From the AP via NorthJersey.com:
Municipal mergers promoted under proposed legislation
By TOM HESTER Jr.
After months of meetings about how to cut property taxes in New Jersey, lawmakers on Wednesday were to begin debating actual legislation aimed at driving down the highest such taxes in the nation.
Among the bills scheduled for consideration were plans to ask voters to hand over town operations to county governments, and to reward merged towns and their residents with increased property tax relief.
Another measure to be debated by one of four special legislative committees would create yet another committee.
…
The committee on Wednesday is slated to consider bills that would:* create a nine-member panel that would determine which municipalities should be merged and give its plan to the governor and the Legislature for approval by a single, up-or-down vote from legislators within two years.
* allow binding county referendums on whether county government should assume responsibility for many municipal functions.
* reward with increased state aid municipalities that meet cost-saving performance measures.
…
The bill also would boost rebates by 10 percent for homeowners in a municipality that develops at least four shared service agreements among police, firefighting, municipal court, trash collection, construction code and recreation services.“I have no doubt that there will be resistance to anything we propose,” said Sen. Bob Smith, a Middlesex County Democrat and the committee co-chairman. “No one wants to give up local identity and services, but when it means a measure of relief to beleaguered taxpayers, we need to take action.”
What are these people smoking ?
From Bloomberg:
Kohn Says He’s Concerned About Persistent Inflation
Federal Reserve Vice Chairman Donald Kohn said he’s more concerned about persistent inflation than slowing growth in an economy that’s likely to avoid a recession.
“The risks to my outlook for economic activity may be skewed to the downside, while those to my forecast of gradually declining inflation are tilted to the upside,” Kohn said in the text of remarks to the New York University Money Marketeers. “In the current circumstances, the upside risks to inflation are of greater concern.”
His remarks provide a detailed argument on why the U.S. economy is likely to move through several quarters of slower growth and gradually receding inflation without major cost to jobs or production. Kohn said the current overnight lending rate level of 5.25 percent “has the best chance of fostering” a so- called soft-landing. He made no mention of an interest-rate cut and challenged financial markets’ expectations that one will occur as soon as the first quarter of next year.
“I am surprised at how little market participants seem to share my sense that the uncertainties around these paths and their implications for the stance of policy are fairly sizeable at this point,” Kohn said, noting the “very low level of implied volatilities in the interest-rate markets.”
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Thanks,
jb
yeah, what that means is school inegrations.
i.e kids from east orange will be shipped to Summit schools and vice versa.
Better teach your kid how to throw a punch or 2 now.
;)
SAS
kids from east orange will NOT be shipped to Summit. They are in different counties.
They are finally considering some real solutions.
sure…
that what we all hope for…
:)
SAS
Let me predict the future: Merged services, no tax relief afterall. Nothing like getting less for the same price.
Transferring East Orange kids to Summit school & vice versa is great idea. They both are on extreme and need to learn the reality from each other.
Bingo SG.
They did that in Denver, CO in the early 90s.
They bus in kids from the Denver city schools, to different counties, and vice versa. They did this to “share” the budgets and a big push to make the schools more diverse.
What happened? All the Mexican kids beat the hell out of all the white kids, parents got pissed and raised caine, and few council member got booted, and that was that.
True story.
SAS
The No.1 thing the state could do to cut municipal costs and minimally impact services would be to eliminate municipal police departments.
While it’s difficult to minimize how much could be lost in continuing corruption and inefficiencies, even a half-hearted effort would likely yield 20-40 percent cost reductions for many towns. A serious effort could see some communities save 60 percent easy on what they now pay for policing.
School system problems are a whole other ball of wax, but I can’t figure out why forced busing would be on the table as a cost saving measure.
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