By Sean Ruppert, Staff Writer
A report from a state commission charged with investigating ways to make local governments more efficient found there are no one-size-fits-all answers when asking if consolidating can save taxpayer money.
The mayors of East Windsor and Hightstown both said this week that the findings back up their positions that more needs to be known before it can be determined if a consolidation of the two towns would save money.
The report, called “A Quest for Efficiency in Local Governance,” was carried out by the state Department of Community Affairs’ Local Unit Alignment, Reorganization and Consolidation Commission. The commission, established in March 2007, released the report March 31. The commission worked with the School of Public Affairs and Administration at Rutgers University’s Newark campus.
The study did not look into the feasibility of consolidating any specific municipalities, but rather more general concepts like what the optimal size of a municipality is and whether consolidation saves in the long run.
While it asked general questions, what it found was there do not seem to be any general answers.
”The most significant lesson … is that consolidation is beneficial in some situations but not in others; there are no general parameters given to make this determination,” reads part of the analysis done by Rutgers. “Rather, a case-by-case analysis is necessary, evaluating the goals of consolidation against the realistic possibility of how those goals would be furthered by a merger.”
The commission has promised further studies into the issue.
East Windsor Mayor Janice Mironov praised the report’s cautious tone.
”I think the report wisely recognizes that the subject of consolidation is a complex one,” she said Thursday. “It is not readily subject to rapid or simple conclusions of the upshot of such arrangements for taxpayers or service delivery.”
Hightstown Mayor Bob Patten expressed similar sentiments.
”The LUARCC report underscores what I have been saying all along; that a study is needed to determine the benefits for our town to consolidate,” he said in an e-mail Thursday.
A privately funded consolidation report, released in January, found that consolidating the two towns would result in more than a $1,000 annual savings for each Hightstown property taxpayer and a nominal increase for East Windsor taxpayers that would be offset by the state.
Mayor Mironov agreed in late March to meet with Borough Council President Walter Sikorski to discuss setting up a commission to further study the issue, however, that meeting has not yet occurred.
She repeatedly has said substantial benefits would have to be identified for East Windsor taxpayers for any arrangement to move forward.

