Local legislators have little faith that calls to merge at least 35 Bergen County municipalities would ever work.
Bergen County Executive Dennis McNerney made that call last week during his annual State of the County Address. He said that he wants the state to offer increased financial incentives to encourage municipalities with fewer than 10,000 residents to merge forming fewer towns.
State Senator Loretta Weinburg supports the idea of cutting costs but doesn’t know much about the county’s "far-reaching" proposal for merging municipalities.
The longtime District 37 legislator said she doesn’t believe merging towns will actually happen.
"There is no way the state has money to undertake such a far reaching program," Weinburg said Friday.
"I’m sure some of these towns are already doing shared services and we will encourage them to keep doing that."
Weinburg did say McNerney’s plan is a good talking point, a "wonderful idea that people should review."
"If the county has a way to force towns to merge into one another, I would be curious to hear about it and I’m sure residents would be interested in knowing the ways the county plans to cut rising costs."
About 15 years ago, Assemblyman John Rooney raised a similar question to Northvale residents, who rejected the thought.
Rooney asked voters if they would be in favor of greater regionalization of services and if they would like to consolidate with another municipality.
The responses were split. Voters said they would like to regionalize services, include the big ones such as the police and fire departments, but didn’t want to give up their individual autonomy.
"I think people realize that it is too expensive to run all these programs," Rooney said.
"People want services shared but they want somebody else’s services shared," Weinberg said. "As far as merging entire communities, there isn’t a push for that."
Assemblywoman Valerie Vainieri Huttle, said a similar concept to merging towns, through sharing services or regionalizing has been on the table for years.
Huttle said she supports the concept of cost cutting but the key is gaining support from local officials and residents.
Historically, a lack support from people in communities has stalled town merger plans proposed in the past, she said.
Residents and officials from Emerson and Westwood adamantly opposed sharing a police force.
But in Teterboro and Rockleigh, a plan to merge school boards does make sense and may have the necessary approval from those residents, Huttle said.
"The challenge lies in getting approval from people in the town and local elected officials who first need to find out what the details are and what would be the best outcome for their individual town," Huttle said.
"You can start in towns where it makes common sense but there are many challenges. When you talk about people’s lives and livelihood you have to get them all on the same page."
Some of those challenges, Huttle said, would be convincing residents that merging police and fire departments and schools would be beneficial to them.
Huttle said the pros and cons of merging towns and services is an issue for experienced professionals, not the county board of freeholders or the county executive.
"I support cutting costs and people power, but we need to see what the merger plan entails and what advantages it has. It’s going be a while before all the details are ironed out," she said.
"It is a laudable plan," said Rooney. "But the municipalities should be talking about it, not the county."
"I don’t think anything the county does along this line is going to save money," he said. "It is going to cost money."
