“The governor’s always pushing for consolidation,” he said, “and we figured we would take the bull by the horns and not have it be jammed on us. Let’s be proactive.”
Each county will get $150,000 for up to three study grants. If the three Wildwoods get one and they proceed on combining fire and EMS, Byron thinks it could go further to include schools, police and beach maintenance.
“We have three different school districts, which means we have three different superintendents, three different principals — all the way down the line,” he added, “and those guys all make pretty decent salaries.”
Whether his fellow mayors would agree to go that far remains to be seen. The whole shared services idea is a hard sell in much of the state, and previous discussions about it in the Wildwood communities haven’t gotten very far.