Some residents of Jack's Trailer Park in Buffalo Township get an "A" in crime fighting for helping police solve burglaries carried out apparently by another resident of the mobile home park.

They cornered the suspect when he returned home and, although he briefly escaped what has been described as a citizen dragnet, he nevertheless was apprehended two streets away. According to police, the suspect, Douglas W. Clark, 27, subsequently confessed to the burglaries and led police to most of what was stolen.

Doing what the park's residents did to apprehend the suspect can sometimes be very dangerous. Citizens often are advised to let police do the police work.

Nevertheless, the residents merit praise for the way they worked together to apprehend Clark. Their quick response perhaps cost Clark the opportunity to dispose of stolen items that were recovered from his mobile home — disposal that would have made it more difficult to build a case against him.

Slippery Rock University President Robert Smith is right in reaching out to students regarding the financial pressures that are and will be affecting the university.A total of three workshops will be held — the first was held Wednesday evening — to explain the challenges facing not only Slippery Rock but all of the 14 state-owned universities.At the conclusion of the three presentations, SRU will launch a new Web site on which people will be able to post ideas and suggestions for making cuts, saving money and increasing revenue.Suggestions can be posted anonymously.Only about 25 students and faculty members attended the first workshop. That figure is much lower than it should have been.Hopefully, information that spreads over the campus resulting from that meeting will generate more interest in attending the subsquent workshops, followed by reflection and suggestions by way of the Web site on ways the university can more effectively deal with financial challenges.There's a $5 million shortfall in SRU's budget for the current academic year, and it is feared the university could be facing a $9 million budget hole next year.All members of the university community must be kept up to date on the situation. Fortunately, the university is off to a good start in doing that.

The Buffalo Township Board of Supervisors wouldn't have found itself in the middle of two neighbors' junk-car dispute Wednesday if the board had carried out its responsibility from the start.In regard to Cole Road resident Gary Smith's 55 junk vehicles parked on his land, the board failed to enforce the township's nuisance ordinance, and that failure caught the municipal leaders in the middle of the controversy.On the one hand, Chris Blattenberger threatened to sue the township for its lack of ordinance enforcement, followed by Smith threatening to sue the township if officials didn't work with him on a reasonable time frame for the vehicles' removal.The bottom line is that township officials have been wrong in not enforcing the ordinance in question all along.If a municipality has no desire to enforce one of its laws, it should repeal it.Residents can only ponder what would happen if Buffalo officials were to remove the nuisance law from the township's books.Fortunately for Buffalo Township, Supervisor Dan Przybylek, board chairman, took the lead on trying to reach an accord involving all concerned, and eventually persuaded his colleagues and Blattenberger to accept a timetable in which Smith would remove several cars this month followed by six more each subsequent month until all of the vehicles are gone.Przybylek stressed the importance of a compromise to keep the township out of court.That was a good strategy, since the township might have had a tough time explaining to a judge why the township didn't enforce the law — obviously for a lengthy period of time.Buffalo Township isn't the first municipality causing itself a headache by ignoring a responsibility; no doubt there will be others.But hopefully Buffalo officials from now on will take seriously their responsibility to ensure ordinance compliance by all. If not, sometime in the future they might not be able to avoid a court appearance.