For most of us, the purchase of a house is the single biggest investment we’ll ever make. But few of us would think of buying a house without first getting an appraisal or at least checking out recent comparable sales.

Few of us would gamble our hard-earned money without careful consideration and lots of facts. Few of us, that is, except the Natchez Board of Aldermen. Only it wasn’t their money at risk; it was the taxpayers’ money.

Last month aldermen agreed to modify a complex financial deal originally penned in 2006. We believed when the deal was originally signed that few aldermen could explain how it worked.

Today, six years later, we believe fewer still may truly understand the potential risks of the new interest rate swap.

Remember, these are the same people who have had to borrow millions of dollars over the last few years just to make it through the full fiscal year and who seem to struggle with basic budgeting.

Now they’re voting — with seemingly little discussion or much of a chance for public input — for a complicated financial deal in which the very company that suggested it be done will reap a wheelbarrow load of cash out of the deal.

This is the same firm that infamously pulled out a fake $400,000 check in 2006 for a photo-op. Only later did the city learn the amount they would actually receive was less than half that amount.

That track record — and obvious vested interest in reworking the deal to gain additional fees — worries us.

Such financial deals — difficult for common taxpayers to understand and peddled by the very people who will profit from the deal — are concerning.

We hope our concerns are unfounded and we pray the risks the city leaders have taken are never realized.