As five of the six Natchez aldermen jockeyed for a small sliver of a tiny piece of fiscal pie Tuesday, a glaring problem was revealed.

The City of Natchez seems to have no plans for how to maintain basic infrastructure needs such as resurfacing roads.

That was evident as aldermen reached for tiny chunks of the $50,000 surplus the city has in its account — rent payment from the Roth Hill casino deal.

Two things about the deal bug us a bit.

First, the city’s leadership seems incapable of holding onto money for any future needs. Money — particularly uncommitted money such as the casino payments — seems to burn a hole in their pocket until it’s spent.

While we certainly cannot argue that many of the city’s streets are in downright deplorable condition, we’d hoped aldermen could save some of the casino rent payments and simply have a little cushion instead of constantly having to live hand to mouth and needing to borrow a little money at the end of the year.

Second, is spending $50,000 on five different projects an efficient way to spend money?

We’ve always been under the impression that the economies of scale were at play on such projects, meaning the cost per foot of paving dropped as the total number of feet in the project increased.

At the end of the day, however, the city woefully needs to develop a long-term plan showing the steps necessary to get the city’s streets up to snuff as well as what’s needed to keep them in good shape going forward.

Taxpayers depend on their representatives to create a road map for the city’s vision. As best we can tell, no such map — or vision — seems to exist at the moment.