Why is area municipal fragmentation so hard to solve? (Pittsburgh: sales, neighborhoods)

[Goinback2011]

Originally Posted by h_curtis

Problem is, costs and all these new taxes that don't work. PAT made a bad bed and the people of our city are paying of it.

The retired bus drivers are laughing in their easy chairs.

They robbed the bus company.

[North Beach Person]

PAT has been a hole of suck and mismanaged for 40 years, you guy's/ya'all's/younze's discovery of it isn't new. Bill Cardille used to make fun of it on Chiller Theater.

[jimmyev]

I love it when people talk about a city/county merger as if it's going to save the city and be detrimental to, say, Fox Chapel. The reality in large city-counties is that the tax revenue generated downtown flows to where the people-most-likely-to-vote live, i.e. wealthier communities in the suburbs. Money generated by Pittsburgh property taxes on the Rivers casino and downtown skyscrapers would be flowing to Fox Chapel or Mt. Lebanon rather than Hazelwood.

That being said, I do wish that there were smaller mergers. Like Braddock/Rankin/Swissvale/Edgewood, which wouldn't be much different than Swissvale is now - you'd have your wealthy side and your poorer side - with a hell of a lot lesser municipal payroll.

[Katarina Witt]

I think the best you can hope for, since every surrounding Pgh is incorporatead, is some inter-governmental co-operation. What do you guys want to accomplish with a merger? Police departments could merge, or fire departments, or libraries, or whatever, kind of like school districts.

[speagles84]

Originally Posted by jimmyev

I love it when people talk about a city/county merger as if it's going to save the city and be detrimental to, say, Fox Chapel. The reality in large city-counties is that the tax revenue generated downtown flows to where the people-most-likely-to-vote live, i.e. wealthier communities in the suburbs. Money generated by Pittsburgh property taxes on the Rivers casino and downtown skyscrapers would be flowing to Fox Chapel or Mt. Lebanon rather than Hazelwood.

That being said, I do wish that there were smaller mergers. Like Braddock/Rankin/Swissvale/Edgewood, which wouldn't be much different than Swissvale is now - you'd have your wealthy side and your poorer side - with a hell of a lot lesser municipal payroll.

This is exactly what I was thinking. Combining smaller areas with similar problems and average income to create a larger tax base. Another example would be all the little towns on the northern side of the Ohio River (Haysville, Glenfield, etc)

[ElijahAstin]

Originally Posted by Katiana

I think the best you can hope for, since every surrounding Pgh is incorporatead, is some inter-governmental co-operation. What do you guys want to accomplish with a merger? Police departments could merge, or fire departments, or libraries, or whatever, kind of like school districts.

Given Pennsylvania's highly individualistic municipal culture, I think this is the most realistic solution.

[MathmanMathman]

The fact that there are Councils of Government suggests that consolidation is needed.

Councils of Government - Allegheny County

I mean some municipalities are outsourcing services to neighboring municipalities.

[Katarina Witt]

Originally Posted by MathmanMathman

The fact that there are Councils of Government suggests that consolidation is needed.
Councils of Government - Allegheny County

I mean some municipalities are outsourcing services to neighboring municipalities.

I don't get your logic. There are lots of councils of government, everywhere in the country.

Council of governments - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
http://www.narc.org/http://www.narc.org/ (broken link)

[North Beach Person]

The DC area has several Councils of Government: Washington COG (VA and MD Counties plus a few municipalities), Tri-County Council (covers the 3 Southern MD Counties, one of which also belongs to the Washington COG). There is also a MD National Capital Park and Planning Commission which covers a couple MD Counties , a Washington Board of Trade, and the MD Municipal League ( a non-profit lobbying group) breaks the municipalities into regions.

[eschaton]

Getting the argument back on track for a second...

The problem with selective mergers of services is while they decrease head count, they actually create a new local government. A municipality could share a school district with 5 others, share police coverage with two others, share fire with two from group A and one from group B, etc.

Even if the mergers of services pretty much align, it's not as if one new elected representative is being put in place to oversee all of the joint services together.

All or nothing, I'd say. But hell, if it were up to me, school districts would be eliminated, and we'd have locally-controlled, state-funded charters (but staffed by state employees). Thus we'd get rid of most of the reasons for local property taxes entirely.