"If it wasn't going to happen here, I wonder if it's going to happen anywhere," said Sal Lagattuta, one of the proponents.
It seemed like a natural candidate for a merger, but the people said they wanted to keep their identity, their name and that they didn't mind paying more to do it. Brian Donohue had this video over at the Ledger Live:We wrote last week about how the Medford Lakes council didn't even put it to their voters before squashing a proposed merger to share police services, not even merge the whole town. This will be a thorny issue for the new Governor to navigate, but one that if he's being real about changing the way we do business needs to receive some serious consideration. Brian Donohue asked this:
Will Christie have to push even harder to overcome New Jerseyans' love for home rule?
The answer is yes he will have to push even harder, but the follow up question is will he actually do the pushing necessary?
It still amazes me that we need a bill to tell us we shouldn't have school districts without actual schools, but the Governor made things official yesterday:
Gov. Jon Corzine Tuesday signed into law a bill that will clear the way to merge with larger districts 26 small school districts that do not operate schools.
The districts include tiny towns like Teterboro, Tavistock, Hi-Nella and Rocky Hill. Their school boards usually meet just once a year to approve sending a tuition check to a neighboring district.
The Governor called it a positive first step toward school district consolidation. The new law is meant to clarify a 2007 law that got tangled up in taxes. Small districts say they're not the problem and while there may be larger issues, that doesn't mean they should continue to exist. Jay put up a diary with some video on the press conference:No schools will be closed as they merge the districts. I'll put the video the campaign put out below the fold.
Farmingdale is one of 29 municipalities statewide that would be affected by the bill that calls for either the merger of "doughnut-hole" municipalities and the townships that surround them or the sharing of the towns' major municipal services and functions, within 10 years after the bill goes into effect. The goal, according to the bill's sponsor, is to lower property taxes.
They've tried to suggest, recommend and incentivize, but that hasn't worked. The debate has to happen because like many other problems facing our state, the status quo is unsustainable. Hank Kalet put it bluntly at Channel Surfing:
The reality is that we cannot continue to function in a state as small as New Jersey, with 8 million people and a badly busted fiscal situation unless we reduce the number of towns. There are 566 in New Jersey, 611 school districts, 21 counties and numerous other tax districts. Many do not need to exist.
Despite the fact that Morristown wants to locate its public works garage in Morris Township, Morristown Mayor Donald Cresitello says he's not interested in combining forces with the township to pick-up garbage.
There's no logic in Cresitello's position, other than him being stubborn.
Why would he do anything logical? Cresitello was probably one of those kids who didn't share their toys either.
36 years ago today, President Nixon announced another round of troop withdrawals from South Vietnam. Despite already losing the war, Bush bravely insists on keeping others' sons and daughters in Iraq without a plan until they're all killed, or until he leaves office - whichever comes first.
And now back to your regularly scheduled news:
The latest Quinnipiac University poll has Menendez ahead 49%-45%, a 7 point swing since September when Kean Jr led 48%-45%. A Rasmussen poll will show Menendez ahead 44%-40%.
Not surprisingly, members of the Black Ministers Council endorsed Bob Menendez yesterday saying Kean Jr has offered nothing but unsubstantiated negative attacks. They also "voiced concern over Kean's 2002 vote in Trenton opposing racial profiling legislation." Kean Jr's spokeswoman says he actually did vote for it in the Senate after he voted against it in the Assembly.
Hamilton mayor Glen Gilmore has donated more than $12,000 he received from John Lynch, who recently pleaded guilty to corruption. "Gilmore had originally declined to give up the money, but changed his mind this week." Mercer County Republicans are calling the Mercer Democratics to return over $32,000 they've received from Lynch. Democrats say Republicans are hypocrites and should return $36,000 from Harry Parkin and others - all of whom pleaded or were found guilty as well.
There's not much love for Sen Karcher's bill to ban trans fats from restaurant food. Assemblyman Lou Manzo said "I just don't like the taste of this bill."
Third district legislators, Sen Stephen Sweeney and Assemblymen John Burzichelli and Doug Fisher, visited with students at Woodstown. One eighth grader said: "I never realized what they could actually do...It's nice to finally be able to see how they can affect us on a daily basis." Another added: "They made me really want to learn more about politics...They inspired me to maybe one day become a politician."
Assemblyman Joe Roberts has proposed creating 21 "super" county school superintendents as a way to cut property taxes, but Assemblyman Senator Bob Smith wants to go a step further and create 21 "administrative" county school districts, where purchasing, HR, transportation and other work is consolidated, eliminating an estimated 600 local administrators and staffers.
While the political hired guns for the Kean and Menendez camps have thrown reasoned discussion to the dogs and are busy painting their candidates' opponent as someone who has the ethics of Al Capone but is not as bad as, say, Pol Pot (wait until Nov. 4, though, when the really wacky accusations will start flying), our Governor has been proposing some solid ideas on combating New Jersey's multiple municipal madness.
By combining many small districts into fewer larger ones, "you end up having greater diversity in your school system," Corzine said. "If you went to a county system, you'd have a much broader, diverse community."
Corzine said he is not supporting local government or school district consolidation as a way to confront segregation in New Jersey schools, but he sees it as a side benefit of consolidation in the interest of property tax relief.
New Jersey is insanely segregated by race and class. Most often, municipal boundaries are the dividing line between a future of hope and expanding horizons for young people or one of little opportunities. In my home county, just stroll from poor, crime-ridden Plainfield into tony Scotch Plains next door, a distance of only a few hundred yards. Compare housing values and school performance data.
While I don't think that the Governor's plan (if enacted) will destroy neighborhood schools, it may make school administrators more serious about designing relevant curricula and other policies if their students hailed from a broader spectrum of households. It would also benefit students from all social, ethnic and economic groups who will be exposed to peers who aren't just like them. Third, making rich people sweat from time to time is probably a good thing.
You can expect that every newspaper in NJ will write the local version of the "whither home rule?" story in the coming days and weeks. I'm not going to post everyone one of the, but the ones that I find entertaining, I will.
This one, from the Times o' Trentn (as we all know, Treton properly pronounced has only ONE syllable - the second 't' and the 'o' are mostly silent), is especially funny -- the writer has NO CLUE as to why Princeton Borough and Township have steadfastly refused to commingle. He actually believes the township and borough have "the same zeitgeist." HA!
(The tale of two P'tons is an eternal battle of the six-toed townies versus the unwashed arrivistes in the township ... why, their money isn't even two generations old, and they've actually got some! Heathens!)
Why, if you can't remember when Cox's General Store had roasted peanuts in its window, you simply don't belong in the borough, dear ...
(And I remember when it cost $0.27 to travel one way from Kendall Park to Princeton on Suburban Transit .... and EVERYONE thought Kendall Park was just too declasse to even admit it existed ... never mind Deer Path and Cuyler Rd., both developed by the same parnership as KP, in P'ton township).
The Trentoonian picked up an article by my old friend and co-worker Angela Della Santi that is probably in today's Passaic Herald and/or Bergen Record. I neither agree nor disagree with the conclusions of Bogota's Mayor, though I do think he's a total bonehead on the topic of billboards.
I see that back in May BlueJersey ran the Ballad of Tom Kean by Charlie Stile (Angela's husband), another former Princeton Packet reporter and co-worker/friend of mine -- a lot of talented people came out of that newsroom, and a few of them are still there, having come to grips with economics of being a small-town newspaper person. (Me, I got tired of being poor so I went corporate. Little did I know what lie ahead ... )
Sorry about the long quote but I've got eight seconds to finish this and block quotes are faster than links
Northfield battles over ballot question on shared services
By MARTIN DeANGELIS Staff Writer, (609) 272-7237
Published: Wednesday, July 19, 2006
Updated: Wednesday, July 19, 2006
NORTHFIELD — Local voters may have a say in November on whether they want their town to join nearby Linwood and Somers Point in looking at ways to combine government services, including the school boards, to try to save property tax money.
If the discussion is anything like the one Northfield's City Council had Tuesday night, it won't be cordial.
Council voted 4-3 to put a question on the ballot asking residents whether they want city officials to “examine and undertake efforts to combine government services (with Linwood and Somers Point), and the local and regional school boards, to achieve significant property tax reductions.�
That vote went along party lines, with Northfield Council's four Democrats supporting it and the three Republicans voting no. Now Northfield's governing body would have to approve the ordinance again after a public hearing at its meeting next month before the question can go on the ballot in November.
But Republican Tim Carew objected that the vote was being “shoved down our throats� because the matter was just put on Northfield's agenda in the last few days, at the request of Somers Point Councilman Gregg Clayton. Carew said some Northfield officials hadn't seen or heard about the question until this week, and said Council President Vincent Mazzeo told Carew before the meeting that Mazzeo was calling for a vote because of “pressure from Somers Point.�
In New Brunswick, a judge extended the Halper family deadline until noon Monday to leave their 75-acre Piscataway farm as a result of an Eminent Domain decision that will pave the way for a new park.
The flap over the Attorney General's involvement in her boyfriend's traffic stop is not going away and today the Bergen Record asks, "Why is Zulima so quiet?"
I do not think that any municipality has ever gone through with this process. I assume the new ordinances Joe Roberts has referenced are intended to streamline this process.
Look, I understand the original poster was only suggesting consolidating the administration of a particular service -- tax collection -- from the municipality to the state, but it's really the KEY function of the municipality! Everything else flows from tax revenues, all the other services, all the potential benefits.
The Governor would like the state's municipalities to consolidate services in order to reduce the cost of providing local government to people. Often times people take that to mean small things like co-purchasing gas, combining leaf pickup, but there are really good ways to save money without impacting services at all.
"You don't have to be a genius or a rocket scientist" to see that having 566 municipalities and 616 school districts is not the most efficient way to run a state, Corzine said.
"I hope we use this opportunity to really go at trying to get a more efficient way, a more productive way, to deliver the fundamental services that people want," Corzine said.
One of the most efficient ways that could save municipalities six figures every year would be to consolidate property tax collection at the county level.
Two South Jersey Assemblymen are asking the governor to postpone implementing the sales tax increase for another two weeks. The article doesn't mention where they plan to make up the difference in lost revenue.
Tom Moran writes about what Corzine considers "pay to play" in the budget process. Democratic legislators agreed to the sales tax increase, but only in exchange for $300 million in pork barrell spending.
Corzine's plans for the special summer session on property tax reform includes improving efficiency through consolidation of services. A coalition group called the Citizens Convention Coalition, which includes the AARP, the League of Municipalities and other, "plans a press conference today to urge the Legislature to put a convention proposal on the ballot this year, not next."
Yesterday Corzine signed legislation which would create the Department of Children and Families. The governor says the purpose is to "make sure that there is dedication and focus primarily on the job of looking after our children in the welfare system."
Despite a threat of a primary challenge from 33rd district Assemblyman Brian Stack, Sen Bernard Kenny says he won't step aside.
The owners of the Tropicana casino are being sued by a nonsmoking worker who was diagnosed with lung cancer.
Does anyone know what our Govenor's plans are for school consolidation? Would it be up to the districts, would it be along county lines, does their need to be a contigious border among the district, etc?
Looking to see if anyone know what this might look like.
Thanks
-njmitch
Corzine will push the legislature to create a needle exchange program: "We're losing lives every day we don't act." New Jersey is one of two states that does not provide access to clean needles.
A report by Corzine's Budget and Reengineering Government Transition Policy Group suggests "cutting state spending and barring the use of one-time revenue sources...to balance spending; expanding the 6 percent state sales tax to items such as tanning, massages, limousine services and cable television; lobbying Congress to make it easier to tax purchases through the Internet; implementing a temporary income tax rate surcharge if the other measures don't help; increasing the retirement age from 55 to 60 and considering a 401(k) retirement plan, rather than a pension, for all new state hires....requiring state departments to cut budgets, freeze work-force levels, slice salaries of nonunion employees, mandate a week off without pay for state workers and prepare layoff plans."
The latest merger to stop before it gets started is the one between the towns of Sussex and Wantag. 
