Consolidation and Shared Services

                                Consolidation and Shared Services

By Albert B. Kelly

If you get a chance, check out the special series being done by journalist Paul D’Ambrosio and his colleagues on taxes in New Jersey, the impact on residents, and the overall ability of families, business, and industry trying to make it our state. There’s quite a lot there to consider in terms of thinking about tax relief, but one area that stuck out to me was shared services.

I say this in the context of our having some 565 separate jurisdictions (local government) including 250 boroughs, 3 villages, 245 townships, 52 cities, and 15 towns all recognized as a municipality in one form or another. With 8,722 square miles of real estate, the average size of each jurisdiction is slightly less than 16 square miles.

In terms of population, 322 of our municipalities, fifty seven percent, have a population of less than 10,000 people. If you sift through a little further, 188 of the states’ jurisdictions actually have less than 5,000 residents and half the jurisdictions in Cumberland County fall into this latter grouping.

Granted, there are more precise ways to break things down and these include dividing “local government” into general purpose and special purpose, but keeping it simple, I’m focused on basically those places that have their own city hall.

I guess my point is that we may very well end up paying a high price, in the form of taxes, for the privilege of   “home rule”- the idea that we can organize ourselves under our respective banners to carry out the full range of government activities under our own recognized authority as a municipal government.

I don’t know the full and detailed history of “home rule”, meaning all the twists and turns and nuances of how it evolved as it has, but I wouldn’t be surprised if it had more to do with human nature and the full range of fears, prejudices, and distinctions than it did economics and thoughtful planning.

This might explain why there’s so much resistance to the idea of consolidation in general and why the subject leads to so many fierce debates and pitched battles. Like church splits, who can say how many jurisdictions came about as a reaction against one thing or another?

If consolidation is too much to consider then what we’re left with is shared services and inter-local service agreements. For the record, Bridgeton has approximately 18 such agreements with one neighbor or another covering everything from Fire and EMS service to animal control and tax assessing.

These are helpful fiscally for all concerned, but I also think we can do more. I could be wrong, but it may well be worth exploring opportunities for sharing services related to municipal court, safety inspections, library services, and more.

Of course it is always necessary to start with feasibility and the numbers, but assuming the math works, then it comes down to other factors like personal preferences, perceptions, and maybe even politics. But even here, apart from issues like consolidation, indulging these can result in duplicating services and higher taxes.

With Daily Journal piece in mind, maybe it’s time in the 21^st century to take an honest look at home rule and consolidation and if that’s just too much, then at least more shared services. Who knows, maybe a consortium for trash hauling and recycling could benefit the western side of the county. It doesn’t hurt to explore these ideas and others.

That’s why I commend our County leaders who, in the interests of cost cutting, willingly chose to downsize administrative facilities and repurpose their former building into a school. It is not often that any bureaucracy makes that choice and executes it.

Residing in the southern part of the state as we do, we can seem a world away from life in the north. Vineland alone ranks in the top 25 in terms of population in NJ coming in 24^th in the state. Millville and Bridgeton come in at 79 and 99 respectively.

The remaining communities in Cumberland County include Maurice River 289, Upper Deerfield 298, Fairfield 334, Commercial 370, Hopewell 392, Lawrence 438, Deerfield 447, Downe 509, Stow Creek 515, Greenwich 543, and Shiloh 554.

For me this suggests an opportunity to see how creative we can be at eliminating duplicate services, operations, facilities, and functions of government as ways to lower the tax burden for all of our citizens. I don’t suggest this will be quick or easy, but our elected officials are up to the task.