NATCHEZ — Adams County residents who are delinquent on their garbage collection payments could soon be facing a lawsuit from Adams County.

The Adams County Board of Supervisors on Tuesday unanimously authorized County Attorney Scott Slover to begin filing lawsuits in county court against county property owners who are at least $3,500 behind in paying garbage collection fees.

County Administrator Joe Murray said approximately 97 properties in the county owe $3,500 or more in delinquent garbage fees, some dating back as far as the 1980s.

Lawsuits could result in delinquent property owners having liens filed against their properties or car tags denied, Slover said, acknowledging that some of the properties have been delinquent so long it might be difficult to find the owners.

Murray said many counties throughout state charge residents for garbage collection via ad valorem taxes, but that Adams County Supervisors resisted funding the county’s collection through ad valorem taxes a couple of years ago and had continued monthly billing cycles. As long as a property has a water connection, Murray said, the owner would be billed for garbage collection.

The move to collect delinquent garbage fees comes as the county is in the budgeting process and county supervisors have been meeting this week with individual department heads to put finishing touches on departmental budgets.

Supervisors said they have been resisting requests for additional expenditures and hope to finalize the budget next week without raising millage, Murray said.

“We have no anticipated increase in millage, but because of expenditures and less revenue, I will have to adjust my anticipated ending cash balances for this year to account for some extra expenditures.”

Murray said the county plans to advertise the budget on Aug. 31 and again on Sept. 7 and the board plans to approve the budget Sept. 14, which is one day before the state-mandated deadline of Sept. 15 to adopt county budgets for the fiscal year that begins Oct. 1.

On Tuesday, supervisors met with County Road Manager Robbie Dollar to discuss the road maintenance budget, which will be $1,870,037.

Last year’s county road maintenance budget was $1,837,180.

The new fiscal year budget is $32,857.40 over last year’s budget, which, Murray said, is due to the road department’s planned purchase in early 2019 of two tractors and a truck to haul limbs at a cost of $36,562.88 minus buyback of used equipment.