BUCKLAND — Several Franklin County towns were awarded hundreds of thousands of dollars in grants Thursday that will help them explore regionalizing their public services.The grants were announced at Buckland Town Hall Thursday afternoon by Lt. Gov. Karyn Polito. Buckland and Shelburne were awarded $200,000 to take steps toward a shared police department; Leyden and Bernardston received $187,000, also to explore sharing policing; and Northfield was awarded $40,000 as it seeks to expand its emergency medical services beyond existing partnerships.
These grants are administered by the state’s Community Compact Cabinet as part of its Efficiency and Regionalization grant program.
Polito said the program shows the power of communities “finding strength in regionalizing and coming together around certain services that must be provided.”
“I’m thrilled we’re here in Buckland and Shelburne to acknowledge your efforts around policing services, to do something unprecedented,” said Polito, who later traveled to Greenfield to discuss downtown revitalization and tour the city’s temporary fire station. “You’re doing something that will be important for other communities like yours to think about doing in their respective communities.”
After the event, Polito said the Efficiency and Regionalization grant program is a “combination” of efforts to “build individual communities” while also creating “good, quality services” at lower costs. She added the goal was to create a program that is “easy to access for rural communities, like the ones you saw today.”
Buckland Selectboard Chair Barry Del Castilho said he was hired by the Franklin Regional Council of Governments (FRCOG) more than a decade ago to explore the regionalization of Buckland and Shelburne’s policing services and he was met with a negative reception. Now, however, he said he sees a chance for the partnership to work out.
“When I heard there was some interest in sharing police services with Buckland, I was both intrigued and skeptical,” he said, “but that interest has grown and borne fruit.”
Addressing Shelburne Selectboard member Andrew Baker directly, Castilho said this is a rare chance to make something happen in their two towns.
“Opportunities to get better services of anything with lower costs are few and far between,” he said. “This is one of those opportunities, so let’s do it, let’s do it, Andrew.”
Shelburne Police Chief Greg Bardwell, who will serve as Buckland’s chief if an inter-municipal agreement is signed, said the new police reform laws mandating increased training for officers will make it “extraordinarily difficult with current budgets to maintain staffing and coverage of our communities,” a sentiment shared by other small-town police chiefs in the county, and this Efficiency and Regionalization grant will help them get over the financial hurdles.
“We are beyond thrilled for the financial support of this project,” Bardwell said. “We are eager to move forward with the next steps ... to show that there’s a possibility for long-term sustainability.”
In Leyden, the situation is different, however. The town’s longtime police chief retired in October and the town assembled a Public Safety Advisory Committee to explore the future of the Leyden Police Department and the rest of its emergency services. Leyden has been working steadily toward a temporary shared policing agreement with neighboring Bernardston over the past several months and, if the trial run is successful, the towns would then explore a permanent agreement.
Leyden will use the grant to work with the University of Massachusetts Boston’s Edward J. Collins Jr. Center for Public Management to develop a feasibility study of sharing its police with Bernardston and to find partners to share emergency medical services.
“We have a long history of sharing things with the town of Bernardston,” said Public Safety Advisory Committee Chair Elizabeth Kidder. “We’re going to be looking at all areas of public safety and how they all have to work together because we may be in a situation after our feasibility study, of working with police in one town, maybe sharing the fire chief with another town.”
In Northfield, EMS Chief Mark Fortier said officials are looking to conduct a feasibility study for regional EMS services. He said their goal is to see what partnerships they could form beyond existing ones, and the funding would go toward the study and the “implementation plan, as well as the facilitation of the necessary agreements.”
After the announcement, Kidder said receiving the grant is a huge boon for Leyden and will help keep the re-envisioning of public safety moving forward as the town works with the Collins Center.
“It couldn’t be more important,” she said. “There’s no way we could do it without the Collins Center’s help.”
Chris Larabee can be reached at clarabee@recorder.com or 413-930-4081.