Corzine Forcing Small Towns To Merge

[JCMAN320]

All 70 Fanwood Borough employees face layoffs

by Mariam Jukaku/The Star-Ledger Thursday June 12, 2008, 11:45 AM

The Borough of Fanwood has notified all of its roughly 70 employees they may be laid off because of an anticipated decline in state aid.

Officials in the Union County town said they will not determine how many workers will be cut until the state budget is finished. Trenton lawmakers today predicted they would pass the budget before July 1.

Towns statewide are facing dramatic reductions in aid as part of a controversial effort by Jon Corzine's administration to force small towns to consider merging with their larger neighbors.

"These are hard times," said Eleanor McGovern, the borough administrator and clerk. She said Fanwood is not currently considering merging with another town.

State law requires towns to give at least 45 days notice before cutting employees. Fanwood sent its roughly 60 full-time and 10 part-time workers layoff warnings on Wednesday.

The preemptive notices will enable the borough to release workers by Aug 1, instead of waiting until later in the month to trim the payroll.

[Ninjahedge]

I feel sorry for small towns, but at the same time having a separate police force for a town that is really small is rather wasteful.

I still wonder why we had a mounted cop (although donated) and a full SWAT team for little Mile Square Hoboken.....

Hopefully this merger will not neglect its new acquisitions, or force some better faring towns to either absorb, or be absorbed by less successful neighboring jurisdictions......

[NYatKNIGHT]

Smallest towns in New Jersey (http://www.city-data.com/city/New-Jersey3.html)

[JCMAN320]

Yea honestly why the hell did Hoboken need a SWAT team?! Also why one so bad lol? Newark; of course, Jersey City; naturally, Hoboken; umm yea not so much. lol

[Ninjahedge]

Hoboken, at most, needs a bunch of HONEST traffic cops and a heavy weekend detail to handle all of the bar-goers.

Our group has a REALLY bad (and well earned) rap when it comes to handling these things. I don't know if it is older burnouts, or just people who are on the bad-cop rotation (suspended in one town, reassigned to another).

Money gets spent here in such weird ways.

[JCMAN320]

Bill calling for merger of 'doughnut' towns' gets cool reception

by Rudy Larini/The Star-Ledger Monday February 09, 2009, 4:38 PM

http://blog.nj.com/ledgerupdates_impact/2009/02/medium_Gusciora.JPG
Star-Ledger File Photo
Bill sponsor Assemblyman Reed Gusciora (D-Mercer) in a 2003 file photo

A measure that would compel some two dozen of the state's so-called "doughnut" municipalities to merge or share major services with the larger municipalities that wholly surround them was rolled out for discussion today before the Assembly Housing and Local Government Committee.

It was not warmly received. A handful of local officials and municipal advocates said communities and voters need to make their own decisions on consolidation.

Some smaller towns forced to merge with larger ones actually could face higher taxes, they argued, because their salaries and other expenses already are lower than those of their larger counterparts.

"If you sit down and look at the facts, it will actually cost us more," said Councilman Peter Cammarano of Metuchen, a borough of 13,000 surrounded by the township of Edison, with a population of more than 100,000.

The bill sponsored by Assemblyman Reed Gusciora (D-Mercer) would force Metuchen and 21 other doughnut towns and the larger municipalities in which they are located to merge or enter into shared service agreements within a decade.

"We've all talked about consolidating communities for a number of years, but no one seems to get it done. No one seems to bring people to the altar," the assemblyman said. "I think we need to have some shotgun weddings."

Assemblyman Patrick Carroll (R-Morris), a member of the committee, said the state's municipal map might very well look different if communities were being designed from scratch. But he said Gusciora's proposal would be tough to sell in a state with 566 municipalities and a long tradition of home rule,

"You simply can't ignore 200 years of history," he said.

William G. Dressell Jr., executive director of the New Jersey State League of Municipalities, said Gusciora's proposal would undermine the efforts of a state commission created by the Legislature to study the issue of municipal reorganization and consolidation.

"There is no evidence to support this radical approach," he said. "In fact, some evidence suggests smaller municipalities cost less to operate than larger municipalities.

Michael Cerra, the league's senior legislative analyst, said the issue of municipal consolidation should be left to the local electorate, as it is now. Municipalities now can merge only if voters in both towns approve the union in a referendum.

"If two communities want to merge, God bless them. Go for it," he said. "But you need the will of the voters in each of the two communities."

In 2001, there was a failed attempt in the Legislature to provide local governments and taxpayers in doughnut towns with a financial incentive to merge. The towns would have been given state aid and the measure also provided annual tax relief to residents whose property taxes rose as a result of consolidation.

The state's history of municipal mergers has not been good. Over the past five decades, only Vineland and Landis Township in Cumberland County and Pahaquarry and Hardwick townships in Warren County have consolidated.

Gusciora said he recognizes the uphill climb he faces in pushing such a controversial proposal as forced municipal mergers or shared services through the Legislature in a year with all 80 Assembly members up for re-election.

"Certainly a lot of legislators around here would like to avoid unpleasantries during an election year," he said.

"But I think we've reached a tipping point in New Jersey where we have to really start drastically thinking about property taxes," he said, "because people are just moving out of here in droves."