Christine McGrath
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Question 2: Verona officials have discussed the concept of shared services for many years, both with the Board of Education and with other townships. Which services should and shouldn’t be shared, and why?
Shared services have been touted as one way for New Jersey municipalities to save money. Verona is already sharing services in several ways in both formal and informal arrangements. However, we should be careful to analyze the potential downsides to giving up local control for services that are most central to the value that Verona’s local government provides.
With respect to shared services with the Board of Education, residents expect shared service arrangements. And we already have one today. The Township plows the snow, maintains the artificial turf at school fields, and cuts field grass. In turn, the Board does not charge the Township for the Recreation Department’s use of buildings for sports events. This is great for the taxpayer overall, and I fully support it continuing.
Shared services with other municipalities make the most sense when an employee’s service is required on a less than full time basis. For example, we currently share building inspectors with Roseland. Identifying situations where we can share employees that are not full time should be an important priority.
Another effective area for shared services is with equipment sharing. Verona and Caldwell currently partner to share our street sweeper. This allows us to get value out of equipment that would otherwise be idle in a garage. We should continue these arrangements and look to identify additional opportunities along these lines.
With shared services, however, we need to be thoughtful in situations where local control adds value to our community. Police dispatch services, which have been discussed in town council meetings for a potential shared service model, is one example of this. Our community policing approach and philosophy begins with dispatch. It’s in the call intake that our police force can ensure that calls don’t escalate unnecessarily. Most residents do not realize that Verona police are serving as the front line of social work in our community. Many calls that come into the police are not emergency calls per se, but relate more to supporting the must vulnerable in our community. This experience is built into the work they do from the moment a call comes into dispatch. We need to be careful not to sacrifice the efficiency of this approach, which may be saving us more money in the long-term than a shared service agreement.
If I am elected to serve on the council, I would analyze each recommendation from our Township Manager on new shared service arrangements along the lines of the trade off between loss of local control and the potential cost savings that consolidation provides. This will help to ensure that we deliver true value to the taxpayers of Verona by looking for cost savings that don’t impact the high level of service from Verona’s local government.
