Tuesday adoption

Arceneaux-Mathis, Gray and Smith all said they have had some communication with city hall or their colleagues about the budget since the public hearing, but no action or official meeting has taken place.

But while the aldermen all seem to agree they will adopt some form of a budget Tuesday, the aldermen said the board will have to remain engaged in the process throughout the year.

“Whatever the board decides to do Tuesday, then we will begin to rein back in spending that in some instances we may not have approved,” Arceneaux-Mathis said.

Gray said he had some ideas about how to resolve the budget issues for this year and to prevent them from happening again in the future, but said he wanted to discuss them with the board first.

Smith said even if the budget isn’t perfect Tuesday, it has to be adopted.

“You have to remember your budget is a tool. It is not a Bible,” she said. “It can be amended, and you have to keep your government running.”

But, even in that case, “it is not something that we are going to wait to pull out (at the end) next year,” Smith said.

Fields said he thinks the city should compensate all its employees properly and provide fair wages to help recruit others to work in Natchez, but said now is not the time to allot funds to certain employees for wage increases.

“As of right now, I’m prepared to vote for a budget that reflects the request of no salary increases and no new hires until at least January,” Fields said. “In the meantime between now and January, we need to take a serious look at how we figure out this budget.”

Fortenbery said he would also vote in favor of a budget without the increases and hopes the process never gets down to the wire again.

“I think we may have been a little strong-armed with this budget, but we can’t allow our employees to not get paid,” Fortenbery said. “I think this is a good example of a bunch of communication that’s not happening when you have the mayor agreeing to pay raises and not telling us that up front.

“As a board, we give him the authority to hire somebody at $60,000 for example, but you can’t come back later and say, ‘Well now I’m adding $5,000 on to that.’”

Dillard said he hopes to see the board take a firmer stance on the budget, including no increases for department spending on top of the freezing of new hires and salary increases.

“What I’d like us to do is not just put a hold on that until at least January when we could consider allowing the expenditures, but also put something in place to say the numbers have to be there to support that,” Dillard said. “If the revenues don’t support it, we don’t need to do those things.”

The board is scheduled to take up the matter Tuesday before its 11 a.m. meeting.