2014-03-01-sdc-elbridge1.JPG

Elbridge's village mayor is passing around a petition calling for a voter referendum on dissolving the town of Elbridge. Governments across New York are searching for way s to become more efficient or consolidate.

(Stephen D. Cannerelli | scannerelli@syracuse.com)

Elbridge Village Mayor Hank Doerr's petition for a vote to dissolve the town of Elbridge brings the statewide issue of consolidating government home to Central New York.

Combined, the town of Elbridge and the villages of Elbridge and Jordan have six clerks, three highway department supervisors, three lawyers, two fire departments and 15 members of town and village boards. That's a lot of government to pack into a town of 5,900. The village and town halls are located within four miles of each other.

Doerr is right to question how long the 700 residents of his village can continue paying to support a town and a village government. He wants the town board to allow residents to vote on dissolving a layer of government. He's not alone. People across the state are questioning the need for so many layers of government.

The state is offering Local Government Efficiency Grants to municipalities, school districts and other government entities to pay for studies on sharing services or, in some cases, consolidating.

Earlier this year, New York put a little more pressure on local governments to consolidate. It will refund to taxpayers the increase they paid in school taxes, but only if the districts stayed within the state-imposed tax cap. The state plans to extend the refund to local governments that stay within the cap, too, further tightening the screws on local governments to be more efficient.

In Onondaga County, leaders have received $250,000 in state money for the Consensus project to study ways to make local government more efficient. Everything is on the table, from informal agreements on sharing highway equipment to full- scale municipal consolidation. That project is in its beginning stages of gathering information and meeting with community groups, according to Centerstate CEO Vice President Kevin Schwab.

The outcome of the work is still more than a year away and no one knows what it will look like. There are difficult decisions to be made. No one wants to determine who will be let go when it comes to duplicative employees and take on the task of informing those being fired. If the emotional side is hampering municipal employees when the taxpayers say "reduce and consolidate" then they need to remember who they ultimately report to - the taxpayers.

Onondaga County has 19 towns, 15 villages, a city, a county, 18 school districts, 16 police departments and 55 fire departments.

We think it's time for more government consolidation. Elbridge is as good a place as any to get this civic conversation going.