County to change tax bill mailing process

Landowners in Pearl River County will soon be receiving their real property tax bills in a more streamlined fashion. During their Monday meeting, the Pearl River County Board of Supervisors agreed to accept a proposal from Lawrence Printing to print and mail land payment cards to citizens of the County using a new process.

Jimmy Hughes, with Lawrence Printing, said his company has been providing services to Pearl River County for over 41 years. Hughes explained that the way the County currently mails out bills is less efficient and tends to have some privacy concerns.

The new system will mail the bills in a envelope and come with a return envelope for the landowner to use to return their payment for their bill. Citizens with multiple properties whose name is spelled the same on every parcel of the owner, will receive a large envelope that contains all their tax bills inside the envelope for that spelling of the name, instead of many separate cards that could be misplaced, and the current process of using post cards, also costs the County more due to the extra postage.

Hughes said his company will charge the county 14 cents per mailing before postage charges, which Lawrence Printing will help reduce the postage cost by using presorted mail to get the lowest possible postage price for the county. He said the current method of providing post cards to the county, costs Pearl River County 17 cents per card plus postage. The new method will also save county labor costs by eliminating the process of county employees having to tear the post cards on a perforated edge before mailing..

Pearl River County Tax Assessor / Collector Gary Beech felt that this new system would benefit his office as well as County residents. People should expect to see the new billing system arrive in their mailboxes in the very near future, possibly as early as November.