Build more suburban economies of scale

You don't see many big prestige projects being dreamed up by local government these days.

Those generally take a walloping at the polls, as we saw during the April 7 election.

We have, however, been seeing encouraging signs that more and more local government leaders are exercising the same type of frugality that most of us are at home.

In the same way that you and your neighbors might throw some money in a pot and share a great big snowblower instead of each buying a little one that wouldn't do the job, local government has gotten a lot better at noodling out cooperative solutions to big problems.

This is behavior that should be lauded ... and encouraged.

In a story in Tuesday's Daily Herald, staff writer Bob Susnjara wrote about six villages in Lake County banding together to buy a much needed police records management system - one that none of them could buy individually.

The system will be housed in Lake Zurich but also be used by police in Hawthorn Woods, Kildeer, Lindenhurst, Round Lake and Round Lake Beach.

In addition to replacing outmoded systems, it will give these towns the kind of bells and whistles that you ordinarily find in much larger towns: mapping tools, crime analysis and automated case management.

"This collaborative approach is similar to what many communities have been doing; like Lindenhurst, Lake Villa, Fox Lake and others on emergency 9-1-1 dispatching, where we all realize mutual benefit through collaboration versus providing the service on our own," Lindenhurst Village Administrator Matt Formica said.

Lake County, which is home to a number of small towns and school districts, is a perfect breeding ground for achieving economies of scale by working together.

More than three years ago, Libertyville District 70 and Oak Grove District 68 forged a deal to share financial leadership. That's grown to include an art teacher.

District 70 also shares a hearing-impaired itinerant teacher with Gavin District 37 schools.

But this is happening elsewhere in the suburbs, especially in the area of emergency response.

At the beginning of the year, Wheeling began taking 9-1-1 calls for the city of Des Plaines. Either Des Plaines needed to do an expensive overhaul of its outmoded and poorly functioning emergency call center or shut it down and find someone who had the equipment to do it for them.

It's estimated the city will save $4 million over the five-year agreement.

There are so many opportunities to work together, and we encourage more of it to make the best possible use of the money we all budget for property taxes.