After enduring more than a decade of failed efforts to tear down or repair 2833 Concord Ave., neighbors were thrilled to see Camden Mayor Dana L. Redd put a legal notice on the house in Cramer Hill house labeling it abandoned.Thursday's ceremonial posting was the first step in what's expected to be a six-month process to turn the deteriorated, light-blue house over to the Cramer Hill Community Development Corp. for rehabilitation.The community group will then sell the house at market value to one of the hundreds of people on the neighborhood's waiting list for housing."I still can't believe it," neighbor Antonio Jimenez said.For six years, he has lived in the house next to the blighted Concord property.The legal posting is part of the process in the state's Abandoned Properties Rehabilitation Act, passed in 2004 and ignored by city officials until this year.More than 30 adults and several schoolchildren turned out for Thursday's ceremonial event to watch Redd post the bright-orange legal notice on the Concord property.

City workers had posted the rest of the notices earlier in the day.Moving Truck Rentals AbbotsfordIn April, Redd announced that Camden's new Business Growth and Development Team would handle all inquiries about vacant properties from interested developers and annoyed neighbors and speed the process of condemning or saving them.Compost Toilet Shredded PaperSo far, the team has received 154 property proposals, all from Cramer Hill community groups. Homes For Sale In Buffalo Grove Il RedfinOf the 91 properties inspected so far, 59 have made the cut to be put on the abandoned-properties list, City Attorney Marc Riondino said.Properties on the list are not occupied or on demolition lists or subject to liens under the Tax Lien Financing Corp.It wasn't until recent years that local groups, such as Camden Churches Organized for People and the Cramer Hill development group, started pushing hard for use of the Abandoned Properties Rehabilitation Act.

The act gives the city power to hold a special tax sale, accelerate foreclosure of tax liens, and use spot-blight eminent domain to turn over properties to entities that will rehabilitate them in accordance with the city's master plan.The Cramer Hill development group hopes to start working on 20 houses from the first batch once it gets clearance from the city Legal Department and Division of Planning and Development."The difficult portion is we haven't been inside these homes yet to see" how extensive the renovations need to be, said Manny Delgado, executive director of the group. Officials estimate each property could cost $100,000 to fix up.The rehabilitated properties will be sold at market value, ranging from $85,000 for a rowhouse to $130,000 for a three-bedroom, single-family house, Delgado said.The group awaits $1 million from the state Neighborhood Revitalization Tax Credit Program to use toward its rehabilitation project.Depending on how much annual funding the group receives, Delgado hopes to fix up about 20 houses a year through the abandoned-properties list pipeline.

However, any developer or resident can submit a plan to the city development team to acquire any of the properties on the list.If all goes according to plan, Delgado and his team will begin working on 2833 Concord and 19 other properties in November."If the building has a roof, we can jump right in" and work through the winter, he said.Faced with tight budgets, many communities across the country are considering regionalizing their police departments, along with other services like firefighting, libraries and schools. Though some governments have rejected the idea for fear of increasing police response time, the police in Camden — population 77,000 — are already so overloaded they no longer respond to property crimes or car accidents that do not involve injuries. The new effort follows a push by New Jersey’s governor, Chris Christie, a Republican, and Democratic leaders in the Legislature to encourage cities and towns to regionalize government services. They maintain that in a new era of government austerity, it is no longer possible for each community to offer a full buffet of government services, especially with a new law prohibiting communities from raising property taxes more than 2 percent a year.

Most municipalities have so far remained committed to local traditions, fearing a loss of community identity, but officials in Camden County say they expect others will soon feel compelled to follow the city’s example.Camden’s budget was $167 million last year, and of that, the budget for the police was $55 million. Yet the city collected only $21 million in property taxes. It has relied on state aid to make up the difference, but the state is turning off the spigot. The city has imposed furloughs, reduced salaries and trash collection, and increased fees. But the businesses the city desperately needs to attract to generate more revenue are scared off by the crime.“We cannot move the city forward unless we address public safety,” the mayor, Dana L. Redd, said. “This is about putting boots on the ground.”Even union officials acknowledge that the contract is rich with expensive provisions. For example, officers earn an additional 4 percent for working a day shift, and an additional 10 percent for the shift starting at 9:30 p.m.

They earn an additional 11 percent for working on a special tactical force or an anticrime patrol. Salaries range from about $47,000 to $81,000 now, not including the shift differentials or additional longevity payments of 3 percent to 11 percent for any officer who has worked five years or more. Officials say they anticipate salaries for the new force will range from $47,000 to $87,000.In 2009, as the economy was putting a freeze on municipal budgets even in well-off communities, the police here secured a pay increase of 3.75 percent.And liberal sick time and family-leave policies have created an unusually high absentee rate: every day, nearly 30 percent of the force does not show up. (A typical rate elsewhere is in the single digits.)“How do I go to the community and say ‘I’m doing everything I can to help you fight crime’ when some of my officers are working better hours than bankers?” the police chief, J. Scott Thomson, asked. Chief Thomson, who is well regarded nationally, is expected to lead the new force.

Though Camden County covers 220 square miles and includes 37 municipalities, the proposal calls for a division focused exclusively on the nine-square-mile city of Camden.Camden, in the shadow of Philadelphia’s glimmering towers, once had a thriving industrial base — a shipyard, Campbell Soup and RCA plants along the waterfront. About 60,000 jobs were lost when those companies moved or shifted them elsewhere.Nearly one in five of its residents is unemployed, and Broadway, once the main shopping strip, is now a canyon of abandoned buildings.The burned-out shell of one house, a landmark built by one of the city’s founding families, has become a drug den. This month, a heroin user there demanded that a passer-by give her some privacy to use it. “Can you show me a little respect?” she said. “I’m in a park.”Camden reorganized its Police Department in 2008 and had a lower homicide rate for two years. Then the recession forced layoffs, reducing the force by about 100 officers.

The city has employed other crime-fighting tactics — surveillance cameras, better lighting, curfews for children — but the number of murders has risen again: at 48 so far this year, it is on pace to break the record, 58.The murder rate so far this year is above 6 people per 10,000. By contrast, New York City’s rate is just over one-third of a person per 10,000 residents.Many of the drug users come to Camden from elsewhere in the county, getting off the light-rail system to buy from the drug markets along what police call Heroin Highway in the neighborhood of North Camden. “That is cocaine, that is heroin, that is crack,” Bryan Morton, a community activist, said recently as he used his car key to flick away empty bags while his 3-year-old daughter played nearby. This summer, Mr. Morton tried to set up the city’s first Little League in 15 years in nearby Pyne Poynt Park. Drug users colonized even the portable toilets set up for the players, littering them with empty glassine drug packets and needle caps.

Like other residents, he is resentful of the police union for making it so prohibitive to hire more officers. “The contract is creating a public safety crisis,” Mr. Morton said. “More officers could change the complexion of this neighborhood.”John Williamson, the president of the Fraternal Order of Police, blamed the city for creating the problems by shifting officers onto patrols, where they receive extra pay, from administrative positions. He said he was open to negotiation but believed that the city simply wanted to get rid of the contract. “They want to go back to a 1930s atmosphere where employees and officers have absolutely no rights to redress bad management and poor working conditions,” he said.Under labor law, the current contract will remain in effect if the new county force hires more than 49 percent of the current officers. So county officials say they will hire fewer than that. Nevertheless, they expect that the new force will eventually become unionized.Officials say that simply adding officers will not make all the difference, given the deep suspicion many residents harbor toward the police.

As the chief and his deputy drove through the Whitman Park neighborhood this month, people sitting on their stoops stood up to shake their fists and shout obscenities at them. When police officers arrested a person suspected of dealing drugs in a house on a narrow street in North Camden last year, residents set upon their cars and freed the prisoner.The new county officers will be brought in 25 at a time, while the existing force is still in place, and trained on neighborhood streets, in the hopes that they can become part of their fabric and regain trust.Ian K. Leonard, a member of the Camden County Board of Freeholders and the state political director for the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers, said he did not blame the union officials who won the provisions. But he said he believed that the contracts were helping to perpetuate the “most dangerous city in America” title that he and others hate.“If you add police, it will give us a fighting chance,” Mr. Leonard said.