Nazareth mayor tries to bolster police regionalization push

FROM THE MORNING CALL

Nazareth borough spent nearly two hours Monday night debating road construction, policing a church carnival and whether highway employees should be allowed to wear shorts.

(They might get poison ivy, fears went.)

Those are the things a borough council should worry about, Mayor Fred Daugherty said at the end — not managing its police department, which he says has only gobbled budget money and given council members more headaches every day.

But in a presentation Thursday night that reiterated his call to disband Nazareth's force in favor of a regional service, the mayor provided only a rough sketch of a financial picture he says is crippling.

"The facts and the figures that are here," he said. "It shows one trend: The cost of the borough running its own police department is going to consume the borough."

Council voted in June to seek a contract with Colonial Regional Police Department, resurrecting an alliance first sought in the '90s but unthinkable until now. It's raised a chorus of voices both for and against, with some residents saying the savings come at the cost of Nazareth's small-town security.

The bare facts: The police budget, which was $785,785 in 2010, has grown 52 percent since 2005, when it was just under $520,000. Workers' compensation insurance premiums shot up 22.5 percent in the past year alone, largely driven by police claims, Daugherty said.

And if you mix together police payroll, health benefits, FICA matches and workers' compensation payments, the mayor says the cost to put officers on the streets has grown by 110 percent over the last eight years.

But a simple disparity remains: The projected 2011 police budget stands at just over $790,000, while Nazareth has said in writing that it is willing to contract with regional police for $840,000, quite a chunk of change more.

At the same time, while Daugherty paints a picture of a borough on the verge of crisis, the borough actually plans to spend $120,000 less overall in 2011 than it did in 2009.

The police budget hasn't been the only line item to see a growth spurt. Since 2005, the sanitation department budget grew 73 percent; the fire budget grew by 38 percent; and the highway budget grew by 16 percent.

Explaining his reasoning, the mayor says the police budget doesn't include workers' compensation insurance or litigation expenses, which he says have grown dramatically. Those are within the "Miscellaneous" line item, secretary Paul Kokolus said.

But that category has actually fallen 8 percent since 2005.

A fitting prelude to the meeting: Nazareth Police Department Detective Fred Lahovsky requested a grievance hearing on behalf of the police union for a dispute over shift differential pay, which he says the borough hasn't paid since 2009.

http://www.mcall.com/news/local/mc-nazareth-police-budget-mayor-20110630,0,1277495.story