To those of you keeping score at home, are you as confused as we are?

First City Grants Coordinator Brett Brinegar is going to be fired.

Then the city announces plans for five layoffs, but doesn’t reveal names.

When the city names the five, Brinegar isn’t one of them.

Now Brinegar apparently still has a job, even though she may be on some sort of probationary period.

What?

In the meantime, nearly the entire planning department is gone along with the public works director. The mayor says department heads running other departments will take over in planning and public works. But at least one of those department heads says he hasn’t met with the mayor about the changes at all.

We don’t know what’s going on at City Hall any better than the average taxpayer. And the whole situation seems, at least, worrisome.

Such a massive overhaul of city government must come with a plan.

And it’s past time to reveal the plan — if it exists.

In light of budget woes, layoffs were inevitable and needed. But the haphazard style of telling one department head she was to be fired, but then changing the plan leads us to believe these layoffs are not part of a master plan but more of a political whim.

Is the City of Natchez going to have a planning department? Who should builders and residents talk to if they want to start a new project in the city?

Who will take recommendations to the planning commission?

The list of questions is endless, and the answers should have been mapped out weeks ago.

We hope the city has a plan. But we just don’t know why they aren’t sharing it.