The Griffin Plan for Municipal Consolidation

I think that Governor Corzine is on the right track when it comes to using the stick to force small municipalities to consolidate. It makes little sense to have 3 towns of 4,000 people, each with it's own tax collectors and police department and mayor, when you can have one town of 12,000 with a single system of taxes, police coverage and local politicians - a much more cost efficient system. The State's budget problems are not at the State level - it's getting really hard to find anything else to cut in State services given that it's only about 1/6 of the entire budget. The problems lie in the gross inefficiencies brought about by home rule. Given that, I think we need a fair, balanced system for deciding which towns get to stay and which ones have to merge.

Five simple rules:

1. No towns with less than 10,000 people. If you don't get merged because of one of the other rules of this system, you're going to have to either join a bigger town or find a neighbor in the same boat to merge with.
2. Every county is limited to 15 municipalities. Therefore we will have at most 315 municipalities after the merge.
3. Every town must have a unique name. All of those Washingtons and Franklins - this one's meant for you. This is more of a means to ending the confusion when telling someone to meet you in Washington and then having to specify a county.
4. Neighboring towns sharing a core place in their names must combine. North Brunswick, South Brunswick, East Brunswick and New Brunswick - congratulations, you are now the City of Brunswick! Same goes for all of the Seasides, Cape Mays, and Oranges.
5. Adios, Bogota. Originally, I thought of this to prevent Steve Lonegan from being a Mayor anymore. Now it's just punishment for having elected him Mayor in the first place.

Eventually I'll get around to applying these rules and seeing how many towns we actually would have afterwards.

And while we're at it, let's merge the school districts into 21 county districts.