Natchez Mayor Darryl Grennell threw a surprise into Friday night’s Lighting of the Christmas Tree ceremony when he announced it would be his last lighting ceremony as mayor.

Sure enough, Grennell confirmed after the event, he will not seek re-election to the mayor’s seat that he has held since 2016.

Grennell served as a member of the Adams County Board of Supervisors for many years before becoming mayor.

Grennell has many accomplishments, including the Proud to Take a Stand monument, developing a downtown master plan, forming a business council, overseeing lighting upgrades throughout the city and vegetation removal on the bluffs, to name a few.

We realize serving as mayor can sometimes be a thankless job. Therefore, we say, Thank you, Mayor Grennell for your service, and we wish you the best in your future endeavors.

Now, no doubt, plenty of people are weighing the option of running for not only the mayor’s office but also any of the city’s aldermen seats in next year’s elections.

Already a couple of names have been thrown into the hat for the mayor’s seat.

Potential candidates can continue to weigh their options up until Feb. 7, 2020, when qualifying for municipal elections ends. Qualifying begins Jan. 2, 2020, at City Hall.

The first party primary will be April 7, 2020, and runoff if necessary will be April 28. The general election will be June 2.

We encourage Natchez’s best and brightest to consider taking on this important job to help Natchez grow in the right direction into the future.