file photo by Boyd Loving
the staff of the Ridgewood blog
Ridgewood NJ, The New Jersey Business & Industry Association is supporting bill S-1 today, which promotes shared services and potential cost savings for local and county governments.
The legislation, which is being voted on today in the Senate Budget and Appropriations Committee, represents a legislative effort to exercise much-needed fiscal discipline for the state amid more than $215 billion in total debt.
“These are very challenging fiscal times for New Jersey and our financial problems are deeply systemic,” said NJBIA Vice President of Government Affairs Christopher Emigholz.
“It’s imperative that our state recognize cost-savings wherever it can and pass that down to our property taxpayers. This bill takes a positive step in that direction.”
S-1, sponsored by Senate President Steve Sweeney (D-3) and Sen. Vin Gopal (D-11), encourages shared service agreements and joint contracts through modification of the “Uniform Shared Services and Consolidation Act.” Some modifications also include civil service relief for shared service agreements.
The bill is part of the “Path to Progress” report, issued by the New Jersey Fiscal Policy Working Group in 2018.
NJBIA continues to strongly advocate for impactful reforms within the report to remedy the state’s high debt load and excessive taxation on overburdened New Jersey residents and businesses.
Basically it means all the other towns will mooch from Ridgewood.
Our budget problems in NJ are not because of shared services.
#1 budget item is schools, and in most cases that is a spectacular failure.
Read Abbott v. Burke 1985
35 years later the education system in most of NJ sucks, yet the agenda in Trenton is set by the teachers unions.
A few years ago we were doing shared services . But someone screwed that up.
How about we go one better than shared services? How about municipalities not owning any this this stuff and put out to competitive tender to private companies that can do these types of work? Allow market forces to actually work. Cut out all the costs that go with owning these services, such as pensions and healthcare, etc.
Shared services….
Just like federal taxes.
The taxpayers (scorned as 1%-ers) pay for the non-taxpaying freeloaders.
If you don’t already know… Ridgewood is the “1%-er” in and shared services arrangement.
So go ahead… lobby for shared services. It will only increase your taxes and reduce your services.
“Basically it means all the other towns will mooch from Ridgewood.“
To whoever this anonymous commenter was – there is absolutely zero reason to “mooch” from the services of Ridgewood. Surrounding towns actually have effectively plowed roads, leaf collections which are actually on schedule and sanitation which isn’t a tremendous payroll burden. No thanks.