Cities are struggling with budget cuts. School districts are dealing with declining enrollment. Anoka County officials grapple with ways to satisfy added demands with a staff extended like rarely before.

Now, these groups may have found a life preserver to escape the economic quagmire -- one another.

After nearly a year of informal discussions, representatives of Anoka County's cities, school districts and county government met last week to embrace a "Cooperation and Collaboration Project" unlike any they've ever attempted. The idea is to pool resources and come up with as many win-win solutions as possible, making sure all the contributors benefit.

For instance, Anoka-Hennepin School District Superintendent Dennis Carlson said school personnel often deal with student depression. At the same time, county officials deal with mental health problems, while city zoning officials make plans that determine who lives where and, ultimately, the demographic makeup of the schools.

"We're all linked," Carlson said. "We need to come up with a strategy. Together."

Share and streamline

The hope is that the various boards will complement one another, rather than duplicating services and ideas that waste dwindling resources, said Rhonda Sivarajah, chairwoman of the Anoka County Board.

"We need to work more efficiently, share equipment, streamline in a way that will benefit the customer," Sivarajah said.

The to-do list includes developing a shared technology plan to be used throughout the county; to share facilities, space and equipment; identify situations that benefit all participants; eliminate service duplication, and balance historic practices and policies.

Right now, officials who attended Wednesday's meeting are "trying to sell the concept" to newly elected officials. The benefits may seem obvious, but getting everyone involved to share a vision isn't always much easier than solving the economic crisis, Blaine City Manager Clark Arneson said.

Loss of identity

"You can call it a turf war," Arneson said. "For some cities, it's difficult to talk about sharing services with your neighbor city.

"Some fear the loss of identity. For others, it's an internal issue: Merging services with a neighboring city means changes -- and not everybody wants to change."

Andover is a city that has embraced working with other servers.

Combining the city center with the YMCA proved a model example of a public-private partnership that benefited all involved. Andover has no police department, but instead contracts with the Anoka County Sheriff's Office for public safety services. Anoka County provides assessment services for the city.

"You can't stick with the status quo and you can't sit on the sidelines, not in these economic times," said Jim Dickinson, Andover's city administrator.

"The problem is, there are issues where there's what we call organizational turf. 'This is ours.' The reality is, someone may say, 'By golly, my tax dollars paid for that vehicle, so what's it doing in Columbia Heights?'

"You've got to work on that attitude and convince all the players that partnership and collaboration is OK, not a bad thing."

Paul Levy • 612-673-4419