Chautauqua County officials recently decided not to update its 2021 countywide shared services plan, opting instead to reassess the plan this year.

It’s a decision with which we disagree.

Several of the projects in the 2021 plan are nice projects that help local towns and villages share or merge positions, come together to take care of common environmental problems and purchase equipment that benefits multiple municipalities. They are nice projects – but projects that should be wrapping up by now.

In our opinion the county shouldn’t kick the can down the road again on a new shared services plan. In fact, the county should take eye some bigger shared services projects. Rather than smaller projects that may take two or three years to achieve but that also come with smaller benefits, the county should take a serious look at bigger duplications of services between local governments. As the county’s overall population decreases, all of the region’s elected officials should be re-examining the way services are provided. Are taxes being collected as efficiently as possible? Are assessing services provided in the most efficient and fair manner possible? Is it time to examine the way courts are structured throughout Chautauqua County? Can we eliminate some layers of government? Should schools be included in the shared services team?

Shared services isn’t the buzzword it used to be at the state level now that former Gov. Andrew Cuomo is no longer in office. And while Cuomo was often off-base, in our opinion, even a broken clock is right twice a day. And shared services is one area where we believe Cuomo was right.

Chautauqua County would probably look a lot different if we were designing local government from scratch in 2023. We can’t just take a big bottle of whiteout to the municipal maps we’ve had for the past 150 years, but we can use a bigger eraser than we’ve used over the past three years.