Officials weigh in on potential merger of Syracuse, Onondaga County

More than 80 community members — about one-quarter of them standing behind the mostly filled five rows of folding chairs — gathered inside the Southwest Community Center in Syracuse on a Monday night.

Attendees of the Feb. 8 town hall meeting were fixated on a projected screen displaying the state of municipal operations in the Syracuse-Onondaga County area. The area includes 19 town courts and nine village courts that are funded locally and, in 2013, cost taxpayers $18.3 million. The average deficit of court operations in the area adds up to $54,000 with a cumulative total of $1.4 million.

Melanie Littlejohn, a representative from the citizen group Consensus, presented a PowerPoint slide to seek feedback about a report the group released in January that made a controversial recommendation: merging the city of Syracuse and Onondaga County.

The group, composed of legislators and community members, issued “Options Report and Preliminary Committee Recommendations” in late January. In it the group recommended creating a new city-county government that would allow towns and villages to “opt-in” to the new government. The 83-page report also listed challenges and made 51 recommendations on five different categories: infrastructure, public safety, municipal operations, economic development and governance.

Some of the recommendations include consolidation of the Syracuse Police Department and the Onondaga County Sheriff’s Office, unification of village and town courts to establish a regional court system and development of purchasing and training agreements.

Since the release of the report, Consensus has held town hall meetings both in and outside Syracuse to explain what is in the report and solicit feedback from community members.

Zach Barlow | Asst. Photo Editor

At the Feb. 8 meeting, some community members in the audience expressed deep concerns about whether the consolidation would generate any benefit to the community.

“How is the consolidation of libraries actually helping and having benefits of Syracuse and its surrounding areas?” a woman asked.

“The idea of saving a couple hundred dollars and merging a county system doesn’t mean all that much … the big issues are economy, poverty and jobs,” a man said.

Another man said the merger would diminish the power to represent Syracuse, adding that the people in the city would suffer.

Yusuf Abdul-Qadir, an attendee and director of New York Civil Liberties Union, said that while he agrees with some recommendations and disagrees with others, his main critique of the commission’s report is that it does not address specifically or explicitly the issues of Syracuse’s high concentration of poverty among minority groups.

“If we do not frame every solution we have from the lens of that, then I think we are doing a disservice,” Abdul-Qadir said. “But that being said, I think we need to talk about what the vision for our communities moving forward. If we are talking about consolidation, then what will it look like and we as a community need to be pushing forward what that will look like.”

Data from the United States Census Bureau shows 34.6 percent of the population in Syracuse lived below the poverty level between 2009 and 2013. Syracuse also has the highest rates of poverty among blacks and Hispanics in the U.S.

Syracuse’s progress report in economic development has been in the lower ranks.

The Brookings Institution, a Washington, D.C.-based think tank, released a report in January that ranked several economic characteristics of the U.S.’s 100 largest metro areas from 2009 to 2014. The institution ranked Syracuse 95th in economic growth, 57th in prosperity and 86th in inclusion among the 100 largest metro areas . Economic inclusion is a measure of whether the economic growth raises standards of living for all people, according to the report.

William Coplin, the director of the public affairs program in the Maxwell School of Citizenship and Public Affairs at Syracuse University, said he is unsure whether the merger would be successful.

The Consensus report highlighted local governments that spend more than $100 million on “redundant” services overlapping between Syracuse and Onondaga County. According to the report, 20 out of 35 towns and villages within the county “could be in a deficit” in the next decade.

Minchin Lewis, an adjunct professor of public administration and international affairs in the Maxwell School, said the individual governments in the county are not fiscally sustainable.

He also warned that unless the city of Syracuse does something dramatically different in resolving the fiscal situation, the state will appoint a financial control board for the city.

The plan in the report, Lewis said, is successful in terms of gathering community input.

“The report starts with the statement of what the need is, and the need basically is the fact that there has not been any economic development over the past 40 years, and secondly that our local governments are facing uncertain future,” Lewis said.

By bridging overlapping administrative services, according to the report, government spending can be reduced by as much as $20 million immediately.

Onondaga County Executive Joanie Mahoney said at an early February civic event that the general concerns from those opposing the consolidation are that they do not want to pay for the city.

She pointed out, though, that in the $192 million city budget, almost $85 million derives from county sales tax — while $34 million is from city property tax and $75 million is from state unrestricted aid to municipalities.

“If you are a county resident — whether you live in a city or outside of the city — you have a lot of your tax dollars inside the city budget right now,” Mahoney said.

The Consensus report, however, does not provide a blueprint as to what a potentially merged government would look like and how it will be created.

David Rubin, dean emeritus and professor of communications in the S.I. Newhouse School of Public Communications, said he sees the report as an attempt to get central New Yorkers to think about and embrace changes.

Rubin added that the merging would be exceedingly difficult under the current New York state legal system.

Luke Rafferty | Staff Photographer

Bea González, a member of Consensus and dean of SU’s University College, said the discussion regarding potential consolidation is about modernizing government. She added that the merger is merely one solution instead of the solution.

Even if a legal framework for the consolidation were prepared, a path toward realization may remain steep.

For example, the city of Buffalo and Erie County in New York state sought to possibility merge in 2005. The initiative crumbled before any legislation was voted on, according to Syracuse.com.

A merger between the city of Louisville and Jefferson County in Kentucky took three attempts in referendums — in 1956, 1982 and 1983 — before approved through a referendum in 2000.

Linda Ervin, floor leader and representative for the 17th district in the Onondaga County Legislature, said people are afraid of the idea of the consolidation because they don’t know what is taking place and think it will happen overnight, with them being left out.

Ervin added that although she does not know what the new government structure would look like, she expects there should be some changes in a government structure within a decade.

Littlejohn, a representative from Consensus, said feedback from the town hall meetings will be factored into the final report — which is expected to be published some time in late April or early May — and future discussions on the merger.

The next town hall meeting about the potential merger led by Consensus will be Feb. 29 at the Southwest Community Center at 6 p.m.

Community input for the preliminary report will be accepted until March 16.