BATON ROUGE - An item introduced during Wednesday night's Metro Council meeting aims to create a Home Rule Charter Commission to determine whether consolidation is beneficial for Baton Rouge.

Metro Councilman Darryl Hurst proposed the item, saying it's time for the City of Baton Rouge to get its fair share.

"What we've seen from deconsolidation is that the most challenged areas in Baton Rouge have gone down and gone by the wayside because there has not been a dedicated focus, because the larger tax bases pull on the council, pull on the administration, and they, a lot of times, the squeaky wheels get the oil," Hurst said.

Currently, four cities in East Baton Rouge Parish operate as their own government: Baker, Zachary, Central and most recently St. George; however, these cities do rely on the parish for certain resources.

"So when we start talking about constitutional offices, fair share, Baton Rouge deserves its fair share, and that's the part of the conversation that's always left out. Because a mayor shouldn't have to wake up, a parish president shouldn't have to wake up and determine which hat he's going to wear that day," Hurst said.

Hurst says there is still some research to do on whether deconsolidation benefits both the city and parish financially, but he says some of the data they've already discovered show the City of Baton Rouge would survive separating from the parish.

"We've already done some preliminary numbers, and based on those preliminary numbers, Baton Rouge is solvent. We can walk away today and be successful. What it keeps is the parish from pulling on the city, the city from pulling on the parish, making sure everybody can hold their own," Hurst said.

Metro Councilwoman Laurie Adams says she believes there are savings to both the parish and city having consolidated operations, and the deconsolidation process is a very complicated one.

"I think these conversations have been going on for several years, certainly with the formation of st george, and you know the conversations that have happened around that. There have been a number of people, especially the ones who live inside the city of Baton Rouge, saying am I getting the same amount of representation that the other cities are getting within the parish, and it's not an unfair question," Adams said.

The Metro Council is expected to vote on creating the Home Rule Charter Commission on whether staying consolidated is beneficial for the city-parish at the Sept. 23 Metro Council meeting.