“We have an absolute dire need to regionalize our public safety services.”

That was the assessment of City Councilman Vincent Pulizzi during a town hall meeting earlier this year on Home Rule.

Three of the city’s public safety department budgets are more than $20 million.

Bureaus of Police are listed at $11.3 million; Fire, $7.8 million and Codes, $893,301.

“In the past, whenever we inquired about regionalization we were told this is too hard to do,” Pulizzi said.

Jonas Crass, local government policy specialist with the Governor’s Center for Local Government Services, said public safety department budgets are one of the most common pressure points the center has seen for municipalities.

“A lot of times it’s reaching 50 % of their budget,” he said.

There are regionalization studies done at the Governor’s Center that do come in handy, Crass said.

These studies can be done outside the ongoing strategic management planning process, and if there were a Home Rule charter.

“We have a whole team here that looks at regionalization,” he said.

The team has met with the Mayor Derek Slaughter and the administration as well because they’ve alluded to it being a pressure point, Crass said.

“The study can look at your calls for emergency management services. It’ll look at where you’re visiting as well as what compensation you’re getting for it,” Crass said.

It will look at whether that compensation is equitable, and if it is not, he said.

It can give suggestions of what the city can ask a municipality to contribute.

Oftentimes, it’s the larger third-class cities that spearhead a regionalization effort.

“It would not necessarily draw down your forces here, but you could spread them out a little more and get some compensation,” Crass said.

The office is doing a regionalization study in Lycoming County, he noted. A couple of municipalities near the city are going through the study.

Councilman Randy Allison noted that it is a complicated matter, because here there are contracts that are in place.

“The Governor’s Center can look at your current contracts,” Crass said. “They will not retroactively change what’s already been done or pension payouts … but they can suggest that, you know, you can shop around for different insurance providers, if it’s been a while since you’ve looked at different insurance providers.”

The city expects to hear back from Public Financial Management (PFM) in late September. The consultants said they will present several big-ticket ideas on how the city can close a projected 2026 budget deficit of between $3 million to $4.6 million.