First date is beginning of relationship

Published 12:04 am Tuesday, September 4, 2012

Something great could happen at 1:30 p.m. today at the Adams County Board of Supervisors’ meeting room, and it won’t cost a penny, just a little talking and a lot of listening, hopefully.

Natchez-Adams County taxpayers may start seeing a more coordinated, more cooperative city-county government and it could start today with a first date, of sorts.

Leaders from the City of Natchez and Adams County will meet together today — for the first time in a long time — to simply try and understand one another a bit better.

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Such a meeting will be a great start toward better cooperation between city and county government — and that’s needed.

Many times over the last few years when issues arise that affect the city and county differently, the civility is quickly thrown aside and accusations fly.

That’s not good government, and it’s not representative of what the great majority of city and county taxpayers want from either government.

Although divided in some ways by the city limits boundary, city and county residents have far more in common than not.

Residents — regardless of where they live — have much to gain by all of our city leaders working together.

Apparently today’s agenda includes such things as city-county fire protection, recreation and waste removal contracts. All of those are excellent projects on which the city and county should be coordinating efforts, but both groups would be wise to simply agree to start talking and agree to some common points ahead of the meeting.

Going into today’s meeting with the expectation that all of the city-county issues will be resolved once and for all may be asking too much for the first date.