A Cranbury official on June 25 waved a warning flag about an idea being floated in Trenton that would force towns with a population of less than 5,000 people to merge with a neighboring municipality.
Township Committeeman Daniel P. Mulligan III, speaking at the Township Committee meeting, stressed the need to be “alert and vigilant” about a possibility he criticized.
“So now state level politicians think the way to solve the state’s problems is to consolidate towns like Cranbury,” Mulligan said. “I’ll say now that consolidating local towns is the worst thing we can do to save taxes. If you look at it, when government is closest to the people, I truly believe the best decisions are made.”
Cranbury is home to about 3,800 people, according to the latest population estimate by the federal government. As a result, the community would fall within the “crosshairs” of a forced consolidation “scheme,” in Mulligan’s words.
He called on the township’s legislative delegation, state Sen. Linda R. Greenstein and assemblymen Daniel R. Benson and Wayne P. DeAngelo (D-Mercer and Middlesex), to “step up and protect us if it does becomes a reality that they want to push this agenda and this scheme at the state level.”
DeAngelo said on June 26 that at this point he would not favor forcing towns to merge.
“At this time, there is really no town in my district that I would … support a forced merger on at this point,” he said.
In recent days, news reports have focused on the work of a committee state Senate President Stephen M. Sweeney (D-Salem, Gloucester and Cumberland) formed called the Economic and Fiscal Policy Working Group, made up of lawmakers, and financial and public policy experts. The aim of the panel is to assess the impact of changes in federal tax law on New Jersey and to look at options. One suggestion getting the most attention is forced consolidation.
“That was one idea that was mentioned by the independent tax policy study commission that is studying ways to allow government to find cost savings and efficiencies,” Richard McGrath, a spokesman for the New Jersey Senate Democrats, said in an email. “The commission, which is comprised of a broad and diverse group of accomplished members, is still in the midst of its work.
“We expect them to develop a wide range of ideas and recommendations to address the state’s economic and fiscal challenges. We want to hear their ideas, but the committee is still working and has not reached the stage of actually making recommendations and we certainly haven’t made any decisions on which suggestions will be used for potential policy proposals,” he said.
The New Jersey League of Municipalities said this week that it “adamantly” opposes forcing towns to merge “because it bypasses the will of the voters,” said Michael F. Cerra, assistant executive director and director of government affairs with the organization.
“The will of voters has to be heard here,” he said on June 26. “That’s the problem with the concept of forced consolidation, because it doesn’t take into account the will of voters, it doesn’t take into (account) local circumstances.”
“Anything that just kind of paints a broad brush and just assumes there’s going to be savings by doing forced consolidation, to me, wouldn’t have my support,” Benson said. “I think there are plenty of other ways to generate savings across the board through shared services, with the help and encouragement of the state, that makes sense.”
New Jersey is home to more than 560 towns, in a state where home rule is seen as sacrosanct. A 2014 Rutgers University research study found that the “cost per capita of municipal government does not significantly vary between large and small municipalities in New Jersey.”
In particular, towns with less than 1,900 people had a per capita cost of $1,271, compared to $1,340 for towns with more than 40,000 people, the report found.
“Politicians in Trenton seem more concerned about the votes than they do solid financial practices,” Committeeman Jay Taylor said on June 26. “At the local level, we have to focus on the financials.”
Cerra called it a piece of state folklore that “forced consolidation will result in property tax savings.”
Yet there is a recent, albeit rare, case of towns merging.
In 2011, residents of then-Princeton Borough and Princeton Township voted for their two communities in Mercer County to consolidate. They have been one town as of January 2013, but so far, no other municipalities have followed suit.
Later in the meeting, Mulligan said if any branch of government should be consolidated, county government is the place to turn. Such a step, he said, would lead to a 23-percent cut in local property taxes.
“You can absorb a lot of those services, in fact, all I believe into local and state (governments),” he said. “There’s a middle layer there. That’s where they should be looking.”
Aside from Cranbury, Helmetta would be the only other community in Middlesex County that would be impacted if the state were to compel mergers. Helmetta had an estimated population of 2,223 people in 2017, the federal government has reported.
