The good news is the City of Natchez’s is not $1.5 million in the hole. The bad news is the city could have been and no one except the outside auditor and the mayor seemed to know.

The auditor spotted the error late last week after the mayor and others called her attention to coverage of last week’s Natchez Board of Aldermen meeting. In the meeting, the city discussed a $1.5 million budget deficit which, quite frankly was at least $1 million wrong.

We apologize to the mayor who stated in the meeting that he didn’t think the budget number discussed could possibly be correct. It wasn’t.

An accounting error at the city clerk’s office caused the city to be looking at what the auditor said was a “bad number.”

The problem highlights a continued concern for both residents and the city’s aldermen and mayor — no confidence in the financial reporting of the city.

Something must be done about this continuing problem. It’s not unreasonable for aldermen and the mayor to request monthly financial updates and expect those updates to be accurate.

Not having those records means the city must operate blindly and work as the mayor suggested, operating on his gut impression of how much money is going in and how much is going out.

While the mayor’s gut was accurate in this case, it’s not an ideal or efficient way to run the city. The mayor, the aldermen and the taxpayers deserve dependable numbers.