Somerset County
Shared Services 

Office of Emergency Management
In cooperation with the County’s OEM helped coordinate the input of 21 municipalities and 19 school districts in the completion of the Hazardous Mitigation Plan for submittal to FEMA.  By presenting a county-wide plan the burden of developing individual plans for each municipality and county netted savings of an estimated $40,000 per plan.  The unified plan will qualify all participants for federal funding in the event of a natural or man made disaster.

Police Dispatch, 911 Emergency Communications
The County’s OEM provides dispatch or 911 communications for 15 of the 21 municipalities within Somerset.  The system was built and designed to provide complete communications service for the entire county.  The county is currently involved with acquiring software that will allow data from local police departments of any history of specific sites i.e. domestic violence calls, public disturbance, etc., to be shared through their system for responding police officers.

Consolidation of Public Work Facilities & Department
Neighboring towns will be soliciting proposals to study the creation of new public works facility and blending of their Public Works Departments into one work force.  Raritan Borough is in need of a new public works facility with no land appropriate or vacant for the facility to be built.  Somerville has the land and is interested in consolidating workforces to augment skill sets both Public Work Departments can offer each other.  The study is to be completed by the end of 2008.

Green Tool Kit
The Somerset County Business Partnership, with support from the Johnson and Johnson Companies of Somerset County, HSBC Finance, Commerce Bank and AT&T has developed a Green Tool Kit that provides a step by step plan for high performance public buildings.  The Tool Kit can be down loaded at www.greenbuildingtoolkit.com.  The tool kit is being used as a model by the NJ Department of Community Affairs in the creation of a state-wide guideline for new public building construction.

Three Towns One Skate Park
Somerville Borough’s skate park is a popular venue for both skate board and BMX bicycle enthusiasts.  The park experiences an annual maintenance cost of $20,000. A survey of users demonstrated that the two largest non-resident group users were from Bridgewater Township and Raritan Borough.  Through the efforts of the Somerset County Business Partnership a shared maintenance agreement has been developed between Somerville, Bridgewater and Raritan for the skate park.  Annually the two neighbors will support maintenance of the park while Somerville will assess resident park user rates for residents from Bridgewater and Raritan.  

Shared Maintenance Supervision and Workforce and more!
Bedminster Township, the Bedminster Board of Education and the Clarence Dillon Public Library have come to an agreement to combine the supervision of maintenance needs under the Supervisor of Public Works.  The agreement will allow the application of full time and contractual workforces to be assigned to meet the maintenance needs of the three entities.  Example of supervision and shared services include: use of the Board custodial staff to clean the municipal building and the library in the evening after normal business hours; on rainy days in the summer Public Works employees will be directed to support building maintenance of Bedminster School; carpet cleaning, a specialty skill set of the Board’s custodial staff will clean the carpets in the library and the municipal building, all during normally scheduled work hours. 

From the cooperative discussions between the three opportunities for mutual staff training (Right To Know, Sexual Harassment, Lock Out Tag Out, etc) will be offered to each entity.  This will eliminate duplication of training.