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With the recovery from Hurricane Sandy, the race for governor and the ongoing search for solutions to many of New Jersey’s chronic budget problems, 2013 must be the year to change.
With all the attention on solving problems in what will be the post-fiscal cliff era, 2013 must go down in the books as the year we finally get serious about addressing the high property taxes that plague every Garden State homeowner.
New Jersey continues to fund and maintain the many separate, diverse and small towns that have defined us nationally as the "home rule" state. New Jerseyans have made it clear that we like our little hamlets, just as our parents did, and the generations before them.
For some of us, the status quo of maintaining our 565 separate municipalities must be preserved and protected at all cost — even if it is the most expensive and the most inefficient way to deliver local services.
In 2013, we must ask: Do local government services really need to be delivered this way?
No one in New Jersey wants to lose his or her "town identity." I like to visit Ocean Grove in the summer — even though the seashore resort is actually part of Neptune Township. There are so many other identifiable communities, such as Short Hills, Oakhurst, Annandale, Ortley Beach, Iselin and Basking Ridge, that are actually part of bigger towns, with different names and different identities.
If these small "towns" dotting New Jersey have been able to maintain their identities over all these years, why should we be concerned that municipal consolidation would somehow strip them of that identity?
After all, what we are calling for is the consolidation of government structures, not people and places. Do you think the people of Fanwood would suddenly say they live in Scotch Plains if the proposed town merger goes through? I’ve been there plenty, and I can confirm to you the answer is no.
With all the state mandates and pension obligations that local towns are now forced to pay, consolidation is our way out of a very difficult jam. There are clear warning signs that we must change, as the state-mandated 2 percent property tax cap has already proven to be unsustainable in many storm-ravaged towns.
I became very concerned about our high property taxes in New Jersey when I served as mayor of Long Hill Township in Morris County in 2006. I saw 3,100 households struggling to pay for the costs of an administration and police department.
As the town’s chief executive, I asked: What if revenues keep falling? What if state aid is cut again? What if we can’t cut any more employees from our Department of Public Works to maintain quality service? And, what happens if we choose not to act?
There is nothing worse than staring an unsustainable budget in the face to make you realize that New Jersey must change to address our high property taxes and make our local government work for us in the 21st century.
So how do we keep our local governments small enough to be local, but large enough to be efficient and strong? Municipal consolidation is a viable option. There is a reason that consolidation has been talked about by legislatures, governors, state commissions and towns since 1895.
What has changed now? We’re finally turning words in action.
We will have implemented a successful municipal consolidation in New Jersey, when Princeton Borough and Princeton Township unite their municipal governments into one today. These two communities created the benchmark for other towns wanting to seize control of their own destinies in 2013.
Let’s build on this historic accomplishment now. Princeton’s study commissioners and transition task force members have established the steps that other towns need to take.
It’s all laid out. Now, other towns in New Jersey must realize that both status quo and progress are not compatible. Let’s create a new chapter to this book in 2013, before your town falls off its own fiscal cliff.
Gina Genovese is executive director of Courage to Connect New Jersey.
Consolidation won't do a thing about property taxes. The amount of revenue which can be saved by reducing duplicate bureaucracy is quite small; if you have two towns with N people and M cops each, making that one town with 2N people and 2M-1 cops (because you only need one chief) doesn't help all that much.
Consolidation won't do a thing about property taxes. The amount of revenue which can be saved by reducing duplicate bureaucracy is quite small; if you have two towns with N people and M cops each, making that one town with 2N people and 2M-1 cops (because you only need one chief) doesn't help all that much.
As long as people like yourself with this attitude keep thinking the way you do of course nothing will ever happen and taxes will continue to go up.
Home rule is the downfall of NJ and one of the biggest reason taxes are so high.
Hey I don't care anymore, we educated our kids while taxes were still manageable.
For those of you who insist that consolidation will do nothing, good luck with your doing nothing.
No one wants to consolidate with a neighboring town with worse schools and/or a lower tax base. The people who most aggressively support consolidation don't actually care so much about the savings: what they really want to do is to force towns into undesirable consolidations.
If people really cared about the savings aspect, they would pass laws making voluntary shared services and consolidation legally/administratively easy and at the same time make attempts to involuntarily impose it as expensive and unattainable as possible and then sit back and watch as shared services initiatives bloomed from the ground up. Of course this won't happen because efficiency isn't the true main goal of the consolidation activists.
Pennsylvania has it too, and much lower taxes. Home rule is an excuse.
Just keep crying about your high taxes and look for something/somebody else to blame.
You can be excused for your ignorance but not for your failure to comprehend the facts.
You can also be comforted by the fact that you are not alone in NJ with your narrow-mindedness.
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