Mayors: Shared Services Report Under Revision

The mayors of both Scotch Plains and Fanwood say they feel the consulting group charged with leading the shared services study adequately met its deadline.

The completed shared services report was due to the two towns by Dec. 31. Jersey Professional Management, the Cranford-based team that directed the study, presented the two towns with a draft form at that time so that they could review it before releasing a final version to the public.

The Shared Services Committee, which is made up of both mayors and other municipal leaders, is currently making minor revisions to the report that explores merging the municipal departments of Fanwood and Scotch Plains.

"I do consider they met their goal," Scotch Plains Mayor Nancy Malool told Patch. "That was the plan all along, to get it and review it first to see if there were any miscommunications."

The committee met on Thursday to go over the report, and has plans to meet again in a couple of weeks, Malool said.

"We're making sure that things are correct, that there's no inaccuracies, that all the numbers are numbers that work and that both sides are comfortable," Fanwood Mayor Colleen Mahr told Patch.

"The things we're looking for are minor," Malool added. "An example is where it said that the police contract ended in 2008, and they implied that they're working without a contract this year. That's not the case — we extended it. So it's that kind of misunderstanding."

Malool said that these minor changes aren't intended to impact the recommendations that have been made, and that the committee isn't even discussing those recommendations yet.

"It's in essence done," she said. "We're not changing recommendations, it's just minor things like different job duties they think people have, we're trying to clear up discrepancies of what people told them and how they interpreted it. We always understood that there'd be a period between when we got it and when it was available to the public. I don't expect this draft stage to last that long."

Once the Shared Services Committee is through with the review, copies of the final report will be passed on to the governing bodies of both towns to read.

Mahr said she's not sure exactly what the process of review for the governing bodies will be, but that she thinks both councils should have time to look over it and have conversations amongst themselves first before going in front of the public.

"I think it's important that the governing body wraps its arms around it first," Mahr said. "You want to have an intelligent conversation. It's going to be a very transparent process, but it's about coming up with the right procedure. The charge will be still to have a committee made up of the two towns, and we'll continue to meet, and that we anticipate will be a clearinghouse for a whole lot of information."

Once the councils begin to debate the recommendations made in the report, both towns' governing bodies must agree in order for any adoption of those recommendations to be made.

"If we think courts are a good place to go after both councils read the report, then we'll say 'let's take the next step of looking at merging the municipal courts," Mahr said. "Then we'll have to bring in the court administrator in Scotch Plains, the court administrator in Fanwood—the people who actually know the business—and create a sort of team. That's what I anticipate happening."

"When the report comes out, all these are are recommendations," Malool added. "We can take all or none or some of them, but they don't bind us to anything. Some of them are a little more dramatic than others, but that doesn't mean that anything is written in stone."

Mahr said she expected the complete report should be ready for the public in a couple of months. Malool seconded that, estimating an early March release.

"The idea is that this is a broad review of 11 different departments that makes recommendations to both Fanwood and Scotch Plains of what they think is possible," Mahr said. "We're going over the information, and then we'll set out and start to have conversations within the municipal bodies and with the communities."