Being a region made up of individual cities and towns, many of which trace their roots to well before the Revolutionary War, the idea of consolidating even simple functions does not come easy. But fiscal constraints and common sense have given fresh impetus to such initiatives.
Here's two that ought to be encouraged:
A story in yesterday's Salem News reported on the effort of eight North Shore communities to cooperate in providing inspectional services and other health-related resources.
Too often in the past, the response when a need for services arose was to either hire someone, even if there wasn't enough work to occupy that person full time, or go without. But there's a third and better way — hire someone to do the work in more than one community.
That seems to be the thrust of discussions now taking place among health officials in Salem, Peabody, Danvers, Lynn, Swampscott and Marblehead with the encouragement of a $25,000 state grant. (The city of Beverly and town of Nahant have also expressed interest.)
Gov. Patrick has frequently noted, and we agree, that in the face of declining state aid, there are things cities and towns can do to reduce costs. Sharing the expense of a health inspector, nurse, even a health director, is one.
Peabody Health Director Sharon Cameron, whose leadership has won praise from her own mayor and others, rightly notes that given the fact "this will change the way services are delivered," it's critical that chief executives, boards of health and the public are supportive of any regionalization effort. We're fairly confident that if such an initiative promises improved services at the same or less cost, residents will be on board with those changes.
Earlier in the week, we carried a story about how local police departments are sharing facilities and equipment.
The Salem Police Department recently received a $250,000 federal grant to upgrade its technology and make improvements to the firing range on the top floor of its headquarters.
The range is used to train police officers working not only in Salem, but for the Beverly, Danvers, Hamilton and Wenham police departments, as well as those at Salem State University.
Meanwhile, a new, $40,000 electronic fingerprinting machine — which retired Salem Detective Jim Gauthier, an expert in the field, says is a vast improvement over the old ink-and-paper method — is also being made available to area departments. Not only do the machines produce a better image, but the prints can immediately and easily be matched with those on file here and in other jurisdictions.
We like the attitude of Salem police Chief Paul Tucker, who told our reporter, "Anything that we can do is open to our partners."
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