Twice in recent weeks we’ve seen shared services agreements come to an end.

The first was a note that North Harmony was ending its agreement to share an assessor and code enforcement officer with the town of Busti. Then, it was learned Chautauqua and Mayville are ending a shared code enforcement officer over conduct by Mavyille’s mayor that Chautauqua town officials said is inappropriate.

These aren’t the first times locally driven shared services agreements have come to an end and we’re sure they won’t be the last. But the ebb and flow of these types of agreements makes us wonder what needs to change for some of these municipal shared services agreements to flourish over longer periods of time, because in our view shared services is the only way to provide government services at a fair cost to taxpayers as our overall county population continues to decrease.

We don’t know the specifics of each failed shared service agreement as well as we do what happened with Mayville and Chautauqua, which played out publicly during a recent Chautauqua Town Board meeting. County Executive PJ Wendel signaled an intention in his 2025 State of the County address to focus on additional shared services throughout the county. Wendel said as part of his 2026 budget he wants to build a financial resource and develop a strategy regarding local municipal mergers, consolidations and shared services.

“The purpose of this fund would be to reduce redundancies, thus leading to significant cost savings by streamlining operations and enhancing and eliminating duplicate services,” he said.

But what if money isn’t the only issue that needs to be overcome? If Wendel is serious about shared services – and we don’t doubt his sincerity – then he will have to overcome the non-monetary hurdles that have cropped up with shared services agreements, particularly in assessing and code enforcement, in the past. There’s a reason why these agreements don’t last – and we need to find out why if we’re going to make real headway streamlining our local governments.