Now those same municipalities could be forced to pay for the service as a result of a $20.5 million cut in Gov. Jon S. Corzine's proposed budget that targets State Police patrols of rural towns.

According to state Department of Community Affairs Commissioner Joseph Doria, these towns "should have seen it coming."

"This is something the Legislature has been discussing for many years," Doria said Wednesday.

Capt. Al Della Fave, a spokesman for the State Police, said the plan would affect 95 municipalities statewide, including 77 municipalities that depend on the State Police for full-time law enforcement.

The State Police's Troop A, which has eight stations in southern New Jersey, currently patrols 28 municipalities on a full-time basis, Della Fave said.

Acting state Treasurer David Rousseau said the change is occurring because the current setup isn't fair to municipalities whose residents pay taxes to support a local police department.

Rousseau said the rural municipalities will have three choices:

n Pay for State Police coverage.

n Start their own police departments.

n Enter into contract agreements for police coverage with municipalities that have police departments.

Sen. Christopher J. Connors, R-Ocean, Burlington, Atlantic, criticized the plan, calling it "a slippery slope" that could lead to municipalities with their own police departments being charged for State Police coverage.

"The State Police pass through more than just the few municipalities they patrol. They probably drive through every municipality in the state," Connors said. "If they start charging to patrol a few towns where does that road end?"

Connors said the cut would do little help the state's overall financial crisis because it was only a miniscule portion what it costs to fund the State Police.

"What it will do is act as another mechanism to place more of a burden on small municipalities," Connors said.

Charging for State Police coveragewould come on top of the governor's proposal to reduce state aid to municipalities with populations of 10,000 or less. The move is considered one way to force those smaller municipalities to consolidate, thereby possibly reducing local government costs.

One of those municipalities is Folsom, where Mayor Thomas N. Ballistreri said his borough already has joined with neighboring municipalities to investigate creating a regional court system.

"I don't get it. The governor keeps saying he's working to lower property taxes, yet everything he's proposing is making me raise ours," said Ballistreri, who is running for Atlantic County freeholder.

While Ballistreri said each of the three options Rousseau suggested would be financially difficult for his municipality, he said there is one option the borough would not choose.

"I might have to go back to deputizing some of my council members, but I'm not paying for State Police coverage. It's out of the question," Ballistreri said. "The purpose of them being here at all is to protect small towns and now they want to charge them for it. It's ridiculous."

Eagleswood Township Mayor Wayne Thomas has heard the idea pitched in past budgets and was hopeful that it would not get passed again.

"But if that's the direction they go, we'll have no choice but to deal with it," said Thomas, whose municipality is home to a State Police station and environmentally protected areas, including pinelands and wetlands.

"What is important to point out is that a majority of Eagleswood is state and federal land. So if we have to pay for the State Police, we would essentially be paying for them to patrol their own land," he said.

Bass River Township is home to the Bass River State Forest and, like Eagleswood Township, relies on the State Police for protection.

"We haven't had a local purpose tax in quite some time. We've been lucky, but we've also been incredibly frugal," Bass River Township Mayor Richard Bethea said. "But the state's school funding formula already neglects schools in rural areas. And the county taxes keep going up. If taxes have to go up any more, it's going to be like salt in the wound."

When the idea to make rural towns pay for their police coverage was pitched in 2006, the state League of Municipalities estimated it would cost Upper Deerfield Township $806,680.

At that time the league also estimated it would cost towns with full-time State Police patrols about $280 per household.

"Any number they come up with this time will probably be just as hard of a hit," said Upper Deerfield Mayor Ralph Cocove, whose town also has no local purpose tax. "We're getting hit from all sides - school, state, county. Pretty soon people won't be able to afford to live in their homes."

The township had a small police force in the early 1980s, which Cocove said worked well until the state mandated that all officers be full-time.

Now Cocove said is faced with the probability that funding to other programs will have to be cut in order to pay for police again, under either option.

"To tell you the truth," Cocove said, "I don't know if it's possible for us to cut that much."

The area Demitroff, a geologist and climate scientist, now makes his life's work to study is above the 17 trillion-gallon Cohansey aquifer. But it also is home to residents afflicted by rising property taxes and businesses with limited room for development.

Demitroff has amplified concerns initially raised by an environmental group regarding what he says is a recent change to water-pollution levels acceptable in part of the township.

In the Pinelands Preservation Alliance's January newsletter, Richard Bizup laid out the group's fears that a recent change allowing higher levels of nitrate nitrogen to be discharged from septic tanks would sacrifice water quality for the sake of business development and set a bad precedent.

But the town's mayor says the criticism fails to understand how differing standards currently apply to different properties, and how in that context, the town's latest rule is nothing new.

Last year, township officials forwarded an ordinance to the Pinelands Commission, the body that oversees and approves all municipal actions affecting the protected national reserve.

Buena Vista's mayor, Chuck Chiarello, said Sunday that the ordinance - which was approved by the Commission at its January meeting - would allow businesses in a 3/4-mile-wide section of Richland Village to raise the level of nitrogen they dispense on their lots from two to 10 parts per million, while contracting to offset that impact by making part of a parcel of city land free from possible development.

Bizup wrote that this amounted to "trading." The alliance's executive director, Carleton Montgomery, said in a Friday interview he feared what this would mean for the future in the Pinelands. "We are always very worried about the exception which undermines the rule," he said.

A representative from the Pinelands Commission could not be reached Friday for comment regarding the approval.

The issue is a lightning rod for discussion about how to manage water in an area where most homes use individual septic systems and sewers are forbidden in 82 percent of the reserve.

Montgomery said Friday, "We do not believe the loosening of regulations is the direction we should be taking."

But Chiarello said Sunday the ordinance only offers local, and sometimes historic, businesses the chance to survive, in the same way homeowners and developers already can.

The newly approved plan for businesses in Richland - which township officials hope will become the site of an as-yet-uncontracted development of shops - lets businesses contract to earmark part of a 52-acre parcel of city-owned land, which would then remain free of development while the greater levels of nitrogen could be legally emitted on the business site.

Chiarello said Sunday that under previously adopted rules, anyone willing to build a house on less than 3.2 acres could exercise a similar switch, setting aside nearby land that would remain pristine. "That allows them to build a house," he said.

Similarly, he said, developers who planned to build houses in closely placed clusters were able to set aside adjacent land that made up the equivalent of 3.2 acres per home.

Montgomery said that the rising nitrogen and nutrient levels, along with lowering acidity, were contributing to conditions that favored outside species over indigenous ones. He also expressed concern that homes and businesses that operate wells and septic systems would be raising pollutant levels in their own water sources.

Chiarello said that in some cases, those homes also had filtration systems fitted because of their proximity to a polluted, or superfund, site. The wider problem he faced, he said, "as a mayor of a small town in the Pinelands, it's very difficult to be able to offer businesses reasons to stay here, and also to attract people who are new." Under prior regulations, he said, the Richland House, a historic building from the 1920s, could not continue to operate under new ownership as a restaurant because it failed to meet the previous maximum level. "We don't want a business like that to have to close," Chiarello said.

Demitroff said Friday that he could not see the justification for development that, he said, "got around the rules of the Pinelands." He added, however, that at this stage, as a resident, he wanted to avoid his principled objection to the plan descending into negativity. "It's about maintaining the essential character of the area, without jeopardizing its unique environment," he said. "We want to keep this positive."

Mayors from a majority of the towns came away from the Friday night meeting of the Atlantic County Mayors Association with an agreement to act as a body and advocate a joint effort in trying to lessen or even nullify the settlement.

"There was a unified voice among the towns to challenge this and move forward," said Buena Vista Township Mayor Chuck Chiarello, the association's president.

Atlantic County owes more than $5 million of the $34 million settlement approved by the Atlantic City Council in November. The county had tried to start its own appeal, but in December Tax Court Judge Joseph Small ruled that the county is a "pass-through" entity, not a taxing entity, and therefore isn't able to intervene.

Each municipality in the county owes a proportional amount of the settlement, ranging from Egg Harbor Township's share of $466,672 to Corbin City's share of $5,490.

"It may be a small amount per taxpayer," said Chiarello, "but it's an amount we should not bear. If we don't nip this early on, (there could be) subsequent settlements with another casino or another large property. This could happen repeatedly, time and time again."

Chiarello cautioned that the Mayors Association in itself could not launch a challenge - "(We) probably also don't have legal standing as an entity," he said - and that it was the responsibility of each mayor to go back and make the case to the town councils.

"Several other times we've made an effort to get all towns on board to support a situation like this," he said. "But it's not easy getting all the towns to agree. (As to) the money needed to support a legal defense, it's unknown what it will cost to fight this battle."

As is usually the case in such legal matters, one town might take the lead in filing a lawsuit while other towns sign on to it.

"We're working on a plan to ration out the cost in proportion to the size of the community," Chiarello said.

One avenue of appeal, he added, could be the disparity between some original estimates of the size of the settlement - one city-hired consultant originally described $1.65 million as the city's "best case scenario" and $25.82 million as the "worst case scenario" - and the final $34 million number approved by the City Council.

"There's a great distance between those numbers," Chiarello said. "This would bring about a proper examination of it. ... There's a lot of different angles to this."

But another solution recently proposed by Somers Point Councilman Bobby Donovan - dipping into the county's $10 million surplus to offset each town's share - seems to be dead in the water, as far as the Mayors Association is concerned.

"That issue did not become a topic," Chiarello said. "It did not seem to be a practical way to resolve the issue."

Somers Point City Council approved a resolution calling on County Executive Dennis Levinson and the county Freeholders to look into the issue, a copy of which was sent out to every municipality in the county.

Levinson had already gone on record in opposition, while, before Friday's meeting, Galloway Township Mayor Tom Bassford described his reservations about the idea.

"Maybe we could use some of (the surplus)," Bassford said, "but half sounds like a lot. It's never prudent to use half a surplus in one shot. ... The county does a good job with its budget, and (dipping into it) would unfortunately just affect us later down the line. I don't approve of other towns saying what we should do, so I don't want to tell the county what they should do."

To e-mail Steven Lemongello at The Press:

SLemongello@pressofac.com

Atlantic County is required to pay $5,090,097 of the $34 million settlement with Trump Properties.

Each municipality's share:

Absecon: $87,517

Atlantic City*:$1,985,616

Brigantine:$393,473

Buena:$28,019

Buena Vista Township:$51,898

Corbin City$5,940

Egg Harbor City$29,013

Egg Harbor Township$466,762

Estell Manor$18,470

Folsom$16,567

Galloway Township$344,881

Hamilton Township$233,898

Hammonton$131,821

Linwood$109,826

Longport$162,868

Margate$351, 756

Mullica Township$53,134

Northfield$106,540

Pleasantville$106,075

Port Republic$13,509

Somers Point$136,778

Ventnor$243,847

Weymouth Township$11,975

*Figure denotes Atlantic City's contribution towards the county's share of the tax settlement

Buena Vista Township Mayor Chuck Chiarello and South Jersey Industries CEO Edward J. Graham were two of the 10 the Governors' Office announced late Friday afternoon.

Graham could not be reached, but Chiarello, a Democrat, said he was honored.

"It's just about the most important thing that needs to be looked at," he said. I'm very optimistic. I have very high hopes about having input into the process."

Chiarello believes he was asked to join the committee because he asked questions and made suggestions when Corzine met privately with Atlantic County mayors shortly before the governor's public Feb. 7 meeting at Atlantic Cape Community College.

Corzine told them that he could solve state fiscal problems for five years, but he wants to solve them once and for all. The expansive group of business leaders, labor members and local government officials are supposed to discuss Corzine's ideas and report back, said former Republican Atlantic County Sen. Bill Gormley, who was named in the first round of selections.

Also named locally was Trump Entertainment Resorts CEO Mark Juliano, who did not return a call seeking comment.

The group, generally seen as supportive of the governor's proposal, is headed by former U.S. Rep. Bob Franks, who has since been criticized by fellow Republicans. He did not return a call seeking comment.

In a statement, Corzine's office said the group is helping it discuss the proposal with the public. "These individuals recognize the dire financial situation the state faces and have come forward to lend their support and ideas in helping with Gov. Corzine's financial restructuring and debt-reduction initiative," the Governor's Office wrote.

Gormley said the initial group met with Corzine the day before the governor announced the formation of the group. Since then, Gormley said he has talked and debated the ideas but there have been no formal meetings.

He said he expects the group will get together in the days before Corzine's Feb. 26 budget address.

The general public knows he is on the committee, Gormley said. "They'll tell you at Wawa. They'll say, 'What do you think?' And I'll say, 'What do you think?'" Gormley said. "You always get, 'Why aren't they (state officials) doing more to the pension system?"

"I don't think anybody thought he would announce something and everyone would say, 'Yeah!'" Gormley added.

Corzine proposed last month to pay off half of the state's $32 billion debt by turning over the control of the state's toll roads to a non-profit. But this would lead to 50 percent toll hikes in 2010, 2014, 2018 and 2022 with additional cost of living increases.

He also proposed limiting spending, tying future new spending to future new revenue and requiring voters approve all new state debt. Corzine has said he plans to hold meetings in all 21 counties to discuss the plan and solicit ideas.

The highway proposal is not popular with state legislators. Republicans have uniformly opposed it while a number of Democrats, including state Sen. Jeff Van Drew, D-Cape May, Cumberland, Atlantic, say they are not in favor of it. Van Drew plans to announce his proposals at a Monday afternoon press conference.

Toll road opponents criticized the committee as a waste of time. "This is the third ring in the three-ring circus," said former Bogota Mayor Steve Lonegan, who has emerged as one of the proposal's most prominent opponents. "It's all part of an orchestrated move to shove this down the throats of New Jersey taxpayers."

It was a bad sign that so many prominent business leaders were joining the proposal, he said. "This is an example of what happens when big business and big government gets together," Lonegan said. "The little guy gets crushed."

In the meantime, Gormley called the process "fascinating" because it got people discussing the state budget long before the June 30 deadline.

"The public will become even more aware once they make cuts of $2 billion," expected in Corzine's budget address because it will spotlight programs and departments for the first time.

"This is not about arguing with people - it's about what are your ideas and what's your input," Gormley said.