By Victoria Hurley-Schubert, Staff Writer
Options for a combined police department and public works were accepted by the Joint Shared Services/Consolidation Commission at their Tuesday night meeting. Should consolidation not occur, a shared services recommendation for police was also accepted.
The police subcommittee recommended a model that goes from a current staffing of 60 in year one to 51 sworn personnel with an increase in services in three years, said Ryan Lilienthal, a member of the police subcommittee as he explained the recommendation.
”The objective is to reduce the size of the force to 51 in a manner that is sensitive enough to retirement eligibility,” he said.
If there is a vote for consolidation in November, the consolidation would not occur until January 2013; 2012 would be a transition year. By 2015, if not sooner, the officers will be reduced to 51 through attrition.
”It reflects the structure of the force we are looking to get to,” he said. “So we don’t have two captains and two chiefs.”
More officers will be in traffic and community policing at the end of the process because of streamlined management.
”That model was formed from meetings with police in the township and borough,” said Anton Lahnston, chair of the JSSCC.
Vote on recommendation passed unanimously.
The commission also adopted a motion for shared police services should consolidation fail.
For shared police services, the main issue would be governance.
”We received clear direction from the police chiefs that they do not want to be reporting to two masters,” said Mr. Lillenthal.
The governing bodies would determine what the scope of the structure of the merged police would be outside of consolidation.
”Any commendations for sharing services that are not based on ratables are dead on arrival in the borough,” said Councilman David Goldfarb, a JSSCC member.
The shared police services recommendation passed without support from Mr. Goldfarb and fellow JSSCC member Patrick Simon because they also wanted a more complete recommendation that could be placed on the ballot so the issue would be binding if they voters wanted it and the government would have to act on it.
Public works would be a cross departmental model that includes engineering, sewer operating committee and recreation maintenance. One area would be devoted to downtown and another one devoted to roads and parks.
Recreation had serious concerns about the plan.
”The viewpoint of recreation is they have a system that works and they need the responsiveness of the system they have,” said Valerie Haynes, chair of the public works subcommittee, who also said the chain of command was too long and recreation might get lost in the grand scheme. “It’s not broken and they don’t want it fixed.”
Fellow committee member Carol Golden, who also spoke with the recreation department, agreed with her.
”The rec department has a very strong interface with the public, the rec department touches so many peoples lives in both towns … this could kill consolidation because the people connected to the rec department, and I have to emphasize it’s a lot of people from the ages of 28 to 50 with kids in this town, are not going to vote for consolidation if they think it is going to wreck the rec department,” she said. “We could be shooting ourselves in the foot.”
Other committee members disagreed, saying if this is what the subcommittee believes is the best option they should mode forward and not cave to pressure from one department.
”Organizations tend to build walls around their own fiefdoms and I think that if our review leads us to believe that it should be structured the way you originally recommended, then we should proceed with that,” said Bernie Miller.
Mr. Lahnston thought “it is a management issue and can be solved with good management and we have good management.”
After hearing the concerns, the recommendation was amended to have a phase-in for recreation maintenance over a two-year period. For the first year, they would be independent and in the second year there would be a transition.
”I think it’s a compromise that’s workable,” said Mr. Lahnston.
Mr. Goldfarb said the public works department should be sensitive to the incoming recreation maintenance people, who have worked autonomously for years.
Ms. Golden voted against the DPW recommendation with an amended sensitivity statement in support of the recreation departments concerns.
The commission is not recommending shared services for public works.
”The difficulties administering shared services is a factor,” said Ms. Haynes. “One of the benefits is merging the engineering and when you take that out … (with all the effort it would take to create an autonomous body to run it) it doesn’t seem worth the energy.”

