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Elsewhere in Pennsylvania, Washington County municipalities of McDonald and Midway, along with Robinson and Mount Pleasant townships, are considering regionalizing their police departments into one unit rather than four separate entities.
While we can't say from 220 miles away whether every detail in this proposal has been ironed out to the satisfaction of constituents, we recognize that, more broadly speaking, the pursuit of regionalization is a step Pennsylvanians need to take.
More communities across Pennsylvania need to work on ironing out the details of regionalizing services, or even merging with one another.
Only Texas and Illinois have more municipalities than Pennsylvania. Because the commonwealth does not have unincorporated land that would fall under the control of county government, Pennsylvania is a patchwork of boroughs, cities and townships. These municipalities have a variety of authorities that handle public services like water treatment and hospitals. Then, there's the multiplicity of school districts, each with their own administrative structure.
Taken to its extreme, Allegheny County has the most municipalities of any county in Pennsylvania - a jaw-dropping 130. The smallest is Haysville, with fewer than 100 residents.
Most of these municipalities and school districts were established decades ago, and residents and their elected leaders are often reluctant to merge or consolidate services with other communities because of a perceived loss of identity that would come with it..
David Rusk, a senior fellow at the D.C. Policy Center in Washington, D.C., said at a forum sponsored by Spotlight PA in 2023 that many of Pennsylvania's communities and school districts can be classified as "little boxes" and that "the almost unspoken mission of every little box government and every little box school district is to keep our town or keep our schools just the way they are, for people like us, whoever 'us' happens to be."
If residents can break out of this mentality, it could pay dividends. There would be less reliance on property taxes, bulk purchases could be made at lower costs, services would improve and faltering communities would be stabilized. We believe it would also be a boon to economic development.
We recognize that mergers and consolidations must be a thorough process that allows taxpayers and voters to speak out, to ask questions and voice concerns and a deliberative process where elected officials answer those questions and provide relief to those concerns. We hope that as these communities in Washington County examine the police-services merger, it can serve as a much-needed example for other municipalities.