A recent study on fire service in the town of Whitestown concluded what some people had suspected all along: The town is paying too much for fire services provided by its four villages.The OD implies that all fire and police services should be consolidated at the Town level. . . .
While consolidation among adjoining villages (or even with Utica) would make sense, consolidation with large unincorporated areas does not. That type of consolidation causes more harm than good because it costs more to provide services to people who choose to locate a distance from the population center.
Consolidation at the Town level will mean that Village residents would be subsidizing services to the outlying areas in the Town ... That would encourage more urban sprawl, and up everyone's cost in the long run.
Consolidation at the wrong level will result in less, rather than more, efficient government.
4 comments:
The police departments should be taken over by the Oneida County Sheriffs Dept, like they did in Onondaga County with a huge tax savings.
The Whitestown fire departments should be merged to save on equipment expenses.
A no brainer and it will never happen as local leadership is weak and afraid of change.
New Hartford's 911 too, should be merged with the County. Annual Savings to town residents over $500K.
This is a NO BRAINER!
But Chief Ray Philo and Earle Reed and too, County Executive Anthony Picente REFUSE to allow this migration of services to the County.
Why????
I agree with anoymous above. This is why you have the situation now in NY Mills. You need administrators whom have governmaent and HR experience and can deal with those issues. Town and Village Boards are just your neighbors with no experience in any personnel management. Personnel issues are too complex for the average person to comprehend. They hope he will just retire and the issue will go away. The county has these people in place. They should develop a plan and offer it to the Towns and Villages. One PD, one court etc. etc. Who cares what color the car is. But nothing will ever hapen here. Consolodation here means sharing a copier or a printer at best. NY Mills will soon find out they wish they did.
I agree with the consolidation of all of the town police agencies to be incorporated under one law enforcement umbrella, but not under this Oneida Sheriff Department administration. It is in need of a managerial overhaul. The Oneida County Sheriff Department leaves much to be desired in terms of their administration of their Human Resources Department. They have been caught accepting time sheets made out in pencil. And they have been caught paying an “Exempt Class” politically appointed secretary overtime. Whether this negligence is unintentional or not, it would be difficult to trust this agency to take on the additional responsibility of manage a larger workforce.
Having a county wide law enforcement agency take over the different town police departments is a good concept. It would eliminate the duplication of services. Every town police agency has their individual layer of brass. It is high time that we eliminate the extra police chiefs, captains, lieutenants and sergeants. However at this time, we should not rely on the human resource department of this Sheriff Department’s administration to be the lead agency for this undertaking.
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