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Since moving from NYC to NJ 9 years ago, I've always been struck by how many mini-towns there are. It's got to be highly inefficient (and expensive) to have separate mayors, police chiefs, school superintendents, administrations, etc. every few square miles. With the exception of Newark in Essex County, I really don't see why most towns couldn't just merge into single county-wide municipalities.
We recently bought a house, and had to be VERY conscious of which exact little town we were in because if you're down the street 1 mile this way or that way you could have VERY different school districts and VERY different taxes, etc. Even though big cities have different neighborhoods too, it didn't seem like the lines were as thick.
Since moving from NYC to NJ 9 years ago, I've always been struck by how many mini-towns there are. It's got to be highly inefficient (and expensive) to have separate mayors, police chiefs, school superintendents, administrations, etc. every few square miles. With the exception of Newark in Essex County, I really don't see why most towns couldn't just merge into single county-wide municipalities.
We recently bought a house, and had to be VERY conscious of which exact little town we were in because if you're down the street 1 mile this way or that way you could have VERY different school districts and VERY different taxes, etc. Even though big cities have different neighborhoods too, it didn't seem like the lines were as thick.
It is the only way to reduce property taxes besides an entire revamping of all taxes in NJ. Here in Bergen County, my town touches 7 towns and is within a few miles of another 5 or 6. Each town has its own police force and building, town hall and administration, and school system or 2 for regional high school systems.
Most of these towns could be combined on some level. It will never happen. It seems we only feel safe when there is a police chief making a high 6 figure salary every couple of miles.
Not going to happen. The only hope (and I give it -10% chance) would be if a lot of similar towns all jumped from their county and formed a new one
A couple of years ago, it appeared that Somerset County was very close to approving a merger of all of the various municipal police departments into a county-wide department, divided into 3 or 4 sectors. At the last minute, the plan was scuttled, undoubtedly because of all of the high-ranking police officials who would have suffered a downgrade in their job titles.
Almost 20yrs ago the Bergen Record started a series of articles on reasons taxes were so high in NJ. Each town is it's own little fiefdom. One article used fire departments as an example. Most towns have volunteer fire depts it seems the town thru taxes pay for the trucks, whereas each fire dept owns the firehouses. This article used aerial ladder trucks and fire equipment in general. It seems each town had to have it's own 100ft+ ladder truck, even if they had no buildings over 4 stories. The idea being they can shoot water over from the next block. Since the volunteers are taxpayers, etc. they petition the town to buy the truck. If a town balks at the price, with the suggestion they could use one from the next town thru mutual aid agreements, time to get on site, and how much is a life worth are the counter arguments.
Well it seems there are more fire trucks in Bergen County than in NY City. At the time I was working for a public works dept and that's why the article interested me. I also looked around at the town I was working for and a few surrounding towns. The town I worked for had it's own shade tree dept. as did surrounding towns. The town I worked for had a bucket truck that basically sat 4 days out of 5 a week. I assume the other downs did also, that seemed to be the schedule for most tree dept work. It seemed the only time the bucket truck was used more than once a week is to clean up damage after a storm, it may have been used 2 or 3 days in a row then.
It's that way for a lot of equipment in towns, and our tax dollars pay for this. Boards of Education are also used, Teterboro it seems had it's own Board of Education until 2010 until it was dissolved and is now under the Hasbrouck Heights School District. It seems some towns are coming to their senses and merging services. Back 75 to 100 yrs ago when towns were smaller and they may have only had 1 policemen, (my grandfather became police chief in a town in Passaic County since he was the only one on the force.) My mother had said they were the first on their block to have a phone and the last to have electricity. Today things move a little faster and seem to be more complicated and the only way to cut costs is consolidation of services. Many people are to entrenched into home rule, it may happen but it will be a slow, contentious process.
No. The main reason there's a push for consolidation is because some people WANT places like Millburn to be governed from places like Newark; they'd like to see all the rich people's money going into Newark politician's pockets.
This would be an amazing idea Texas has suburbs with like 300k people to avoid a million towns.
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Originally Posted by brookdaleresident
It's that way in GA. It seems to work well. Really enjoying paying $3000 in taxes rather than $12k in NJ
States like Georgia and I think Texas have strong County level governments and less local governments. Actually I think most of the country is like that, especially in the South and the West.
In the Northern states, the closer you get to New England you tend to have stronger local governments and weaker county government. If fact, some New England states like Connecticut only have counties on the map, counties like Fairfield County really have no county government at all.
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