By: Brad Flynn | Published June 7, 2024
The clock struck midnight on July 1, 2018. It was the end of an era with Borough police services as a member of the Colonial Regional Police Department. The Pennsylvania State Police assumed jurisdiction of law enforcement duties. This was after the Borough spent more than 18 months, carefully planning and talking the transition through with residents and ultimately deciding to withdraw from Colonial Regional as a member.
Colonial Regional, an agency born in 1995 from the former Bath Police Department, was created to extend law enforcement duties serving the Borough, Lower Nazareth and Hanover Townships. Bath was a member municipality of Colonial for 22 years.
Bath realized cost savings after the initial dissolution of the Bath Police Department and forming the regional police department. Savings lasted for more than a decade. As Colonial Regional grew, so did its budget.
The business of providing police services is expensive, no matter how you break it down. Staffing positions for 24/7 coverage, equipment, training costs, insurance requirements, pension and employee benefits, it adds up. Roughly 80% of a police departments budget is typically spent on personnel.
Bath’s local economics and budget was difficult to stack up against Lower Nazareth and Hanover Townships. These municipalities have significant area to expand, whereas the Borough is under a square mile in size and had been built out for a number of years. Bath’s total property assessed valuation and tax revenues are much different and lower in comparison to Lower Nazareth and Hanover Townships, making it difficult to keep up with Bath’s own fiscal and capital project needs.
Bath was operating at a level, bringing in enough revenue to keep the lights on, pay minimally for an underdeveloped workforce, providing only minimal public works services, all without any significant plan to complete short and long-term capital projects. During the days as a regional police member, Bath didn’t have enough money set aside to make any significant road repairs.
Bath had to make a tough decision: maintain status quo or head another direction to free up cash without crushing its property tax base.
Council formed a special Police Services Committee that studied a few different options: staying with Regional Police, transitioning from Regional Police to State Police, and even looking at a hybrid model of part-time police coverage from another municipality and State Police. In the end, the committee recommended to the public and Council that the best way forward, financially, was to withdraw its membership from Regional Police and allow the State Police to assume law enforcement duties.
The decision to transition police services by Council was not an easy one. Council was ultimately responsible for changing the course of history, but it did so in a well thought out way with its public a part of every conversation. Most that were close to this issue understood, while not the absolute popular option, it was the right thing to do in light of tremendously difficult financial times.
On July 1, 2018, the Borough began receiving its police services from State Police, at no cost. Going from nearly $435,000 annually as a member of Colonial Regional down to $0. And after five years now, according to a recent study, Bath receives about the same in police services with State Police as it did under Colonial Regional.
The maneuver provided the Borough with instant savings to begin patching an increasingly expense to revenue lopsided General Fund budget. The move providing enhanced public works services and new road reconstruction. The Borough now has a fully established Capital Improvement Fund, something it did not have in the past. The move stabilized expenditures, even against inflation, minimizing future property tax increases.
