Clearfield Borough and Lawrence Township held a town hall meeting Wednesday night about possibly merging their police departments.

Clearfield Borough Mayor Mason Strouse told 6 News ahead of the meeting that this recent effort to "regionalize" their police resources follows past efforts to merge the municipalities.

"So, Clearfield Borough and Lawrence Township, we do have some staffing issues, mostly with keeping people in the police departments, due to our area and the size of our area. A lot of times we see that we end up training police officers and then they move on to something bigger and better."

Clearfield has a lot of people in a small space, and Lawrence Township has a lot of people in a big space, but Strouse mentioned that many of their police services overlap.

"We have a lot of duplication of services related to the police department and our police departments are already going out on a lot of calls together. They respond just about to most everything together already. ...We wanted to look at the possibility of merging the two police departments, and that's what got our regionalization started."

"Most people are just, you know, their concerns are: Will there be consistent coverage, you know, are the police officers gonna be compensated well, and are community's gonna be safe? And that's what this regionalization seeks to do."

The mayor added that both departments already have much in common, making a potential merger run smoothly.

"A lot of our policies and procedures are very similar to each other. We both have the same contract, even almost down to the word. A lot of our contract language is very similar. We have the same contract, union, leadership too."

And, with regionalization, most likely comes money from Harrisburg.

"There is a lot of grant funding opportunities through the state for regional police departments, through [the Pennsylvania Department of Community and Economic Development] and some other organizations as well. When we first met with the state a couple months ago, you know, it's not very often that the state's willing to throw money at you. They were like almost over zealously, you know, trying to throw money at us."

He told us current employees of both departments should have no worries about losing their jobs.

"The goal of the regionalized department, at least at this point, the wish of the commission is that everyone who's currently employed with the borough and the township will keep their jobs. And they're, we're not looking to lose anybody. In fact, I believe the commission is looking to even hire an additional one or two people once we get up and running. So, I think it's a very great thing for our, both of our communities."

Strouse said they want to start any potential merger by Jan. 1, 2023.