Police Service Consolidation, Unique Partnership to Study

A recent Spout Off had a Wildwood resident warning a West Wildwood spouter that the merger of police departments in the two communities would not be a solution to the problems of property taxes in the smaller community.
Before that exchange, at the Aug. 4 meeting of the West Wildwood Commissioners, Mayor Christopher Fox told residents that the largest item in the borough budget is the police department.
The response had been part of an exchange with residents who pushed for consideration of a consolidation of police services with neighboring Wildwood.
Not New
The argument for and against consolidation of police services is not new. New Jersey has the highest median property tax rates in the nation.
Many local and state officials over the years have pointed to the strong tradition of “home rule” in the state and the costs of maintaining 566 separate municipalities and 678 school districts.
The idea that consolidation of services, shared service arrangements, and even mergers of municipal departments gains force when property taxes in municipalities jump as they did in West Wildwood this year.
While borough officials cite the loss of ratables due to reevaluation as the major cause of the increase, the spotlight inevitably moves for some to expensive public services in small communities.
Police departments get attention because they are where the dollars are allocated since staffing is a 24-hour, seven-days-a-week proposition.
Cape May County
In 2002, Cape May, West Cape May and Cape May Point entered into the only sharing agreement in the county for full police services.
The square mile areas of the three municipalities place them at or near the bottom of municipalities in the state with Cape May Point 553rd, West Cape May 487th and even Cape May City 359th of the 566.
The range of coverage for the Cape May City Police Department under the agreement is a little over four square miles.
By the Numbers
Based on 2016 Census estimates, the combined year-round population of the three communities stands at less than 5,000 residents.
The Cape May Police Department operates with 22 sworn officers and adds up to 20 part-time officers in the summer.
The move to share police services among the three communities began operation Jan. 1, 2002.
According to a U. S. Department of Justice survey in 2008, New Jersey had 476 local police agencies with 21,875 sworn officers.
Cape May County hosts 16 separate municipalities and 11 municipal police departments.
Three communities, Dennis and Upper Township and Woodbine depend on an arrangement with New Jersey State Police. The sharing of police coverage strictly by arrangement among municipalities is uniquely present only on Cape Island.
Cape Island Example
The evolution of this arrangement at the Cape began in early 1986 when ordinances adopted in both Cape May Point and West Cape May united the police services of the two communities.
Herald press reports at the time credited West Cape May with two full-time and five part-time officers and Cape May Point with one full-time and five part-time.
The new arrangement gave the combined operation two patrol cars to provide 24-hour coverage for the two communities for the first time.
Police personnel continued to wear uniforms of their municipality. Dispatch remained separate with West Cape May using Cape May City and Cape May Point using Lower Township.
Five years later the municipalities joined the Cape May City Police Department by disbanding the West Cape May department and entering into a series of seven-year shared-service agreements.
One lesson learned in that arrangement was that the way officials sought to make it financially viable was to close one department so that Cape May would not be required to absorb the existing personnel.
Not All Hired
Cape May’s Mayor Clarence Lear, a 37-year veteran of the department, remembered that the city interviewed the officers from West Cape May but hired two.
Four other officers sued over the arrangement. They argued that there was a legal obligation to absorb the existing staff. They lost their lawsuit.
The agreements among the municipalities spelled out the services to be provided and specifically excluded others, such as school crossing guards.
The intent was a service that “will assure a reasonable and sufficient degree of police protection.”
Fees for Service
A fee schedule was also incorporated into the agreements. Up until 2016, the cost to both West Cape May and Cape May Point increased by 3 percent per year regardless of what increases, or decreases may have occurred in the Cape May City appropriations for the police department.
When the agreement signed in 2008 ended in 2015, a new cost arrangement lowered the increases to 2 percent per year.
In 2009, the first year of that agreement, West Cape May paid $383,723 to Cape May City.
Cape May Point paid $231,890. Under the current 2017 budget, West Cape May is paying $476,697 and Cape May Point $288,075. This represents a 24 percent increase in expense to those boroughs over a nine-year period.
Known Cost
The agreement represents a known cost each year to the boroughs serviced.  Whether or not the costs are a desirable substitute for the expense of maintaining a separate, and substantially smaller department, probably providing a different scope of services, is the judgment call each municipality has to make.
The spouter who warned of unexpected or unknown costs and the West Wildwood property owner questioning the expense of a separate department in a community experiencing an increase in local taxes both have an arrangement down the road they can cite. The Cape Island experience offers some evidence of what consolidation of police services might look like.
The agreement among the Cape communities is in its third renewal. It is unique in the county and rare in the state.
It demonstrates that there is possibly initial pain for some if all personnel cannot be absorbed. It also shows the fee-structure arrangement results in known costs, but also in costs that can only be renegotiated periodically.
Study, Study Again
In Avalon, a move to merge the borough’s police department with neighboring Stone Harbor led to a non-binding referendum in November 2000. 
The proposed move was approved overwhelmingly, 633-340.
Stone Harbor officials were quoted in press accounts stating the move needed more study. No question of a merger was ever on a ballot in Stone Harbor, and the proposed merger never occurred.
To contact Vince Conti, email vconti@cmcherald.com.