NATCHEZ — Adams County officials will begin this week determining how to spend taxpayer money in the coming fiscal year.

The Adams County Board of Supervisors will meet at 9 a.m. Monday in the boardroom of their offices on State Street to begin the process of budgeting for fiscal year 2014-2015.

Last year, the budget increased $1.7 million over the previous budget, with nearly $1 million of that increase accounted for by debt service on new properties — a warehouse and the 470-plus acre former International Paper land — acquired by the county. The county’s budget last year was $24.49 million.

County Administrator Joe Murray said he has worked approximately three-quarters of the way through the expected expenditures budget for the coming year and does not anticipate any major additions to the budget such as those.

Over the past few years, the county has been able to reduce some costs by approximately $300,340 by renegotiating some contracts and reworking some intra-office logistics.

“We have cut people’s (departmental) budgets over the past several years without handcuffing them where they can’t do their job,” Murray said. “There is not a great amount of fluff in anybody’s budgets.”

As the budgeting sessions progress, the supervisors will have several meetings with departments heads to discuss their budget requests, Murray said.

Natchez City Clerk Donny Holloway said his office has not set any dates with the city’s board of aldermen for budgeting sessions, but the proposed budget will have to be posted by Sept. 15.

Currently, the city’s auditors — the Gillon Group — are in the process of reconciling the city’s accounts so officials can have a true figure to work with when the budgeting process starts, Holloway said.

Once those reconciliations are complete, a second group — Natchez accounting firm Silas Simmons — will bring the city’s books into order to a point where the clerk’s office can keep them current, Holloway said.

In June, city officials had to re-run the May budget report because it showed a $1.5 million deficit.

When the report was recalculated with corrections made, however, it showed a $2.5 million surplus with all account funds included.

Holloway said city department heads are currently sending proposed budgets to his office.

“We will crank up on this in the next week,” he said.

The budget the city board adopted in September 2013 was for $36.4 million.