PASCACK VALLEY—Sharing municipal services, large equipment purchases, and public works equipment has been a common practice among Pascack Valley towns for decades in efforts to save taxpayer dollars, minimize property tax increases, and streamline services.
However, consolidation, or merging of towns, was suggested in 2018 by a state committee recommending it for neighboring towns under 3,500 residents.
No towns took the committee up on it — and in fact Pascack Valley towns have general populations of 5,800 in Woodcliff Lake to more than 11,000 in Westwood, according to the most recent Census numbers. Today, New Jersey has 565 municipalities, including Bergen County’s 70 towns, 76 school districts and 69 fire districts.
Most New Jersey towns have preferred to share services on expensive equipment and seasonal duties such as leaf collection and storm drain maintenance.
The question of consolidation came up at the Jan. 26 Greater Pascack Valley Chamber of Commerce Annual Breakfast With the Mayors, which was held on Zoom for a second year, over coronavirus fears.
The eight mayors attending took up a question forwarded from the public by chamber chair Robin Malley: whether they knew of any efforts to consolidate local governments.
The mayors acknowledged the history behind the question and discussed shared-service agreements between towns covering funding for and sharing expensive public works equipment, emergency dispatch services, senior shuttles, and volunteer ambulance corps.
The mayors also discussed affordable housing and overdevelopment: “At breakfast, mayors urge regional strategy on 2025 housing mandates,” Pascack Press, Jan. 28, 2022.
And they gave updates from Emerson, Hillsdale, Montvale, Old Tappan, Oradell, Park Ridge, Township of Washington, and Woodcliff Lake, which we broke out in reports on Feb. 7.
Two mayors did not attend the session: Westwood’s Mayor Ray Arroyo and River Vale’s Mayor Glen Jasionowski. Arroyo gave us a full report, also Feb. 7, of what he would have said, had he been available.
‘Home rule unsustainable’
Oradell Mayor Dianne Didio, originally from Nassau County, N.Y., where many towns were consolidated “and yet taxes remained high,” said of consolidation, “You’ve got to look at it and really study it.”
Hillsdale Mayor John Ruocco concurred, saying he favored looking at ways to consolidate towns, as New Jersey’s “home rule” is “unsustainable in the long run … shared services is certainly an interim step. It needs to be studied. I think there’s more that can be squeezed out of this and that can help the taxpayers.”
Indeed, Hillsdale recently outsourced its emergency dispatch services to Bergen County’s Public Safety Operations Center (PSOC) in a move pitched as saving the borough more than $1 million over five years.
Westwood’s governing body had authorized Police Chief Michael Pontillo to offer his counterpart in Hillsdale WWPD’s dispatch center in what Arroyo told us at the time was a fully shared service: transparently splitting all costs 50/50.” Hillsdale considered it and declined.
Ruocco said at the breakfast that there were “too many” superintendents and police chiefs, “and it’s just unsustainable … this deserves a lot of study … but the problem is that it’s been studied to death.”
And at press time the Township of Washington council authorized a shared service agreement with Northwest Bergen Central Dispatch in Ridgewood, which receives and dispatches all requests for public safety units in its primary communities and functions as a 9-1-1 Public Safety Answering Point for multiple communities.
“This is going to save the taxpayers $150,000 to $200,00, really. And I don’t think we give up anything in service,” WTPD chief Richard Skinner told his governing body on Feb. 7.
He said the township is one of the last in the county that still answers its own 9-1-1. “Most are still dispatching but are not answering their 9-1-1.”
He said the township’s system is nearly obsolete and that “This is not something that we took lightly.”
NWBCD says it provides 9-1-1 and dispatch services for Ridgewood, Glen Rock, Emerson, New Milford, Oradell, River Edge, Montvale, Park Ridge, Woodcliff Lake, River Vale, and Old Tappan and provides 9-1-1 PSAP services for Oakland, Franklin Lakes, Ramsey, Waldwick, and Rutherford.
Ruocco said at the breakfast that consolidation studies were undertaken in Gov. Christine Whitman’s administration, in the early 1990s.
“Again here we are, how many years after the Whitman Administration, and we’re still wrestling with it, and nobody wants to touch that third-rail issue,” he said.
He said he’d joked with Arroyo that their boroughs merge as “Westdale.”
Former Westwood Mayor Skip Kelley, GPVCOC’s vice president and the executive director of the Pascack Valley Mayors Association, said when he was in office he tried to interest mayors about considering consolidating police and public works departments, and noted schools are the biggest expense.
“Westwood, after all these years, is still the only town in the Pascack Valley that has a K–12 regional school district,” said Kelley. (The district also includes Washington Township students.)
He said, “Now you throw all the money that goes into the administration of your grammar school operation, that’s a lot of money.”
He said he advised looking at police departments with a 10-year plan, noting if one chief retired, the 10 Pascack Valley towns could then decide to hire one chief for two towns.
He noted over a 10-year period, towns would “have almost total consolidation … and you will save money.”
He said with public works, “You can do a couple towns here and a couple towns there.”
Over the years there have been musings of unifying the Borough of Westwood and the Township of Washington, which would see the township gain ground after it was broken up in the Borough Act of 1894.
The township says on its webpage, “Between 1894 and 1909, the municipalities of Emerson, Westwood, Hillsdale, Woodcliff Lake, River Vale, Park Ridge and Montvale applied to the state for charters allowing them to form new boroughs. The Township of Washington dwindled (from approximately 30 square miles) to a mere 3.25 square miles.”
Possibly the Pascack Valley’s highest profile shared-service agreement is a 10-year pact between Montvale and River Vale.
That agreement, in place since 2014, shares public works employees, equipment and services, and was estimated to save up to $400,000 in costs for the two towns though no study has been done to confirm the estimate.
However, in 2018, a dispute over one storm’s snow-removal costs almost killed the deal but the partners agreed to fund a $100,000 snow escrow account, at $50,000 each, to resolve the dispute.
A Montvale community survey in 2020 found many residents wanted more shared-service agreements to reduce taxes, with suggestions to consolidate police operations and leave the regional high school district.
At one forum, Ghassali said he did not favor consolidation of police departments.
And our towns are partnering where possible. See “In Ida’s wake, mayors press Bergen County for FEMA grant on flood solutions,” Pascack Press, Oct. 7, 2021.
State aims to help
Soon after his election, in 2017, Gov. Phil Murphy appointed two shared-services “czars” — former mayor Jordan Glatt, a Democrat, of Summit, and Nicholas Platt, a Republican councilman from Harding Township — and asked them to work with towns on increasing shared services.
The state’s shared-services czars have acted as impartial liaisons to help negotiate over 800 shared-services agreements between towns to share courts, health departments and a variety of government functions.
In mid-2021, the pair said that they were next taking on the so-called “Big Three” of government services: police, fire, and schools.
“That’s where all the money is. The schools, the police and the fire is where the real savings are,” Platt said then. “If we’re really going to make a difference in the New Jersey property tax crisis, it’s trying to get that under control.”
Added Glatt, “People don’t like to give up control [and] power. The one thing we can’t give these elected officials is courage.”
And the state Department of Community Affairs (DCA) has recently offered Local Efficiency Achievement Program (LEAP) grants to develop and help implement shared-services programs.
In the 2021–2022 budget, the state allocated $10 million for the LEAP program, offering grant funding for efforts to further develop and promote cost-sharing agreements.
Approximately $4 million was set aside for LEAP funding grants for K-12 school regionalization studies, with most towns in Pascack Valley (and New Jersey) having their own districts, school principals and superintendents.
Only Westwood and Washington Township, in our area, share a K-12 regional district.
Four Pascack Valley towns share two award-winning regional high schools — and have struggled with equity on the school funding formula: Montvale and Woodcliff Lake send students to Pascack Hills High School, in Montvale; Hillsdale and River Vale send students to Pascack Valley High School, in Hillsdale.
Due to Woodcliff Lake’s high property taxes — increased an average $545 per homeowner in 2021–2022 — Woodcliff Lake officials recently floated splintering off into a regional K-12 district with Montvale — which so far has not expressed enthusiasm for the idea.
Bergen County’s Shared Services Division partners with towns on energy, purchasing, equipment, and more.
— With John Snyder