Mayor Ron Littlefield said this week talks of consolidating police, fire and parks and recreation are ongoing between the city and the county, though there have been no talks face-face between elected bodies.
“There’s many other steps going on,” Mr. Littlefield said.
Mr. Littlefield has made it a priority to try and consolidate city and county governments by the end of his term in 2013. A report leaked out this week that he and the Hamilton County Criminal Court office had been talking of merging those services with the City Court Clerk’s office.
PDF: Interlocal Agreementhttp://media.timesfreepress.com/audio/2010/07/
County officials said this week there have been talks with Mr. Littlefield about mergers, but did not go into specifics about those talks.
Mike Dunne, spokesman for Mayor Claude Ramsey, said Mr. Ramsey would talk about consolidation “where it makes sense.”
“There’s no scheduled discussions at this time,” he said. “They have talked in the past.”
Mr. Littlefield acknowledged the commission and the council have not met or discussed any of the items yet, but said that is more complicated because of sunshine laws.
Commission Chairman Fred Skillern said this week he has not heard one word about any of the talks and that worries him.
“I don’t want the County Commission to be left out and then handed a bill on what it would cost,” he said.
Mr. Skillern said the commission is willing to talk about things like consolidation, but only after a tremendous amount of study that shows there would actually be savings. He said he has heard rumors there would be a push on more consolidation after the county general election on Aug. 5.
He said there’s a lot of questions still unanswered. The county and city has different pension plans, payrolls and even goes so far as the city having take-home cars, which the county does not.
“There’s two retirement systems,” Mr. Skillern said. “That’s a nightmare.”
Mr. Littlefield first broached the idea of consolidation last year during his inauguration speech. Since then, he has talked about it in his State of the City speech and went as far as to say this year he would place the sheriff as police chief after the council decided not to renew the contract with former Police Chief Freeman Cooper.
He has said he thinks negotiating a sales tax agreement next year could lead to the council and commission talking about consolidation.
Councilwoman Deborah Scott, chairwoman of the city committee studying the sales tax pact, said she has a different agenda planned.
She said she does not see consolidation talks coming out in her meetings, which will be used to forge a sales tax agreement between jointly-funded agencies.
“I suppose if you get people together they will talk about many different issues,” she said. “I’m a little more specialized in my thinking.”
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