NATCHEZ — The City of Natchez will be late adopting its budget, but city leaders say few consequences are associated with the tardiness.

Members of the Natchez Board of Aldermen questioned Tuesday during the board’s meeting whether the city clerk’s office was in line to adopt its upcoming budget by the Oct. 1 deadline.

City Clerk Donnie Holloway told board members the city needed to publish a notice in the local newspaper one week prior to hosting a public hearing on the budget.

That advertisement, Holloway said, had not yet been submitted.

Alderman Dan Dillard said he believed consequences of failing to have a budget adopted by the deadline included a shutdown of the city clerk’s office.

“I don’t think the clerk’s office can function, and I don’t know how you’ll be able to spend monies if we don’t have this adopted,” Dillard said. “I’m willing to see which way the wheels go when they come off, but I would like the attorney to give us some opinion on this.”

City Attorney Hyde Carby said the city could advertise for a public hearing Thursday, host a hearing a week later and then adopt a budget that same day after the hearing.

If the city is able to get an advertisement published by Thursday, Carby said that would put the city office adopting a budget Oct. 2.

Natchez Mayor Butch Brown said after the meeting a delay in the adoption wouldn’t impact major city services, including payroll.

“We would never not make payroll,” Brown said. “We may delay a bill or two for two days, but they have accounts payable setup on a cycle, and payroll would not be impacted.”

Holloway said city payroll is distributed on the 15th and 30th of each month, so a two-day delay in the budget would not impact those payments.

Dillard said the underlying issue of the late adoption was still evident and should be corrected.

“The administration is going to redouble their efforts to get budget information to act before the Oct. 1 deadline,” Dillard said. “But I’m hoping we would have learned from two years of this and that the clerk will start this process at a much earlier date.”

Holloway said he wanted the board to host another work session before the public hearing to ensure all the figures in the budget were accurate.

The city hosted a similar work session last week, where board members voted to keep the same 42.73 mills as the amount used for ad valorem taxes.

The city’s overall $37.7 million budget has a nearly $3 million surplus, but includes an $857,199 deficit in the general fund.

“We’ve gone through the latest set of numbers from the clerk’s office (Tuesday), but those numbers are unfortunately not much different than what we saw at the last work session,” Brown said. “We’ve identified funds in the general fund we’re looking at, because that’s the main problem. We’re not out of money, we just don’t have enough money in the general fund.”

The meeting was tentatively set for today, but no exact time was decided.

In other news from the meeting:

The board tinkered with adjusting the route of Natchez High School’s upcoming homecoming parade.

Natchez-Adams School District safety and security supervisor Ray Brown came before the board to seek permission for the parade, which is scheduled for Friday, Oct. 17.

Board members were quick to raise a red flag to the issue of the parade being the same weekend of the Great Mississippi River Balloon Race.

Alderman Mark Fortenbery said a significant traffic closure downtown during a highly attended event such as the balloon race could have consequences.

Mayor Brown said he didn’t believe the city had enough barricades to use for both the parade and the balloon race festival grounds near Rosalie.

Natchez traffic director Curtis Norton told the board that the city normally uses barrels, as well as security officers from the school district, to block streets and control traffic for the parade.

The issue eventually became how to not have the parade and balloon race activity overlap on Broadway Street. That street is where those in the parade generally setup and prepare, but is also a key place for the balloon race.

Several route suggestions were discussed, but the final one discussed involved the parade staging on the top of Learneds Mill Road going to Madison and onto Wall Street.

The parade would go down Wall Street, take a left onto Franklin Street and continue up on its regular route taking a right on Rankin Street and then another right on Main Street.

The other issue was where the parade would end and dissemble, which is normally on Broadway Street where it began.

Mayor Brown suggested the parade could take a right on Wall Street from Main Street and take that road back to the area where it started.

Another suggestion involved using the former A&P building on Franklin Street as a staging area for the parade.

Mayor Brown said he and other city leaders would discuss the routes and get back with the school district on possible scenarios.