Despite suffering an anticipated $2 million financial wallop from sales tax collections, Sheriff Jack Strain on Tuesday announced he will not increase property taxes to recoup the money.

In light of higher property assessments and a stumbling economy, Strain decided to roll back last year’s 8.05 millage to 6.84 mills this year.

“When you look at the economy, the state and the country, the people are hurting right now,” he said. “We did not feel we could justify an increase.” But because 2008 property assessments surged on average about 30 percent, the new 6.84 millage rate will collect and deliver the same amount of tax revenue – a significant chunk of the department’s roughly $38 million to $40 million yearly budget.

The rollback means homeowners with a $200,000 home and a $75,000 homestead exemption will pay about $855 a year, according to the St. Tammany Parish Assessor’s Office. Without a homestead exemption that same homeowner will pay about $1,300 a year.

Still with an anticipated $2 million or more loss from slacking sales tax collections, Strain said he may have to look elsewhere to recoup the funds as he balances his 2009-2010 fiscal year budget in May.

Donations such as $15,000 a year to the Youth Service Bureau may be nixed, a huge loss considering it would take up $200,000 a year for Strain to hire his own department to do work the organization does. Also, donations of $6,000 or more to Project Graduation, a parishwide after-graduation program that gives students an outlet from drinking, may be cut.

Other amenities such as upgraded computer programs and a possible 2 percent pay raise may be chopped, he said.

“Those may be some of the things we have to reduce or eliminate completely,” he said.

It won’t be the first time. Several years ago, Strain was forced to cut his community relations department that included DARE officers and school crossing guards after voters overwhelmingly defeated a proposed sales tax expected to generate $7.8 million yearly.

For weeks, even months afterward, Strain was racked with a backlash of public outrage. It was lean times, he said, but like now, times he must weather.

“Time and time again we’ve had to do what was necessary to become leaner,” he said. “But whenever we see these similarities we have to focus on the goal — crime fighting.”

It might be working. Unincorporated St. Tammany suffered four murders this year, compared to Washington Parish, where 13 murders occurred, and New Orleans, with 178, he said.