CENTRAL JERSEY: State lawmaker would like to eat up ‘doughnut’ towns

Local reaction mixed to Gusciora’s planned bill

By Matt Chiappardi, Staff Writer
   The days of tiny boroughs surrounded by larger townships in the state may be numbered if one area state legislator has his way.
   Assemblyman Reed Gusciora, D-15th, says he will be proposing legislation in January that would merge so-called “doughnut communities” — pairs or groups of municipalities like Hightstown and East Windsor where a small borough is surrounded by a much larger township.
   With 22 such geographic arrangements throughout the state and 566 municipalities in all, Mr. Gusciora said consolidation is one of the best ways to offer residents property tax relief.
   ”They both have municipal buildings, there are multiple police forces, this would make for less duplication of services and, ultimately, lower property taxes in the long run,” he said.
   The proposed legislation, which Mr. Gusciora says still is being drafted, would mandate all doughnut communities merge within 10 years, he said. Other than that, he said he could not offer more details until the bill is drafted.
   He did say the decade-long transition period would give municipalities enough time to work out how to combine services and figure out things as simple as what the new town would be called and where they’d conduct their business.
   Locally, officials said they needed to see more specifics about the legislation before they could weigh in on Mr. Gusciora’s plan, but the mayor and Borough Council president of Hightstown remained at odds on how badly full consolidation is needed.
   And the mayor of larger and surrounding East Windsor said the state would need to ensure some financial incentives and benefits for such a proposal to work.
   ”Hightstown is the poster child for consolidation,” repeated council President Walter Sikorski. “There’s only one major way to reduce property taxes, and that’s to consolidate services and reduce the administrative overhead that exists.”
   The borough has indeed been in a tight spot with its municipal taxes, levying three double-digit increases in a row over the past three years. Last year’s tax rate was hiked 15 cents, but would have been increased 24 cents if not for an 11th-hour state extraordinary aid grant of $200,000.
   Mayor Bob Patten said this type of tax growth is not sustainable. Nonetheless, he said consolidation should be used only as a last resort.
   ”In the long run, we have to find sustainability and can’t keep putting Band-Aids on things, but I’d like to see a process where there is something else we can do before merging municipalities,” he said.
   That something else is continuing to find ways to consolidate services with surrounding communities, stopping short of dissolving the government in the 1-square-mile borough, he said.
   Hightstown already shares a number of services with other communities, including its animal control officer with East Windsor, EMS with Robbinsville and emergency dispatch services with Cranbury.
   In addition, Hightstown and East Windsor have been studying the feasibility of having the larger community take over police services for the borough and recently sought more state funding to include a review of merging their two court systems. The police force in the borough costs taxpayers about $1.6 million per year.
   Meanwhile, Mayor Patten continued to blame skyrocketing local taxes on school districts and state-mandated expenditures.
   ”Municipalities are doing a great job of keeping their taxes down, but there’s an over-reliance on property taxes to fund public education, and that’s the bottom line,” he said.
   As for the borough’s steep increases over the past few years, Mayor Patten added, “that’s because of uncontrolled expenses like pensions, insurance and health benefits.”
   Over in the township, Mayor Janice Mironov said residents should be the ones who decide whether towns merge, and the state needs to make sure it’s in both towns’ best interest to do so.
   ”Any such arrangement in the end would need to have consensus among residents,” she said. “If the state is seeking to attempt to impose certain policy directions of this kind, then it has an obligation to be an active participant and ensure there are adequate financial incentives and advantages.
   At the state level, Assemblyman Gusciora already has sponsored legislation with a similar goal — one that would merge all of the six municipalities on Long Beach Island into one and four other nearby Ocean County communities into another.
   However, that bill, A-3490, has been met with stiff opposition from both Ocean County state legislators and local officials from those towns.
   No matter the fate of the bill, Mr. Gusciora said it’s worth the debate because, at the very least, it broaches what can be a touchy topic.
   ”At least mayors at the shore are talking about sharing services now,” he said.
   And the assemblyman adds he thinks the only way consolidation will get done is if the order comes from Trenton and not through a local approach.
   ”On the municipal level, you get into all these political problems with home rule issues,” he said. “If the state does it from the top down, consolidation has a much better shot.”