Manville has been a leader in cost-saving shared services agreements, both within the borough and with other municipalities.
By: Charlie Olsen
Manville and the eight other members of the Somerset County Business Partnership (SCBP) will try to identify new shared service programs, according to a resolution approved at the Aug. 14 Borough Council meeting.
The application for the $50,000 Sharing Available Resources Efficiency (SHARE) grant will be made by the SCBP, an organization of over 500 Somerset County businesses and organizations with a special council on shared services.
The state grant requires no matching funds from the member municipalities.
Manville has been a leader in cost-saving shared services agreements both within the borough and with other municipalities.
"It ends up saving the taxpayer (money) and we get better services," Borough Administrator Gary Garwacke said Tuesday.
Through agreements with the Board of Education, the borough handles playing field maintenance, mowing, and plowing. In return, the borough gets janitorial services for all the municipal buildings and plumbing and carpentry services from school board maintenance staff.
"Instead of having a full-time employee with benefits, now we have part-time," Mr. Garwacke said. "We do the playing-field maintenance … they do our janitorial services … we play this back and forth."
The borough also participates in the only shared ambulance service in the state. During the daytime Monday through Friday, the borough and Raritan share full-service, while South Bound Brook provides backup service and Bridgewater provides nominal service.
For the remaining 12 hours starting at 6 p.m., Somerset Medical Center provides ambulance service – resulting in annual savings of $60,000 each for Manville and Raritan.
The borough shares a tax assessor and building code officials with Raritan; health services and a fire official with Somerville; leaf-recycling with Hillsborough; and police K-9 service upon request.
Manville has already received three shared services grants from DCA: $10,000 for a feasibility study of shared public health services in February 2005; an additional $20,000 for a feasibility study of animal control services with 10 other towns, including Hillsborough in July 2005; and $20,000 for a feasibility study of yard waste disposal with the Somerset Central Yard Waste Consortium with South Bound Brook, Bound Brook, Raritan, Somerville and North Plainfield in March 2006.
The public works departments of each municipality in the SCBP share equipment.Other savings occur in-house. The director of Public Works, Phil Petrone, is also the borough clerk and Mr. Garwacke serves as planning and zoning administrator, and borough engineer.
A number of feasibility studies are ongoing, such as an expanded animal control service, police consolidation and shared municipal court service.
A total of $295,662 was appropriated for shared services in the 2006 budget.
Department of Community Affairs spokesman Chris Donnelly said its hard to compare municipalities for shared services because of differences in circumstances.
However, Manville does an "excellent job in sharing services," he said.