LBI, Consolidate or Lose Funding

New Jersey Senate President Stephen M. Sweeney says he is working on legislation that would pull state funding from municipalities that do not share services with neighboring towns.

Long Beach Island is 18 miles long, with six separate municipalities and local governments and five police departments and police chiefs. Long Beach Township is the largest police department and patrols 12 of the island's 18 miles.

As an example, if you eliminate four of those chiefs and you could see a savings of $170,000 per chief between salaries and benefits. You don't need five police chiefs. Just add some more officers and have one department cover the whole island.

On Long Beach Island, steps have already been made to share some police services. The Long Beach Township Police Department currently provides police dispatching services to the Ship Bottom, Beach Haven and Harvey Cedars departments, although Ship Bottom is considering moving its dispatching services to the mainland municipality of Stafford Township.

But according to Sweeney's plan, this is not enough - and he's calling on local mayors to step up and accept savings through shared services.

Long Beach Township Mayor Joseph Mancini said he thinks taxpayers are afraid they will lose their town identity and the personal touch of police departments through consolidation.

"I'm a firm believer that the island municipalities should share as many of the services that we possibly can. It just makes good sense. I really feel that the island is moving that way. I really don't think Trenton is looking at making it one town, I think they're looking at making one police department, one DPW, one court system, and that's where it has to go," Mancini said.

Surf City Mayor Leonard T. Connors said a lot of services already have been consolidated on Long Beach Island, including police dispatching and water services. As far as consolidating police departments across Long Beach Island, Connors said if the other towns agree to it, he might also agree.

In Ocean County alone there are 33 different municipalities, so conslidation only makes sense, right?

Karl Hess, Jersey Shore Real Estate

This article orginally appeared in the Asbury Park Press