NATCHEZ — City leaders are exploring the possibility of a series of educational public forums on consolidating services between the City of Natchez and Adams County.

Mayor Darryl Grennell said consolidation of services is an age-old practice that needs greater exploration.

“For years, ever since I’ve been in government and probably way before my time, the word consolidation would come up, and we’d have consolidation of services,” Grennell said. “This would be bringing in the experts and talking about the realization of it, can it be done and how much would it cost to conduct a study of this sort?”

Grennell said it was too soon to go into great detail on the forums when he has yet to speak with those who might be involved. However, he said the forums also would be an opportunity for the city and county to look at other forms of municipal government.

Grennell said he would like a guest speaker from the John C. Stennis Institute of Government at Mississippi State University to help lead the discussions. The Stennis Institute is a service and research arm developed to improve Mississippi government.

Grennell said they have yet to determine the cost of, or funding options for bringing in experts.

“I’m working on maybe getting the two boards — the county and the city, but I haven’t even approached them yet,” Grennell said. “These would be public forums, but right now we haven’t even locked that in because I have to raise the money in order to bring in the experts, which is basically travel money to get here.”