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"Lempert says the combined municipality has exceeded the projected savings of $3 million annually—achieved largely by eliminating redundant jobs. The benefits don’t end there. Because they now have a single 911 dispatch center serving the community, and a single emergency operations center, emergency response operations have significantly improved."
"Consolidation also has affected police performance. “Under the leadership of Chief Nicholas Sutter, the new department has thrived,” says Lempert. “The department is smaller overall [down from 60 combined officers to around 50], but there are more officers on the street because the administrative staff is smaller, and the focus can be on service delivery and building relationships.”"
10 less officers and more manpower on patrol. One set of dispatchers. Less redundant employees in other sections that help operate the town. These 2 towns now have only one administrator, that alone is a savings of around 100K plus benefits per year. These are real salary savings every year and future savings in pension costs.
This could happen all across NJ.
Not the best example. The boro was entirely surrounded by the town. Logistically, consolidation made sense, and this is the type of situation where savings are maximized. But if you read the article much of the savings was due to belt tighting and increased efficiencies, which you can do without consolidation. But what happened was everyone worked to bring costs down to justify consolidation, when they could have done the same without it. Nonetheless, when you have a boro completely surrounded by a town it’s the one situation where consideration makes the most sense and you have the easiest time, logistically, to cut costs.
But it’s hard to gauge the 3 mil in savings without knowing the overall budget, which was never reported. Just sloppy reporting on the part of the writer of the article.
Not the best example. The boro was entirely surrounded by the town. Logistically, consolidation made sense, and this is the type of situation where savings are maximized. But if you read the article much of the savings was due to belt tighting and increased efficiencies, which you can do without consolidation.
You brought up Princeton as a bad example of consolidation. Now you are saying it sort of worked because the boro was surrounded by the town. Having less employees is not "belt tightening" and it ALWAYS results in less spending. You can only eliminate police manpower if you can consolidate towns. The positions eliminated are highly paid leadership officers.
Quote:
Originally Posted by 987ABC
But what happened was everyone worked to bring costs down to justify consolidation, when they could have done the same without it. Nonetheless, when you have a boro completely surrounded by a town it’s the one situation where consideration makes the most sense and you have the easiest time, logistically, to cut costs.
But they did not and could not reduce the costs until they consolidated. It would be impossible to eliminate 10 police positions unless you consolidate.
Quote:
Originally Posted by 987ABC
But it’s hard to gauge the 3 mil in savings without knowing the overall budget, which was never reported. Just sloppy reporting on the part of the writer of the article.
So $3 million is not a lot of money in a municipal budget?
How much did they need to save for you to approve?
You brought up Princeton as a bad example of consolidation. Now you are saying it sort of worked because the boro was surrounded by the town. Having less employees is not "belt tightening" and it ALWAYS results in less spending. You can only eliminate police manpower if you can consolidate towns. The positions eliminated are highly paid leadership officers.
But they did not and could not reduce the costs until they consolidated. It would be impossible to eliminate 10 police positions unless you consolidate.
So $3 million is not a lot of money in a municipal budget?
How much did they need to save for you to approve?
I never said it was a bad example of consolidation. Please learn to read. If you follow the discussion, it is clear that my point was that it is not the best example in terms of proving that municipal consolidation always leads to large tax savings because it involved consolidating a borough that was entirely surrounded by a town. How many of these scenarios exist within the state? When you have this donut hole type of scenario, it makes it much more likely that you can achieve significant savings simply because the original set-up is in and of itself inefficient - mostly for the encircling Town, which has its provision of services, in most instances, interrupted by the encircled boro.
As for the rest of your post, you are simply wrong. "Belt tightening" is obviously an apt description for any scenario where a government or business finds ways to eliminate employees in order to curb expenditures. How can you say its not? You are also 100% wrong when you say that you can only eliminate police manpower if you considerate towns. A third grader can tell you that you are wrong. Any police department in America can eliminate police manpower if they want to. And they can eliminate highly paid leadership positions as well. You don't need to consolidate with another town to do this. Yet you say "It would be impossible to eliminate 10 police positions unless you consolidate." This is simply a false statement.
And yes, $3,000,000 may or may not be a lot of money in a municipal budget. It depends on the size of the budget and the amount of properties paying taxes. I don't know why this is a hard concept to understand.
In general, I don't know why it is hard for you to understand that when you have a bizarre and inefficient municipal map, consolidation savings are maximized, but that such a scenario is not the best model to predict savings when two municipalities simply share a common (and often small) boarder.
I never said it was a bad example of consolidation. Please learn to read. If you follow the discussion, it is clear that my point was that it is not the best example in terms of proving that municipal consolidation always leads to large tax savings because it involved consolidating a borough that was entirely surrounded by a town. How many of these scenarios exist within the state? When you have this donut hole type of scenario, it makes it much more likely that you can achieve significant savings simply because the original set-up is in and of itself inefficient - mostly for the encircling Town, which has its provision of services, in most instances, interrupted by the encircled boro.
Why such an emphasis on this "donut hole" scenario? Would it really be that much more difficult to consolidate two small towns that are adjacent to one another as opposed to one surrounding the other?
Why such an emphasis on this "donut hole" scenario? Would it really be that much more difficult to consolidate two small towns that are adjacent to one another as opposed to one surrounding the other?
No. It would not be more difficult to consolidate two small towns that are adjacent to one another. However, you would not likely achieve the same percentage of savings when merging adjoining towns as opposed to the donut hole example. This discussion has never been about how difficult it is to merge. Its been about the amount of cost savings, and whether or not it would be achieved to a degree that would justify a loss of local control and sense of community identity.
a case of steak tossed to the guard dogs to keep them busy while robbing the store....
NJ voters are your enemy.
New visions are not welcome in NJ and any vision proposed must benefit a political career as a primary requirement.
So many great ideas come to NJ and end up as compost in great garden state.
Dems and murph are indebted to the teachers union, a union that can't even figure out how to evaluate a teacher's performance. We can only hope plans such as proposed would edge closer to reality.
Meanwhile, how is that 100 mill Zuckerberg gave Newark edu doing?
Love this state, hate the way the politicians run it with the blessing of the voters.
No. It would not be more difficult to consolidate two small towns that are adjacent to one another. However, you would not likely achieve the same percentage of savings when merging adjoining towns as opposed to the donut hole example. This discussion has never been about how difficult it is to merge. Its been about the amount of cost savings, and whether or not it would be achieved to a degree that would justify a loss of local control and sense of community identity.
Ok. I’m still left scratching my head. Why would it not be a similar percentage of savings?
Ok. I’m still left scratching my head. Why would it not be a similar percentage of savings?
You just need to look at a map. When one municipality completely encircles another one, the encircling municipality is forced to provide services inefficiently. Its police patrols either have to go completely around the encircled municipality, or cut through the encircled municipality (where they have no primary jurisdiction, and are therefore wasting their time while trying to get to the other side). Either way its wasteful. The same is true for snow plows and highway work, and other services. In other words, the encircling municipality has a natural center to which they can provide services efficiently, but non of those properties pay taxes to the encircling municipality. These properties instead pay taxes to a completely different government. It's a situation that is inherently wasteful, and when you combined the two municipalities, you eliminate this waste.
Contrast this with two more-or-less square shaped municipalities that share a border. The border would be small compared to the total size of each municipality. By combining the municipalities, you don't necessarily gain efficiency. You are not "improving" the map for police, highway, code enforcement, ect.
And I have never said in this thread that taxes won't go down if you combine two (normal shaped and neighboring) municipalities. I have simply stated that the cost reductions won't be nearly as big as people assume (especially the posters who posted early on in this thread), and may, in the opinion of many, be de minimus and not worth the loss of local control and deminished sense of community. But with the donut hole example, the original set-up is itself inefficient, so when you combine, and eliminate this inefficiency, the cost savings will likely be larger. Hence, combining two municipalities that are in a donut hole set up will likely result in a percentage savings greater than combining two municipalities that are more sensibly mapped.
The Princeton situation can be used to illustrate this point. There, they eliminated a wasteful donut hole set-up by combining it into one large municipality. But what if they just redid the map into a "West" Princeton and an "East" Princeton? In other words, maintain the two-municipality set-up, but make the map more sensible. I bet this would have lowered costs also. To the tune of $3,000,000? I have no idea. But I am sure the total budgets of East and West Princeton would have been less than the total budgets of the former Princeton Town (the encircling municipality) and the former Princeton Borough (the encircled municipality). This is because the $3,000,000 cost savings achieved by Princeton was largely a function of eliminating the donut hole inefficiency, and mostly not a function of having one municipality vs. two.
I never said it was a bad example of consolidation. Please learn to read. If you follow the discussion, it is clear that my point was that it is not the best example in terms of proving that municipal consolidation always leads to large tax savings because it involved consolidating a borough that was entirely surrounded by a town. How many of these scenarios exist within the state? When you have this donut hole type of scenario, it makes it much more likely that you can achieve significant savings simply because the original set-up is in and of itself inefficient - mostly for the encircling Town, which has its provision of services, in most instances, interrupted by the encircled boro.
Personal insults? Always the sign of a losing argument.
Quote:
Originally Posted by 987ABC
As for the rest of your post, you are simply wrong. "Belt tightening" is obviously an apt description for any scenario where a government or business finds ways to eliminate employees in order to curb expenditures. How can you say its not? You are also 100% wrong when you say that you can only eliminate police manpower if you considerate towns. A third grader can tell you that you are wrong. Any police department in America can eliminate police manpower if they want to. And they can eliminate highly paid leadership positions as well. You don't need to consolidate with another town to do this. Yet you say "It would be impossible to eliminate 10 police positions unless you consolidate." This is simply a false statement.
$3,000,000 says I am not wrong. If you have 2 towns side by side and try to eliminate about 10% of the top police management from each town you will never succeed. If you combine the 2 towns, at a minimum, you clearly do not need 2 chiefs, 2 captains and 2 sets of dispatchers.
Quote:
Originally Posted by 987ABC
And yes, $3,000,000 may or may not be a lot of money in a municipal budget. It depends on the size of the budget and the amount of properties paying taxes. I don't know why this is a hard concept to understand.
Maybe because I cannot read... or maybe you are delusional if you think $3 million savings in one year is a pittance for a municipal budget.
Quote:
Originally Posted by 987ABC
In general, I don't know why it is hard for you to understand that when you have a bizarre and inefficient municipal map, consolidation savings are maximized, but that such a scenario is not the best model to predict savings when two municipalities simply share a common (and often small) boarder.
It could be what you are saying is complete and utter nonsense.
Personal insults? Always the sign of a losing argument.
$3,000,000 says I am not wrong. If you have 2 towns side by side and try to eliminate about 10% of the top police management from each town you will never succeed. If you combine the 2 towns, at a minimum, you clearly do not need 2 chiefs, 2 captains and 2 sets of dispatchers.
Maybe because I cannot read... or maybe you are delusional if you think $3 million savings in one year is a pittance for a municipal budget.
It could be what you are saying is complete and utter nonsense.
In each of these four comments, you have again proven that you have very poor reading comprehension skills. None of your comments are logical responses to what I have said. Just to cherry pick one of your inane statements, I have never said in this thread that $3,000,000 is a pittance, but yet you attribute such to me. It simply can not be effectively categorized without knowing the total budget of the newly created Princeton municipality. Again, how is this difficult to for you to understand?
Please see this link. The 20 N.J. towns with the fastest-shrinking police departments | NJ.com
How did these municipalities manage to cut police officer (and overall personnel) staffing without merging with another municipality? Please tell me, because you are on record in this thread that such things are impossible.
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