Tiny Towns in N.J. May Have to Merge

New Jersey's plethora of incorporated municipalities -- 566 in total -- is a common feature of the Northeast. "It's just something that has evolved from colonial times," said William G. Dressel Jr., executive director of the New Jersey State League of Municipalities (and no relation to the Moonachie mayor). "People like that sense of community. They like their sense of home town. Bigger does not mean better."

The towns and boroughs all have a mayor and a council, a municipal building, a fire station (usually staffed by volunteers), an elementary school with a principal, and a handful of police officers with the name of the borough inscribed on the side of the car. They put on their own Fourth of July parades, with school bands and firetrucks rolling down the main streets.

Many are suburban bedroom communities, for New York in northern New Jersey, or Philadelphia in the south.

That sense of smallness is what longtime New Jersey residents like and why so many stay close to the town where they were born.

"It's the small-town atmosphere," said Jack Nagel, who runs a shop in Moonachie printing promotional logos and slogans on T-shirts, cups, bumper stickers and just about anything else. "People in Moonachie are very comfortable with the police department. We know the mayor and council members." He added, "The fear of losing that small-town identity is greater than the savings that would be found."

That fear, and anger at not being consulted in advance, seem to be stoking the opposition to the merger plan. The governor is facing no less than a revolt of the small towns. At stake, say the small-town boosters, is a tradition, a way of life and the very definition of democracy, which at its best should be the government that is closest to the people.

"We're not a town; we're a home town," said Edward G. Campbell III, the mayor of Gibbsboro, with 2,500 people and 840 homes on 2.2 square miles. "Home rule is deeply rooted in New Jersey."

Campbell cited several examples of how small boroughs can be more cost-effective than bigger towns. Gibbsboro pays a single trash collector $10 an hour for garbage collection and shoulders no costs for health insurance or a pension. It hires police officers straight out of the state academy and pays them $12.50 an hour; they usually stay two years in the borough to get on-the-job experience before moving on. The borough has no sewer utility worker; instead, it made arrangements with an area plumber to do repairs, and every resident has his phone number.

Some mayors are angry because they said they are already cooperating with their neighboring towns, and now the threatened aid cutoff to the smallest jurisdictions may disrupt those ongoing agreements.

The borough of Collingswood, for example, has an agreement with tiny Woodlynne nearby to provide police protection and to let Woodlynne students go to its high school. But if Woodlynne, with 2,700 residents, loses its state aid, the hamlet would not have any money to reimburse Collingswood, so the services would have to stop.

"They've dropped a house on us," said Collingswood Mayor James Maley, a lawyer. For the smallest towns facing cuts, he said, it "just makes these towns destitute."

The battle has prompted some gallows humor. A blog called "New Jersey: Politics Unusual" speculated on possible new names for merged towns. For example, if Hillsdale, Mount Airy and Clinton merged, they could rename their new town "Hillary Clinton." And Ho-Ho-Kus could merge with Hoboken and become "Ho-Ho-Ho."