Archived Story
Supervisors, Aldermen plan joint meeting
Published 12:07am Saturday, September 1, 2012NATCHEZ — The Adams County Board of Supervisors will meet with their colleagues from across the street Tuesday.
The supervisors and the Natchez Board of Aldermen will discuss a range of issues, including city-county fire protection, the juvenile justice detention center and cable and trash contracts.
The two boards had a joint meeting in January to discuss a consolidated Adams County recreation program, and at the time the idea to meet quarterly was floated, but Supervisors President Darryl Grennell said the city elections effectively halted those meetings.
Now that the elections are over and some new faces have taken office in the city, it’s time to find out what all parties are thinking about given issues, Grennell said.
“When you have changes in leadership, things have a tendency to get off track,” he said.
“We need to find out what page each group is on. Are we still on the same track toward the recreation complex? I have heard that the new administration in the city has different ideas about it today, so we kind of need to have a meeting of the minds to see what direction we are going in those joint efforts.”
The supervisors have also recently started exploring the idea of expanding the role county fire stations play in responding to fires at county residences, which could potentially lead to a significant alteration of the current fire protection agreement the county has with Natchez.
“The county eventually needs to expand its protection of residents in rural areas, and that is something the county has been talking about since 1983,” Grennell said.
“We just need to make sure we are on the same pages, and that’s why it’s important to periodically have meetings of the minds.”
Natchez Mayor Butch Brown said the two boards used to have quarterly meetings, and that in addition to making sure the two bodies were communicating about important issues, working together could help them leverage better deals for the taxpayers, be it for garbage collection or cable franchises.
“I think it is incumbent on us to save taxpayers money where we can,” Brown said. “One of the ways we can do that is to meet to discuss similar contracts such as cable, garbage contracts, anything that we can do mutually. Even though we will have separate contracts, we will negotiate together a better and more economically attractive contract.”
The meeting will be in the supervisors’ boardroom at 1:30 p.m.
