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Politics & Government

Consolidation Junction, What's Your Function?

In 2011, Whitefish Bay will have three different governmental consolidations on the proverbial table. We'll debate consolidating the Health Department function, the 911-Dispatch function, and a merger with Shorewood's police department.

In 2011, Whitefish Bay will have three different governmental consolidations on the proverbial table. We’ll debate consolidating the Health Department function, the 911-Dispatch function, and a merger with Shorewood’s police department.

Cliché alert: The devil is in the details for all three.

First up is a discussion on merging the Whitefish Bay/Shorewood Health Department with the North Shore Health Department, which is comprised of Bayside, Fox Point, River Hills, Glendale and Brown Deer, where it is located.

Didn’t know we had a health department? That doesn’t surprise me. It’s in the basement of Shorewood’s library. (I’d like to thank many of you for taking the survey I blogged about last week. Within a day, nearly 200 readers had given their input, with most reporting little knowledge of the HD.)

To a large extent, we’ve already gained economies of scale working with Shorewood. We represent about one third of their case load, and are charged proportionately, or about $70,000 per year. Nearly all of the functions of the Health Department are mandated by the State of Wisconsin, so there’s not a lot of wiggle room.

From my observation from my many hours on the Board of Health, I don’t believe most people would even notice a merger, as the Health Department would continue onward with the same (or more) services, with the same (or more) staffing, in the same location in Shorewood (plus Brown Deer's office).

It should be noted: This potential merger would not save a material amount of money for either community. But it would better protect us from future increases and mitigate future mandated service increases.  Indeed, we’ll lose some “local” control, but I think that can be worked out as well, creating a stronger Health Department for all communities.

In my estimation, this merger makes enough sense to continue forward.

The next consolidation is the 911 dispatch center. Currently, dispatch is in the basement of Whitefish Bay Village Hall, and also serves Shorewood and Glendale as well as the North Shore Fire Department. Bayside is pitching a merger with us, plus Fox Point, River Hills and perhaps Brown Deer.

Consolidation is good, right? Usually. The big “but” here, is that a bigger, merged dispatch would require a new dispatch center (in Bayside) to handle all the communities, and at last check of the numbers, would cost Whitefish Bay middle six-figures in the first year. Economies of scale help us save money going forward, but it would take a very long time to save the first dollar after the initial expense, making it far from a financial “no brainer.”  There are of course, intangibles that will also be considered, like better tactical coordination amongst the groups.

Truth is, Whitefish Bay already has solid of economies of scale with our current partnership with Glendale, Shorewood, and the NSFD, as we've already consolidated. Not an easy call.

Finally, at the February 21 Whitefish Bay Village Board meeting, Shorewood will be bringing some form of presentation/proposal to merge police departments. While I have little advance information of what the proposal will suggest, one can assume a large up-front capital start-up cost for new facilities, pushing the break-even point far into the future on any possible cost savings.

Once you delve into the consolidation analyses, you realize the moral of these merger stories is .. there's no low hanging fruit.   It's not as simple as chopping out some administrative people and saving money.  These mergers can come with steep start-up costs, and you need to look far into the future just to break even – which may be good enough, naturally.

And before anyone suggests resisting consolidation on any of these projects could be attributed to some “turf protection” concept...Please. Give me a break.  

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