NATCHEZ — The City of Natchez and Adams County are looking for their overdue fine money.

A week after the Natchez Board of Aldermen delayed a vote on a new contract with a Texas collection agency, the Adams County Board of Supervisors will discuss its own collections practices.

Adams County Board of Supervisors President Mike Lazarus said the county is currently working with Natchez-based collections company Receivable Solutions. Lazarus said he feels the collections practices in the county are inadequate.

Lazarus said the county is owed approximately $2 million in garbage collection fees.

“We’ve got a lot of money floating around needing to get collected,” Lazarus said. “That’s why I’m bringing justice court and constables. We are going to see what we can do about ramping up these fine collections.”

Lazarus said the county has little recourse besides Receivable Solutions to actually collect these fines.

“The only recourse is holding their tag,” Lazarus said. “A lot of people find ways to get tags in another county or across the river so that’s not working.”

Lazarus said Receivable Solutions was not specifically invited to Monday’s meeting.

“We need to hash this out between ourselves first,” Lazarus said.

The county’s collections concerns come as the City of Natchez is wrestling with a similar problem.

American Municipal Services, a collection agency seeking a contract with the city to collect its past due fines, will not come before the board of aldermen again until this summer when a new municipal judge is elected.

Ward 5 Alderman Mark Fortenbery suggested the company come back after the upcoming election after hearing sitting Municipal Judge Jim Blough’s objections to the agreement.

“We just decided we’d wait until the next judge. It’s only a few months away,” Fortenbery said. “It’s up to the judge, I would feel. It’s not up to us. It’s his court.”

Blough announced in December that he would not run for another term.

The agency’s contract would allow it to access the list of people who are delinquent on municipal fines.

AMS Vice President of Sales Jeff Parsons said the company has more tools and staff to devote to the job of contacting people who owe fines, and would reach out to offenders by letter and email.

If a defendant does not pay their fine within four weeks of their court date, a bench warrant is issued for their arrest. Parsons said the company could work with offenders on making payments that work with their budgets and keep them out of jail while making those payments.

“The reasons offenders don’t pay fines for the court is because they’re afraid to go to court for fear of being arrested,” Parsons said. “And they usually don’t have all the money at one time.”

In return for this service, Parsons said, a 25-percent fee is added to the fine.

“We’ve been doing this 22 years, working in Mississippi for six years,” Parsons said. “We get in thousands of dollars for the cities and have little to no complaints.”

Blough expressed his disagreement with adding the extra 25-percent fee on top of the cost to the defendant as AMS proposed.

The entire payment would be sent from AMS to the city, and the agency would invoice the city for the added 25 percent, which pays the company for its services.

Parsons said the 25-percent rate was established by the Mississippi Legislature as a way of encouraging these relationships between agencies and cities.

Blough has pointed to instances in which other cities have come under fire and been sued by the American Civil Liberties Union and the Southern Poverty Law Center for collection practices.

Lawsuits were recently filed against Gulfport and other municipalities for creating “debtors’ prisons.” The cities have been accused of not properly determining whether impoverished defendants can pay fines or should be offered alternatives, such as community service.

Parsons said Gulfport is one of the cities the company deals with, but these lawsuits were not related to AMS collection practices.

“What the (other) company was doing was taking people on probation and charging them a $50 fee every month that didn’t reduce the amount they owed,” Parsons said. “We don’t do that. If someone owed $100, they owe $125 (after the AMS fee). That amount never goes up. Once they pay $125, they’re done. No one goes to jail.”

Blough said his court deals with delinquent fines every court session. An in-house remedy that may expedite collections is getting the court back to serving bench warrants in a routine manner, Blough said.

Fortenbery also mentioned the possibility of approaching Receivable Solutions to collect city fines if necessary.