Well, we gave it our best shot. Despite our best efforts, the Borough has decided to terminate its shared police service agreement with Woodlynne. 

    Three years ago Collingswood and Woodlynne entered into an agreement for Collingswood to provide police service to Woodlynne. There was also an agreement for Collingswood to provide housing inspection and fire inspection services. It started as a 2 year agreement that was renewed effective July 1 2008. Unfortunately Collingswood has decided to terminate the agreement effective June 30, 2009.  

    Collingswood entered into this arrangement to provide better police protection in our neighboring community for the obvious reason that a safer Woodlynne would mean a safer Collingswood. At the time, Woodlynne could not afford to keep their police force. There were many nights when there would be only 1 officer patrolling Woodlynne. Collingswood is joined with Woodlynne in another way – our High School.

    Our intention was that employing our housing inspections and police protection would help our neighbor maintain services that would benefit our bordering neighborhoods and our High School. Unfortunately, at the agreement renewal in 2008, Woodlynne ended our involvement in the housing inspection process. Justifiably, Woodlynne did this in an attempt to generate additional revenue to assist their taxpayers. Since that time, the number of police calls and the intensity of those calls has been on the rise. With our Police Chief and feedback from our officers, we believe more and more Collingswood resources have been needed to address Woodlynne issues. We know Woodlynne is unable to pay for these resources. It is not fair for Collingswood taxpayers to pay for theses resources devoted to another town. It was time to end the arrangement. 

    Unfortunately, the end of this agreement means 6 officers will be laid off. We have already begun the process to find new jobs for these officers and we are very optimistic we can find each of them a new job. Our entire Department has done a miraculous job in working through the inclusion of officers from another Department into a cohesive group and in dealing with patrols of  a new community. Our police officers were making this work; the lack of adequate finances for such a venture made this impossible to continue. 

    We will redeploy our Department. We will continue to protect and serve our town. We tried a new step in police protection but it did not work. But in the process, we became stronger as a Department and the entire experience will allow our men and women to provide an even better level of service.