NATCHEZ &045; When it comes to negotiations to acquire International Paper’s former Natchez mill site, local officials have never said much in public.

And Monday’s meeting of the Adams County Board of Supervisors was no exception.

But supervisors President Darryl Grennell would say this &045; that he and supervisors attorney Bob Latham will travel Wednesday to New York to help finalize the deal with IP officials.

The topic arose when Grennell asked for and received approval from the board to get his and Latham’s travel expenses paid for the New York trip.

&uot;We have a meeting to get the IP deal finalized,&uot; said Grennell, who couldn’t be reached for further comment later Monday.

Grennell also said he met Friday with Gov. Haley Barbour to discuss an industrial prospect for the IP site, but he would give no more details on that prospect.

The more than 50-year-old IP chemical cellulose mill closed in July 2003 due to poor market conditions, leaving more than 600 people out of work or transferred to other locations. In April 2004 aldermen, supervisors and Economic Development Authority board members met to discuss options for buying part of the mill property. The EDA then sent officials at IP’s corporate office a proposal of how much local bodies would pay for pieces of the mill property.

Revisions of the proposal have been sent back and forth between the EDA and IP ever since, as well as a prospect for the site, which local officials has not been willing to name.

The EDA in May received a $268,245 U.S. Housing and Urban Development grant for studies related to the development of an industrial park. If the IP site deal comes to fruition, that money will be used to conduct due diligence at that site and at possible industrial sites on U.S. 61 and 84, EDA officials have said.