Managing a multi-million dollar budget is no easy task, especially when there is no business-school educated CEO at the top of the ladder.

But just like balancing your checkbook, the formal degree is not a formal requirement.

Instead, the required traits are common sense and work ethic.

As the Natchez Board of Aldermen pokes at the city’s budget for the coming year, we hope they’ll apply both.

Unfortunately, managing a city’s budget isn’t as easy as saying let’s freeze hiring, deny raises and cut this and that.

City leaders have acknowledged recently a need for reduced spending and, at the same time, the creation of a new IT department.

In its initial stages, an IT overhaul will be costly. The city most likely needs dozens of new computers. It also needs an expert to lead the way.

The price tag shouldn’t mean the need is ignored. Moves like that got the city in its current boat in the first place.

Instead, the board must be willing to put in countless hours of work going through the budget line item by line item.

Ward 2 Alderman James “Rickey” Gray had it right Wednesday night when he said the budget should start from scratch.

“The way we build our budget is the problem,” Gray said. “We should build (the budget) from zero, not what they had last year.”

He’s correct.

If the board, mayor and city clerk commit to this goal, we feel confident they’ll find enough wasteful spending in city departments to easily create funding for new, needed projects.

The city’s elected officials may not want to micromanage the budgets of their departments. But that’s exactly what the taxpayers elected them to do.