Damminger Named ‘Freeholder of the Year’ by New Jersey Conference of Mayors
Thursday, April 26, 2012
April 26, 2012
(Gloucester County Freeholder Director Robert M. Damminger has been named “Freeholder of the Year” by the New Jersey Conference of Mayors (NJCM). Damminger will be honored at a dinner at 6:00pm on Thursday, April 26 at the Borgata in Atlantic City.
Freeholder Director Damminger said, “I am very flattered to have been chosen by the mayors as Freeholder of the Year. We live in an age where all governments must pull together and knock down imaginary boundaries to deliver the best services to our taxpayers at the lowest possible cost. In Gloucester County we saved our municipalities more than $24 million by providing shared and regionalized services.
Damminger said that the $24 million in savings due to shared services like regionalized EMS, 911 dispatching, countywide tax assessing, stormwater management save the local towns an average of 18 (eighteen) cents on their local tax rate.
“I am very proud of Gloucester County, we do things with an eye on the future,” stated Director Damminger. “We utilize a five-year budget plan and six-year capital expense plan so that we are prepared for almost any situation.”
Earlier this month the Board of Freeholders adopted their 2012 budget represents $3.2 million in spending cuts and a reduction in the amount to be raised by taxation by over $4.1 million.
Since joining the Gloucester County Freeholder Board in 1997, Freeholder Director Damminger has been a part of a team that sought to transform county government and has pushed for shared services and consolidation. He spearheaded an effort to permanently preserve 17,690 acres of farmland and open space. He has helped secure millions in federal and state funding to improve the county’s roads and infrastructure, and has lead the county in a plan to ensure that all of the county’s 90 bridges are structurally sound.
The New Jersey Conference of Mayors was founded in 1963 by a group of leading Mayors who believed their collective voices should be heard in Trenton and Washington. As front-line soldiers in communities across the State, the founding Mayors were interested in each other’s activities and chose to find common ground on issues impacting their residents. NJCM has since become the largest statewide organization in our Nation to exclusively represent the interests of Mayors to the State and Federal Legislatures and Administrations.