>Readers Skeptical of Shared Services
I grew up and bought my first house in York County Pennsylvania which is made of seventy-two different municipalities from small quaint boroughs where everybody knows everyone else to large urban communities such as Hanover and the City of York. Back in the 1990’s many of the communities were sold on the concept of shared services, most notable regional police as a way to save money and get better service. Though I moved here 15 years ago my family is still lives in the York County community of Glen Rock PA (never knew Glen Rock NJ existed until I moved to Ridgewood!). Both my father and late uncle were very active in the community.
Twenty years later none of the communities has seen the savings that were promised. The large start up costs for professional services (lawyers, financial people, equipment, oversight boards, etc) were funded in exchange for a projected long term savings that never came to pass. No one could ever tell us exactly what they expected us to save, but theorized that shared management, personnel and equipment costs would be lower in the long run. The main regional forces in York County are the Southern Regional Police Department and York Area Regional Police.
Now towns are all fighting with each other over the costs of the regional forces. Each town provides representatives to Police Commissions which is always a local controversy as none of them get along. Towns are rationing hours of police coverage (the amount of hours a police car is actual on patrol in your community), accusing each other of having residents who call the police too often or involving the police in things the other towns don’t want to pay for such as monitoring school traffic or the local gas station where teenagers hang out and get rowdy. The towns are billed based upon hours of patrol coverage and number of calls.
Some of the towns are now considering withdrawal from their regional forces (under the threat of lawsuits from the other towns) and seeking coverage from the State police. The draw back is that the State police respond only to crimes and crashes. They do not enforce local ordinances and will not deal with traffic or parking issues. Their response time is 20 to 40 minutes as opposed to the regional police who can respond to an emergency in 5 or 10 minutes. The two times I have called the police since moving to Ridgewood they were at my door in less than 5 minutes!
