Newtown Township's Police Contract With Wrightstown is Flawed

It’s a “sweet deal” for Wrightstown and a bad deal for Newtown.

At a public meeting on Monday, Oct. 3, the Wrightstown Board of Supervisors approved a 10-year contract extension for police protection with Newtown Township. Under terms of the deal, there is an automatic annual 5% increase in what Wrightstown will pay for police protection, which is the same terms as the first 20 years of contracted coverage, officials said.

This contract was passed by the Newtown supervisors at its October 26, 2022, public meeting by a 4-1 vote. I voted “No’ for the reasons outlined below.

The Numbers Don’t Add Up in Newtown’s Favor

According the 2022 Newtown Budget, the yearly fee that Newtown charges Wrightstown for this service is $846,529. Meanwhile, Newtown estimates "Police Services" expenses for 2022 will be $5,926,062.

From 2017 through 2020, an average of 18.6% of Newtown Township Police Department (NTPD) Calls For Service were in Wrightstown.

Also see "WRIGHTSTOWN POLICE SERVICES" in my Notes from the 28 November 2018 BOS Meeting.

A simple analysis based solely on the number of police calls in WT vs NT (as shown above) would suggest that WT should pay $1,219,438 in 2023 based on 18.6% of $6,556,120 in 2023 budgeted Police Services expenses. Meanwhile, Wrightstown fee for police services for 2023 is only $888,855!

Some have argued that the NTPD does not have to deal with serious crimes in Wrightstown as opposed to crime in Newtown. My analysis of YTD police incident data (see the image below) shows that the NTPD responds to similar serious crimes/incidents in Wrightstown as it does in Newtown. Based on this analysis, Wrightstown should have paid $1,072,793 (average 20.1% of total incidents X $5,333,020 in NTPD expenses for 2021). In 2021, Wrightstown actually paid only $806,223!

In 2021, Wrightstown actually paid only $806,223!

Frank McCarron, a resident of Delancey Court, described this as a “sweet deal” for Wrightstown and a bad deal for Newtown. Mr. McCarron – a retired corporate CFO – did a much more sophisticated analysis, which he presented to supervisors at the October 26, 2022, BOS meeting. He focused on the per capita cost*, which is much higher for Newtown than for Wrightstown. See the table below for his analysis based on 2023 budget numbers.

*This is Mr. McCarron’s analysis of the per capita cost to fund the NTPD for Newtown vs. Wrightstown. Access Mr. McCarron’s complete analysis and listen to his comments in the video snippet below.

Mr. McCarron suggested that the BOS should haved tabled this decision until it had an opportunity to review more data, include patrol miles logged by the Newtown Police Department in Newtown versus Wrightstown. Unfortunately, the majority of supervisors were not interested in these data.

My Statement

I made the following statement at the Oct 26 before the BOS voted 4-1 to approve the terms of the extension. I voted “No” for the following reasons:

In my opinion, the proposed contract UNDER FUNDS the Newtown Police Department! The 2023 fee of $888,855, in my opinion, is not sufficient to cover the costs involved. That is not money that is just put away in the bank to earn interest. Services need to be provided and those services cost money. Wrightstown residents are getting those services at much less cost per capita than Newtown residents. That’s just not fair to our taxpayers.

This contract does not take into account current inflation rates, which are nearly 8%. Nor does it take into account the extra costs that are needed to cover Wrightstown. Police Chief Hearn has repeatedly advised us that to do an adequate job of covering the additional territory he would need to increase the number of police officers from the current 32 to 47 – nearly a 50% increase! In addition, the Chief says he needs 4 additional police cars every year due to the extra miles needed to be covered. The price for those cars are increasing at a rate much higher than 5% per year.

In addition, our police department needs a new, modern police building to replace the rundown, inadequate “cottage” currently used. Our police cannot even process arrests at its current location, but must travel to Northampton’s modern facility to do that! Who will pay for this new building that is desperately needed? It will be Newtown taxpayers, and not Wrightstown!

Finally, it is surprising to me that this contract was negotiated without ANY input from us supervisors, who have recently been admonished by the local press to “stay in our lane.” If negotiating contracts that impact our taxpayers is not “staying in our lane,” then I don’t know what is!

Posted on 05 Nov 2022, 01:29 - Category: Police