The Sun-Gazette’s recent reporting on the study regarding City Hall is a relief.

We still believe a committee or panel that includes input from residents and taxpayers of Williamsport would have been a better course. We also still believe the city should have started this conversation in pursuit of the facts and figures that should inform this decision when the City Hall building was condemned and certainly before its potential sale was put out to bid.

But it reassures us that the consultants conducting an independent study into the matter are looking at all the options.

We do not believe it would benefit the city if leaders are pressed into a false, binary choice between renovating the condemned City Hall or building an entire new structure.

We would like to know how much it would cost to make the renovations that would allow the properties being used “temporarily” — a feint that now stretches into years — as the permanent offices of city government.

We also would have liked to have confidence that our mayor was transparent about that possibility and what it could entail from the beginning. We also would have liked to have confidence that all of our representatives on City Council have some ideas, clear to the public, about what percentage of the city’s budget should be spent on administrative office space for personnel, compared to police officers, firefighters and improvements in our city parks.

Unfortunately those ships have proverbially sailed.

We can hope that the level of transparency improves as our city attempts to salvage this important debate. We can hope that our city’s leaders place their obligations to the tax-paying public ahead of any expensive nostalgia.

While we woefully still lack the information necessary to know what the right decision is, we can still hope that our city’s government looks at all the options and makes that right decision as more information comes, better late than never.