According to Jenkintown Borough officials, the future of the Jenkintown Police Department is uncertain due to financial concerns.
Glenside Local received a tip earlier this week involving a proposal from a communications firm which outlined a public relations strategy if and when Jenkintown made a decision to dissolve its police department and contract with a neighboring police force.
Jenkintown’s borough council voted during a July 2023 public meeting to contract with Bellevue Communication, the public relations firm that had submitted the proposal. The agenda shows that the contract was “to provide professional consulting and communications services,” and the minutes and video from the meeting show that there was no explanation about the contract or questions. The vote was 8-0 (there were four council members absent).
Council President Jay Conners told Glenside Local that the borough began privately considering contracting out its police services during the spring of 2023. The Abington Township Police Department was at the top of the list, though no actions beyond temporarily hiring a public relations firm have been taken since those initial conversations. The contract with the firm concluded before the end of the 2023.
“We wanted to take it seriously. We wanted them to assist us in the best way to communicate to the public in case we decided to move forward,” Conners said.
On Wednesday, February 7th, Borough Manager George Locke released the following statement intended for media outlets:
As part of our continuing commitment to provide the very highest quality public safety services to the residents of Jenkintown, the Borough engaged the services of a strategic communications firm last summer to assist us in reviewing a variety of options and how best to present them publicly if we chose to go forward with them. That work was completed in the fall, and the contract in question ended. To be clear, at the current time there has been no decision to go forward on this issue, but the challenges still exist such as the cost of the current public safety system and its sustainability over the long term. For this reason, in the future, the Borough will continue to explore all options to provide public safety services at an affordable cost.
Locke also released the following clarification to the above statement:
The Borough Council has an obligation to examine all options for providing the very best police services in a cost-effective manner, and we will continue to do so. We have not made any decisions about how we will go forward on this issue, nor would we without first inviting residents to a public meeting for a full and open discussion about it.
To gain more clarity on the issue, GlensideLocal.com asked all members of the borough council the following questions.
- Was the dissolution of the police department and contracting with another police force one of the recommendations from the W.R. Smeal report from 2020?
- When has/have the potential dissolution of the police force and potential contracting of another police force been discussed in a public meeting?
- In July 2023, the council voted to hire Bellevue for communication services. Why was it not stated what the need for this service was? How much was the contract for?
- In the borough’s February 7th statement (quoted above), it states that no decision has been made to move forward. When, by who, and where was this decision made?
Council President Conners responded with the following:
In response, I would simply say that Council continues to explore all options to provide high-quality police services in a cost-effective manner as part of its obligation to serve the best interests of Borough taxpayers. We engaged the Bellevue firm for two months to help us think through some of these options and how we would discuss them if the Borough decided to go forward. We did not deliberate about or make any decisions about going forward, but as we said, the challenges remain – the Borough cannot sustain the current cost of police services over the long term absent a significant local tax hike or the implementation of an affordable police contract. So we must and we will continue to consider all reasonable options.
In a subsequent phone interview, Conners emphasized that no talks or negotiations with neighboring police departments have taken place as of yet.
“We were just seeing what it would look like as part of our fiduciary responsibility to save our taxpayers money and provide them with essential services,” he said. “When you’re talking about contracting, one department dissolves into the other. There was never a talk or a negotiation with another municipality.”
Conners noted that conversations regarding the future of the Jenkintown Police Department will continue, though no exact timeline on its eventual dissolution is available at this time.
“Our police department just isn’t financially sustainable over the next 5-10 years,” he said.
Kevin Tierney contributed to this article.
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Photo: Jenkintown Police Department