BILOXI, Miss. (WLOX) - Persistent inflation and rising interest rates were both topics up for discussion during the second day of the 91st Annual Municipal League Conference.

City leaders from across Mississippi are gathering at the Coast Coliseum for three days of educational sessions.

About 200 companies set up shop in the vendor hall to promote their unique services to city officials, but at the moment, they’re all experiencing one thing in common.

“Supply’s extremely low. Demand’s extremely high,” Josh Parker with Puckett Power told WLOX. “We’ve had several price increases this year, several more to come.”

With Puckett Power, Parker sells Caterpillar machinery to municipalities and more.

“Right now, interest rates are slowly starting to increase throughout the market,” he said. “We’ve seen several price increases on machines throughout the year. That’s all due to inflation and rising costs of components. Of course, factories are having labor shortages.”

Lee Frederick with the Mississippi Department of Transportation said he believes it’s a culmination of the record-high fuel prices and the pandemic.

“Obviously, the cost of everything: construction, labor, you know, everything. It’s all tied to fuel. It’s all tied to a labor shortage,” he said. “We’ve had several projects where we’ve had to reject just due to costs. We’ve had a engineers estimate and then the initial bids came in excessively high.”

From roads to houses, it’s not easing up.

“People are looking at manufactured housing because they can actually get more house for less money,” said Jennifer Hall, the Executive Director of the Mississippi Manufactured Housing Association.

Her group is made up of about 48 manufacturers that ship ready-made homes to our state.

However, things are changing with rising interest rates.

“We were offering that 3 to 4. We’re now the 6%, same as site built,” she said. “So, this is going to affect a lot of people whether or not they will be able to buy a home, and everybody wants that dream to come true of owning their own home.”

Whether it’s people buying homes or officials keeping cities running, higher prices are bringing new budget realities.

The Municipal League Conference will continue Wednesday morning at 6:30 with a 5K Fun Run across the Ocean Springs-Biloxi Bridge.

The first educational sessions of the day begin at 9 a.m.

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