The York District Herald discusses the ongoing efforts to control spending and taxes in Gloucester County, led by Supervisor Phil Bazzani. Key initiatives identified during a recent strategic retreat include hiring a budget analyst, consolidating departments, and streamlining permitting processes to enhance efficiency and business attraction. Bazzani emphasizes the importance of community involvement and cites Burlington County as a successful model for achieving cost savings without raising taxes.

1. January 15, 2015 A publication for the good citizens of the York District and Gloucester County” Issue No. 2015-1
The York District Herald
After all … It’s Your Tax Money!
Happy New Year!
Strategic
Retreat
When I ran for the Board of Supervisors seat in the York District, I personally visited well over 500 residents and businesses in
Gloucester County to ask what their concerns were. The most common theme from them during my discussions was to help get
spending and taxes under control. I promised that I would introduce citizens’ and businesses ideas, as well as my ow n, to the
Board and County staff and I have done just that. I also promised to develop a newsletter to keep citizens and businesses
abreast of w hat is going in our community and how our government is spending your money.
Since starting this newsletter shortly after I w as elected, I have continually received hundreds of emails, phone calls and
personal visits from the citizens of Gloucester on very important things like taxes, spending, zoning, the highw ay overlay,
business issues, the progress on the reassessment, property issues, animal control, senior citizen concerns, road issues and others
things just to name a few. I personally want to thank each and every one of you for getting involved in your local government
and for communicating with me!
On January 7 and 8, I attended a strategic retreat with the County Administrator (Brenda Garton) and my colleagues to
identify near/long-term initiatives important tothe County’s future growth. Someof the near-term initiatives included:
 Hire a budget analyst to build a budget that identifies department costs from the bottom up. We appropriated monies
for such an individual in April of 2014
 Consolidating departments such as the County’s consolidated transportation facility (schools and County), information
technology,shared services and several other areas
 Hiring a Economic Development Director (previous Director retired) with an aggressive and proven track record of
success to attract new businesses and help existing business to expand with the goal of absorbing the tax base and
provide more county revenue
 Develop a plan and strategy to streamline ordinances to be morein-line w ith StateCode
 Establish a streamlined one-stop permitting and zoning process that gets all commercial zoning/permitting actions
completed w ithin 10 days of receipt
 Take stock in our infrastructure and capital needs and improve them wherenecessary within budget constraints
 Look at various cost alternatives to our jail. The Sheriff was previously tasked in August of 2014 to provide the BOS with this
a cost analysis to determine if we (1) keep things the same, (2) joining a regional jail system or (3) implement a combined
approach
 Evaluate County zoning w ith an emphasis on attracting new business along Route17
 Implement a BOS tracking system that records Board actions and directives to report on each during each Board
meeting
 Develop and implement a strategy to increase and enhance the quality of joint meetings between the Board and
School Board to increase cooperation and joint planning success
Thinking Outside
the Box:
Benchmarking a
Success Story
I read with great interest a recent November article in the National Association of Counties (NACO) newsletter about Burlingt on
County, New Jersey summarizing steps they took to cut taxes and still maintain same-level services to its citizens. After
researching many other cost savings efforts done by other Counties, this is by far the best success story I found!
As a result of their efforts over a 5-year period, they cut county spending by $39 million, cut taxes by $25 million and maintained
or grew county services without increasing taxes, and best of all they were able to provide pay raises for employees! This
happened w hile facing a $6.4 billion reduction in property values. They did it with a $189M budget (population 560,000)
compared to our $130M budget (population 38,000). Read the article by clicking on this button: NACO Article
How did they do it? Well … they decided to reinvent government using a no sacred cows approach w ith the goal of running
the county like a business. Was it easy? Of course not; but according to their County Administrator who was shouldered with
the effort, it was doable. One big step involved consolidating some of the 34 different departments through synergies and
elimination of duplicate effort and major reorganizations – in other words, a lean county government. Working together, the
County Administrator and Board of Supervisors,implemented thesecost saving measures over five years.
So, w hat could all this mean for Gloucester? Together w ith our County Administrator,w e have an opportunity to explore ways
to make our county government more efficient. As Burlington experienced, it won’t be easy and immediate, but I know we, as
a Board working with our County staff, can step-up to the task together using Burlington as an example. I believe we can do
this w ithout raising taxes just as they did. Again,please continue to contact me w ith your input,suggestions and concerns!
Next Scheduled
Meeting
The next scheduled meeting for the Board will be on February 3. Please come out and participate and be a part of the decision
making process!
“Ideasare like rabbits. You get a coupleand learn how to handlethem,and pretty soon you havea dozen.”
John Steinbeck
PHIL BAZZANI – YORK DISTRICT SUPERVISOR