NATCHEZ — Break out your calculators, Natchez. It’s budget time.

Starting today, the City of Natchez will be getting their budget straight for the next fiscal year, which begins Oct. 1.

City Clerk Donnie Holloway said the budget meetings will span across three days, starting at 3:30 p.m. each day in the conference room at city hall.

On Monday, he said he will meet with the department heads from the community development, fire, personnel, planning and police departments.

On Tuesday, department heads from municipal court, the grants coordinator and from the recreation and public works department will meet with Holloway.

Finally, on Wednesday, the budgets for the senior citizen and the tourism department will be situated.

Holloway couldn’t guess how long the meetings will last, he said some may last only 20 minutes for the smaller departments, but for the larger ones, it may take longer to hash things our.

But it’s important to be detailed.

“We’ll go over their budget with them line item by line item,” Holloway said.

Looking for cuts is key, too.

“We’ll see what we’ve got to cut, where we got to cut, see if there’s any waste in the budget,” he said.

Once the department heads’ meetings are over, Holloway said he will sit down with the mayor and board of aldermen to review it.

“We’ll sit down again and go over it and see, first of all, what we’re looking at as far as a deficit or a balance budget at that time,” he said.

Holloway said the budget will be officially approved at a public hearing that will take place the second week in September.