As this year’s county political campaigns begin heating up, along with whispers of who may run in next year’s city elections, we urge candidates to consider how our community might benefit from doing things a little differently.

Although the dreaded “consolidation” word still scares some people to death, we believe a more palatable approach is simply to seek more ways to increase the number of shared services between city and county governments.

Doing so makes common sense — why buy two dump trucks when you could share one or why pay two shifts to man emergency dispatching when only one is necessary?

We’ve already proven that we can work together as a community on some services.

City and county schools were consolidated decades ago. City fire trucks have, through an agreement with the county, responded to all county fire calls for more years than we can remember.

Finally, both city police and county sheriff’s deputies have worked in tandem on the Natchez-Adams County Metro Narcotics Task Force for years.

Imagine how great would it be if all of the candidates simply said, “We support what’s best for the community, and we support an independent study on what we could gain by sharing more services.”

The study would not require an expensive outside consultant either. Perhaps the research could be an excellent project for a graduate student or even a university class.

We may learn that working together and pooling resources may just make our community better and eliminate overlapping duties and redundancy in our government.