LIBERTY — A little over a month remains until the May 5 primary election, and the township’s 2.5-mill police levy remains a pressing matter for its chief, who is making a push at maintaining the department’s strong presence in the community.

Trustees approved placing a 2.5-mill additional police levy on the May 5 ballot at a special meeting in late January, providing the county’s board of elections with its language days later.

The levy would collect an estimated $823,492 per year, according to numbers from Trumbull County Auditor Martha Yoder. Broken down and at the tax rate of 2.5 mills for each $1 of taxable value, the township would bring in $88 for each $100,000 of Yoder’s appraised value.

The levy would be assessed in 2026 and collected the following year.

If passed, the funds will support police staffing, response times to both residential neighborhoods and the Belmont Avenue business corridor, and equipment costs such as body cameras and updated car cameras, as well as patrol vehicles.

Police Chief Ray Buhala said Tuesday township officials first noticed the department was struggling when they had to start taking out banknotes to make payroll a decade ago.

“I know one year in particular, I think it was in 2016, we had to borrow from the fire department fund to make payroll; in 2017, it (the deficit) grew, of course,” Buhala said. “Then in 2018, when (Trustee) Greg Cizmar got in, I think he signed — and he’ll tell you exactly — about a $460,000 bank note just to cover payroll.”

Buhala recalled the department being so depleted that it was in a reactive state.

“We had very little staffing; we didn’t have a very solid investigative unit,” Buhala said.

Buhala said the administration’s introduction of traffic cameras in 2016 and 2017 helped build the department to 21 officers. After switching the program they were operating under to Blue Line Solutions in 2018, the department ran the cameras in a stronger capacity, according to Buhala.

“The federal standards, the mandate per capita per thousand, should put us right around 27 officers,” Buhala said. “But 21, we felt, was a good staffing level to adequately answer the calls for the community that we serve.”

Buhala acknowledges some of the criticism the department has received on social media for seeking a levy after losing the cameras, but said the department has saved taxpayers a decade of possibly paying what they are asking for now.

Buhala said he was against the cameras initially, but his stance changed after becoming a captain, saying the department legitimized it by putting a second car on the road with the camera money.

“If people were driving excessively or reckless, etc., then we’re going to stop them, and we’re going to give them that physical ticket, which we did,” Buhala said. “We stopped somewhere in the neighborhood of 200 to 300 cars per year on Route 11 based on that speed camera observing the violation, and that chase car would go down and make that physical stop.”

Buhala said he gets calls on a near-daily basis about neighborhood speeders and trash in the street, which plays into the value of a proactive department.

“That gives me the ability to have sufficient manpower to both answer calls and then have other officers be proactive and be in the neighborhood (and) stop the speeders, do these things that I’ve had a vision for since I took over,” Buhala said. “The pure fact of being visible out on the streets with marked police cars deters crime and it slows people down.”

Buhala recalled when the department was down officers and had little money, noting it made officers “dejected,” because they were just responding to calls.

“Really the question for this levy is, what kind of police department do you want — do you want a proactive, efficient police department that solves your crimes?” Buhala said. “Or do you want one that just comes and takes your report, and we’ll get there when we can?”

Since the levy went on May’s ballot, police officials have been hosting events to drum up support, like a town hall or “Coffee with a Cop” at local cafes.

Buhala said the department has two more planned, 10 a.m. to noon April 11 at Donahue’s Family Restaurant and May 2 at Jimmy’s Italian Specialties, both on Belmont Avenue.