"I concur with the Governor’s statement that there are an excessive number of taxing districts, most of which are local governments, in New York State. The vast majority of these governments provide the same level of services to their residents which results in excessive duplication of resources and substantial cost to the taxpayers. As part of an effort to address this problem, Chemung County is now providing all IT and purchasing services for the City of Elmira. We are also working with the City to consolidate our highway departments into a single operation. We recently signed an intermunicipal agreement with the Town of Big Flats to provide administrative and personnel supervision to their highway department. We are also looking at opportunities to share and consolidate engineering and IT functions with the Town. We are offering these same services, including an array of financial and budgetary services, to every municipality in our county. As we move forward, this sharing of services on a county-wide level would substantially lower costs to local taxpayers."