BERNARDSTON — Hoping to find an arrangement that could save money, the Bernardston Selectboard and Police Department have revived an old idea of potentially sharing police departments with another adjacent town.
Bernardston Police Chief James Palmeri was tasked by Selectboard Chairman Stanley Garland with researching how such an arrangement might work. The ultimate goal, Palmeri said, is to find a cost savings.
“Everybody seems to want to bring regionalization to the table,” he said. “Obviously in these little towns, it is about cost savings.”
Palmeri said that in his nine years as chief, the Police Department’s budget has increased by about $40,000 to its current $254,751, largely because of additional training to meet state mandates and increasing salaries. Such straining finances led Garland to ask Palmeri to look into sharing departments with another town.
“I think it could be a good thing down the road and could save us money,” Garland said during a recent Selectboard meeting. “I don’t see how we can afford to keep going the way we are in our town.”
Garland said the idea is in the beginning stages and “nothing that’ll be done overnight,” though Palmeri explained the concept is to have one chief who would supervise multiple departments. The police departments in Gill, Northfield and Leyden — the three adjacent towns to Bernardston — would be the most likely departments with which to merge into a regional department.
“In order for things to work, two communities need to be on the same page,” Palmeri said. “It never hurts to look.”
Perhaps, Palmeri wondered, both stations would be maintained and staffed to ensure quick response times. For example, Palmeri said, a response from the Bernardston station at 25 South St. to an accident on Route 2 in Gill would take significantly longer than from the Gill station.
In the next few months, Palmeri will research what staffing levels and equipment two towns would need, what a pay structure might look like, what nearby towns’ limitations and expectations are, where stations or substations might be located, and what sort of cost savings would be involved, if any.
However, this isn’t the first time Bernardston has considered sharing police departments. Palmeri recalled he and Garland attending a conference in Worcester in 2008, when representatives from southern states shared how their towns regionalized their police departments. Shortly after, Recorder archives show the Selectboards of Bernardston and Gill — and later Northfield as well — met to consider sharing a police chief, but implementation didn’t come to fruition.
Tracy Rogers, Northfield selectwoman and Regional Preparedness Program Manager for the Franklin Regional Council of Governments (FRCOG), recalled a 2009 study FRCOG conducted on sharing police departments. She said the study showed regionalizing wouldn’t save money, but would allow departments to have a more professional police force by offering full-time positions shared between towns instead of employing part-time officers and by maintaining consistent training and policies between towns.
“We keep finding that it’s not a matter of saving money, but it’s getting better service for it,” Rogers said, adding that once Gill, Northfield and Bernardston found there wouldn’t be savings, the towns abandoned the idea.
Recorder archives indicate Leverett and Shutesbury considered sharing a police chief in 2005, and Shelburne and Buckland considered consolidation in 2006. In both cases, however, the plans were never completed. Rogers said FRCOG is also currently assisting Heath and Charlemont in discussions of sharing services.
Some of the obstacles to regionalizing, Rogers said, include questions surrounding town identity and involvement, like “What would the police cars say?” or “Who would be responsible for setting department policies?”
Giving up autonomy, particularly through sharing a police chief, has also proven difficult.
“Selectmen always try to support their own chief,” she said. “He’s your neighbor. You’ve probably known him for generations, and to think about eliminating his position for the betterment of other towns, it hurts.”
Given the response in the past, Leyden Police Chief Dan Galvis said he was skeptical the idea would take shape this time around.
“I think it’s something to look into, but the townspeople want their own chief and their own department,” Galvis said, speaking to how Leyden might feel about sharing police departments. “I just don’t foresee it happening … Somewhere down the line it may happen, but I don’t see it happening in the near future.”
Northfield Police Chief Robert Leighton shared Galvis’ skepticism, saying that though sharing police departments is an interesting concept, he couldn’t imagine a new study would result in different findings. Northfield, he continued, as the largest town involved, would have the least to gain through sharing departments.
“I think that every possible angle of this has been discussed and been analyzed,” Leighton said.
Reach Shelby Ashline at:
sashline@recorder.com
413-772-0261 ext. 257