Suffolk County Executive Bellone Announces Nearly $300,000 Awarded For Shared Services Portal
Suffolk County, NY - December 22, 2017 - Suffolk County Executive Steve Bellone today announced that Suffolk County has received nearly $300,000 in state funding from the New York State Department of State Local Government Efficiency grant program for its regional Shared Services Portal. The grant assists local leaders by helping to identify best practices and implement actions to effectively reduce municipal expenditures, limit the growth in property taxes and increase efficiencies in service delivery.
“The grant we received reaffirms the important work we are doing here in Suffolk County to make it easier for local governments and municipalities to share services and save taxpayers money,” said Suffolk County Executive Bellone. “SuffolkShare has served as a model for other counties across the state and we will continue to work together to provide quality services to all our residents.”
Suffolk County was awarded a total of $299,155 through the 2017 Long Island Regional Economic Development Council. The funding will enable the County to share a services portal technology platform to facilitate shared services with municipal governments County-wide. The platform’s key function is an online marketplace that allows municipalities to list shared services, procure services, and an inter-municipal chat room to identify and compare costs. Training materials and performance measures will be integrated into the Shared Services platform to support resources sharing and collaboration on initiatives.
The Suffolk County Shared Services Plan, SuffolkShare, was unanimously approved in September and is projected to save nearly $37 million over the course of two years among local governments. The plan is a comprehensive 10-point plan that provides a modern inter-municipal framework among participating municipalities to enhance service offerings and improve the ability for local governments to work together to implement and augment their programs and initiatives. The plan includes designing a virtual municipal service store, establishing an intra-county procurement consortium, offering an assortment of inter-municipal services with participating municipalities, and providing a certification function to identify and quality savings achieved by the use of the shared services program. The full plan can be found here.
Earlier this week, Governor Cuomo unveiled his sixth proposal of the 2018 State of the State that would making the County-wide Shared Services Panels permanent. In addition, the State Department of Financial Services will publish guidance and provide technical assistance to local governments that would ease the process of creating health care consortia and provide $225 million statewide to match savings from County-Wide Shared Services Initiative plans.
For more information, residents and municipal employees are encouraged to visit the New York State Department of State Shared Services Initiative website at www.ny.gov/programs/shared-services-initiative.