The penny-wise and pound foolish award of the week goes to Malvern Borough Council. It is being reported by Malvern Patch that they are thinking of ditching their police department.
With all the development they have approved for the future, they will need their police force more than ever. You can’t outsource everything and police and fire are one of those things I feel you just shouldn’t.
It’s like they just don’t want to re-negotiate the contract that expired and would rather just throw these hard-working individuals away who have faithfully served their community as opposed to roling up their sleeves and getting back to work.
When you hear about local governments discussing addled ideas like this, well it makes you want to throw away the local borough council, doesn’t it?
I hope the people of Malvern rally to save those who protect and serve.
The Malvern Police Department could be disbanded and replaced by contractual services of a police department from a nearby municipality. The Borough Council floated the idea at its work session Tuesday night and scheduled a public hearing on April 17 to gather residents’ input.
“Council has considered and wants to consider openly, publicly, the possibility of providing for our police services through an alternative means than our own police department,” council president Woody Van Sciver said.
The borough’s contract with its police officers expired in December, and negotiations have been ongoing to construct a new one.
“We’re questioning whether, as a small-town police force with five full-time officers, we can really provide the complement of police services that we really need,” he said
Contracting out police services is not necessarily penny-wise and pound foolish. Look to Malvern’s neighbor East Goshen that splits costs with Westtown. East Goshen doesn’t maintain it’s own police force as a separate entity yet both municipaities enjoy one of the finer police services in the area. I’m definitely a law and order person but for an area the size of Malvern Borough to maintain a police force of 5 full time officers all by itself must be terribly expensive. I’m no expert but if they can maintain the same level of service and save significantly by sharing costs with another municipality then everybody wins.