Local Officials Discuss Government Consolidation

Local officials met at the Rye Free Reading Room Thursday to discuss local government consolidation and sharing of services among Sound Shore towns and villages.

The forum, sponsored by the local chapter of the League of Women Voters, came just weeks after a report by the State Comptroller’s Office said municipalities around the state could save more than $750 million by sharing services such as police and fire departments, sanitation and snow removal, and administrative tasks. 

The officials who took part in the discussion emphasized past and present successes while also recognizing the political sensitivity surrounding the issue.  

“People like their local services, they distinguish themselves by them, they are proud of their police officers and fire fighters,” said Rye City Manager Frank Culross.  “But times have changed and people are starting to ask if we can afford it.”

There are already several examples of shared services in the area. Rye City, Rye Brook and Port Chester share the costs of ambulance service.  The Town of Rye provides tax collection and assessing for Rye Brook and Port Chester. According to Rye Brook Village Administrator Christopher Bradbury, the village saves more than $300,000 a year by sharing a library with Port Chester.

State Assemblyman George Latimer, D-Rye, the forum’s moderator, acknowledged the labyrinthine structure of towns and villages in the area, but said that this “crazy quilt pattern” is not to blame for high taxes.

“If you move here from anywhere else in the country, the structure of government seems illogical. A town looks like a city, a city looks like a village,” he said. “Although it seems that the proliferation of small communities is a problem, that’s not where most of the driving costs of property taxes are.”

Instead, Latimer said, those costs are mainly a result of ever-increasing school taxes and the soaring costs of Medicaid.

But the Comptroller’s report highlights a series of small steps that could mean big savings.

School districts, for example, could cut up to five percent of their budgets by consolidating services such as bookkeeping and purchasing. A bill introduced in the State Legislature last year would eliminate some of the many reporting requirements imposed on schools and put the Board of Cooperative Educational Services (BOCES) in charge of administrative tasks currently taken on by individual school districts.

 “BOCES is a proven entity for the consolidation of services,” said State Senator Suzi Oppenheimer, D-Port Chester, who sponsored the bill.  The measure would “produce savings in staff time, printing and mailing at the state and local levels,” she said.

Oppenheimer’s bill passed the Assembly last year, but stalled in the Senate.

Officials at the forum briefly mentioned a new law taking effect in March, which will streamline the process of dissolving or merging municipalities and service districts. The current consolidation process is harrowing and filled with red tape, officials said. The new law requires only that ten percent of the residents of a town, village, or service district sign a petition to put consolidation or dissolution on the ballot. But some experts have expressed reservations about the measure.

In 2008, Alfred DelBello, a former lieutenant governor under Governor Mario Cuomo, was chosen to sit on a statewide panel that issued a report on consolidation.

That report outlined more than $1 billion in potential savings and made similar recommendations to the Comptroller’s report, but DelBello told Patch in an interview that the law may not have the outcome some people expect.

“One problem with [the law] is that you have to vote on consolidation before there’s even a plan in place. This is not going to have the effect people hope for,” DelBello said.

 “Sharing services, from a political standpoint, is a lot easier to achieve and a good first step leading up to consolidation,” said DelBello, who didn’t attend Thursday’s forum. 

One of the speakers at the forum likened municipal government to business.

“If a company is running inefficiently, they close down or get taken over. Mergers and acquisitions are what keeps business going,” said Bishop Nowotnik, Confidential Secretary to the Supervisor of the Town of Rye. “In government there is no merger and acquisition option; they can only go to the taxpayer and ask for more money.”

The new law, Nowotnik said, is an attempt to create a more business-like structure.        

Along with Nowotnik, Latimer, Bradbury and Culross, the panel included Port Chester Village Manager Christopher Russo and Mamaroneck Village Manager Richard Slingerland.