Watch Executive Director of Courage to Connect NJ Discusses Consolidation on PBS. See more from WNJT.

Courage to Connect New Jersey started its presentation last week at Pohatcong Township Elementary School by citing an 1895 New York Times article discussing the municipal consolidation of the Oranges.

 
“The Oranges must be made one city so that all our public departments may be better and more economically managed,” Courage to Connect New Jersey Executive Director Gina Genovese said, quoting a city physician from the article. “It is only selfishness that keeps us apart.”

 
“We have to find out if in 2012 if it is only selfishness that keeps us apart,” Genovese told the audience of roughly 20 people, including local officials, residents and emergency squad members. Courage to Connect New Jersey is a nonpartisan, nonprofit group that goes around the state educating the public about municipal consolidation. The three-year-old organization delivered a similar presentation at the end of October in Pohatcong Township.

 
Genovese did most of the talking at the lecture last week as co-founder Wendy McCahill took on the tedious task of showing the audience 566 placards representing New Jersey’s municipalities from the highest to lowest in population.

 
McCahill then stacked a majority of the placards against a wall, leaving a handful on the table because the pile had reached the ceiling.
“The thing that’s ironic about these 566 towns is that they do 80 percent of the same thing,” she said. “Is there a better way to administer the business of these 566 towns?”

Click here to continue reading this article in The Express-Times. To download a full PDF, click here.

Gina Genovese, Founder and executive director, Courage to Connect NJ

One word to describe 2011: Groundbreaking

Wish or hope for 2012: In 2012, New Jersey will have the courage to lead the way to a sustainable and stronger municipal structure.

In the new year municipal consolidation will be acknowledged as the most common sense way to end redundancy in local government.

Courage to Connect NJ will be working on numerous consolidation efforts initiated by both citizens and elected officials statewide. What was learned through the efforts of citizens and elected officials in 2011 in communities such as the Princetons, Cherry Hill and Merchantville, and Scotch Plains and Fanwood will be passed to the next generation of consolidators.

Courage to Connect NJ will be the one-stop resource for those seeking to improve local services and reduce the cost of local government.

Ultimately, the consolidation movement, started in New Jersey, will sweep across the entire country.

Click here to continue reading the full article.

“This would solve everything,” said Fred Lange, a 37-year Scotch Plains resident leading the effort. “It would lower taxes, make departments and services more efficient and it just makes sense.”

Scotch Plains and Fanwood already share a school district and most recently started talks about combining police forces and construction.

Lange’s group, Courage to Connect New Jersey, is a nonprofit organization dedicated to consolidating services in many of New Jersey’s 566 towns. The group operates across the state but sprouted local roots in Scotch Plains and Fanwood in March.

Council members and the mayors in both towns say they’re committed to cutting property taxes but feelings about a total merger are mixed.

“I think you have to walk before you run,” said Scotch Plains Councilman Kevin Glover. “Walking might have been merging the schools, next you merge police and public works but it should be an evolutionary move, rather than a revolutionary one.”

In 2009, the towns spent $50,000 to study merging services such as the police department, public works and the municipal courts, Glover said. But there has been no study that looks at combining the towns on the whole, he said.

This article originally appeared in The Star-Ledger. Click here to continue reading

Scotch Plains and Fanwood residents are making their mark on New Jersey’s history. Never before have the citizens in two adjacent towns petitioned the state to study the benefits of municipal consolidation. With petitions completed and submitted to both towns, this is democracy at its best.

In the past year, there have been enormous strides toward consolidation in New Jersey, as residents are tired of wasting money on redundant government. Citizens in Merchantville petitioned and successfully created a study commission, working with the mayor of Cherry Hill. Earlier this month, residents of the Princetons voted to merge their towns, with the support of the local mayors and governing bodies.

Scotch Plains and Fanwood would be the first communities in which the residents — not the elected governments — are taking the steps toward consolidation. Residents in Fanwood and Scotch Plains created a group called “Courage to Reconnect,” and led a petition drive in both towns to form a study commission.
Courage to Reconnect is a leader in the consolidation movement. It is a leader in making New Jersey sustainable. It is using state law to mobilize local residents into controlling their own destiny.

The citizens who spearheaded the petition and all those who signed it should be applauded for their visionary leadership. They are taking the steps to see what a consolidated Scotch Plains and Fanwood would look like, and if it is the right move for the towns.

While Scotch Plains and Fanwood are the first to complete this citizen-run petition drive, they are not the last. Courage to Connect New Jersey, a non-profit, non-partisan organization, is now guiding nine other groups around the state in seven counties. Most if not all will be starting the petition process in January.

This is an amazing time for taxpayers in New Jersey to take control of how their tax dollars are used and to identify efficiencies that benefit them. The residents of Scotch Plains and Fanwood should be lauded as leaders in this effort.

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Pohatcong Township Mayor Jim Kern III hosted a forum last week to discuss consolidating Alpha, Phillipsburg and Pohatcong, Lopatcong and Greenwich townships.

“There are 566 towns in the state of New Jersey and 566 mayors in the state,” Kern said after the forum. “It’s crazy the amount of duplication between services.”

The consolidation would result in one governing body, one mayor, one council, one administrator, one attorney, one land use board, one chief financial officer, one tax assessor and one court system for the Phillipsburg-area, according to Kern.

“There would be no reduction in services and the town would be able to operate at lower costs,” Kern said, adding he vowed to explore all possibilities to lower taxes when he was elected earlier this year.

Kern invited Gina Genovese, executive director of Millington, N.J.-based Courage to Connect New Jersey, to speak at the forum.

“Courage to Connect is a nonpartisan, nonprofit organization that addresses the financial state of New Jersey and difficulty of municipalities to deliver services and not raise taxes,” Genovese said in an interview after the forum, noting the organization has existed for two years. “The forum is a great way to start the conversation, air concerns and talk about consolidation.”

This article originally appeared in The Express-Times

Funny thing is, when you ask a resident of Princeton Township or Princeton Borough where they live, the answer usually is simply “Princeton.” Well, now they have a chance to make that a reality. On Nov. 8, the two municipalities can write history (and rewrite maps) if they vote to consolidate.

The town’s new name? Princeton, of course.

Should they merge? Yes. Will they? Who knows?

The towns have been trying to marry for 60 years, but each time, residents have objected rather than hold their peace. Three efforts toward a proposed unification have failed, but times have changed dramatically, even since the last attempt in 1996.

The two municipalities are sharing more services, state aid is drying up, unfunded mandates are siphoning tax dollars, the economy is sputtering (and likely will for years) and the Legislature has installed a 2 percent property tax cap.

And now, Gov. Chris Christie has proposed making the upfront costs associated with consolidation easier to manage by allowing towns to stretch them over five years, with the state picking up the tab for the first year.

In other words, there are more reasons than ever for the Princetons to book the chapel.
Residents are asking themselves: Do we want to remain in separate but similar towns, drowning in taxes, or combine into one municipality and enjoy immediate and long-term savings?

It’s a no-brainer, but New Jersey’s 566 municipalities and 605 school districts — even those as well-matched as the Princetons — have resisted coupling. Unapologetic dreamers, like Gina Genovese of Courage to Connect New Jersey, believe the tide is turning, however. Her nonprofit organization holds the hands of towns (Merchantville and Cherry Hill, for example) that want to merge.

Below is a Q&A that originally appeared in The Star-Ledger on Oct. 31, 2011. To read the full article, click here

A 1934 New York Times article, bemoaning New Jersey’s inability to merge inefficient and redundant towns, says “it is up to organizations of citizens to carry forward the movement without the aid of the State.”

So, how’s that been working? Not very well, actually.

Seventy-seven years later, New Jersey has 566 municipalities and 605 school districts, and has become a model for costly and inefficient municipal government. In other words, little has changed.

But Gina Genovese insists the state finally is on the verge of a consolidation movement, and her organization, Courage to Connect New Jersey, is a driving force behind potential municipal mergers. Genovese, who spoke with Star-Ledger Editorial Board member Kevin Manahan, will be watching closely as Princeton Borough and Princeton Township vote on a historic consolidation on Nov. 8.

Budgetary struggles statewide are leading citizens and elected officials to wonder.

“We’re all working to try to make an equitable, efficient system, but, clearly, 566 redundant structures performing 80 to 90 percent of the same services is unsustainable,” said former Long Hill Township Mayor Gina Genovese, executive director of the nonprofit organization Courage to Connect NJ.

“Frankly, it’s a burden none of us can afford anymore,” Genovese said. “We can’t keep heading on the course we’re on; we have to make significant changes.”

Courage to Connect NJ was founded by Genovese as a resource to educate elected officials and the public about the expensive impact of over-reliance on “home rule” — and the potential efficiencies to be found through resident-supported municipal consolidation.

In Cumberland, Salem and Gloucester counties, approximately 511,270 residents live in a total of 53 municipalities. But only 14 of these tri-county municipalities host populations with more than 10,000 residents, and nearly half the townships and boroughs have fewer than 4,000 residents.

“Fragmentation is never the way,” Genovese said. “Consolidation has been talked about in New Jersey for over 100 years — this is absolutely not a new idea.”

Continue reading this article in the News of Cumberland County

The Governor’s proposal, released at the end of September, called for the New Jersey Department of Community Affairs to pay 20 percent of the cost of a merger between any two municipalities in New Jersey and to allow the cost to be spread out over five years. Over the long run, municipal consolidation will save taxpayers’ money; this proposal is designed to eliminate, or at least mitigate, the short term expense.

“Sensible, locally-driven consolidation must be supported by state government, and that is exactly what we are doing,” Christie said in a statement accompanying the proposal.

The forum is planned by Pohatcong Mayor James R. Kern III, who reached out to Gina Genovese, executive director of Courage to Connect New Jersey, a non-partisan, non-profit organization, to arrange the open forum. The goal of both the meeting and the organization is to help educate the community about the need for a more efficient municipal structure for New Jersey. The program will take place at the Pohatcong School, 240 Rt. 519.

In addition to discussing the Governor’s proposal, Genovese will talk about the second edition of “Courage to Connect New Jersey Guidebook: The Tools for Municipal Consolidation,” a comprehensive manual that provides step-by step measures that residents and local officials can take to form municipal consolidation study commissions and, ultimately, consolidate communities.

Genovese has presented similar programs at the request of residents of numerous municipalities across New Jersey. The program is free and open to the public; residents of Pohatcong and the surrounding communities are all encouraged to attend.

“Public employee costs have been going up while there are numerous duplications of services between smaller neighboring towns with limited budgets,” Mayor Kern said. “If we were able to come together and it would directly deliver some taxpayer savings, it’s something we should at least be talking about.”

When asked about the possibility that a consolidation between Pohatcong and a neighboring town could cost him his position, Mayor Kern said, “I didn’t run for Mayor for a job. I ran to do the right thing for taxpayers.”

To learn more about Courage to Connect New Jersey or for a free copy of the guidebook, visit the organization’s website: www.CourageToConnectNJ.org or email info@couragetoconnectnj.org.