Shared Services Grants

SPITZER BACKS STATE AID FOR DISSOLUTION:

State aid to pay for dissolution of local municipalities is proposed to stay at last year's amount in New York Gov. Elliot Spitzer's 2007-08 budget. That could bode well for Johnson City if a dissolution petition is accepted.

The proposed Executive Budget Aid and Incentives for Municipalities (AIM) program has earmarked $25 million to the Department of State Shared Municipal Services Incentive (SMSI) program to fund grants to local governments that consolidate or share services. The funding level would be the same as 2006.

A petition requesting officials to study the dissolution of Johnson City into the Town of Union is being reviewed by the village to verify its authenticity. If found valid, the petition would begin a process that would end with a village-wide vote on a plan draw up by officials to dissolve the village government.

Kyle Wilber, SMSI program manager, said Johnson City and Union last year could have each received a maximum of $400,000 to help study the potential economic impacts and the extent of efficiencies created by a possible dissolution, the legal paperwork leading to the referendum, and a dissolution plan. Under last year's program, state reimbursements covered 90 percent of the actual cost of the proposal, or a maximum of $400,000 each.
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Charles Zettek, with the Rochester-based non-profit consulting group Center for Government Research, explained that if Johnson City's petition to study dissolution is accepted, he believes it will be the largest populated village to study dissolution.

He said the first step when he helped an appointed committee study dissolving the Village of Wellsville was to decide what services the village had and what it needed. In Johnson City, the study committee would include at least two representatives who live outside the village, but in the Town of Union.
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The actual Wellsville dissolution study took six months to prepare, but last November's referendum vote, in which dissolution was rejected 1,000-94, didn't come until two years later.