Middletown Examining Merger of Parks Department, Public Works

Middletown officials are again looking into merging a few city departments into single management bodies.

The city's Ordinanace Study Committee met last week to review a pair of proposals to merge the Middletown Public Works Department with the Parks Department, and the city's Recreation Department along with Senior Services.

The first proposal would dissolve the Parks Department title completely, calling the new restructured department just Public Works, and the second proposal would create a newly titled Recreation and Community Services Department.

The committee did not vote on either of the restructuring proposals during its July 16 meeting after an attorney for a City Hall union provided a letter requesting a tabling of the vote so that the union could review the particulars of the idea, according to meeting minutes.

Mayor Dan Drew told The Middletown Press that the two mergers would allow for both consolidation of services and ways for the city to save money. The Press reported that the restructuring recommendation came out of a study conducted by Drew's Task Force on Efficiency in Government.

If both of these mergers went through, then this would signify the second and third major departmental mergers this year.

In May, the Common Council approved the combining of the city's human relations and legal departments. The move drew considerable criticism from Middletown Republicans, who argued the Democratically-controlled council approved a whole new department that could create future conflicts of interest among staff.

The Press article notes how the two Republican members of the council, Joseph Bibisi and Phil Pessina, both of whom voted in favor of the initial mergers in May, were not endorsed by the Middletown Republican Town Committee for re-election this fall.