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It's good to hear that Lock Haven City Council will investigate the feasibility of offering the city's police services to other communities.
Councilmen Jeff Brinker and Doug Byerly brought the idea to council after doing research into the city's attempts at regionalization in 2017.
Taxpayers can be served well -- and better -- through sharing police services, we firmly believe.
It's already happening.
In neighboring counties.
As an example, Tiadaghton Valley Regional Police based in Jersey Shore is even providing "police chief" services to Old Lycoming Township in Lycoming County as Old Lycoming's recently stepped back from the position.
In Clinton County, Mill Hall Borough provides coverage in Castanea and Lamar townships.
Woodward Township provides limited police coverage to neighboring Gallagher Township.
Mill hall, in fact, is investigating that borough providing police services to additional municipalities.
Shared services.
Notice we did not use the word "regionalization."
Sadly, that scares people around here.
But sharing services based on realistic time commitments and reasonable costs makes tremendous economic and common sense.
It could even help with recruiting more cops.
We know municipalities struggle with that at times as the pool of applicants has shrunk.
Officials should not get scared away by any astronomical dollar cost estimates for shared services.
Those studies go the full extent of regionalization.
On the ground, municipalities are contracting limited police services from neighbors at reasonable costs.
It's called local-decision making.
We hope to see the fruits of police regionalization here in the future.