NORWICH – There wasn’t any specific mention of Chenango County’s efforts at consolidating government processes or streamlining services in a state report released this week, but it wasn’t because nobody tried.
A two-page description of collaborative joint fuel purchasing strategies and plans to create a county-wide highway services department made its way to the Commission on Local Government Efficiency and Competitiveness. Deputy Director Lori Hethoff said she received the report from the Chenango County Board of Supervisors in June 2007, but no one in county government remembers sending it.
The submission describes the efforts of a community cooperation group that met a three or four times at the Eaton Center begining in late 1996. No action resulted from the multiple converstations between government and business leaders in the county.
The Board of Supervisors adamantly opposed former Governor Eliot Spitzer’s initial request last March for collaborative strategies that could streamline government, and perhaps cut taxpayer costs. And though it did agree to apply for a grant to study the assessment function at the municipal level, the county board did so only reluctantly earlier this month.
A handful of county officials said they recalled attending meetings about community cooperation in 2006 ad 2007, but no one said they submitted the report to the Commission. Commerce Chenango President Maureen Carpenter said it could have originated from the Chamber prior to her tenure there. Several officials representing the city and town of Norwich, North Norwich, the county, DCMO-BOCES and the Chamber of Commerce said they did not submit the report.
Deb Bestwich, from BOCES’ purchasing department, said she attended two meetings at the Eaton Center beginning in late 2006 as an invited guest of the community cooperation group. The meetings addressed how fire companies could participate in joint fuel, tire, gear and office supply purchasing.
“We would have been willing to help with those procurement bids,” she said recently. “But there was a lot of red tape.” Bestwich said after making her presentation, the group discovered there were some roadblocks to standardizing equipment and being able to match state bid fuel contract prices.
Chenango County has a contract with BOCES for food and custodial supplies purchasing.
Department of Public Works Director Randy Gibbon said he had discussed with the Commission the inter-municipal agreements for highway equipment and services already shared, but did not submit a report suggesting a county-wide highway department.
“The towns already do collaborate informally with stone and oiling and plowing for each other,” he said.
Gibbon said he recalled the community cooperation group “spending a lot of time thinking they could make a big fire department out of the whole county.”
“I think people just ran out of time. There was a discussion at one point about county-wide highway department. We talked about it and thought about studying it. But it was so complicated to get there. We are so rural, we would have to have several satellite stations,” he said.
Chairman of the Board of supervisor Richard Decker said he did not know that a report on suggested local collaborations had been submitted to the Commission on behalf of the board.