Tag: consolidation

Consolidating consolidation

Assembly Speaker Joe Roberts (D-Camden) wants to streamline the consolidation guidelines approved by the state Legislature last year. But his fix will do little to actually push towns to consolidate.

The reason has to do with the political climate in New Jersey. While I believe we will need to reduce the number of municipalities in the state if we are to begin reining in unnecessary government spending, few municipal governments — and maybe fewer of their residents — appear willing to make the necessary trade offs.

Consider Jamesburg. The town has been in danger of losing its library and offers a skeletal, volunteer recreation program. But its elected officials have promised to fight tooth and nail to keep any merger from happening — mostly because of concerns aboaut identity. At the same time, its officials complain constantly about the level of aid it receives and about being required by the state to fund its public library.

And that doesn’t take into account Monroe, the likely consolidation partner. Monroe has no interest in merging with Jamesburg and also would fight.

(Cranbury is a different case, because of land mass — 14 square miles — and the wealth of its residents gives it the resources required to provide a level of services unavailable in most towns with a similar population. Plus, it historically has gotten by with little state aid and has rarely complained, so it seems to me that the state should probably leave it alone.)

The consolidation panel created last year would have little power to move the two towns toward a merger. Its research can only lead to a recommendation that then must go to the state Legislature and then to voters in the affected towns. It is an unwieldy process that, in the end, faces the same basic hurdles that consolidations have always faced.

Speaker Roberts wants to streamline the process. According to a press release, he wants to remove the Legislature from the process and send recommendations made by the consolidation panel directly to voters in the affected towns. He also wants to allow the state to cut state aid to towns that opt not to follow panel recommendations.

I’m not sure that this will change things much. The governor’s budget already uses municipal aid as a prod, a questionable move that has been met with significant resistence from municipal officials.

I think Roberts is correct when he says that we can “address the problem of our overabundance of local government without sacrificing the individual community identities that make New Jersey such a special place to live.”

“Choosing to continue ignoring these problems will eventually leave us with hundreds of municipalities that are as charmingly colloquial as they are wholly unaffordable.”

I’m just not convinced that the plan he is offering is the best plan to move us past the parochial objections that have frozen us in place for so long.

I’ve written before that I think the consolidation panel should make its recommendations to the Legislature and that the Legislature should make the decision. Even it that were in place, the politics of the issue are such that I could see the Legislature allow recommendations to die by inertia.

I’ve also written, however, that the tax structure is as much to blame for our woes as anything else. Because we rely on property taxes, we have created a government structure designed to bring in ratables and spread macadam.

Let’s fix the weak consolidation panel, but keep in mind that doing will only accomplish so much. Greater reform is needed and needed quickly.

South Brunswick Post, The Cranbury Press
The Blog of South Brunswick

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Consolidation talk is in the air

This story comes from Bergen County, but has tremendous relevance locally.

Bergen County Executive Dennis McNerney, in his state of the county address on Thursday, called on the state to “encourage — with financial incentives — the merger of towns with fewer than 10,000 residents.”

“The surest way to significantly lower homeowners’ property taxes is to merge small towns and reduce administrative overhead,” McNerney said in his State of the County address before a small crowd of county officials and state legislators at the EMS Training Center in Paramus.

He outlined a series of incentives — carrots, he called them — that could be used to convince taxpayers that they would be better off with fewer, but larger towns.

He proposed a state pilot program that might offer multiyear property tax freezes and the doubling of a homestead rebate for residents of a new town created by a merger of neighboring towns.

If the carrots are large enough, and the reduction of the average property tax bill dramatic enough, McNerney reasoned, residents who would normally resist mergers might actually demand them.

“During a five-year transition period, as the new town comes into existence, all municipal, county and school taxes should be frozen at current levels, with the state agreeing to supplement the towns and school for any justifiable financial increases as the merger proceeds,” he said.

By the time the state’s incentives expire, McNerney said, the newly created towns would see savings from the efficiencies they created.

“A business administrator making over $100,000 a year to manage a town of 5,000 residents could easily oversee a town with double the number of residents of a merged municipality,” McNerney said.

Bergen County has about 900,000 residents living in about 239 square miles. There are 70 municipalities in the county, half of which have fewer than 10,000 residents. By contrast, the 318-square-mile Middlesex County has about 745,000 residents and 25 towns, seven of which have fewer than 10,000 residents.

Consolidation obviously would benefit Bergen County most, as well as some of the Shore-are towns. Middlesex County also could benefit — Jamesburg, in particular, would see improved and expanded services if it became part of Monroe (this is not a knock on Jamesburg, just an acknowledgement of the difficult realities the borough faces). Helmetta and Spotswood could be merged, either with each other or with Monroe, East Brunswick or Old Bridge, and Dunnellen could be grafted back onto Piscataway.

I’m not offering a specific plan, but it is necessary that we begin to think about these kinds of mergers so that we can reduce the number of municipal governments in New Jersey, cutting some administrative costs and possibly expanding some services in the process.

South Brunswick Post, The Cranbury Press
The Blog of South Brunswick

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Jamesburg library woesa sign of larger problems

The Jamesburg Borough Council is considering closing its library.

The reasons, according to borough officials, are a collision between state library funding rules and a new state tax levy cap that limits what towns can spend.

As we’ll be reporting tomorrow, the council is considering placing a referendum on the November ballot that would ask voters whether the library should be closed, the idea being that eliminating the library and its mandated increases will give the borough more flexibility in crafting a budget.

I think Mayor Tony LaMantia and the Borough Council are fooling themselves. The problem is not the library or even the state cap levy law. The problem is the borough’s size and the fact that it is built out, that it tax base is stagnant and that costs in general are rising.

The way to fix it, borough officials constistently say, is for the state to ease of its requirements while also pumping more state money into Jamesburg. That approach, however, would do little more than allow Jamesburg to exist as a shell. Already, borough residents maybe facing life without a library. They have a barebones recreation program run by volunteers that offers a small fraction of the programs offered by their larger neighbors.

The issue, it would seem to me, is one of share services or — perish the thought — full municipal consolidation. While the mayor keeps making excuses to the contrary, Jamesburg residents would benefit from being part of a larger community, from the economies of scale it offers.

Consider this: According to state figures, Jamesburg spends about $22 a person on its library — compared with $78 for Monroe. Monroe and South Brunswick have massive recreation and senior programs; Jamesburg offers what it can.

Failing this, Jamesburg needs to explore either a shared library with Monroe or some kind of contractual arrangement under which the Monroe library would treat Jamesburg residents as if they lived in Monroe.

The library is an important resource — especially when you consider that Jamesburg kids attend Monroe Township High School. Closing the library will leave Jamesburg’s high school kids without the same resources available to their classmates.

There a lot of options out there. Closing the Jamesburg libary should be a last resort and even then I’m not sure it’s worth it.

South Brunswick Post, The Cranbury Press
The Blog of South Brunswick
The Cranbury Press Blog

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Fire district preview: A snafu

I received an e-mail this morning questioning why we didn’t write a preview of the fire district elections in Monroe. The answer? We were unable to track down the budgets and commissioners until after our deadline on Thursday. (We intended to get something up on the Web late Friday, but that fell through the cracks.)

I offer this not as an excuse. The information is public so we had a responsibility to get it.

I offer this as another example of the problems with New Jersey’s governmental structure. There is something inherently wrong with having a government entity — in this case, one that levies taxes — that is as inaccessible as most fire commissions. Our reporters attend occasional meetings, but getting information at other times is nearly impossible — this goes not only for Monroe, but for South Brunswick, Jamesburg, Plainsboro, West Windsor, nearly every fire district that I’ve had the misfortune to have to cover in my 17 years as a reporter and editor.

Monroe is supposed to be reviewing whether to consolidate its districts, maintain the status quo or abolish them altogether. I vote for abolition. At the very least, the independent fire commissions should be required to file all budget information with their municipal clerk’s office, which would make it more accessible for voters to peruse — and reporters to track down.

South Brunswick Post, The Cranbury Press
The Blog of South Brunswick
The Cranbury Press Blog

Email me at grassroots at comcast dot net.