Macomb's cities band together to save cash

BY PEGGY WALSH-SARNECKI
DETROIT FREE PRESS STAFF WRITER


Sterling Heights, Warren, Utica, Clinton and Shelby townships and Macomb County have formed the Macomb Area Communities for Regional Opportunities to find more and bigger ways to share services -- and save money.

Though all of the communities, which represent half of Macomb County's population, already share some services, they're looking for ways to ramp up savings.

"What we're looking for with MACRO is to take service-sharing to the next level ... where there are greater opportunities for large economies of scale," Sterling Heights City Manager Mark Vanderpool said. Opportunities could include sharing emergency dispatching, libraries, even entire departments -- any place where redundancies could be reduced, he said.

MACRO was formed this month, just before Gov. Rick Snyder announced plans to cut revenue sharing by $100 million. He wants to divide the remaining $200 million according to how well communities share services and how much they cut insurance and retirement costs.

"It's not so much carrot and stick as it is reality," Macomb County Executive Mark Hackel said. "Some of these things we should have been doing all along. Now we're forced to."

"I think we need to take it up to another level," Hackel said.

Most metro communities are sharing services -- "everything from parks to water and sewer to emergency dispatch, maintenance, purchasing, recycling, police and fire protection and engineering and building codes," said Arnold Weinfeld, director of strategic initiatives for the Michigan Municipal League. Westland shares a narcotics team with Wayne, Inkster, Garden City and the Wayne County Sheriff's Office, a high school police officer with Wayne, and an emergency dispatch system with Inkster.

Clinton and Macomb townships share a library. "There would not be a library if we hadn't cooperated," Clinton Township Supervisor Bob Cannon said.

Sterling Heights shares 19 services with nearby communities. It provides 10 services for school districts, partners with seven nonprofit organizations and outsources 11 services that collectively saved $2.7 million.

Warren and several Oakland County communities are discussing sharing fire services, Warren Mayor Jim Fouts said. Fouts is preparing a letter telling Snyder how Warren has complied with his criteria -- so send the revenue-sharing money.
Troy and Shelby Township just completed a deal to share building department services, said Shelby Township Supervisor Rick Stathakis.

"There are many ways we could play off each other, in terms of saving money," Stathakis said. "Really, a lot of us have been saying that for the last year or two."


Source: http://www.freep.com/article/2011022...ther-save-cash