Savings too few to justify court merger
Nov, 23-2009 11:32 am
To the editor:
Without a doubt we are experiencing one of the hardest economic times in the last three decades. Not since the severe recession of the late 1970s has unemployment been so high.
Municipal governments with their constituents saddled with the ever increasing cost of education placed upon them by autonomous and unfazed boards of education, are forced to curtail spending their 30 percent portion of the tax revenue pie left by the schools.
The buzzword in municipal circles today is shared services.
In some circles this a practical approach to curtailing spending on salaries, facilities maintenance and equipment purchases while at the same time either reducing staff or eliminating hiring to replace retiring employees while increasing efficiency. However, shared services implemented for the sole purpose of declaring a financial victory many times fails to consider the unintended consequences of lowered efficiency in employee input, revenue output, and customer service.
Some have almost exclusively endorsed shared services without fully examining the consequences of the merger. Such is the case with the proposed shared courts between Linwood and Northfield.
In its fullest examination, shared services should be considered when the following four goals can be accomplished:
First, a reduction of staff can be realized without affecting the operational integrity of the department.
Second, there is a desire to increase efficiency by integrating two or more departments into one.
Third, the reduction of facilities from two or more to one reduces overall maintenance costs.
Fourth, the sharing of equipment reduces replacement needs, maintenance costs, and upgrade costs as duplication of equipment is eliminated and need is cut to one plant, one equipment bid, and one maintenance contract.
Linwood and Northfield’s venture to create a shared court service meets none of these desired goals.
It is being touted as a way to save $700,000 over the next five years between both municipalities. The stated savings could just as well have been $7 million as both estimates are a bogus charade.
Both courts do not cost $700,000 over five years to operate, hence it is impossible to save that which is not spent.
At present, Linwood has one court employee handling day-to-day operations while Northfield, which by raw numbers is the busier of the two courts, employs two people.
Their individual court efficiency ratings, prepared by the Superior Court’s Cape-Atlantic Vicinage Municipal Division, are in the highest percentile of all courts located in either Cape May or Atlantic counties. There are no employees to eliminate, unless either council believes the two courts can operate with less than what it has operating now – three total employees.
Linwood has always had two employees and Northfield upwards of four employees. Therefore, two of the four goals of any viable shared service plan have not been accomplished as no saving is going to be realized in terms of employee reduction.
Nor can any increase in efficiency be expected. In fact, efficiency will surely suffer as a result of personnel movement and court being held during hours usually reserved for normal court business.
In addition, this proposal does not include sharing of facilities or equipment. Each court will maintain its own jurisdiction, thereby negating the last two goals of shared services.
The only area of savings that could possibly be examined is in the area of having one judge, prosecutor, and public defender operating in both courts. But those savings would come at the cost of a loss of judicious circumspection.
Plea deals will most certainly be increased in order to handle the increased volume of cases being pushed into fewer available court dates. What judge or prosecutor would spend their entire day trying cases for what amounts to half this year’s salary when plea bargains and dismissals save court time?
Shared services has its place, even within these communities. Linwood and Northfield share their sewer departments by sharing employees and maintaining one main piece of equipment and one facility. Linwood and Somers Point are in talks to share police/fire dispatching, again realizing a possible increase in efficiency, possible staffing reduction, while reducing two facilities and communications systems to one. Such is the case with the Northfield/Egg Harbor Township communications agreement entered into in the 1990s.
However, as these agreements realize many of the sought after goals of a shared service agreement, this court merger realizes none. This is, for lack of a better term, a dog and pony show designed to convince taxpayers that their councils are saving money when in the end its creation would only result in a lack of efficient services being provided. The little money that is saved is will be eaten up in increased police overtime for security for what is proposed as all day court sessions to eliminate night court.
Northfield and Linwood councils, being led by their respective Pied Pipers, have apparently made their decisions to follow along this slippery slope. However, time will prove these decisions will neither save money nor increase efficiency.
In the meanwhile I’ll pop some corn, pull up a seat, get comfortable and wait for the show begin. It should all be quite entertaining.
Larry Carlson
Northfield
(Carlson's wife, Merrilee Carlson, is Linwood's acting court administrator. She will go back to being deputy administrator upon the start of the shared court.)
