Study projects $1.5 million savings by sharing police
Regionalization projected to save $11.5M by 2017
BY JENNA O'DONNELL Staff Writer

Mayor Michael Halfacre

Consultants project that as much as $1.5 million can be saved through sharing the Fair Haven, Little Silver and Rumson police departments, with even greater savings down the road.

The findings of the Two River Regional Police Study Group by Eatontown-based Patriot Consulting Group were presented to Fair Haven officials and residents during a meeting held at Knollwood School on Aug.18.

At the meeting, which followed an initial meeting in Little Silver last month, residents expressed doubts as to whether sharing police services would result in significant savings.

Tom Pallone, Little Silver, said that he had read the report, which he called "full of disclaimers," but hadn't found a compelling reason that services should be shared. He added that he was pleased with his town's police department.

"I'm against it," Pallone said. "And you haven't given me a convincing argument to support your recommendation."

Prior to the presentation and public discussion, Fair Haven Mayor Michael Halfacre urged residents to keep an open mind, reminding them that no decisions were being made at the present time.

"It was against a backdrop of rising property taxes, reduced state aid and a willingness of the majority of residents to share services that this process was begun," he said.

Halfacre said that a 2005 survey, which had asked borough residents if they would be willing to share certain services, had returned with 60 percent open to sharing police services.

"This is a report, not a decision," he said. "It is not a mandatory document. This is a starting point, not an end point."

Fair Haven Councilman James P. Banahan told residents that the council was not necessarily in favor of sharing services.

"This is an organic issue," he said. "It's something that the state is in favor of. This is exploratory."

Upon finding that about a third of the audience consisted of police officers from the three towns and their families, Banahan said that the survey likely represented a more accurate picture of how the majority of residents felt about the issue.

"This is a very heavily weighed population of people," he said. "We need to collect that information. We're exploring it in the most sensible and detailed way."

Brian Valentino, president and principal consultant for Patriot, went over the findings of the study, which recommends immediate sharing in six areas: purchasing, communications and information technology, prisoner processing and holding, criminal investigation, traffic functions and youth aid services.

Though the report does not currently recommend full regionalization, it does stipulate that the three boroughs begin collecting call data in a uniform way to allow for the feasibility analysis of eventual consolidation.

There are 46 police officers among the three towns, serving 19,244 year-round residents in a land area of 9.6 miles, according to Valentino.

The final report, which anticipates the retirement of six current police officers between the three towns, predicts a savings of $1,480,314 million a year into the shared service agreements. Following full consolidation, the report forecasts an $11.5 million savings by 2017.

Valentino said that the source of savings would come from reduced personnel and operating costs, as well as the reduction in associated expenses such as health benefits, clothing allowances, holiday, sick and vacation pay and pensions.

Fair Haven Councilman John Lehnert was unconvinced by numbers and said some factors hadn't been taken into account.

"You say $1.4 million," he said. "Where does that number come from? Because that would mean something like $200,000 per police officer."

Valentino said that the savings would come not just from salaries, but a number of other nonsalary costs.

"There's a lot of fuzzy math going on here, but I think there's a lot of unanswered questions," Lehnert said. "If we did merge, everyone's going to go to the highest salary of the highest paid department."

For some residents, the greatest fear was losing the personal benefits of a local police department. Many couldn't place a price on the comfort of having a familiar face respond to a crisis.

Jennifer Ekhoff, of Rumson, recalled an instance when an emergency had brought police officers and first aid responders to her house. Her 12-year-old daughter had been calm upon seeing familiar faces, but frightened by strangers.

"It really means a huge amount to residents," Ekhoff said.

Lehnert recognized the importance that people place on having their own police officers.

"When you talk about merging the police, people get hot about the issue because they want their own police department," Lehnert said. "They want their police to come. This is causing a lot of animosity that I don't think needs to happen."

Lehnert suggested looking into sharing other services before police.

"When the police come, you want to know your police, and I think we should look into other avenues before we merge the police," he said. "But we also should get all the answers before we make any rash decisions."

Brian O'Reilly, a former councilman and police commissioner of Fair Haven, was concerned about the financial impact to police officers, who might plan their lives around a career in their town.

"I would like to see what the impact is on the cops," he said.

O'Reilly said that he hoped there would still be a way to recognize police for a job well done.

"I never thought this would actually come to fruition," he said. "I hope you would allow some opportunity for cops to grow."

Sgt. Gary LaBruno, of the Little Silver Police Department, was skeptical about the calculations that predicted savings.

"I'm traffic safety officer for Little Silver," he said. "How will you do court proceedings? Are we still going to have three separate courts or one court? What about overtime costs for those court appearances, who pays for them?"

Patriot consultants said that an agreement would have to be reached as far as sharing courts.

"I'm not against full regionalization of these police departments if it's done right," he said. "This is not done right, it's going to cost the taxpayers more money."

Halfacre responded that the report was a preliminary outline, with the purpose of giving officials an idea of what to look at moving forward.

"This is a framework," he

said. "The report is not a mandate, it is for informational purposes, and we can debate endlessly the numbers in the report."

Halfacre added that he felt that the towns would have to merge municipal courts at some point down the road.

"The fact of the matter is that merging municipal courts is what makes sense," he said. "Unfortunately, the state of New Jersey makes it extremely difficult to merge municipal courts, but I think that ultimately municipal courts have to be part of that phase."

District 12 Assemblyman Declan O'Scanlon, who initiated the shared services study during his days as a Little Silver councilman, said that there were still a lot of questions.

"There are a lot of unknowns here," O'Scanlon said. "That's why we're doing it this way."

O'Scanlon said that there is evidence where forces of similar size had managed to merge and work well together.

He added that he had spoken to a number of police officers who would look forward to expanding on the borders of their small territories and had faith that the officers would be able to acquaint themselves with the two other towns.

The reality, according to O'Scanlon, was that savings would have to be found.

"These taxes are driving us out of the state of New Jersey," he said. "On the flip side, every time we try to reform, we hear about the savings. There's no single thing that we can do that will cut the taxes in half. It's a series of small steps that will make a difference."

O'Scanlon said that having residents decide on the merger through referendum would ultimately be a discussion for a time when boroughs are poised to go into full consolidation.

He stressed that the current study was neither mandated nor irreversible.

"This is about as innocuous as we can possibly get in that we can test the effectiveness of it and not do any damage if we do implement it," O'Scanlon said. "We can't do it any more conservatively."