The police services contract between the borough of Valencia and the Adams Township Police Department expires at the end of 2025 and Valencia is spending the rest of the year deciding whether to renew the contract or look for other police options.

Discussions come as the borough faces a budget shortfall with emergency services among the major expenses.

“Our solvency and our ability to pay for emergency services is, I think, our number one issue,” according to Shanon McKenna, a member of borough council. “We have to make a decision about what quality of emergency services we are required to provide.”

“Shanon and I have spoken with Adams Township about the police contracts and they were very willing to work with us to try to come to a solution that might work better for us,” Joshua Zimmerman, borough council member said.

One alternative option the borough has looked into is working with the Saxonburg Police Department, which already provides contracted services for both Oakland and Summit townships.

“One of our council members did talk with Saxonburg to see if they had any interest,” Zimmerman said. “And I think we’re going to continue conversations with them just to see what our options there are.”

According to the minutes of the council meeting held on Monday, Sept. 8, council has also considered dropping coverage from any local police department and moving exclusively to coverage from state police to save money.

The borough is also in negotiations with St. Barnabas Health System to ask them to foot some of the bill for its emergency services.

“We’re trying to set up a meeting with St. Barnabas and we’ve been going back and forth,” Zimmerman said. “We’re working on our schedules trying to make that happen.”

St. Barnabas, with its two senior living facilities — The Arbors and The Woodlands — owns a combined 126.031 acres in the roughly 218-acre borough. Since St. Barnabas is a nonprofit entity, none of that land is taxable, which limits the amount of revenue Valencia can bring in from real estate taxes each fiscal year.

“Services are getting more expensive. They increase year over year. Unfortunately, our income is stagnant,” Zimmerman said. “Any property tax we would get is stagnant. It’s not going up.”

“Our expenses are severely exceeding our income, and it’s doing that because of our limitations and our ability to collect taxes,” McKenna said. “Over 70% of our community are retirees. That means that our earned income taxes from the people that are working is pretty small. If we don’t have the ability to bring in earned income taxes at a level that keeps up with expenses... we have to make hard decisions.”