A Blogger requests a category to discuss the ideas of metro-governments and the consolidation of some other functions. That has been in the news very much in the last year in WV. What I have not heard discussed was a complete set of options. How about considering doing away with the County Government all together? I’ve been told that is what they have done in Delaware and Massachusetts. I understand that they have kept the county boundaries for historical reasons but the real services are provided by non-county levels of government.
While we are at it and certainly in time for the County Commissioner election in 2010, why not expand the number of county commissioners in Harrison County from 3 to, oh, pick a number – 5, or 7? The WV constitution permits that.
Here is the suggestion made in the About Area:
How about a thread on the metro ideas. I have been told by some of our leaders in this county that we have an opportunity to make significant changes in the way we govern ourselves. I have heard a few excellent ideas on how to stream line some of our services for the county. We already have two great examples of county wide service providers in the Harrison County EMS and the Sheriff department. I know there is a plan to develop a metro police unit. There are other plans that deal with the consolidation of our PSD water and sewage departments across the county. I think some of these things can be done with some real leaders in the right places. Will it save us money, will we get better service?
Let’s start an idea page on how these things can work, or what is already working. This can be a positive start to change on a county level. Metropolitan government will make a difference for all of the residence and employees of the county they serve.
Filed under: Economic Development, Elected Officials, Harrison County Commission, Uncategorized
A metro county government is a great idea. Buying power is consolidated. Services are consolidated and not duplicated. A central, unified police force could have state-of-the-art equipment and top notch personnel. The problem is, egos would have to be checked at the door. The county commission would have to be expanded in order to give the major players in the new metro government a seat at the table. Say to 9 members? But would Bridgeport ever want to be involved? Would Clarksburg? You’re talking some big egos there. They’d be giving up their “turf.” President Kennedy wrote “Profiles in Courage” in which he discussed U.S. Senators who had the courage to risk their own careers in order to make the right decisions for all the people. And many of those senators did just that, ended their careers because they made the right decision for the greater good while costing them politically. Do we have anyone in municpal and/or county government serving now who has that kind of courage? Will city counsel members and mayors in the various municipalities want to give up their government paid trips to Reno, Russia, China or elsewhere to be “educated” on how to govern? Will any of their ilk want to give up the power they enjoy which translates into personal profit? Will they have the guts or confidence to consolidate with the county and run for a seat on an expanded county commission? Who knows? It would be akin to asking them to consent to term limits in exchange for our vote. Will members of the county commission have the foresight to want to share their power with a popular member of city council person? Would the various chiefs of police want to trade their “stripes” and power in order to work as, say, a captain in the new metro police force? Who knows. I think if we, as a county want this then we, as citizens, should do as the blogger suggests and open the discussion. Then perhaps convene a town hall type meeting on it. I’ll guarantee you the politicians will come. And they’ll listen, if the information is out there and the numbers are there.
Bullwinkle, I think you just opened the discussion. Very good food for thought and right on the mark.
I would vote “yes” on consolidated government.
I have heard all three of the present County Commissioners say to the public, during a speech or presentation or political gathering, “you own government and we work for you.”
Now, we have miles to go before we sleep.
I agree with Bullwinkle and Maggie. Why should a county of nearly 70,000 people have 14 or 15 municipal governments and police departments, etc.? It’s nuts. If we had one centrally organized government, a metro government, we could save a lot of money vis a vis property tax money for starters. Let’s look into this. The little power pouches located within the municipalities work for the people as well. Let’s let them know what we’re thinking! POWER TO THE PEOPLE!!!!!!!!
You folk seem to know what you’re talking about. Do you have any ideas on how to educate the rest of us. So far all I know about metro government is positive. Is there a down side, other than some bruised egos.
When we talk about metro government I feel there is one more important issue to discuss. It seems nobody wants to bring up the subject of county wide fire service. Why in the 21st century do we still rely on volunteer fire departments. Back when the city of Bridgeport decided to increase the paid staff and limit them to only respond within the city limits our current County Commission went to a council meeting and wanted to know why the people outside of the city limit would no longer get the service of the paid staff. If it was such a concern for those people then why not everyone else in the county. A couple of our neighboring states have been doing this for years now. County based fire service is a common finding especially around the DC metro area. Virginia and Maryland have several county based fire and ems services. When you look at the volunteer fire departments in this county you can count on one hand the ones with respectable staffing numbers and response times. Even the paid departments in this area are understaffed. This is something that needs to be looked at not only for the safety of the residents of Harrison County but also for the emergency service responders as well.
Duplication of services always gets in the sermon with Metro-government advocates, but in fact two separate entities providing a like service for two separate groups of people is not duplication. We need to step up the educated debate and not be sold a “Pig in a Poke” with squeals of efficiency and cost savings. There is a great report online, completed by the Wisconsin Policy Research Institute, titled Cooperation not Consolidation. http://www.wpri.org/Reports/Volume15/Vol15no8.pdf
The consolidation ideas has pluses and minuses. We could get rid of some of the overhead associated with the myriad of governments and councils (if the politicos would allow it), but what of the other issue of monies? Would the money from Bridgeport leave to Clarksburg? Would we get good representation (I realize that we NEVER get goood representation in the first place, but…) with a centralized gowvernment? I agree we all need to be educated and I would hope we could have further debate about this.
PABLO —excellent read. Very informative and points well made…that if taken re: Harrison County…our possibilities are very very limited. Thank you
Pablo, I can understand your suspicions of a few of our elected officials, however….
There are all kinds of duplication going on. How many cities do we have in this county? Multiply that number against the positions of: city clerk, police chief, fire chief, director of finance, director of public works, director of HR, and city managers… the list goes on. Do we need X many of this duplication of paid positions? How about the police departments? We have a Sheriff Dept. that backs up all municipalities (first due on some shifts in a few small towns that already can’t operate). The police dept of Bport and Cburg both sit at JC Maxey’s to target DUI candidates. Is that not a duplication of service? How about the EMS? The city of Clarksburg has no expense in the EMS, however other towns such as Bport wants to expand a service that is provided on the county level, which is second to none. What about our cost of water? People better wake up and realize that if you are not a retail customer of the Clarksburg Water Bard, then you are being gouged by your PSD or town where we/you live in. It is your town that wants to keep water revenue rates high, so that money can be used (illegally) in other areas. We have to buy our water through a middle man (town or PSD) and therefore pay much more than the people who buy the water directly from the CWB. Duplication is real. How about these fire fees? How about the retirement plans for these people that work for the cities? There has got to be a better way.
Nashville-Davidson County, Tennessee
Why Consolidation?
Nashville consolidated in 1962. It faced financial problems prior to consolidation. Infrastructure deficiencies High lighted by the influx of commuters into the city, a declining tax base, large numbers of tax-exempt businesses, and a small per capita share of state and county taxes contributed to financial problems for the city. These problems
led the city to annex large areas of residential and industrial lands. The land grabs scared the yet-to-be-annexed suburban residents who had witnessed prior annexations occurring without a corresponding increase in services. physical boundary between city and county was a hodgepodge of jurisdictional lines, making police and fire protection hard to supply.
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Jacksonville/Deval
Infrastructure deficiencies
High lighted by the influx of commuters into the city, a declining tax base, large numbers of tax-exempt businesses, and a small per capita share of state and county taxes contributed to financial problems for the city. These problems led the city to annex large areas of residential and industrial lands. The land grabs scared the yet-to-be-annexed suburban residents who had witnessed prior annexations occurring without a corresponding increase in services.
In addition to the political power grab, government officials and the community in Indianapolis were frustrated at the confusing jumble of overlapping and duplicated units of government, which resulted in an individual taxpayer possibly being taxed
by 10 to 16 taxing units.11 There was also a move to make government more efficient and to align authority with responsibility.
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Although Charlotte and Mecklenburg County have not consolidated to form a single government, they are highly linked in service function. Instead of consolidating city and county governments, the municipalities decided functional consolidation (the merger of services, single function by single function) would be better. The communities accomplished almost a complete merger of services — some twenty-two different services. Nevertheless, some citizens still express a desire for Charlotte to consolidate fully with Mecklenburg County. There are no formal reviews of the efficiency of the consolidated functions in Charlotte-Mecklenburg, but the proliferation of intergovernmental service agreements suggest that these two communities are convinced that they both benefit from the consolidated functions.
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In many cases it is perfectly logical to conclude that economies of scale and efficiencies have emerged. Services such as water, sewer, public transit, solid waste disposal, animal control, cable television regulation, purchasing, and the like can be provided more efficiently, as has been shown elsewhere.
The community benefits from these joint efforts. It may even be able to find a few other services on which it can agree.
Change can be such a tremendous experience. With the right goals in mind… the journey will be worth the end results. The questions to ask; where is the money being wasted now and how will metro government curb that spending? How will we operate more efficiently and how will metro government provide us better, more efficient services? How can it lessen our tax implications?
AND YES there is much duplication.
Cooperation of governments is a great example of how metro government can work. Our municipalities enter into these “governmental agreements” all of the time. This cooperation is an enormous benefit to all of our municipalities. Our cities have mutual aid agreements for police and fire now. Our cities also have these agreements with the Harrison Co. EMS and the Sheriff Department. The Clarksburg Water Board has agreements with the cities and public service districts.
We have organizational agreements through out this county. Why, because we know it is cost effective to rely on our neighbors (share resources). But, We do a lot of good “sharing” with out the benefits of being operated as a metro government. The benefits that metro government can provide to the people are better trained and better paid police, fire, and EMS, and cheaper water and sewage rates.
This is all possible due to geographical advantages of our centralized population base: Bridgeport, Clarksburg, NutterFort, Stone Wood, East View, and Anmoore. Another advantage that this new metro region would have, over the old 5 town, 1 county regions used as an example above, would be in the combined population total to allow us to qualify for so much more grant monies and low interest loans to be used to better the region. It makes sense that the metro region of Harrison with it’s now 31,000 populations qualifies for federal dollars where as the town of NutterFort with 2,000 citizens alone can not compete for these dollars. None of our small cities and towns can get this money alone. So in turn, we small towns are forced to run and/or raise levy rates, install fire fees, increase Business and Occupation tax, and other fees/taxes that will help operate our towns. We already ask the county commission for money every year to help out with this program or that project. It makes sense. We have a chance to form the government we need and a chance to cut the fat at the same time.
I have suspicions of elected officials sure, but I question citizens more, that promote a government action, like Metro, without taking time to separate the wheat from the chaff. Some folks that speak of cost savings leave out very important details– Like those that drive to another county, or another state, for a 10% off sale. Or, to save 10 cents a pound on a imported beef roast at Wally World , but they never factor the high dollars spent on fuel to get them there. We have centralized offices now that is difficult for many in areas that lack easy geographic access to the central areas, so the service is great if you can get here. I’ve read a lot of the past posts on Fire Fees, and believe a county fire fee and service is doable. But, lets factor in all the fees and taxes and truly see what we have, and what we need. How about the 1% tax on all of our fire and casualty insurance policies. Paid by all, city and county residents, but 65% of the revenue collected goes to municipal fire and police pension funds, while only 25% goes to our VFD’s. Check it out @ http://www.wvsto.com and click Distribution of Taxes..
Pablo great points… the idea here is how can we make change for the better? You point out some interesting points, I question motives too. What do you mean when you say, “those who drive to another county or state for a 10% off sale”? Why not make our county the place they drive too? We can change the tax structure and there for the cost of doing business, this could be an achievable goal. This is the idea of Metro Government. To change government in a positive sense, to make it more accountable, more accessible, and less expensive to operate is a common goal. Many of us can attest to the poor fiscal management of our cities (especially the smaller ones). We have to ask ourselves, how or what changes would you make to create a better local government?
Let’s talk about infrastructure, compare Harrison Co with other counties in NCWV. We are the only county that has a major east/west and north/south 4 lanes traversing our county. The I-79/Rt. 50 interchange is one of the busiest in the state. We have 7 exits off of I-79 that feeds into Clarksburg/Bridgeport and the rural parts of our county. Rt. 50W opens up the western end of the county to easy access. Not to mention I-279 and the Meadowbrook 4 lane. We have the infrastructure in roads. We have the infrastructure in our water and sewage too.
Government is created for the people and by the people. What kind of government can we create to assist us and make Harrison County the leader in the state?