HONESDALE, PA — One man came forward at the October 2 meeting of Honesdale Borough Council to shed light on borough police department history, in hope of lighting a way toward its future.

Former mayor Jack Bishop, also a former councilman, addressed the council during its public comment segment, tracing the borough’s current police department manpower and money shortages to their origin decades ago when he served as councilman. It was back in Main Street’s glory days, when all shops stayed open until 9 p.m. on Friday night and foot traffic on Main Street, especially in the months before Christmas, was heavy.

According to Bishop, it was then that the council recognized a need for increased police presence and, with the help of a generous one-time grant, developed a force to meet it. Bishop said a fellow councilman whispered to him that within a few years the grant money would expire, leaving the borough on the hook for the cost of maintaining those officers.

Fast forward several decades. The grant money has expired, and Main Street shops have been eclipsed by Texas Township mall merchants. Officers who once patrolled Main Street for a few hours on Friday night can now be called to Texas Township at all hours any night. But Texas Township, a municipality outside Honesdale Borough, has declined to contribute toward that protection. Still, Bishop noted that borough residents expect the protection by their police when shopping just outside borough borders.

Police Chief Rick Southerton has also reported routine response to calls from Bethany Borough, less than four miles from Main Street but also outside borough borders. Bishop said it’s time to ask other municipalities to foot their fair share of the bill for local police protection. He likened a regional police force to the type of centralization undertaken when Wayne Highlands School District consolidated several outlying districts into one large school system with many more shared resources than any of the smaller districts could muster alone. A similar consolidation of the sewer authority saw mutual benefits accruing to all parties, said Bishop, urging a meeting of municipal leaders to discuss a regional police force.

Unknown to fellow council members, vice president and safety committee chair Bob Jennings has been exploring another alternative to borough police shortages. He and Southerton met on September 19 with Captain Christopher Paris, commanding officer of Pennsylvania State Police Troop R in Dunmore, to discuss the possibility of the state police providing additional coverage for shifts not covered by Honesdale borough police.

Asked in an October 2 phone interview to comment on that meeting, Paris reiterated the state police mandate: to provide police service to all PA municipalities on an urgent-need basis. “If one call is for a fatal car accident and another is for a barking dog, the accident will get priority.”