New Jersey Gets Serious About Sharing Core Services

By Mark J. Magyar, NJ Spotlight

Spending caps, rising property tax appeals, and a sluggish economy are spurring elected officials to push for police department consolidation, school district regionalization, and other shared services in a movement that promises to reshape the way government services are provided in New Jersey.

"The idea of merging police forces or school districts used to be the third rail of politics,” said Hunterdon County Freeholder Rob Walton. “That’s no longer true. It's now part of the everyday discourse on how we govern ourselves as counties, municipalities, and school districts. It's a big step forward.”

Hunterdon County is now debating a groundbreaking proposal to merge the county’s 30 school districts -- and their 30 school superintendents, administrative staffs, and school boards -- into a single countywide district, with potential tax savings in the tens of millions of dollars for Hunterdon’s 128,349 residents.

Such a consolidation would be unprecedented for New Jersey school districts, but New Jersey Future, the nonprofit research group, noted that the Central Bucks School District -- located in the Pennsylvania county across the Delaware River from Hunterdon -- has one superintendent directing 15 elementary schools, five middle schools, and three high schools serving nine municipalities with a population of 114,548.

The landmark countywide school consolidation proposal by the Hunterdon County Shared Services Task Force is just the latest in a series of initiatives that are sweeping the state, with Republican Gov. Chris Christie and Senate President Stephen Sweeney (D-Gloucester) providing high-level, bipartisan political support:

• The Camden County Board of Freeholders is fast tracking a plan to consolidate all of the county’s police departments into a single force -- an initiative that Christie and Sweeney publicly endorsed last March.
• Somerset County’s police consolidation working group, after two years of study and consultation, will release its final report within the next few weeks recommending the consolidation of Somerset’s 19 municipal police departments into five regional police forces.
• Sixteen Bergen County municipalities are considering plans to merge their police departments with neighboring towns under grants provided by the Bergen County Prosecutors’ Office last summer.
• Princeton Borough and Princeton Township voted in a referendum last November to merge the two municipalities -- the first real municipal merger in New Jersey since 1953.

What is striking about these unprecedented and ambitious initiatives is that they are being pushed by Republican and Democratic officials in urban, suburban, and rural counties throughout the state, and “home rule” has taken a back seat in the discussion to questions of cost savings, quality of service, and staffing levels.

"Everything is on the table," said Bill Dressel, executive director of the New Jersey State League of Municipalities. "There has been more real interest in shared services in the last few years than in the previous 35 years combined."

Interlocal service-sharing agreements date back to 1973, but while municipalities have added more and more shared service pacts over the years, most were contracts with other towns for non-core services such as animal control officers or building inspectors. The most recent recession that struck New Jersey from 2007 to 2009 changed all that.

Read more on NJ Spotlight.

NJ Spotlight is an issue-driven news website that provides critical insight to New Jersey’s communities and businesses. It is non-partisan, independent, policy-centered and community-minded.