NJ Education Report

Local papers continue to foment over the crippling costs of home rule. The Record looks at 8 Pascack Valley towns that have formed a consortium to jointly bid out road paving projects:

The Pascack Valley administrators found it is possible to reconcile home rule traditions and fiscal constraints. “You have to check this parochialism at the door and allow the creativity to come about. We’re there to think outside the box,” said Oradell’s borough administrator, Wolfgang Albrecht. “The box for too long has been our town borders.”

And the Courier-Post urges us to get over ourselves and regionalize:

While those enamored with home rule fight it, regional police departments (along with other regional services such as local courts and school districts) are the future in New Jersey. The economic climate and New Jersey’s repressive tax structure demands the kind of regionalization that’s the norm in other states. It’s time South Jerseyans in small towns came to grips with the fact that taxes cannot be controlled without giving up some of the many expensive public entities our highest-in-the-nation property taxes pay for.