Nine months after Mayor Mark Smith announced plans to reduce the size of municipal government, the City Council has finally gotten a glimpse of his plan.
Mayor Smith appeared before the council at its Aug. 12 meeting, saying that although delayed by several unforeseen circumstances, he finally came up with a plan of action that he believed would help the city cut or eliminate its annual deficit.
Smith said the goal is to make municipal government leaner and more efficient, and gave the council an outline of his proposals for them to review.
The plan calls for reducing the city’s departments from the current nine departments to four, and creating subdivisions in each department to handle many of the chores departments currently handle.
“Generally speaking, government does those things that are not profitable but must be accomplished,” Smith said in his report.
These include police and fire protection, maintenance of roads and other public facilities, public health, maintenance of parks and playgrounds, removal of refuse and litter, tax assessment and collection, economic development, and construction enforcement. Municipal governments also provide programs for recreation, senior citizens, sports leagues, pre-school and other educational classes and quality of life services.
“By examining each department, agreeing upon what its mission should be and looking at everything that department does, we should quickly be able to tell what a necessary service is and what is superfluous,” Smith said. “By starting with a blank slate, we can build an organization that is more efficient, more effective, and more customer service friendly than what we have today.”
The Working Group for the plan met numerous times over the course of several months, Smith said.
“In some cases, functions were being performed that seemed far removed from the department’s charge,” he said. “In some cases it was readily apparent that a particular function was more appropriately aligned with another department. The group was particularly interested in identifying opportunities for consolidation, sharing of services, innovation that cut costs, deployment of information technology and over all reduction in workforce.”
As a result, the working group concluded that Bayonne’s municipal government “suffers from bloat and growth that defies good common business practice.”
“The recommendations of this report include downsizing the number of municipal departments from nine to four, introducing a customer service initiative, introducing a Zone Management program to enhance accountability and improving and enhancing the use of information technology to support the organizational mission,” Smith said.
Currently, the city has departments for administration, finance, law, public works and recreation, law enforcement, fire and rescue, health, community development.
The city also has numerous independent boards and authorities, some of which should be abolished or consolidated, the report said. For instance bodies such as the Urban Enterprise Zone, the Town Center Management Corporation, the Bayonne Economic Development Corporation and the Community Development Department all seem to overlap in their mission.
The group also noted that some functions are so important such as quality of life and economic development these should be overseen by the mayor’s office.
Four Working Departments
Under the plan, the existing departments will be consolidated into four departments.
The Community Development Department could be dismantled and merged with other departments, notably the Department of Business Administration, and a newly created Department of Municipal Services.
The Department of Public Works, Parks and Recreation is proposed to be severed from the recreation function which would also be folded into the Department of Municipal Services.
Public Works would pick up responsibility for overseeing the Solid Waste and Recycling contracts as well as absorb the Signal Division from the Fire Department. Public Works would also be home to a new innovation called Zone Management (to be outlined later).
“We can build an organization that is more efficient, more effective and more customer service friendly.” – Mayor Mark Smith
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The Health Department is proposed to be a new division of the Department of Municipal Services. Early indications are that the Health Division will need at least two additional Public Health Investigators and one Registered Environmental Health Specialist.
The Office on Aging would also become a new Division in the Department of Municipal Services. Several functions of the former Health Department should be considered for merger with the City Clerk’s office such as the Registrar of Vital Statistics.
The two senior centers at 56th Street and Fourth Street, currently under the Health Department, should be part of the Recreation Division to be operated with other municipal facilities such as the Firehouse Recreation Center on Broadway.
Likewise the Free Public Library and Cultural Center would be governed under the auspices of the Department of Municipal Services. Maintenance of the library building would become the responsibility of the Department of Public Works.
The Law Department, the Finance Department and the Department of Business Administration would be merged under the banner of The Department of Business Administration. In addition, this Department would oversee Human Resources, Payroll, Tax Assessment & Collections, Purchasing and Health Benefits Administration.
For improved uniformity and accountability, the Working Group felt that the Tax Collector’s Office should be responsible for the collection and receipt of all cash from each department, rather then each department performing this function individually.
The review of each department begot all sorts of questions regarding the independent authorities and the Working Group recommends that further examination of these agencies be conducted. There may be an opportunity in abolishing the Bayonne Parking Authority and cross training the employees to perform other functions such as crossing guards.
Al Sullivan may be reached at asullivan@hudsonreporter.com.