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Newsday ran an in-depth series several years ago comparing Nassau County (NY) to Fairfax County (VA) in terms of consolidaing services, schools, libraries etc. Quite interesting but, of course, nothing done in NY to change things!

I live in North Bergen which has a high school that includes students from = Guttenburg, which is only 4 city blocks. Yet, they have a school board, a c= ity council, and police dept. if they were to consolidate w/ North Bergen = it would serve everyone, yet they are so resistant.

I think a problem of NJ of duplication of county and city services.

I am finding this discussion to be quite interesting as we just studied this idea of consolidation in our Urban Theory and Design class (I am studying for my Masters of Architecture and Urban Design at Columbia). The article we read focused on consolidation in the mid-20th Century, in Michigan as well as in Long Island. These issues have been around for fifty or sixty years, and they are still needing to be solved. (The article was from John Teaford, Post-Suburbia: Goverment and Politics in the Edge Cities.)

the way the state of NJ is divided is just another example of the ridiculous founding philosophy of the state in general. sorry to say, but almost everything about NJ is nonsensical- the roads, the public services, all public planning etc...go left to make a right, merge into the fast lane.
NJ has a complex because of it's proximity to NYC- they think they have to do things their own way to set the state apart but unfortunately they do almost everything VERY WRONG.

Too many highly paid municipal workers in NJ and too much government. What Christie should have handled first is the amount of gov't there is. Isn't he suppose to be the anti-big gov't Republican?