BATON ROUGE — Mayor-President Sid Edwards has canceled the city's plans to merge its fire department and EMS services into one agency, he said at a Wednesday press conference.

Edwards announced the merger proposal in June with the intention "to create a more unified and responsive emergency services system.”

"The juice wasn't worth the squeeze," Edwards said Wednesday.

Similar fire department and EMS mergers have been seen in cities all over the country. Critics of Baton Rouge's plan called it a "money grab."