NATCHEZ — The Adams County Board of Supervisors is considering hiring an outside agency to help collect millions of dollars in overdue fines owed to the county.

Board Attorney Scott Slover proposed to the board at its Monday meeting contracting with Mississippi Court Collections to collect overdue sanitation fees, justice court fines and personal property taxes.

Slover said after the meeting the county estimates it is owed anywhere from approximately $1.5 million in justice court fines and approximately $2 million in overdue sanitation fees.

“That (sanitation) number was a lot larger before this board got into it,” Slover said.

The board’s focus, Slover said, has been closing the gap between what the county is paying for garbage services and what the county is collecting from residents. That discrepancy is now approximately $200,000 annually.

Slover said the county has the most trouble collecting sanitation fees from residents because there is no real “built-in incentive” for county residents to pay their sanitation bills.

The county must by law collect and dispose of trash, Slover said, regardless of whether residents pay their bills.

Slover said Natchez city residents are incentivized to pay their trash bills because it is tied into their water bills.

“So if they don’t pay it, (the city) can cut their water off,” he said.

The county only has that option, Slover said, if a water service customer agrees to set up their bill that way. Adams County Water Association is a non-profit organization with no ties to county government, Slover said.

Some local governments have levied a tax on sanitation, Slover said, which can be unfair to residents or business owners whose property is valued higher than others.

Slover said the county is hoping the Legislature can provide help to counties trying to collect overdue fines.

“What the county would like to see is the Legislature add to the statute to allow us to assess this on the tax roll, and if they didn’t pay it, it would go to tax sale,” Slover said.

Most of what is owed to the county is collectable, Slover said, but some of it is not because debtors have died. Mississippi Court Collections is by law allowed to charge for its fee 25 percent of a debt collected in state and 50 percent collected out of state, Slover said. That money is added on to the fine and charged to the debtor and does not cost the county anything, Slover said.

At the request of Board President Darryl Grennell, Slover deferred his request for permission to contract with the company until the board’s next meeting. Grennell said he would like time to contact some of the other 30 counties that use Mississippi Court Collections to see how it has worked for them.

In other news from the meeting:

• The Adams County Board of Supervisors recognized Slover Monday for recently being named one of Mississippi’s leading lawyers by the Mississippi Business Journal.

• At the request of Bill Peale, nephew of the late former Gov. Bill Allain, the board voted to hang a photograph of Allain, a Natchez native who died Dec. 2, in the county courthouse and adopt a resolution honoring Allain’s life and his service to Mississippi.

• The board voted to grant the request of Sheriff Chuck Mayfield to upgrade his office’s shotguns using approximately $13,500 collected from auctioning seized weapons and approximately $3,500 in revenue from the sheriff’s annual rodeo out of the deputies’ fund. The remaining shotguns will be sold or auctioned off, Mayfield said.

The board also granted Mayfield’s request to use approximately $30,000 in insurance money collected after accidents and auctioning off sheriff’s vehicles to purchase a new vehicle.