VILLAGE COUNCIL Police chief gets OK to recover lost hours

Council will discuss the police budget June 30.
By NANCY TULLIS
VINDICATOR SALEM BUREAU
LEETONIA -- One of the ways Leetonia police Chief John Soldano reduced his $300,000 budget six months ago was to reduce hours of patrolmen. Now village council has given Soldano the OK to reinstate some of those lost hours.
Councilman Dan Valentine said not only has Soldano kept within the budget reduced by $65,000 the past six months, he's spent less than that, so some of those lost hours can be recovered.
"We need as much of a police presence as we can muster now," Valentine said. "When school is out and the weather warms, more people -- not just kids -- will be out, and that adds to the potential for people getting into trouble. We want to be proactive, not reactive.
"During the summer there's more chance for domestic problems, people getting drunk and into fights, all of that," Valentine said. "As a law enforcement officer myself, I've seen that firsthand."
Valentine is a Beaver Township patrolman and Salem Township constable. He said council will meet June 30 to consider whether other cuts made in patrol shifts can be reinstated in July.
Changes made
Soldano said that to make the reductions and then operate even below his slashed budget, he keeps spending at a minimum. The department always has a shortage of dispatchers, so some patrolmen were trained as dispatchers.
Including Soldano, the department has three full-time and seven part-time officers, and eight part-time dispatchers. There were no layoffs, but overtime was eliminated and some patrolmen were scheduled fewer hours, Soldano explained.
"We modified shifts and cut back on other spending," Soldano said. "A patrolman who worked 20 hours normally might be scheduled 10 or 15," he said. "Dan has a good point that we need more patrols on the road in the summer. When people are uncomfortable in heat they become irritable and short-tempered. Then we get calls."
Soldano said not only Leetonia but other surrounding communities' law enforcement officials are seeing an increase in police calls the past few months.
"We've been doing the best we can operating at a bare minimum, so it will be good to get more people on the road," he said. "Then we'll take another look at things with council at the end of the month and hopefully we can get back closer to where we like to be. We can put guys who've been dispatching back on the road, and the good thing is, we'll have patrolmen who can dispatch if we need them to."