NATCHEZ — Interim City Clerk Megan Edmonds said Tuesday the city will not need to request an emergency loan to end fiscal year 2016-2017 with a balanced budget, as the city was forced to do the previous year.

Presenting her last round of budget amendments at Tuesday’s finance meeting, Edmonds said the city would have to transfer $225,000 from the casino annual lease fund to the general fund. Edmonds also said the city received more money than expected from the tax sale held at the end of August.

The annual sale consists of the auctioning off properties in which the owners have not paid property taxes.

“With the $225,000 from the casino annual lease fund to the general fund along with having received more than we were expecting from the land sale, we will not have to look at doing an emergency expenditure loan to get us through the remainder of this fiscal year,” Edmonds said. “I know that was something we kind of kept looking at and discussing … it will be tight, but we will be able to avoid having to do an emergency expenditure loan.”

Ward 6 Alderman Dan Dillard asked Edmonds to clarify once more that the city would not need the loan to make it through the end of the fiscal year, which is Sept. 30.

Edmonds said that was correct.

“And as such, we will be in the black,” Dillard said. “Even though we are using casino monies, we will still be in the black, correct?”

Again, Edmonds said that was correct.

As recently as Sept. 15 at a public hearing, the notion of an emergency loan was not out of the question. CPA Wallace Collins said at that meeting a chance existed the city would require the loan to get through the end of the year.

Last year, the city required an approximately $167,000 emergency loan, to be repaid this year, just to end the 2015-2016 fiscal year with a balanced budget.