It’s difficult for resident taxpayers to determine whether the City of Natchez’s latest move stinks or not.

Without any public disclosure of proposed garbage bids before a decision was made Monday and with a pile of confusing options, it’s unclear whether the decision to accept a higher bid over a lower offer was right or wrong.

But what still seems a little trashy about the whole deal was the apparent quick abandonment of months of plans that would have consolidated city and county contracts for trash pickup in an effort to save money for all.

Earlier this month, the city said after a meeting — one of which the public had not been notified — that it would be handling its trash contract apart from the county because city leaders didn’t believe consolidating would save them money.

The city acknowledged that the county could save money under consolidation, but the city would not.

We hope city leaders at least called up a few county leaders to talk that over before moving ahead, but we saw no public evidence of such a talk.

Of course it would be foolish for the city to pay more just to save the county money, but true consolidation would mean the two governments would split an overall reduced rate fairly, potentially both saving.

Without a public meeting to explain why that idea would or wouldn’t work, the latest move by local leaders is simply yet another in a long line of consolidation failures.

We can’t help but feel like those failures are costing the taxpayers money.