NATCHEZ — The City of Natchez repaid its $600,000 tax-anticipation loan last week.

The loan was used mainly to cover the city’s payroll expenses, which total $600,000 monthly.

City Clerk Donnie Holloway cited increased insurance costs because of illnesses and during the city’s switch from being self-insured to fully insured as well as payroll expenses as the need for the tax-anticipation loan

Holloway told the board of aldermen in November the city needed the funding because the city is paying two health insurance companies as it transitions from Blue Cross Blue Shield to United Healthcare.

Holloway said the city is paying claims from before Oct. 1, which is when the city’s new plan with United Health Care went into effect. The city is meanwhile also paying the premium for United.

Mayor Butch Brown said the projected expense for the claims is approximately $200,000 to $300,000.

The city has borrowed and repaid approximately $4.7 million in tax-anticipation loans in the past decade.

Some city officials have said it is a habit they want to break, but Brown contends he has no problem with tax-anticipation loans.

“I consider a tax-anticipation loan like using accounts receivable,” he said Wednesday. “I don’t see any reason we can’t or would not use it, as long as we have the capacity to redeem it in its proper time.”