Jan 23, 2007 By Christine Haines 3 min read

BROWNSVILLE – Brownsville officials say there is no truth to a rumor that the borough police department will not be called back to work. “That’s just a rumor. We want to get them back as soon as possible,” said Jack Lawver, borough council president.

Mayor Lewis Hosler also said there was no truth to the rumor that the layoffs would be permanent.

“I got the police car all ready, with the lettering on it, expecting to bring them back this month,” Hosler said.

Hosler said he had hoped to have the officers back by Feb. 1, but it could be longer.

“We’re trying to set a target date for the middle of February,” Lawver said. “We don’t want to run short.”

The full- and part-time officers were furloughed at the beginning of December because of financial problems in the borough. At the time, the borough owed $50,000 on its $75,000 tax anticipation loan and furloughed all the borough employees except the borough manager to help raise the needed money. Street department workers have been working on an as-needed basis for snow removal using state Liquid Fuels funds.

At the time of the layoff, Lawver said the police officers would be the first borough employees to be called back, other than for the snow emergency work. Council has voted to downsize the police department to just two full-time officers working a total of 80 hours a week. In the past year, the department had three full-time officers and several part-time officers, working a total of 120 hours a week.

State police have been patrolling the borough since the local police were laid off. They will continue to provide part of the community’s police protection once the borough force is back on the job.

“We’ll provide 80 hours of service. We just need to figure out which 80 hours per week. That will be up to the mayor to sit down with the police and the state police to determine what’s best,” Lawver said.

Lawver said that while National City Bank rejected the borough’s application for a 2007 tax anticipation loan, a bank in West Virginia has approved the loan and a small part of the loan already has been given to the borough.

“All the bills are paid to date except for a few large utility bills, which we made arrangements to make payments on,” Lawver said.

Lawver said the borough is waiting for final approval from the state Department of Community and Economic Development on the tax anticipation loan before it can receive the remainder of the funds. Lawver was not certain how long it would be before the state approval would be received. A DCED spokesman was unavailable for comment Monday.