NATCHEZ — The Natchez Board of Aldermen voted Monday to put additional funds into street paving for this fiscal year.

One alderwoman, however, abstained from voting because the board did not have confirmation the funds were available.

Alderwoman Sarah Carter Smith said her abstention was because City Clerk Donnie Holloway was not in attendance at the special meeting Monday.

“The whole point of this meeting was for Donnie to be here and confirm we had the money before we moved forward,” she said.

The vote was 4-0-1, with aldermen Joyce Arceneaux Mathis, Rickey Gray, Tony Fields and Dan Dillard voting in favor of the motion, which was suggested by Mayor Butch Brown.

Mathis made the motion to take up the suggestion that the city add $50,000 for street microsealing and $300,000 to make repairs to Broadway Street. Dillard seconded it.

“I have been saying for almost two years that we need to start looking at the downtown streets,” Mathis said. “We are going to have a lot of activities that are going to be going on in 2016 on the bluff for the tricentennial, and Broadway is one of the worst (streets).”

During the meeting, the aldermen and Public Works Director Justin Dollar discussed the cost of microsealing and street repairs, especially to Broadway.

Adams County Supervisor David Carter was also in attendance, and Brown asked him if the county government might be able to commit some funds to the paving cause in advance of the tricentennial.

“Up to this point, there has been no assistance from the county for the tricentennial,” Brown said. “We have made some requests, but we haven’t gotten anything yet.”

Carter said he could not speak for the entire board and would rather defer discussion of what funds were available to the county administrator, but said the supervisors are open to helping.

“We just did a $600,000 job in the county, including some streets in town,” Carter said. “When the time comes, we want to see (the tricentennial) succeed, because the next year we as a county turn 200, and a great tricentennial would boost into a great bicentennial.”