The whiteboard on Palmyra Borough Police Chief Andrew Winter’s office wall is steadily getting emptier as May 27 approaches.
That’s the day the Palmyra Borough and Annville Township police departments will officially cease to exist, replaced by the Western Lebanon County Regional Police Department
The whiteboard is Winters’ to-do list, outlining all the nuts and bolts steps needed to combine independent police departments, from police cars and uniforms down to business cards.
Winters says he and his Annville Township counterpart, Chief William Stickler, have been working to assure a smooth transition since the two municipalities began discussing a combined force in 2022. The merger became official when they signed a charter agreement on April 4, 2023.
According to the charter, all costs of the regional department will be divided between Palmyra and Annville according to a formula based on their budgets and total populations. Palmyra Borough’s 2022 estimated population was 7,783, and Annville Township’s 4,829, according to CensusReporter.org.
Once the charter was signed, the Palmyra and Annville officials created a commission, composed of two commissioners from each municipality plus a citizen at-large, to oversee the merger.
Big picture merger items such as pension plans, insurance, and labor contracts have been addressed by professionals in those areas, but most of the day-to-day work of stitching two police departments together has fallen to Winters and Stickler, leading to the whiteboard on Winters’ wall.
“Oh, yeah, that’s my checklist. I’ve been erasing things as we’ve been getting them done,” Winters told LebTown.
As of April 17, the whiteboard still listed an array of tasks that needed to be finalized, from “social media” and “vehicle titles” to “job descriptions” and “petty cash.”
Winters is confident that the list will get done by May 27. “The only thing we may not have are badges, because I think they told me it’s eight weeks from the time you place your order.”
Some things, such as records management, important to all law enforcement agencies, were relatively easy, Winters said. “The nice part is Annville and Palmyra, along with some other departments in the county, use the same In-Sync RMS records system.”
Winters will be the new department’s first chief, with Stickler being its sergeant. The regional department will be headquartered at the current Palmyra P.D. headquarters, and evidence storage, critical to criminal investigations, will eventually be combined there, according to Winters.
“We did a little remodel. We made our evidence room a little bit bigger. So for now, most of [Annville’s] evidence is going to stay down there, except for a couple of pieces that are going to come up here because we have to hold on to them long term.”
All current officers and all civilian employees in both municipalities have signed on to the regional department. The combined force will have 15 officers to start, 10 from Palmyra and five from Annville. Palmyra is looking to hire one more officer, according to Winters.
Winters noted that Annville Township and Palmyra Borough don’t share a border, which initially led to some questions about the practicality of consolidating police forces.
“People looked at that and said ‘Well, how do you make that work?’ But start looking at some of the other municipalities around here … when you start looking at different areas, they’re huge.”
At their furthest points along Route 422, a relatively straight line along a major highway, Palmyra and Annville are about 6.4 miles apart, and about 2.5 miles at their closest, according to Google maps. Straight-line distances between points in North Lebanon Township and Union Township can be nearly 7.7 and 9.8 miles, respectively.
The merger of the Annville and Palmyra police departments is believed to be Lebanon County’s first regional police force. North Cornwall and North Lebanon townships are currently working towards their own merger.
Read More:
- Annville Township and Palmyra Borough advance plan to consolidate police forces
- Regional police steering committee reviews draft of updated charter
- N. Cornwall, N. Lebanon discuss 12-hour, 3-zone proposal for regional police pact
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