Taxpayers should see a good return on their investment

Thursday, March 17, 2005

Communities in Maine should be able to regionalize without having to conduct exhaustive studies or hire outside consultants.

In other words, they should not always have to spend a lot of money to find ways to save it.

Good judgment and common sense should be all that is necessary to decide how certain programs or services can be combined to improve efficiency and reduce costs.

Oftentimes, those in government think otherwise. They believe extensive analyses are required to address issues or solve problems.

Such is the case with regionalization.

Voters have authorized the state to make a total of $1 million available to help towns, cities, police and fire departments, school systems, counties and governmental organizations join forces in ways that will increase efficiency and reduce costs to taxpayers.

While we are not sure it should require a million bucks to provide the answers, it is encouraging to see tremendous interest being shown in regionalization -- based on the number of applicants for the state grants.

Gov. John E. Baldacci and the Maine Development Foundation announced Tuesday that 26 "collaborative groups" consisting of 121 towns, cities and governmental organizations will share in the public funding this year to help study and move forward with regionalization and consolidation.

The governor, who has pressed for greater regionalization since he was campaigning in 2001, said the money is intended "as a means of exploring the joint delivery of services as one way to reduce local government spending and counteract escalating property taxes."

All told, the state received grant applications from 41 "collaborative groups" made up of more than 200 municipalities and groups.

Proposals came from all parts of the state and included funding requests for a wide variety of initiatives, including regional dispatching centers, combined firefighting services and joint purchasing programs.

Other requests sought money to merge municipal services, such as accounting and tax assessing, water and wastewater treatment, and trash collection and recycling.

Several communities from central Maine are among those selected to receive regionalization grants. They include Augusta, Belgrade, Fairfield, Farmington, Gardiner, Madison, Norridgewock, Oakland, Pittsfield, Richmond, Skowhegan, Waterville, Wilton, Winslow and Winthrop.

The number and the variety of applicants indicate that communities, organizations and agencies are becoming extremely -- and necessarily -- serious about regionalization.

That's good.

Although we do not see intentional wastefulness within most towns and cities, there is plenty of duplication that should end.

As the governor said, there are 495 separate "units of government" in Maine, many of which are looking to build new schools or new public safety buildings -- sometimes a few miles from other schools or public safety buildings.

Such redundancies have become unacceptable.

The governor is right. Duplications of programs and services does not make sense when the future demands greater efficiency and cost savings.

Now that publicly funded regionalization grants are coming their way, communities must make sure the money is spent carefully and productively. Results are what matter.

Used correctly, the grants should help get innovative regionalization programs up and running soon across the state.

Taxpayers who are providing the money deserve a good return on their investment.