DUBOIS – On Monday night, the Sandy Township Supervisors heard from Ron Stern of police services with the Pennsylvania Department of Community & Economic Development regarding police regionalization.
Stern told the supervisors the commonwealth would cover the costs for a regionalization study.
According to him, the nine-page survey requests information on area demographics, number of officers, amount of service calls, uniform crime stats, if the municipalities have police departments and so forth.
“If you are going into this, you need to be going into it for the right reason,” said Stern.
However, he indicated that any official consolidation of Sandy Township and DuBois City police departments would face a major road block before even completing the regionalization study.
“What’s going to happen is the officers in the city aren’t going to agree to change their pension plan, because it’ll mean they’ll have to work longer,” said Stern.
According to him, Dubois City’s police department currently has Act 205 pensions. DuBois officers can retire at age 50 if they have worked 20 years with the department.
Sandy Township’s police department has Act 600 pensions. Officers must work until age 55 and will only receive their pensions after 25 years of service.
The commonwealth requires all regional police forces to operate with Act 600 pensions. As a result, Stern said city police officers would have to agree to switch to a pension plan that would require an additional five years of service.
He was only aware of one police department that proceeded to switch over, which was the City of Farrell. He noted that Farrell’s police department made the switch due to the city being in economic distress.
About a year ago, Farrell’s police department broke away from its regionalization. “I’m not saying it isn’t doable, but it is going to be very difficult,” said Stern.
Stern still advocated for the regionalization process. He went on to say that: “Regionalization, in my opinion, is the only way police stations are going to survive as municipalities.”
He pointed out the top reason for a police department to be sued was ultimately the lack of training. He said small departments have trouble sending officers for training due to having fewer officers available to protect their jurisdiction.
A federal study has recommended departments with 10 or fewer officers to proceed with consolidation. “Eighty-three percent of all police departments in Pennsylvania have less than 10 officers,” said Stern.
Stern offered as an alternative, if regionalization fails, that DuBois City and Sandy Township create agreements in which joint task forces could be formed instead.