VIENNA — With the township’s police chief set to take a step back in the coming months, officials are looking at options for their next police chief and both full and part-time staffing.

The township has open applications for both the chief position and part-time officers, according to Administrative Assistant Stephanie Garito Thursday afternoon, noting incentives for both full and part-time officers, like uniform allowances.

Trustee Phil Pegg said Thursday that they were looking for one or two full-time officers — focusing most of their attention on part-timers.

Trustee Mike Haddle said Darbey was setting himself up to retire in 2026 in a meeting earlier this month, adding that the department had “two paths” — one of which involved finding new officers, which comes with its own challenges.

“I see everyone’s asking for police officers; very few are filling their role. You can see it scrolling through Facebook,” Haddle said. “I think Girard just hired a few.”

Pegg said he spoke with Youngstown State University police academy officials, who had 19 cadets go through the academy — all of whom already had two-year contracts from law enforcement agencies.

“What occurs with the contracts is (that) the municipality or township pays for their schooling, but they (the cadet) must stay with you two years and if they do some other things to add onto it, that can go to five years,” Pegg said. “Depending on how much they spent for college, specialty stuff.”

Trustee Kim Ellis, noting Darbey’s part-time work with Brookfield, asked whether any of their officers have shown interest in coming to Vienna, but he said he hasn’t really asked, as the department only has one other part-timer, who was in his early 70s.

“I think they’re looking. I also work in Champion, and there’s two of us, two or three of us — very little part-timers,” Darbey said.

Haddle said the township needed to expand its search for candidates and new officers, both full- and part-timers, and asked Darbey what his succession plan was.

“There’s a couple of big cases out there right now I would like to finish off; I would like to be finished by September,” Darbey said.

Darbey said he could potentially stay past then, but not as chief, however.

“I want to finish off the couple cases I have that might go past September — they might not, they might, I don’t know,” Darbey said.

Garito said Haddle wanted them to pursue candidates more aggressively, but also pointed out officers in different agencies close to retirement who could come work for the township part-time.

“That’s something too we can look at, that maybe it’s not the younger generation, but maybe if there’s someone close to retirement, they want to ride out a couple of years part-time here at the township — that’s an option,” Garito said. “Maybe hiring investigators that would like to do policing too, that’s another option.”

Garito said being aggressive in pursuing the next cadet classes would also help.

Haddle said he knew consolidating services wasn’t a popular idea, but noted Liberty Township’s contract was still on the table.

“The Liberty contract would cost us a little less than what our levies cost, and would get us 24/7 coverage,” Haddle said. “So it’s still an option that should be looked at, if we want to have viable coverage in the police department moving forward.”

Haddle said it would be “harder and harder” to find officers moving forward, expecting more consolidation, some of which could be forced down on the townships from the state — especially with a push for lower property taxes across the board.

Pegg said last week that the township was running ads in both the paper and on Indeed, adding that they’ve had “numerous responses.”

“We are encouraging officers to come take a look at us; our wages are competitive with other townships,” Pegg said. “We are not competitive with cities and villages, but we are competitive with all our surrounding townships.”

Pegg said officials are hoping to fill the chief position at least a month or two before Darbey retires, so the officer can learn the township’s roads and routines in case they were chosen outside of the township, before they start training as the chief.

Haddle said that person would serve as the assistant chief during that time.

“Financially, we’re okay in a position, but we got to be very, very careful with how many full-time officers we have and part-time officers we have to get,” said Haddle last week. “Everyone wants 24/7 coverage, but that’s hard.”

Haddle maintained his belief that contracting with the Liberty Police Department would be the “best value for taxpayers,” but officials need to see how the search pans out.

“There’s concerns, people are concerned about the policing and the officers — if we did contract out with Liberty, would there be a constant turnover of a different officer every time?” Haddle said. “Things like that, but I think there’s a valid conversation to be had.”

With a renewal police levy on the ballot in November, Haddle said he would hope officials look at things logically, as the goal is to provide the best service at the best value for the taxpayer.

“Most of the levy money is going to go towards labor,” Haddle said. “Again, most of your officers are not going to live in Vienna, so your money’s not staying in your community, no matter what.”