It’s news but not new news. This graphic (below) comes from the Columbia Borough Website’s “Finance Information” page.

“On average, the expenditures for police services were 16.7 percent of the total reported expenditures of the municipality. This, however, varied greatly with some municipalities’ police expenditures being less than 1 percent of expenditures and others being over 40 percent. The median was 16.2 percent.” – SOURCE: Police Consolidation in Pennsylvania report.

Based on the numbers in that report, Columbia’s 51% share of total expenses is substantially higher than other departments across the state.

 

It’s all about control, according to the report, regional police departments said the most difficult challenges to overcome were “concern about lack of control was rated the most difficult to resolve, followed by developing the intermunicipal police contract, union contract issues, and distribution of costs.”

Once those issues were surmounted, most areas saw reductions in policing costs for their residents, though.