As Buckland and Shelburne move closer toward developing a formal agreement to share policing services, town officials are seeking feedback from residents starting with a series of public forums.
The first meeting will take place at Buckland-Shelburne Elementary School on Wednesday, Nov. 16, at 6 p.m. Buckland Selectboard Chair Barry Del Castilho said the first meeting will involve general questions, the second will be about the proposal for a shared system and the third will focus on the budget.
The two police departments also plan to host “coffee with a cop” sessions and increase foot patrol to allow residents to ask questions about the idea of regionalization.
“We want to do outreach beyond public forums,” said Police Chief Greg Bardwell, who has served as chief of both departments since April.
Ultimately, the two towns plan to add a question to their respective Annual Town Meeting warrants next spring asking their residents to support shared policing services.
“We are not the body to make decisions,” Del Castilho said. “We want to know what the public thinks.”
Although there have been talks of combining policing services for about 15 years, this recent interest has come in the wake of Massachusetts police reform laws that removed part-time training and now require all part-time police officers to receive full-time training. Small police departments are facing mass resignations from part-time officers who cannot complete this extra training. This has led many police departments to consider shifting to full-time employees, regionalizing or coming up with another way to compensate for this change.
“The costs of providing police services are likely to go up. The Buckland and Shelburne Selectboards are looking for a way to comply with the law without causing unnecessary cost burdens on their residents, though an increase in cost is still likely,” the two Selectboards wrote in statement about their move to shared policing.
The towns were awarded a $200,000 state grant in March to explore a shared police department. Some of that money has gone toward a contract with the University of Massachusetts Boston’s Edward J. Collins Jr. Center for Public Management, which will guide the towns through a regionalization plan.
Shelburne and Buckland already have shared schools, sewer and water infrastructure, a fire district, senior services, veterans’ services, health services and a building inspector, so shared policing services would represent a next step in the municipalities’ collaboration.
Bella Levavi can be reached at 413-930-4579 or blevavi@recorder.com.