Oneida County Shared Services Panel Continues to Make Progress

Emergency Services, Information Technology Assessed at Latest Meeting

The Oneida County Shared Services Panel met for the third time this year on Tuesday evening, and discussed several options for the consolidation of public safety and information technology services.

The meeting was once again overseen by Oneida County Executive Anthony J. Picente Jr., and featured presentations delivered to town, village and school district officials by Oneida County Emergency Services Director Kevin Revere and Central Services Director AnneMarie Ambrose.

“I continue to be diligent in the quest to reduce the size of our local government and make it more efficient and cost effective,” Picente said. “These are tenets I have stressed since the day I took office 11 years ago, and I will never relent in the pursuit of that goal. We have made good progress over the years, but there is much more work to be done. I am encouraged by the commitment of our local leaders to this panel and applaud their efforts.”

The next meeting is scheduled to take place in late July, at which time proposed projects can be submitted to the panel.

After months of collaboration between the cities, towns and villages of Oneida County, a county-wide Shared Services Savings Plan was finalized last September that has saved taxpayers more than $160,000 this year and into the future through code enforcement; records management and county-wide purchasing and the consolidations of town courts; youth and recreations services; lighting districts and public works salt storage and production.

In addition to the full panel meetings in 2017, several subcommittee meetings took place during the process, as well as three public hearings at which the plan was presented to residents.

The fiscal year 2018 New York State Budget enacted the County-wide Shared Services Property Tax Savings Plan Law that required the chief executive officer of each of the 57 counties outside of New York City to convene a panel of public officials to develop, publically deliberate and vote upon county-wide shared service savings plans.

The plans submitted in 2017 and 2018 are eligible to receive a match from the state on their net savings.