Rye Town to Study Local Merger with State Grant

State officials last week announced that Rye Town will receive a $50,000 grant to study the pros and cons of dissolving the township or merging services with other local municipalities.

While the town will spearhead the study, officials from Port Chester, Mamaroneck and Rye Brook must also be brought to the table to decide what exactly will be studied.

"Each of these places is looking at different possibilities," said Bishop Nowotnik, the confidential secretary to Town Supervisor Joseph Carvin. "The scope of the work needs to be planned and [the municipalities] will have to sign off."

In a memo about the grants, the State Department says that Rye Town receives about $2.5 million a year in non-property tax revenue "that might otherwise be redistributed to reduce the property tax burden" in a hypothetical municipality that would result from dissolving the town.

"Over the years, Rye Town has evolved to be an administrative town government that provides no essential services to its subordinate villages," the memo continues.

Consolidation has been a hot topic in New York since a 2009 report from the comptroller's office found that municipalities around the state could save upwards of $750 million a year by consolidating services like police and fire departments, or dissolving some municipalities altogether.

The issue is particularly acute in the Sound Shore region, where a number of towns and villages abound in a small area. At a forum on government consolidation earlier this year, state Assemblyman George Latimer (D-Rye) called the political makeup of the area "a crazy quilt pattern."

"The village of Port Chester looks more like a city and the City of Rye looks more like a village," Latimer said. "The question is, how do we manage towns and villages incorporated in the early 1800's but that are dealing with 21st century problems?"

The grant, issued through the State Department, is reimbursable, which means the town will have to pay for the study out of pocket. It will then be reimbursed 90 percent of the cost of the study up to $50,000. Nowotnik said he wasn't sure how much the town would end up spending or when the study would begin. The State Department estimates the study will cost $65,000.

The upcoming study will be far from the first in the area. In 2007, Rye Town commissioned a study through Pace University in order to look at the feasibility of establishing a town library. The study found that the Port Chester Library is used disproportionately by Rye Town residents, and a separate town library could cost taxpayers more money than sharing the service with Port Chester.

In addition to the shared library, area municipalities also share ambulance and fire services. Port Chester and Rye Brook residents can use most Rye Town parks for free.

But a recent push on the state level has forced municipalities to consider more drastic changes, including scrapping a number of 'special districts', which are taxing entities that provide services like trash collection and sewer maintenance.

Dissolution is an even tougher topic to broach because residents often trace part of their identity to the town or village in which they live, and local officials are often hesitant to give up control.

"It's local political control, and nothing but" that makes it so difficult to consolidate municipalities, Nowotnik said.

The town of Mamaroneck in the 1990s tried twice to annex Rye Neck, but voters came out to the polls in droves to shoot down the proposal.

Last week, Assemblyman Greg Ball (R-Patterson) proposed the dissolution of the village of Brewster in Putnam County. Ball, who is running for State Senate, said the move could save taxpayer money and put an end to an "illegal alien economy," a reference to the large number of day laborers who seek work in the village.

It's among the first specific proposals to be made after a new state law took effect in March. The law, called the New York Government Reorganization and Citizen Empowerment Act, makes it easier for ordinary citizens to collect petition signatures and call for a vote on dissolving or merging towns and villages. Attorney General Andrew Cuomo, a Democrat who is running for governor, championed the bill and helped push it through the legislature.

Rye Town is one of 20 government entities - including counties, towns, villages and school districts - that will receive a state grant this year. The only other grant for a Westchester municipality is $45,000 for the town of Ossining and villages of Ossining and Briarcliff Manor to study shared services.