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This link should provide some background on this "Home Rule" problem. This is my favorite quote from the article: "New Jersey stubbornly ignores judicial reality as well as the fiscal consequences of preserving a needlessly large number of municipalities and schools."
Just keep crying about your high taxes and look for something/somebody else to blame.
Heck, everyone knows who, or what, to blame. Abbott and NJ waste and corruption are the major factors. There's no reason there needs to be not one but two police cars on every road construction project, for instance. As LackOfCreativity says, consolidation isn't intended to reduce taxes; just the opposite. It's intended to funnel even more of the tax money from the wealthier areas into the poorer ones. This won't improve the poor areas, but it'll bring down the wealthy ones.
I'm sure if we went back to the original town plan like from the 1870s our taxes would be reduced by half...but everyone is afraid to for some reason.
could you elaborate on that? what was the original plan?
I definitely support municipal consolidation and shared services. But we need to face the facts: one of the biggest (if not the biggest) reason property taxes are high are because of the schools.
But I think we should start by consolidation the doughnut towns and the places that share school districts
Princeton Township and Princeton Borough have become just Princeton.
The merger of the Mercer County communities, which won voter approval in November 2011, formally occurred Tuesday when members of the new governing body were sworn in.
The merger's goal is to save taxpayers $1.6 million in the first year of a united Princeton and eventually more than $3 million a year.
Princeton Township surrounded the borough, and Princeton University straddled the town line. The successful unification effort followed three prior attempts to consolidate - in 1953, 1979 and 1996 - that fell flat. New Jersey now has 565 towns, many small. The last time towns had merged was in 1997, when Warren County's Hardwick absorbed Pohaquarry, population 7.
So we'll see if $1.6 million are saved in the first year. Even if it's only half that amount, that's an improvement.
From Philly.com:
The merger's goal is to save taxpayers $1.6 million in the first year of a united Princeton and eventually more than $3 million a year.
So they expect to save $3 million... out of $62 million. 5%. While I wouldn't turn it down, a 5% drop in my property taxes would leave them hellishly high. Having too many municipalities is not a principal cause of NJs high tax rates.
Princeton Township and Princeton Borough have become just Princeton.
The merger of the Mercer County communities, which won voter approval in November 2011, formally occurred Tuesday when members of the new governing body were sworn in.
The merger's goal is to save taxpayers $1.6 million in the first year of a united Princeton and eventually more than $3 million a year.
Princeton Township surrounded the borough, and Princeton University straddled the town line. The successful unification effort followed three prior attempts to consolidate - in 1953, 1979 and 1996 - that fell flat. New Jersey now has 565 towns, many small. The last time towns had merged was in 1997, when Warren County's Hardwick absorbed Pohaquarry, population 7.
So we'll see if $1.6 million are saved in the first year. Even if it's only half that amount, that's an improvement.
It's also just not that much money compared to the massive disruption that would be caused by any action sufficient to cause large scale consolidation.
Let's do some math. Let's assume every other one of NJ's 564 other towns merged with another, and every such merger got the full return of $3 million per annum that they are hoping to eventually get here.
564 * 3 / 2 = $864 million annually.
Now, there are 3,546,249 households in NJ (source: city-data), so that's $243.64 per household.
Which compares to average property taxes of $7,281 (source: wikipedia) in 2010. It is almost certainly higher now, but, we'll use the number we have for now.
Which means 243.64/7,281 = only 3.3% tax decrease from MERGING EVERY DARNED TOWN IN THE STATE WITH ONE OF ITS NEIGHBORS. That's equivalent to a couple years of tax inflation.
Yup, that's right, we'd be saving the equivalent of a year or two of tax inflation by forcing every town in the state to go through a merger. Granted, the method used above is ultra-rough, but, I'm not putting in effort to do proper research for a better methodology to post on a forum, feel free to do so if any of the rest of you guys are inclined.
edit: looks like nybbler beat me to the punch while I was doing my laundry
Yup, that's right, we'd be saving the equivalent of a year or two of tax inflation by forcing every town in the state to go through a merger. Granted, the method used above is ultra-rough, but, I'm not putting in effort to do proper research for a better methodology to post on a forum, feel free to do so if any of the rest of you guys are inclined.
It wouldn't have to be every town, just the smaller ones that have less than 15,000 residents or so.
I'd agree that consolidation wouldn't be a silver bullet, but it may indirectly help tackle corruption. There's research backing up the idea that there is relatively less corruption in larger bureaucracies, which is why local government corruption is such a problem.
One of the main arguments against consolidation is that you are giving up local control for savings that on a percentage basis are low. This may (or may not) make it pointless to consolidate one or two largish towns (say if West Windsor and Plainsboro got together). But, in Camden County, Bergen County, and down the shore, if you consolidated five tiny boroughs, you would STILL have home rule! If anyone claims five towns becoming one town of 8 sq miles and 20,000 people isn't home rule, I can't take you seriously. THIS is where the true savings lie. Plus, the level of services would most likely go up because with a larger tax base you can actually afford better things, while still being cheaper on an overall basis.
Home rule is a farce anyway. Abbott districts, the Mt. Laurel rulings, and other decisions, for better or worse (topics for other threads), have proven that. We need to stop pretending that the supposed ability to call our mayor once every five years for a downed light post is worth the cost.
I'd agree that consolidation wouldn't be a silver bullet, but it may indirectly help tackle corruption. There's research backing up the idea that there is relatively less corruption in larger bureaucracies, which is why local government corruption is such a problem.
And before anyone jumps on this guy and counters with Newark, etc: Don't bother with the tired argument. A consolidated Long Beach Island or "South Bergen City" would absolutely not suddenly become a haven for corrupt officials due to being "bigger." Municipalities suffer from corruption due to citizens who are unaware or feel helpless against the machine, not because they are big.
I tend to agree with BrnTmr4Brkfst - it's the smaller towns that should look at consolidation, and if it is the case that there is less corruption in larger bureaucracies, then that would support having some towns merge. Watching how Princeton fares with their consolidation will prove valuable.
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