By Syracuse Mayor Matthew J. Driscoll
April 12, 2004

In January of 2004, I sent out a letter to elected officials and representatives from all 54 municipalities of Onondaga County, New York, calling for a Municipal Government Summit to discuss the possibility of consolidation. On March 22, 2004 elected officials from the county's 34 Towns and Villages, 16 School Districts (including the Syracuse School District), the County of Onondaga and Syracuse gathered to collectively commence discussions regarding innovative, creative and pro-active strategies to position Onondaga County and Syracuse for the future.

In my letter I shared my belief that with a total municipal budget of $1.935 billion, I believe that the elected officials of Onondaga County, New York, have a responsibility to the taxpayers to begin aggressively addressing ways to better utilize our collective resources. In these lean times, saving even 1 percent of the current $1.9 billion budget would mean a savings of $19 million for the local governments, and taxpayers, of all municipalities within Onondaga County.

In the past several years there have been numerous unfunded New York State mandates, rapidly decreasing state and federal funding for cities, mandatory homeland security measures, declining and static property tax bases, and skyrocketing costs for healthcare, Medicaid, and pensions, causing every municipality within Onondaga County to face hard choices. Because so many of these are issues that can only be resolved at the state level, cities, towns, villages, school districts and counties are all left to pull up the slack within their own budgets.

When I became Mayor of Syracuse in 2001, I took the unprecedented step of instituting a department of oversight and accountability, called SyraStat, in city hall. In it's first year, SyraStat was able to save Syracuse $14 million through cost efficiencies and trimming budgets. SyraStat has been an extremely effective tool in controlling city costs; however, we have now reached a place where we must again turn to extraordinary solutions to solve mounting fiscal problems. Job cuts, service reductions, tax increases and new borrowing programs are the most commonly used, and the least popular methods of creating an instant cash flow, but do not solve ongoing or expanding financial difficulties. We must find an imaginative method of saving money through "smarter" government to achieve long-term structural fiscal relief, possibly through consolidation or cooperative service agreements.

Many studies have been conducted on how to achieve shared and consolidated services, with the conclusion that the most successful efforts at municipal cooperation have been realized when all parties have participated in the planning and implementation processes. Syracuse learned this through experience when, in the late 1990's, there was an attempted consolidation of Police Departments in Syracuse, Town of Liverpool, and Town of Solvay that failed miserably. We learned from this failure that everything about consolidation must come from the bottom up through a culture of cooperation.

Consolidation, a topic that may create distrust, anxiety and cynicism, does not necessarily have to mean dissolution or loss of jurisdiction. I respect the fact that our Towns, Villages and School Districts wish to preserve their independence, and I believe that a plan can be developed for the municipalities of Onondaga County to share or consolidate services while retaining autonomy and community identity.

That 100 local officials and representatives attended the March 22, 2004 Municipal Government Summit is a victory in my book. Presentations were given by the Metropolitan Development Agency, Syracuse 20/20, the Syracuse Chamber of Commerce and representatives of State Comptroller Alan Hevesi's office. There was a question and answer period, and at the end, a pledge by all parties to attend another Municipal Summit in the next several months.

This process is expected to be a long one that some may consider to be slow and arduous. However, by simply meeting and beginning a dialogue, the municipalities of Onondaga County and Syracuse have proven their willingness to explore new ways of sharing resources. I am looking forward to our next Municipal Summit in May 2004.