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General News: Police Consolidation A Statewide Challenge
October 19, 2009
When Cornwall-on-Hudson’s leaders sit down on Monday to discuss the efficiency of the police department, they will be tackling an issue that has been faced by villages across New York state. While the trustees' comments will be limited to a new study of the police department, the bigger issue lurking is whether residents would be better off if the small village department merged with that of the town of Cornwall.
In recent years, several area municipalities have asked the same question and, after research and public debate, only one has chosen to consolidate with a larger force. Saving taxpayer money may be driving the move to consolidate but issues of political control often dominate.
A Consolidation Plan is Rejected in Highlands
Nearly two years ago, the town of Highlands asked the village of Highland Falls police chief, Pete Miller, to come up with a plan for providing police services to the town if it disbanded its part-time town police force. Chief Miller says he put together a plan that would have saved $236,000 for the two municipalities without any police officers being laid off. The village would have provided dispatch services to the merged department and a building to replace a temporary trailer the town police used.
Miller says that he was optimistic about the benefits of consolidation but that his optimism began to fade at a town-wide meeting in February 2008. In a recent interview, Miller recalled the tumultuous meeting. “There was a lot of misinformation, a lot of people challenged the cost savings that I had put out,” he said. He also recalled that Highlands town supervisor Inga Quaintaince said she would put the matter to a referendum but never did.
Supervisor Quaintaince says the town seriously considered consolidation because she and others thought it would save money. But, she says, the estimates for cost savings kept changing and in the end, the town decided it wasn’t worth it to give up local control. “The decision was based less on savings than on having the service,” Quaintaince said in a recent interview, recalling the town residents who spoke against consolidation. “We were concerned about the personal touch, where everyone knows everyone,”
In the end, the town renovated its ambulance corps building to make room for the police and contracted with the county for dispatch service. The town had to get relay towers for the county service, which will cost $150,000 a year for five years, but Quaintaince says that figure will drop to $20,000 after that while the village proposal for service would have steadily gone up.
Haverstraw Consolidates to Control Spiraling Costs
Down in Rockland County, the village of Haverstraw disbanded its police force in 2006 at the end of multi-year plan to consolidate services with the town. Mayor Michael Kohut says that the move was necessary to stabilize the village’s uncontrolled tax increases. Village taxpayers did not really save money, Kohut says, but the village now has a surplus and spiraling costs were brought under control.
The downside of consolidation for Kohut has been the loss of control over policing in the village. Kohut notes that the village has more urban problems that the town and as a result has different priorities for the police.
“If we still had our own police department and if we perceived there was a policing need, I could call up the chief of police and he would address it,” Kohut said. “I don’t have that luxury anymore.”
Consolidation Plans Stall in Walden and Montgomery
Back in Orange County, police consolidation talks between the village of Walden and the town of Montgomery appear to have hit a wall after more than a year and a half of planning. Last July, it looked like a plan had been reached that would allow the town of Montgomery to absorb all of the police officers in Walden, including the chief, and for the town to provide police services and communications dispatch to the village.
Mayor Brian Maher announced that an inter-municipal agreement would be presented to a public hearing in September, then put to a vote in the November election. But when the town of Montgomery board looked at the agreement at its meeting in September, support for consolidation evaporated, at least for now.
Montgomery police chief Butch Amthor, who says he was first hired by the department as a consultant on consolidation, believes that the plan still has a lot of merit. “Myself and Chief Holmes (from the village of Walden) worked very hard over 18 months, looking at every issue regarding police consolidation in every department and we believe that it’s the way to proceed,” Amthor said in a recent interview. “It can be done. It can reduce costs. It can increase efficiency. But it takes the action of elected officials to move it forward.”
Amthor says that he received a letter from Governor Paterson earlier this month, praising his leadership efforts in the area of consolidation.. Paterson has put some muscle into the push for consolidation of local governments, signing into law a bill that takes effect in March 2010 that will encourage consolidation statewide. His office is also distributing a citizens guide for petitioning for consolidation and dissolution of local governments, a move that may mean that issue will continue to be on the agenda not only in Cornwall and Cornwall-on-Hudson, but across New York state.
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