Apparently our former mayor Joe Doria is leading an "effort" to consolidate small towns.

A column in Today's JJ speculates about "BayCity" and quotes Trenton Joe who will use state aid as the "carrot".

Without bonding or some big development moves now, Bayonne will be a "distressed city" and need that carrot.

Quote from the column:

"Merging municipalities is something that Gov. Jon Corzine would love to see happen among many of the state's smallest burgs. Department of Community Affairs Commissioner Joseph Doria said: "The effort is to make them more efficient and move toward consolidation. The incentives are: We have the grants for shared services and working toward consolidation. That's the carrot. The stick is not receiving the aid." Could this work in Hudson County, regardless of a town's size? The feeling here is that one interesting consolidation could be Weehawken and its neighbor, Hoboken. There would be a nice continuous waterfront community. Let's call it Weeboken. Weeboken would have one board of education, planning panel, police force, shared recreational facilities and parks, and, of course, one local governing body and mayor. Think of the other possibilities. Can you guess which municipalities would be involved if, hypothetically, mergers created the new communities of Bay City and Westberg?"

Full article:

http://www.nj.com/columns/jjournal/i...amp;thispage=3

KingBayRat