When officials in Lexington, Ky., try to explain why their predecessors succeeded nearly 40 years ago in bringing about a consolidation of local city and county governments, they usually point to a few circumstances that made getting to that outcome easier than elsewhere.
And, fortunately for proponents of merged local government in Evansville and Vanderburgh County, many of the same circumstances are present here.
The comparisons can start with the presence of a fairly small number of independent municipalities in either place.
Fayette County, home to Lexington, contained no other incorporated city or town in the early 1970s, when the support for consolidation first came to the forefront. That greatly eased the negotiations over the merger, because only two governments had to agree to give up their separate identities.
Vanderburgh County, for its part, contains only two separate cities: Evansville and Darmstadt. Darmstadt officials have said they want to maintain their independence and not participate in any merger.
In another similarity, Lexington, like Evansville, had gone through a period of expansion just before the possibility of a merger became a common topic of discussion. That led in both places to a constant threat of annexation as a way to recoup the costs of bringing services to more residents.
But the grounds for comparisons aren't endless. Lexington enjoyed at least one other advantage that Evansville can't claim.
Between 1960 and 1970, Lexington's population increased by 32 percent. The census count of 174,323 at the start of the next decade put Lexington on the threshold of being deemed a "first-class" city under Kentucky law, a position then held only by Louisville.
That rise in the rankings would have mandated changes in local government that, in many ways, would have been just as extensive as those ushered in by the merger. Many officials, therefore, had come to view a change from the status quo as inevitable.
Evansville's population, in contrast, has fallen in the previous few census surveys. In fact, one benefit that merger may confer here is a slight boost to the population figures, when residents who recently moved outside the city limits can once again be included in the counts.