Two big questions face Evansville and Vanderburgh County when it comes to a possible merger of city and county governments.
    One - how can it be done?
    Two - should it be done?
    A 12-member reorganization committee is responsible for answering the first question.
    And the answer to the second question might be sitting 100 miles to the east.
    Louisville, Kent. - a city merged - the most recent large city to combine city and county government.
    Voters gave the change the green light in 2000.
    It took effect in 2003.
    Mayor Jerry Abramson led the Louisville-Jefferson County merger push.
    He said turning two into one has made Louisville more efficient, more cost-effective.
    "We have been able to cut our budgets. We have more than 20-percent less employees than the old city and old county combined."
    Another selling point - speaking with one voice.
    Abramson said one voice helped convince Yum! Brands, owner of restaurant chains, like Taco Bell, Pizza Hut, KFC, to put its new headquarters in Louisville.
    "And we did the same thing with several other major economic development prospects, who at the end of the negotiations turned to me and said, 'Now, who do I go see?' And the answer is, 'You've seen all you need to see. We're ready to go forward. Bring the jobs,'" Abramson said.
    Tom Owen is the president of Louisville's Metro Council, which has 26 members.
    They're getting a tour of the city's new downtown arena.
    He originally opposed a merger and is now for it.
    Owen said the merger more than doubled Louisville's population.
    "There's strength in numbers when it comes to going to the state legislature. There's strength in numbers in being able to formulate an economic development agenda for our community. I like that. I like that."
    Owen also thinks the merger has given citizens better representation.
    His metro council, like the old city council, has one member for every 25-thousand or so people.
    "The county government had a fiscal court member for 640,000 divided by three - huh?!?! What kind of government is that?" Owen said.
    Merger opponents, who are still just as opposed now, seven years later, said the new system actually gives far worse representation, specifically to the minority community.
    Former Jefferson County commissioner, current state representative, Darryl Owens said the black community has taken a hit.
    "We were 30-35-percent of the city, the old city of Louisville. Now, we're down to 13-14-percent of the new city."
    Opponents like University of Louisville professor Dr. Ron Vogel question whether financial benefits supporters trumpet are actually there, and if they are, if they're worth it.
    "We don't really distinguish in our budget what we're spending in the old city and the new city," he said. "That makes it pretty easy to say nobody has lost services - because how would they know?"
    Vogel said combining some important departments was initially not smooth.
    "Right after merger we had a very severe police morale problem when we merged the two police departments. You tend to find that a city police force does urban policing, which tends to be very different than county policing. There's going to be a clash of cultures, a clash of values."
    Then, there are economies of scale - the idea that doing things on a larger scale makes them cheaper per item or per person.
    Merger supporters said there would be economies of scale.
    But it's unclear if there are - even from the supporters' perspective.
    "I can't prove to you that there have been economies of scale," Owen said. "I cannot peel open the budget and say, 'Yeah, there it is. There it is.' It just seems to me that instinctively it makes sense that there would be some economies of scale."
    "You get economies of scale for some services but not others - very expensive capital services, like sewer systems or expensive infrastructure. But other services that are labor intensive like policing, you're not going get a lot of savings in costs by consolidating."
    Seven years after consolidation the rift between supporters and opponents remains as wide as ever.
    But there are some areas of agreement, like Louisville has become the poster child for merger nationwide.
    They just disagree on what that means.
    "We've had over 70 communities come in to visit from Fresno, California to Pittsburgh to Cleveland several times to Milwaukee to Albuquerque to Memphis and lots of cities in between," said Abramson.
    "We've had a number of communities come into the city to look at it," Owens said. "The interesting thing is nobody has done it."
    Both sides also find common ground on another topic.
    Consolidation has not been an easy process and it's taken a lot of time.
    "I thought I could do all that in one four-year term, and then I could move on," Abramson said. "Here I am in the second four-year term."
    "It takes about 10 years in a community like this for a consolidation to really be put into place," said Vogel. "And during those ten years you can't work on other problems. You're really trying to rebuild these two governments."
    "I think the base has been built," Abramson said. "So, are we done? We're done in terms of the nitty-gritty mechanics. But we've got other things to do in the future."
    Both supporters and opponents in Vanderburgh County might point out just because something worked or didn't work in Louisville doesn't mean the result would be the same in a merged Evansville.
    Still, Louisville's consolidation road map could help merger voters here decide if the pain is worth the gain.
    Evansville's reorganization committee needs to finish its work in June if this is going to end up on the November ballot.
    If not then, it will have to wait until the May 2011 primary or the November 2011 municipal election.