With fewer than six days left before the Hall County Board of Commissioners votes on its spending plan for fiscal year 2012, commissioners still have no agreed-upon plan.

Two county spending plans have been publicly proposed — one with $11.5 million in cuts to services, another with a minimum tax increase of 1.41 mills for property owners — to help fill a massive deficit. Yet neither has enough support yet to pass.

All anyone can say for sure is that the final budget will end up somewhere in between.

"The long and the short of it is we'll have a budget that will be somewhere, dollarwise, between one extreme and the other," Hall County's Interim Finance Director Lisa Johnsa said.

In the meantime, the future of county-provided services and the lives of the people who provide them hangs in the balance.

Commissioners cut 56 jobs Friday, reducing spending in the coming fiscal year by $3.4 million. But with a projected revenue shortfall of $11.5 million, there's still another $8 million in spending to come up with.

A proposal to raise taxes by at least 1.41 mills would raise $8 million, but the only commissioner willing to vote for that is its author, Chairman Tom Oliver.

At least three other commissioners say they are working on a new proposal, but that it won't be ready until at least early next week.

Commissioners Ashley Bell and Scott Gibbs worked Friday with Johnsa. Commissioner Billy Powell is expected to meet with her Tuesday.

Though they don't want to raise taxes, the four have said they do want to preserve certain budget items like two ambulances and employees' holiday pay. Both were on the chopping block in an original proposal released June 2.

To do so without a tax increase, the money will have to be cut from another department's budget, Johnsa said.

"If any one of those comes in or goes out, then you're looking for money somewhere else," she said.

Bell said a tax increase was a "last resort" for him. Friday, he worked to produce a third budget option to avoid higher tax rates.

And as he looked over budget numbers, he said he was looking closely at the spending of departments, like those responsible for building inspections and reviewing developers' plans, that have less demand in the current economy.

"We're deep in the numbers right now, looking at departments and productivity," Bell said.

Though he had not finished with the proposal when he talked Friday to The Times, Bell said he will try, in his budget proposal, to "reflect the values of the community."

He says he has consistently heard from the community that residents want public safety and emergency services preserved. They also want a parks department and don't want to lose libraries.

But meeting some of those needs will mean finding cuts elsewhere.

"Right now, we're in a situation of trying to determine what we still have some wiggle room in, what can be refined a little bit more," Commissioner Craig Lutz said. "Whatever it comes down to, we've got to have three votes on Thursday night."

Whatever ideas are tossed around in the coming days have to be evaluated by county staff who can determine what the impact to the county's budget and services will be.

"This is not even half-baked at this time," Lutz said.

Lutz said he does want the final proposal to preserve budgets of the administrative departments, which include finance, purchasing and human resources, because he said they have shouldered numerous cuts in years' past. Cuts to the county's emergency services would also be out of bounds, he said.

"I don't know that there's much more we can squeeze out of those groups," Lutz said.

Lutz, like Gibbs, has said he will not vote for any proposal that includes a tax increase of any kind, even a legally-allowed "roll-up" that would allow the county to offset losses in property values.

"Seventy percent of the parcels in Hall have not been devalued," Lutz said. "So when you're doing a roll-up on the tax rate, you're doing a tax increase for 70 percent of the property owners in Hall County."

Between their views and Oliver's is Powell, who has said he is more likely to support a roll-up but not a tax increase as proposed by Oliver.

Powell said he's open to new ideas, and plans to go look at spending line by line Tuesday. He's quick to say that he's not working with anybody, and says he wants to try to find a way to preserve the Parks and Leisure Services department, even if it means relying on user fees.

He has asked Parks Director Greg Walker to present a new fee structure to the Parks and Leisure Board at its meeting Monday.

"I'm really just looking at it line-by-line," said Powell. "I'd like to see what the other people have in mind. ... I just want to go through, look at the numbers and see what we can and can't do. ... I'm going to sit down with (Interim County Administrator Jock Connell) and Lisa (Johnsa) and try to get an idea for what the others have talked about as far as cuts, and see if there are any areas that have not been considered or talked about and try to put a plan together."

Oliver says he's just waiting to hear see the next proposal, but he's not actively seeking one. The chairman says he is comfortable with his plan, even if it doesn't pass.

"The secret to business and government and one's life is to see where you want to end up," said Oliver. "I think government is no exception. It's great to do what they want to do and cut all this, but in the end, where are you? Do you have a better county? Have you done what's right for the people?"

Oliver points to local school boards' decision to roll up tax rates as a way to maintain services.

"They're representing their people, and they're representing their community, and we're telling everybody that ‘no, we're not going to represent our community.'" Oliver said. "We're just going to do whatever they feel like they want to do. And that's not my plan."

The commission will hold two public hearings on the budget Thursday — one at noon and another at 6 p.m. at the Georgia Mountains Center — before it votes that evening.

Without enough votes to approve either proposals on the table, commissioners could assemble the coming year's spending plan the night before it goes into effect.

"We'll be prepared as possible on June 30 with the totals that will reflect different possibilities," Johnsa said. "I don't think we'll have any (budget document) that will perfectly match whatever could happen."

If commissioners can't come to a solution Thursday night, they can pass a continuing resolution to keep the county running under its current plan while they hammer out the final details, said Beth Brown, a spokeswoman for the Association County Commissioners of Georgia.

"It's not something we would want to see a lot of (counties) have to do," said Brown said.