This story by Corey McDonald first appeared in The Citizen on April 20.
Hinesburg has agreed to provide on-call police services for Richmond as part of an inter-municipal agreement between the two neighboring towns to assist the Richmond department, which is struggling to provide coverage with only two cops on hand.
The agreement, approved at last week’s selectboard meeting, allows for Richmond to make an advance request for a Hinesburg officer to respond to calls from Richmond at a rate of $50 an hour, but only when the Hinesburg department has the staffing bandwidth to do so.
“We’re only going to provide coverage when we’re able to — when we have more than one officer on,” Hinesburg police chief Anthony Cambridge said. “If our numbers are too low, or we’re too busy at the time, we’re not going to provide coverage, so it’ll be on a limited basis.”
Richmond may also request that Hinesburg officer patrol the town at a rate of $70 an hour.
The department in neighboring Richmond currently only has two available officers on hand, each of whom “are basically kind of working opposite days, just to make sure that there’s someone here each day,” according to Richmond’s town manager Josh Arneson.
“What the agreement with Hinesburg is going to allow us to do is, should there be a shift where we don’t have coverage, we’ll be able to rely on Hinesburg to respond for calls during that shift,” he said. “They’re not going to necessarily be here patrolling, but if a call comes in, they’ll come respond, and they’ll be able to get here.”
The agreement marks a growing cooperative relationship between the two towns and their respective agencies for public safety services.
In November, Hinesburg finalized a three-year contract with Richmond Rescue to provide ambulance services for Hinesburg. The two towns, meanwhile, have been in discussion to merge the town’s police departments via a union municipal district.
The merger would mark the first time two municipalities in Vermont created a shared department — but the prospect is still years away from materializing. Hinesburg put the talks on hold to give time for consultants to complete a public safety strategic plan — a roadmap for the town’s overall vision for its fire, police and possible ambulance services.
“It seemed like we were treading water,” Hinesburg selectboard Chair Merrily Lovell said of the merger talks.
With the Vermont State Police stretched thin, municipalities with their own departments have been asked “to get as fully staffed as they can or try to seek agreement with other neighboring towns for coverage so that there’s less of a demand and a burden on the state police,” Arneson said.
There was some reluctance among the Hinesburg Selectboard to approve the agreement, given the Hinesburg department has itself had trouble with staffing. The department was down from six to three cops in less than four months after its police budget in March 2022 was vetoed by residents.
“I’m certainly not opposed … I just want to make sure, before we do the current strategic planning and everything, that this doesn’t turn into a request for a sixth officer to cover additional shifts,” selectboard member Mike Loner said.
Cambridge, meanwhile, continues to provide on-call overnight service.
“Long-term, I’d rather not be doing it, but it is what it is,” he said.
“I think the most pressing issues with the Hinesburg community police department … I want to figure out how to backstop Anthony on that crazy overnight coverage,” selectboard member Paul Lamberson said. “That just seems perilous to me, that we’re going to burn him out, so that’s on my mind as we consider something else, I don’t want to lose sight of — we have to figure out how to make that situation sustainable.”
However, things have stabilized a bit. The town recently hired a fifth officer who started this past weekend.
“I trust the chief and (town manager Todd Odit) to make sure nobody’s getting burned out,” selectboard member Maggie Gordon said.