Rockhills wrangle over police funding

With East Rockhill planning to cut more than $150,000 from the amount it pays each year for Pennridge Regional Police Department coverage, questions are being raised.

“I’d like to know what that does and where we go from there,” Jay Keyser, a member of the West Rockhill Township Board of Supervisors, said at the Oct. 24 Pennridge Regional Police Commission meeting.

For the past four years, the department’s budget has been based on the two partners each making an equal payment of $878,270 per year. The towns also receive an equal number of patrol hours.

Although 2013 municipal budgets haven’t yet been formally presented, East Rockhill officials said during Oct. 9 budget discussions the proposed budget from that township sets the price for police coverage next year at $710,000.

West Rockhill officials said they were anticipating the budget amounts for the police to remain the same and were surprised to read in the Oct. 12 News-Herald about East Rockhill’s change.

Gary Volovnik, chairman of the East Rockhill Township Board of Supervisors and a Pennridge Regional Police Commission member, said East Rockhill officials had ex- pected to discuss it with West Rockhill at the Oct. 24 meeting and apologized that news about the planned move came through the news article.

Volovnik, however, defended the East Rockhill decision, saying the town cannot afford to continue paying what it has been for the police department.

“We just don’t have the money, don’t have it, don’t have it,” Volovnik said.

Cuts have also been made in other parts of the township budget in recent years, he said.

“This is something nobody enjoys, no one, but it is what it is,” Volovnik said.

East Rockhill Township Board of Supervisors member David Nyman said the move shouldn’t come as a surprise.

As he has done previously, Nyman said the number of police incidents in the two towns isn’t equal.

“Look at the numbers,” Nyman said. “There’s far more that take place in West Rockhill than East Rockhill.”

Keyser said he understands the financial issues raised by East Rockhill, but was still shocked and confused by the move away from a 50/50 split in funding the department.

“This is a partnership. This is a joint effort here,” Keyser said.

When the regional department was started by Sellersville and the Rockhills, Nyman said, it was not based on an equal split of the funding between the towns being served. After Sellersville left, East and West Rockhill split the costs evenly, he said, but “maybe it’s time to re-evaluate it.”

The East Rockhill board members said they expect to continue the 50/50 split of the mortgage for the new police station on Ridge Road that the department moved into a year ago. The amount of patrol time, however, is based on the number of police protection units, commonly referred to as PPrs, purchased from the department, they said. Each PPr equals 10 hours of coverage per week.

A proposed department budget for 2013 was scheduled to be discussed at the Oct. 24 meeting, but police Chief David Mettin said there’s now too many questions, including whether an officer who left the department early this year can be replaced or if there will have to be a reduction in the size of the force.

“The two townships need to sit down and discuss what we’re going to do with this department financially,” Mettin said.

“rntil there’s a discussion and a solution, I can’t make up a budget,” he said. “You’re going to have to make a serious decision and you’re going to have to let me know what it is.”

Negotiations are also ongoing for a new contract with the officers. The current contract expires the end of the year.

East Rockhill is now paying $154 per resident each year for its police coverage, Mettin said. The East Rockhill Township website lists a population of 5,706 according to the 2010 census.

This isn’t the first time there have been rifts in the partnership of towns making up the regional department’s coverage area.

Sellersville left the regional department a decade after it was formed and began contracting with Perkasie Borough for police coverage in 2003.

Following that move, East and West Rockhill filed a lawsuit saying Sellersville owed more than $650,000 for costs contractually agreed upon in the former partnership. A Bucks County Court ruled in 2006 that Sellersville owed its former partners $484,739.67, plus interest since the Dec. 31, 2002, end of the partnership. Sellersville appealed to a state appellate court, which agreed with the lower court, and in 2008, Sellersville paid $650,618.37 to the Rockhills.

Both Keyser and Donald Duvall, a West Rockhill Township Board of Supervisors member and chairman of the Pennridge Regional Police Commission, said they had heard from residents concerned about East Rockhill’s decision.

The three East Rockhill Township Board of Supervisors members, Volovnik, Nyman and Jim Nietupski, each said they had not had anyone raise concerns with them over the issue.