Following a recent shortfall in Harrisville’s 2023 budget, Mayor Gary Hughes said their longtime police department hung in the balance.

Over the last three months, borough council considered solving the shortfall by simply eliminating the department, according to Hughes, but on Monday, May 15, a tentative 2023 budget was unanimously approved with the police department’s funding included. A final vote on the budget is expected to take place Monday, June 19.

The Harrisville Borough Police Department has been a part of the community since at least the 1960s, Hughes said.

“And back in those days, we had one police officer,” Hughes said. “He used his own car, and he had a bubble-light that he’d either put on the dash or on the roof.”

Since then, the department has grown to three officers, outfitted with standard equipment and headquartered at 215 South Main St.

In his 10 years as mayor, Hughes said he has repeatedly reminded the township of the department’s importance.

“If you lose your police department, chances are you will never get it back,” Hughes said.

“If you lose your officers, your equipment, your building, your cars — whatever — to start something over, you couldn’t afford it,” he said. “Look, it’s necessary to have this police department, and if you nix it — if you cut it out — you might as well take your ordinance book and throw it in the fire.”

While council eventually agreed, Hughes said funding challenges are not exclusive to Harrisville’s police.

According to the Pennsylvania Department of Community and Economic Development, “Pennsylvania has more police departments than any other state in the country, and many are too small to provide a full range of police services.”

The state suggests 83% of municipal departments are operating with less than 10 officers.

Recruitment, retention and funding for local police has become another epidemic in its own right — and each municipality in Butler County is confronting and treating its symptoms differently.

Tom Smith, administrator for the Evans City-Seven Fields Regional Police Department, said, prior to the pandemic the regional department was the ideal solution for the two communities.

“I think they work for smaller communities to come together, bring their resources together in a collective manner and provide public safety to the residents,” Smith said. “I think it’s beneficial, it definitely worked and its proof is there in the statistical data for both Evans City and Seven Fields prior to COVID.”

Between 2017 and 2019, the regional department averaged about 577 district court filings per year.

From 2020 to 2022, that number dropped to roughly 205 — a nearly 65% decrease.

In early March, one part-time and two full-time officers resigned from the department, leaving the staff at three full-time officers.

Both municipalities have been reportedly seeking a new policing model to overcome these challenges.

“I think in general, and it’s basically like every other department nationwide, it’s retention and recruitment of police officers — that’s what we’re facing right now,” Smith said.

Hughes agreed.

All three Harrisville police officers are currently part-time, according to Hughes, and consist of a police chief, a sergeant and an officer.

The chief, Jeff Hollidge, is also enrolled full-time in Slippery Rock University’s education department.

“I'll graduate next spring,” Hollidge said. “I’m actually early childhood education, which is pre-K-4 and then also special education, which is up to 12th grade.”

Hollidge said his career change was motivated by the national teacher shortage, and experiencing it firsthand through his wife, Eva, who works in education.

“And, you know, I have two children, ages 6 and 1, and it really scares me not knowing what kind of future my kids, or any other kid, have because of the teacher shortage,” Hollidge said. “Even so, what kind of quality of education are they going to get because of the lack of teachers now?”

Hughes said that Hollidge’s eventual departure will leave a vital role in the department unfilled.

“I don’t look for him to stick around forever, so one of these days that’s going to be a vacancy — and then you’re talking about somebody in the status of being chief,” Hughes said. “And about the only thing you can hope for is to get some recruits out of training centers where guys go to train and school for police work.”

Part of the larger problem too, Hughes said, was money.

“It got to the point where some people were making more money as checkouts at grocery stores or Sheetz or something,” he explained. “They were making more money than some of the police officers in some of the small departments, and that’s not right — you don’t have to put on a bulletproof vest to go to work at Sheetz.”

For the last few years, wages in the department were between $15 and $16 an hour, Hughes said, finally reaching $22.50 in 2022.

“We finally got it up to a decent wage, and that’s how we were able to keep the three that we have,” Hughes said. “Because they had offers in other areas for even more than the final thing that we came up with — but they liked Harrisville, so they stuck around.”

By contrast, full-time officers in the Cranberry Township Police Department make $47.85 at top-rate. Evans City-Seven Fields officers make $28.14 at top-rate.

Of the Harrisville Police Department’s yearly 2022 budget of $69,151, Hughes estimated that about half of it is allocated to officers’ wages. The proposed 2023 budget proposes $89,200 for the police department.

The Evans City-Seven Fields Regional Police Department’s 2023 budget allotted for $969,529, with $491,229 — about 50% — allocated for wages.

But wages are not the only challenge facing local police, Smith added.

“I think we’ve all seen it with the social climate toward law enforcement — whether it’s right or wrong — I think that has probably turned some individuals off from careers in law enforcement,” Smith said. “I think maybe that has to change in our society, we need to really emphasize that it’s an honorable career.”

Despite its size, Harrisville Police Department provides an essential service, not just to Harrisville but also to neighboring Marion Township, according to Hughes.

“That takes in Boyers … and approximately 50 miles of a lot of back roads in Marion Township,” Hughes said.

According to chairman Jason McBride, Marion Township supervisor, the regional agreement came after several years of unsuccessful attempts to form a regional police department in the township.

“It just wasn’t going to work, so what I did, I went outside the perimeter and I spoke first with Harrisville Borough and basically said, ‘Hey, we just want a little more of a police presence,’” McBride said. “The state police have done a wonderful job for us, but it just seems — like every other government entity — it’s challenging.”

Hughes said the borough determined a monetary amount for the officers’ time and affiliated equipment and maintenance costs, and established a contract for patrols in the township.

“At the beginning, we offered them 10 hours a week coverage,” Hughes said. “Now, just recently for the 2023 year, we bumped that up to 15 hours a week.”

The additional hours add up to about 245 hours per month for the officers between the two municipalities, and, according to McBride, costs the Marion about $1,200 per month.

“It’s been wonderful, we’re about a year and half into it, and we could not ask for better,” McBride said.

With the township being a common commuter route to the Iron Mountain storage facility, McBride said their chief concern was speeding, not crime.

“We want it to be safer — there’s a lot of kids walking through the village of Boyers, we wanted people to slow down a little bit and that was our goal,” McBride said. “It’s an investment in the community, it has slowed people down, there’s a police presence and it’s been very well received by the community.”

Within the department’s home borough, Hughes said, the officers cover two major highways — Route 8 and Route 58 — which become a “racetrack” without patrols.

Additionally, he said the police are responsible for overseeing a litany of essential ordinances covering everything from burning to noise to animals.

“There’s a lot of different ordinances that, if we didn’t have police, who knows what the town would look like,” Hughes said.

At the opposite end of the county, Cranberry Township and the Evans City-Seven Fields Regional Police juggle their own unique responsibilities.

While both Cranberry and Evans City-Seven Fields operate 24 hours, seven days a week, the regional police department’s three-person crew — assisted by state police — covers two square miles between Seven Fields and Evans City Boroughs, according to Smith.

Cranberry Township manager Dan Santoro said its department covers 23 square miles — including a major commercial zone — with 30 full-time officers.

“A large retail presence and large traffic corridors generate other types of incidents, right?” Santoro said. “There’s lots of retail theft at retail establishments, and there are certainly lots of traffic incidents on Routes 19 and 228, so those are things you have to take into consideration. It’s not always just a residential population.”

As a larger department, Santoro said the officers also provide a variety of specialties, including crime scene investigation and traffic reconstruction.

“We specialize in different things: drug enforcement and identification, DUI specialty folks,” Santoro said. “All kinds of specialized services that make it a very robust and capable department that can handle a lot of things on their own.”

That level of independence and responsiveness, Hughes said, is one of the things that makes the Harrisville department so essential in the north.

“We’re in the northern part of Butler County, we’re three miles away from Venango County to the north, a mile and a half from the east side of Mercer County,” Hughes said. “So your response time for the state police … is going to be slow.”

While Hughes emphasized that he had the “utmost respect” for the state police, the relative isolation of the region has benefited from a local response over the years.

“If you’ve got your own hometown police, granted they’re part-time, but if they’re on duty and something happens — they’re right here,” Hughes said. “The same with Boyers, we’re not that far.”

He said he hoped the question of the department’s necessity was off the table for the borough.

“Most of the residents in town would agree with the idea: we need police, we want police,” Hughes said. “Don’t even think of getting rid of the police.”

Smith again stressed the importance of recognizing the service and dedication of local police as they confront increasing national challenges.

“Anything in public service — giving back to your fellow citizens — it’s something to be celebrated and embraced,” Smith said.

This story was updated May 24 to reflect the Harrisville Police Department’s yearly 2022 budget of $69,151. The proposed 2023 budget proposes $89,200 for the police department. A previous version of this story said the yearly budget was $69,151 and didn’t include the new proposed budget.