage rate of 35.24 will drop this year, though at this point it's hard to tell by how much.

"The value of property has gone up, so you actually pay more based on the same millage," Jinks said. "But the millage rate is not going up, and actually we anticipate that due to debt service that the millage rate will go down."

An advertisement in The DAILY LEADER on Friday indicated that the rise in tax value has made it so that the revenue generated by the current millage rate of 35.24 could now be generated by a rate of 32.08. Jinks said if the city were to leave the millage rate as is, it would generate an additional $300,000 for the city, based on bonds, solid waste and general funds.

The school system taxes are not figured into the current rates, Jinks said, adding that they will have to address the situation as well.

He said the advertisement was run as a fulfillment of a last-minute requirement from the Mississippi Legislature.

"The law is that any county that did a complete reappraisal has to fulfill this requirement," he said. "They listed Lincoln County as having had a reappraisal, so we're required to publish this and send a letter back to them to let them know we complied with their law."

The law, which was passed during this year's second legislative special session, says a taxing district in which the assessed value of the taxing district has increased because of a reappraisal cannot be applied to that taxing district unless a governing board has published a notice in a newspaper stating the lower millage rate that would produce the same amount of revenue from ad valorem, or property, taxes. This would include a city, county, school district or other taxing district.

"All this came about around the last minute of the last day so we're scrambling around tyring to get everything we need to do to comply with the law," Jinks said.