Skip to content
News
Link copied to clipboard

7 Camden County towns explore pooling police costs

Seven Camden County towns are exploring sharing police administrative costs while maintaining their individual departments. The towns - Audubon, Collingswood, Haddonfield, Haddon Heights, Haddon Township, Mount Ephraim, and Oaklyn - have some of the county's smaller forces, ranging from 12 to 28 full-time officers, each led by a chief.

Seven Camden County towns are exploring sharing police administrative costs while maintaining their individual departments.

The towns - Audubon, Collingswood, Haddonfield, Haddon Heights, Haddon Township, Mount Ephraim, and Oaklyn - have some of the county's smaller forces, ranging from 12 to 28 full-time officers, each led by a chief.

On Friday, the towns - which formed a partnership called the Colonial Alliance more than a year ago - began seeking proposals for a feasibility study that will analyze police budgets, crime statistics, labor agreements, and other administrative aspects.

"We're always struggling to keep taxes down. You need to look at your big numbers in the budget - our top three are trash, police, and public works," Haddon Heights Mayor Edward Forte Jr. said Monday. "We're small, but we need to utilize each other's strengths a little more."

The intent is not to combine the forces but to combine only administrative costs, Forte said.

Proposals are due by Aug. 16.

With municipal budgets constrained by a 2 percent cap on property-tax increases imposed by state law, other New Jersey towns have also considered the idea of sharing services.

"Financially to abide by that rule into the future is going to be next to impossible," Collingswood Mayor James Maley said.

Gov. Christie and other public officials have advocated merging services to lower property taxes, which are among the highest in the country.

Forte said the Camden County towns want to be leaders in possible consolidation initiatives, but said it would be a long-term process.

Members of the alliance are sharing services on a smaller scale, like borrowing each other's public works equipment. Maley likened the informal agreements to "neighbors helping neighbors."

"The idea is we each get something in return," he said. "No money is changing hands."

He said the initiative to possibly pool police administrative costs is unrelated to the recently created county force that is patrolling Camden.

In Mercer County, Princeton Borough and Township merged this year. The action was estimated to save $3.2 million.

But in Bergen County, a possible merger by the Park Ridge, Montvale, and Woodcliff Lake Police Departments fizzled even though a study said the move could save more than $1 million annually, the Associated Press reported Monday.