Albion Councilman Wants to Call Back Furloughed Police Officers
The people of Albion have been dealing with tax hikes the past few years. In 2015, taxes were hiked by over 100%, and this year, a two mill tax hike was imposed, almost doubling taxes yet again.
In addition to the tax hike, Albion Borough Council decided to cut the number of the town's police officers. Full time officers were reduced from three to only one. Part time officers were reduced from seven to only one. The reduction in officers and the tax hike resulted in $400,000 in additional revenue for the community of about 1500 people.
Last night, borough council increased the part time officer's hours from 20 to 35 hours a week. Councilman Jason Harayda wants to do more. He would like to see some of the officers hired back. He says the town has not been the same since the officers were let go.
"As a councilman and as a resident with young kids, in my opinion, we need more police. We don't have enough public safety right now. Just in the past month, we've had some ATV accidents in the borough we've never had before. We had police to keep people from riding their ATV's in the borough. We've also found some syringes around people's properties and around some of the local grocery stores. We never had that problem before," Harayda said.
Harayda says he favors hiring back police officers, but not with money from a tax increase. He says money can be found within the current budget by switching some spending around.