The president of Seven Fields Borough Council needs to rethink his approach to handling community issues.

If he does, he probably will find that those issues will be resolved more quickly and without accompanying hard feelings.

The council president, Jack Oakley, who was responding to concerns by Mayor Ed Bayne about the increase in traffic incidents on the one-mile stretch of Route 228 that passes through the borough, chose to belittle and ridicule Cranberry Township police rather than pursue a more respectful approach toward addressing — and, hopefully, resolving — what the officials perceive as inadequate police coverage.

Reaching an understanding or agreement in a way that doesn't result in hard feelings is always the best tactic — for the immediate problem as well as longer-range relations.

Instead, Oakley, referring to the Cranberry police, who patrol Seven Fields under a township contract with the borough, said, "They are there (at the traffic lights) but there's a doughnut in their face. And you can print that."

That's not the kind of comment likely to promote harmony and cooperation.

However, at the same time, Seven Fields, which pays more than 8 percent of Cranberry's annual police budget under the two communities' current agreement — about $307,000 this year — deserves to get the service for which it is paying.

Officials of both communities need to sit down with top township officers to properly air the issue; an apology by Oakley probably would be a good place to start.

When a customer buys a product that is defective or that otherwise doesn't meet expectations, most of the time there's a quick and easy resolution of the problem if the customer is respectful to the company representatives with whom he or she is dealing.

From the start, the Seven Fields police issue would not have taken on a sour, confrontational tone if borough officials merely had noted at their meeting that they would be requesting a meeting with Cranberry to discuss concerns about some of the police coverage that the borough was receiving.

Probably, some people chuckled when they read the Sept. 15 article with Oakley's quote. However, they also should have looked beyond that initial reaction and acknowledged the potential harm and hard feelings that the comment might have spawned.

Seven Fields needs an explanation in response to its concerns, not a debate over a tired police stereotype.