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The Post-Dispatch disclosed Wednesday that the program has been quietly led by consultants hired by Centene Corp., Enterprise and other St. Louis-area businesses. Leaders of those companies have tried in vain for years to get the city and county departments to combine some or all of their functions.

Jennings, a city of 15,000 residents that abuts the city’s northwestern edge, disbanded its own scandal-plagued police department in 2011. The much larger under a contract.

On Wednesday, Jennings Mayor Yolanda Austin and all eight Jennings council members wrote in a letter they were dismayed that nobody consulted them about the joint city-county effort, which was proposed by former police chiefs from other U.S. cities working as consultants for Teneo, a New York- and London-based CEO advisory firm.

County Executive Sam Page announced in June that the consultants would conduct a review of the county department, which would be paid for by local businesses. Days later, the county’s Board of Police Commissioners agreed to give the consultants access to the department; Mayor Lyda Krewson agreed to a parallel review of the city police.

The departments were apparently ready to implement recommendations from Teneo even though the consultants have yet to issue any findings. St. Louis Public Safety Director Jimmie Edwards told the Post-Dispatch on Tuesday that he had agreed to a 120-day pilot program in which the city and county police would work together in the county police department’s 8th Precinct in Jennings and the city police department’s 6th District.

The Jennings officials wrote that this was news to them. “We will not be dictated to by companies and consultants from London and no real investment in the betterment of our city, nor by elected officials who do not live in the city,� they wrote in a letter to Centene CEO Michael Neidorff, St. Louis County Police Chief Mary Barton, Page and Krewson.

Neidorff touted the city-county cooperation Tuesday in an online roundtable including the mayors of cities like Chicago and Tampa and some executives from major U.S. companies. Neidorff said the St. Louis businesses had to get involved, or it wouldn’t be done.

The Jennings officials said that “if the St. Louis County Police Department wants to keep providing service to our city, perhaps the Chief of Police should think about including city officials in the next round of discussions that are relevant to OUR city.�

Some Jennings council members said in interviews they felt furious and humiliated. Jennings Councilwoman Phyllis Anderson, a former St. Louis police officer, said the city should end its contract with the county police and hire another department.

Jennings Councilman Terry Wilson said, “It shows the level of respect the people who are putting this together have for our community. It always seems that North County’s leaders are complaining, but every time, this is what you get when you unravel it. We’re not complaining for no reason.�

The county police department did not make Barton available for comment on Wednesday. Police spokesman Sgt. Ben Granda said in an email that the department treasured its relationship with Jennings and, while it had good communication with some elected officials there, it “will always strive for improvement.�

Page did not respond to a request for comment. A representative for Centene, which has donated more than $200,000 to Page and a political action committee that supports him, also did not respond. A spokesman for Krewson could not be reached later Wednesday.

St. Louis Alderman Pam Boyd, D-27th Ward, said Wednesday she had been working with Austin and other Jennings officials for more than a year on issues that impact quality of life on each side of the city line. She and Austin had attended a joint city-county police roll call on Oct. 16.

Granda, of the county police, said in an email the joint roll call occurred the day after the fatal shooting at noon of a man driving on Lucas and Hunt Road in Jennings that “created a greater sense of urgency on our end.�

But Boyd said she had no idea police were following a plan drawn up by consultants working for the region’s private sector.

“We don’t need people who don’t look like us, with suits, coming in here and telling us what’s best for us,� Boyd said. “We need you to come in and listen to us about what we think is best for us.�

St. Louis County Councilwoman Rita Heard Days, whose 1st District includes much of Jennings, said the effort looked to her like another version of the Better Together merger plan that roiled the region last year before falling apart after months of widespread and unflagging criticism.

“It’s just another incident of doing whatever you want without including people at the table,� Days said.

Council Chairwoman Lisa Clancy, D-5th District said while she agreed that the county police department needed a top-to-bottom review by an entity unaffiliated with the county, “how we do it matters, and the process matters.�

She said the “secrecy and lack of transparency is going to significantly undermine anything they can possibly achieve here.� And she said the process “feels like it’s being completely run by the private sector, and that’s concerning to me because that’s not the only stakeholder here. We need a table that’s going to get a lot more stakeholders together.�