Opinion: One city of 100,000 people? Centre Region consolidation makes sense

A story in this paper the other day reminded me that the six municipalities that make up the Centre Region Council of Governments ought to recreate themselves as one city of 100,000 population and remove a layer of government that is, in the words of one municipal manager, having “growing pains.”

In other words, consolidate.

I’ve been an advocate for consolidation since the late 1980s. The closest I got was a referendum by the voters of three of the six Centre Region municipalities. As I recall, only a majority of State College Borough voters supported consolidation then.

Some of the opposition to consolidation is born out of ignorance. People believe that it means the borough takes over the townships. That’s not what consolidation means. When the voters of municipalities agree to consolidate, the municipalities legally disappear and are replaced by a new consolidated municipality. Among other things, it’s a chance to customize the form of government and to pick a new name, something the voters wouldn’t do when the Pennsylvania State College became the Pennsylvania State University and University President Milton Eisenhower asked the borough voters to change the name.

I mentioned in my opening another layer of government. That may be in the eye of the beholder until you drill down and see who provides what and who pays for it. Over the years individual municipalities have been slow to support, say, Schlow Centre Regional Library or CNET. Push comes to shove in the COG finance committee if one municipality decides it doesn’t want to pay its share.

This time out five municipal managers (Halfmoon doesn’t have a manager) objected to how much the finance committee wanted each municipality to contribute to COG’s $30 million budget for next year. The managers said that they would have to raise taxes just to cover their COG contribution and that didn’t include raising taxes for individual municipal needs. The finance committee reworked the budget to suit the managers’ concerns.

But the larger question remains. Wouldn’t it make more sense to have one municipality and one budget for the same area that serves the State College Area School District. That’s right. The school district has been consolidated since the early 1960s, but that was done by the state legislature, which cannot force consolidation on independent municipalities.

I’m not going to argue that a consolidated community would save money in the aggregate, but it could operate more efficiently and apply regulations consistently. Do we really need 32 elected representatives (versus 9 school board members), five municipal managers (and some have assistants) and seven municipal buildings and three police departments and two fire companies, etc.?

It’s time once again for taxpayers to examine the potential of a consolidated Centre Region.