Gina Genovese, Executive Director of Courage to Connect New Jersey Quoted in the Courier News

This article originally appeared on MyCentralJersey.com

Scotch Plains and Fanwood may share a school district but the two communities have been separate municipalities since 1895, when tiny Fanwood broke away.

Now a group of citizens is hoping to reunite the neighboring towns.

The grassroots Courage to Re-Connect on Wednesday submitted an application to the state Local Finance Board to create a municipal consolidation commission that would study a merger.

The residents filed their application, which included more than 1,000 signatures, under the Local Option Municipal Consolidation Act of 2007.

Organizers said the application was the first time citizens from two communities, without the backing of the local governments, have asked for a study commission.

“It made a lot of sense to merge, particularly because we already have a merged school system,” said organizer Fred Lange, a Scotch Plains resident since 1974. “Also it made a lot of sense getting rid of the redundancy and be more efficient.”

The commission must be approved by the Local Finance Board, which next meets in March.

After a commission presents its findings and recommendations, including what to name a the merged town, voters in both towns would have to approve the merger.

Last year voters Princeton Borough and Princeton Township approved a merger after decades of debate.

“The citizens are saying let’s look into this we are basically one town anyway,” said Gina Genovese of Courage to Connect N.J., which assisted Lange. “This takes courage because it never happened before. They had no support from the local government.”

The neighboring Union County towns already share a school district and other municipal services. The towns already have studied sharing more services, including their police departments. But Lange said those studies have gone nowhere.

Scotch Plains Mayor Nancy Malool says she supports a study commission.

“Honestly, I don’t understand the reluctance on anybody’s part to do this. We can talk about this for the next 20 years,” she said.

“It’s always been a discussion. Whenever I campaign that’s one of the questions I always get. ‘Why aren’t we one town?’ But it’s important for people to understand that it is not easy as flipping a switch.”

But Fanwood Councilman Robert Manduca isn’t as optimistic about merging, arguing that Fanwood’s small size and volunteer fire department keeps costs down.

The average property tax bill in Scotch Plains, which is nearly 10 square miles with a population of 23,510, is nearly $1,000 more than the $10,315 average in Fanwood, which is 1 mile square with 7,300 people.

“If this could save citizens of Fanwood money, we would have merged a long time ago,” Manduca said. “It’s nice to think that the silver bullet is to merge and everybody saves money. That’s just not the truth.”

Merging the police departments has run into some road bumps, including how much authority each community would have over the department.

Merging the towns would eliminate that concern, but Manduca sees other problems, such as the fact that Scotch Plains police operate under the job-protection rules of the state senior service system while the smaller Fanwood does not.

Gov. Chris Christie, in his “toolkit” package proposed reforming the civil service system, but the legislature has not passed any law that would facilitate mergers.

“If we don’t get the toolkit, all it takes is one judge who says these people should have been promoted to sergeants and lieutenants and we get handed a bill for millions of dollars,” Manduca said. “(Merging) sounds good from 3,000 feet.”