Shared Services Ideas

NYSAC has solicited input from members on potential areas of improvement for shared services. The suggestions we received include the following:

Broome County

• Merger of emergency radio towers
• Project partnering the Broome County Dept. of Social Services and the Binghamton City School District
• Pharmacy Prescription Coalition

 

Cattaraugus County

• Joint procurement and/or coordination of GIS/GPS services with the County
• Joint procurement of professional engineering services
• Joint procurement of building demolition services
• Shared or coordinated Property Tax Assessing
• Joint procurement of Health insurance or participation in the Health Insurance Cooperative
• Participation in a Workers Compensation Cooperative
• Joint procurement of animal control services
• Development/maintenance of a DPW equipment list across municipalities and standardizing calculation of DPW shared services savings
• Consolidating town justice courts
• Shared highway machinery purchases and software-based systems for towns to reserve equipment and avoid conflicting requests
• Shared procurement of natural gas and electric utilities
• Shared procurement of legal counsel

 

Cayuga County

• Consolidating fire departments
• Moving from a town assessor to a county assessor
• Sharing town justices
• Insurance
• Fleet management
• Combining water treatment systems (not possible in six week timeframe)

 

Chautauqua County

• 10 projects are being developed for the county's Municipal Consolidation and Efficiency Competition (MCEC) grant application.
• Storm water management project
• Joint police and court facility
• Consolidation of the towns of Gerry, Charlotte, and village of Sinclairville into one municipal entity
• Merging fire departments

 

Chemung County

• Court consolidation
• Sharing of large highway equipment
• Central HR staff

 

Clinton County

• Combining the Rouses Point village police with the sheriff's dept.
• Centralized assessing
• Tax collection
• Code enforcement
• Dog control
• Snow and ice agreements
• Law enforcement consolidation
• Sewage treatment plant facilities and water

 

Cortland County

• Shared tax collection with schools
• Shared purchasing of office supplies
• Shared accounting services
• Some municipalities may join Tompkins County health consortium
• Consolidated vital statistics (birth/death certificates)                 
• Shared RSPs for road projects

 

Dutchess County

• Shared salt and paving material purchasing
• Motor vehicle repair
• Website development and maintenance
• Shared court facilities
• Drug Task Force efforts
• Municipal solar farms
• Regional project with Dutchess and Ulster counties partnering to expand their Conflict Defender Swap program into Family Court, projected to save nearly $70,000 over the two-year period

 

Erie County                      

• Contracts to maintain grass, fields, and roadsides

 

Essex County

• EMS
• Centralized IT department

 

Fulton County

• Contract tax collection
• Garbage collection
• Integration of the city police departments of Johnstown and Gloversville
• Integration of the fire departments of Johnstown and Gloversville
• County central highway department
• Countywide police force

 

Genesee County

• Assessment services
• Back office IT support
• More inter-jurisdictional courts

 

Greene County

• Consolidated ambulance service
• Shared legal services via county attorney
• Employee trainings
• Broadband expansion via consolidation of cable TV franchises
• Grant writers
• Animal control consolidation and sheltering
• Consolidated street lighting
• Procurement services
• IT services
• Payroll, accounting, fixed asset software management
• Code enforcement
• Property tax collections
• Property assessing services
• Snow plowing service with central school districts
• Road snow plowing, roadside mowing, stripping, signage
• Health care program consortium
• Records management
• Consolidated - unified town/village/county courts systems
• Law enforcement consolidation
• PSAP consolidation
• Libraries
• Water - sewer special district mergers
• Fire dept. consolidations
• General property casualty and liability insurance
• GIS
• Hunting licenses, birth/death certificates
• Parks and rec - programming
• Fleet maintenance

 

Herkimer County

• Highway consolidation with towns
• Public safety sharing between villages (fire, police)
• Purchasing (equipment, etc.)
• Joint health insurance
• Codes and assessment

 

Livingston County

• Justice court consolidation
• Something with health insurance
• Combining fire districts
• Codify/place into IMA form pre-existing shared services grant-writing arrangement with the municipalities

 

Madison County

• Shared courts
• Municipal health insurance
• Shared IT services

 

Montgomery County

• Consolidation of the village and town of Canajoharie
• Shared municipal building in Canajoharie
• Consolidation of court systems
• Consolidation of law enforcement
• Improved electronic records management

 

Oneida County

• Public works
• Codes
• Animal control
• Purchasing
• Courts
• Snow plowing

 

Onondaga County

• Consolidation of busing for schools

 

Ontario County

• Cyber security
• IT services
• Grant writing

 

Orange County

• 911 dispatching
• Assessing
• County takeover of emergency services radio communications

 

Orleans County

• Plans to offer municipalities to share the county’s dispatch services, property assessment and procurement

 

Oswego County

• Shared records center
• Combined health insurance
• Justice court consolidation
• Shared purchasing

 

Putnam County

• Joint purchasing, including energy and insurance
• Shared highway equipment - plowing services
• Shared storage facilities
• Reduce back office administrative overhead

 

Rockland

• Countywide Animal Control Program
• Cooperative purchasing of paper and other items through the Empire State Purchasing Group
• Bulk purchase of LED lighting
• Shared printing through BOCES
• Shared police dispatching
• Formalizing agreements among highway departments
• Joint bids for landscaping and custodial services
• Dissolution and sharing of small village courts

 

Saratoga County

• Bulk purchasing of supplies
• Putting all government retirees into one Medicare pool

 

Schenectady County

• Development of another 15 megawatts of solar farm arrays
• Switch to more efficient municipal lighting systems
• Municipal lighting fund
• Health care cost consortium
• Joint purchasing cooperative

 

Schuyler County

• Tax Collection-Consolidation and/or Privatization
• Centralized Code Enforcement
• Health Insurance Consortium
• Property & Liability Insurance Consortium
• Workers Compensation Consortium
• Consolidated Courts
• Shared PH Emergency Planner (Schuyler, Yates)
• County Wide Enhanced Recycling/Composting/Curbside Pickup
• Joint Purchasing
• Fire Departments - Procurement
• County Wide Law Enforcement Agency / Police Consolidation
• Planning-Economic Development/Grant Writing
• Centralization of Issuance of Licenses – Dog, Birth, Death, Hunting
• Consolidated/Central Board of Assessment Review (Grievance Day)
• Web Hosting
• Shared Water Operator
• Municipal Consolidations
• Regional Wastewater Treatment / Governance

 

Seneca County            

• Consolidated 911, emergency medical response and fire dispatching
• Centralized highway administration and purchasing
• Property and liability insurance consortium
• Consolidated payroll services
• Consolidated website hosting
• Consolidated fleet or vehicle management
• County assessment department
• County tax collection
• County trash pickup
• Reduction of county highway dept.
• County zoning officer with a unified ordinance to enforce
• Dissolution of Seneca Falls, Waterloo and Interlaken police depts.
• Centralized highway depts.
• Dissolution of villages
• Dissolution of towns

 

Steuben County

• Road repair
• Bridge construction
• Mobile work program
• Joint purchasing
• County auction/sale of surplus items
• Joint radio system and broadband communications and consolidation efforts
• Shared public works equipment and personnel
• Shared GIS mapping
• Cooperative purchase for public works materials
• Shared dog control
• Sewer management and operation
• Shared assessor

 

Sullivan County

• Electronic records management
• Police dispatch
• Shared parks administration

 

Suffolk County

• Shared parks administration
• Consolidated dispatch
• IT support services
• Electronic management services
• Sharing recycling services, marine equipment, street sweepers, road resurfacing crews, anti-graffiti trucks, municipal gas pumps, truck cleaning facilities, and senior and youth health care

 

Tioga County

• Accounts Payable – Centralized/Connected
• Fueling Station/Standby Power
• Dog Licensing (Software) – Single Entity
• Police Services – village to town/town to county
• Clerk Services – village to town/town to county
• Court Services – village to town/town to county
• Mitigate Impacts on Services
• Product Purchases
• Training – Centralized
• Health Insurance
• DPW Shared Equipment (including Soil & Water)
• Snow plowing – Duplicate road miles
• Rental of State Equipment to save money
• Towns/County roads and bridges – Identify duplication or efficiency
• IT Services – Centralized/Shared
• Tax Bills (Software)
• Assessments
• Code Enforcement
• Paving – Big Equipment

 

Tompkins County

• A Council of Government Training Academy to provide high-quality training to all local governments in the county.
• Creation and maintenance of a Service Modernization Plan, which would automate several routine paper-intensive tasks.
• Creation and management of a purchasing pool to facilitate lowest-cost acquisition of contemporary financial software for municipalities that want it.
• Acquisition and operation by Tompkins County of a mass notification system available to all municipalities in the county.
• Creation and management of a purchasing pool to facilitate conversion of street lights to high-efficiency LED fixtures for municipalities interested.
• Expansion of the Greater Tompkins County Municipal Health Insurance Consortium in 2018.
• Centralized back office administrative services.
• Centralization of the code enforcement function.
• A collaborative approach to optimize capacity of the Cayuga Heights and City of Ithaca wastewater treatment plants.
• Centralized approach to meet increased storm water management requirements.

 

Ulster County

• Purchasing

 

Wayne County

• District courts
• Countywide assessment
• Digitized records
• Dog control

 

Wyoming County

• Countywide zoning
• Purchasing of electrical transformers and water meters
• IT services
• Schools could share fiscal officers and sports teams
• Sharing equipment
• Green energy
• Consolidated assessing

 

Yates County

• Court consolidation
• Health Insurance
• IT
• HR
• Purchasing
• Justice courts
• Planning
• Highways
• Code enforcement