<< Previous | Next >>

Intro-Local Officials | Intro-Citizens | How to Use | Community Challenge | Authors | Letter
Overview | Six Steps | Sample Timeline | One | Two | Three | Four | Five | Six
Woodbridge Model | What Woodbridge Can Afford? | How Much Does Small Cost?
Glossary | Common Questions | Historic First | A Century of Support

1925 | New Jersey State Planning Board

“Not the least of the State’s administrative difficulties is due to an excessive number of local government units, county and municipal. Wholesale consolidation of counties and municipalities coupled with the elimination of rural townships will be helpful if not essential to public economy and effective public service.”

1933 | Governor A. Harry Moore, First Annual Message to the New Jersey State Legislature

“I believe… that advanced steps must be taken in the direction of consolidation of small governing areas.”

1968 | County and Municipal Government Study Commission

“New Jersey is in desperate need of a better allocation of the fiscal and governmental responsibilities for the planning, financing, and performance of the functions and services provided by its local governmental system – especially those of area-wide or regional scope.”

1972 | County and Municipal Government Study Commission

“Consolidation is recommended to New Jersey municipalities as a means toward more rational control of growth and development, more efficient provision of local services, more viable and capable public administration and the healing of local government fragmentation.”

1977 | Preamble to Municipal Consolidation Act

“The Legislature hereby finds and declares that it is in the public interest to encourage contiguous municipalities to consider consolidation as a means of insuring more rational control of growth and development, more efficient provision of local services and more effective public administration.”A Century of Support for CONSOLIDAT ION

1998 | Alan J. karcher, former Speaker of General Assembly and author of New Jersey’s Multiple Municipal Madness

“Consolidation of municipalities appears to be an attractive possibility for transcending the unproductive debate in which we have been enmeshed for the past thirty years. The restructuring of the system with its promised reduction of overall costs of government should be a solution that is hard to resist.”

2006 | Joint Legislative Committee on Government Consolidation and Shared Services

“The conundrum that New Jersey State government faces vis-à-vis its multiple units of municipal government is not unlike that faced by the federal government with respect to military bases. . . . Whether it is a military base that was established after the War of 1812 or a municipality created around a railroad station, times have changed, and what made sense more than a century ago often bears no rational relationship to current development patterns, population growth, [or] a global economy.”

2009 | Governor Chris Christie, at Town Hall Meeting

“my wife and I think this is crazy… mendham Township has 5,200 people, mendham Borough has 5,000 people. Now I have no idea why it can’t just be ‘mendham’ with 10,200 people. But we have two school boards, we have two police departments, we have two volunteer fire departments, we have two public libraries. Crazy.”

<< Previous | Next >>

Intro | Authors | Letter | Overview | Six Steps | One | Two | Three | Four | Five | Six | Glossary | Support