VIENNA — With money and manpower getting tight for smaller townships, trustees welcomed a neighboring acting chief to talk about what potentially consolidating police services would look like for them.

At Monday’s trustees meeting, Trustee Mike Haddle noted residents passed a 1.1-mill renewal levy during the Nov. 4 general election, and there were several ideas or things the township could do.

Haddle said he’s been approached by two different law enforcement groups and the Trumbull County Sheriff’s Office about potentially contracting with outside agencies.

“Doing a surface cost analysis of it, (the) Trumbull County Sheriff’s Office would be too expensive; Brookfield approached Chief (Brian) Darbey about it, and he put me in contact with them,” Haddle said. “But they’re not on the same court system as us, and there’s things that have passed there.”

Haddle said he spoke with the Liberty Police Department in October, and police officials sent over a package.

“I know some people are not gonna like the idea of contracting with an outside agency; some people are gonna be for it as long as we get the coverage,” Haddle said. “I think it’s at least having that discussion at the township — what we wanna do and how to go forward.”

Haddle introduced Ray Buhala, Liberty’s acting police chief, who said the idea of contracting with other departments came to him in 2020, after speaking with several police chiefs at an FBI National Academy he attended.

While speaking to them, Buhala said he learned the Medina police department was contracting with a neighboring township.

“I thought to myself, ‘Man, that would be nice, to be able to streamline some of these resources, right?'” Buhala said. “I’ve had several conversations with folks from here in the past, and as funds begin to get tighter in both our township and here, it just seemed to be a good time to bring this conversation forward.”

Buhala said the department already staffs 17 officers. Still, they would take on the two full-time officers Vienna already has and hire an additional officer, he added.

“That would staff at least one person seven days, 24 hours a day, here in Vienna. In addition to that, we have two canines; we also have a full-time investigator there,” Buhala said. “We have a full-time guy assigned to the drug task force. All those resources would be yours as well.”

Buhala said an officer will still come and take a police report if a resident’s house gets broken into, but it’ll come with the benefit of on-call detectives and a dedicated investigative unit, which would come out and look into the crime and have the person arrested.

Buhala said Liberty also has dedicated school resource officers — one of which is a retired officer on hybrid assignment, and only works the days schools are in session. Buhala said the officer does a lot of programs too, which was among the package of support Vienna would receive by contracting with Liberty

Buhala guaranteed Vienna trustees and residents that one Liberty police vehicle would be in the township 24 hours a day, seven days a week.

“You will have a representative here at the township, at your monthly meetings, getting the stats, listening to your complaints, addressing those complaints,” Buhala said. “You would call our office no different than you would call here.”

Buhala said Vienna and Liberty also already share a radio frequency and channel, the same reporting system, and the same court, meaning the only thing that would change is the patch on the uniform.

Buhala said the process will still take a “lot more conversation” and buy-in from both sides.

Buhala said that hiring three officers — which would vary in cost based on their status — would cost about $103,000 to $110,000.

As for Vienna’s police resources, such as cars, the police building and assets, some of the vehicles would be offloaded, Haddle said. He said they’ve spoken about a potential credit on other vehicles, such as Darbey’s, which could go to Liberty.

“He (Darbey) would just take a transfer, put different decals on it; a lot of the equipment and stuff like that would transfer over,” Haddle said. “Evidence and everything we have in there, they would come down, take possession of it. They would come down, catalog it with the turnover.”

Haddle said they also would have the option to put other items toward a credit or what Liberty wanted to buy out.

Haddle said the township has to look at its policing situation regardless, adding that Darbey has been trying to find some people, but not as aggressively as they could. Haddle said they also passed the police levy, so they had to jump on hiring regardless — something that will be harder.

“In my mind, we’re going to be constantly chasing the tail, trying to hire people to fill positions, and we’re always going to be against the competition of the next smaller township that just made a pay increase,” Haddle said. “Our guys are going to go work there so they can get a dollar more, and then we pay a dollar more an hour than that, and you’re just constantly chasing your tail on wages and benefits.”

If Vienna were to contract with Liberty for policing, Haddle said the levy funds would be paid out to Liberty as service dues.

“I’m not saying this is what we’re going to do, but it’s worth having a discussion looking at the money and then trying to consolidate a lot of these services across the board,” Haddle said. “I was just talking with (fire) Chief (Gus) Birch; we’re going to have to start doing something with the fire department and consolidate more closely with our neighboring townships. We’re going to have to move in that direction.”