MARS — Borough Council approved two measures for sharing police and emergency services between the borough and other municipalities at a meeting Monday night.

The measures approved a Mutual Aid Agreement between Mars Borough and Butler County for the purposes of utilizing the Emergency Services Unit for responding to critical incidents and threats as well as an Enhanced Mutual Aid Agreement between Mars and Saxonburg to allow Mars police officers and Saxonburg Borough police officers to be cross-sworn and empowered to act as police officers within both municipalities.

The officers shared between Saxonburg and Mars will serve one-year terms and typically will move between municipalities for high-traffic events such as festivals.

“We had talked about it before but had never done it: We actually used some Saxonburg officers for the (Mars Rumble) car show for the first time this weekend, so we had a sort of trial run for the mutual agreement between Saxonburg and Mars,” said Mars Mayor Gregg Hartung. “Penn Township and Middlesex Township have an agreement between them, with two townships working together, we are sort of patterning it after that.”

Hartung said that this agreement is different, however, from the regional police authority between the Evans City and Seven Fields boroughs, as the collaboration would not require the creation of a combined police department.

“For boroughs, with the mutual aid agreement, we're still basically in charge,” Hartung said.

The agreement between Butler County and Mars will allow Mars officers to call on the Emergency Services Unit (ESU) in a crisis.“If you had some sort of high-risk deal, if you've got some bad guys who you know aren't going to just walk out and shake hands, these guys (the Emergency Services Unit) are one step below a full-blown SWAT team,” explained council president G. Michael Fleming. “So, if you have a situation like that and your officers are a little uneasy about it, if you have an agreement with them, these guys will come in.”According to the agreement between Butler and Mars, officers are assigned to the ESU on a voluntary basis and any compensation for time spent during incidents or training will be between the officer and their home department.Typically, municipalities that have agreements with the ESU have some of their officers serve on the ESU in return for their services. Since the Mars Police Department is part-time, Hartung said the department might offer other resources to trade, such as ammunition or other supplies that might be useful to the Butler County Emergency Services Unit.“We'll come up with something like ammunition or some other thing that our department can buy rather than just sending an officer,” Hartung said. “It's a matter of our working that out with whatever needs they might have and what we can acquire.”

Shared services are one way that smaller municipalities can collaborate and work together on governance. A recent report from the University of Pittsburgh Institute of Politics, “Preparing for Tomorrow: Fostering Municipal Resiliency in the Wake of the Pandemic,” recommended expanding shared services as a way for Western Pennsylvania municipalities to bolster their economic stability.Respondents to the study's survey, which spanned municipalities across Western Pennsylvania, said that first-responder services and police services made some of the most sense to share. More than 75% of municipal leaders surveyed believed that there is at least a “somewhat likely” opportunity for collaboration in fire services and emergency medical service, and more than 60% of respondents saw opportunities for shared policing services as well.“Across the board, responding municipalities said that shared services are a useful strategy to support the sustainability and resiliency of municipalities in Pennsylvania,” the report read.