Mar 15, 2024 By Katherine Mansfield 4 min read

Sheetz will stand where Arnold Motor Co. was located in downtown Houston. The influx of businesses, including Sheetz, was the impetus for Houston Borough to enter into an agreement for police protection with neighboring Canonsburg.

Houston Borough Council voted Wednesday evening to disband its police department and enter into a police service agreement with Canonsburg Borough.

Three of seven Houston council members were absent from Wednesday’s regular monthly meeting for reasons unrelated to the vote, said Houston Mayor James Stubenbort. While David Bails, Lisa Minney and Walt Nesic were not present, the other four council members, including President Larry Scears, formed a sufficient quorum and unanimously approved entering into an intergovernmental cooperation agreement with Canonsburg.

Under the agreement, Houston Borough will pay Canonsburg Borough about $337,000 over a three-year period to provide police services 24 hours a day, seven days a week. It’s an arrangement that’s been in the works for several weeks, and one that offers Houston the most police protection it has had in decades, Stubenbort said.

“We’ve never been able to maintain a full-time department because of the money. We operated on a shoestring budget. Most all my guys have other jobs, some work for other police departments,” he said, noting the part-time police department offered at most 17 hours of protection, supplemented by a mutual-aid agreement with state police.

“State police would come, sometimes they couldn’t get there fast. It took them an hour or whatever to get to an incident. Twenty-four-hour coverage, seven days a week, that’s what we wanted. Canonsburg, they’ll just extend their duties into Houston.”

The mayor was part of the talks with Canonsburg, but, per borough code, unable to vote on the agreement. No Houston councilmen could be reached for comment by press time.

The agreement between Canonsburg and Houston is not uncommon. According to Canonsburg Deputy Chief Don Cross, McDonald police are contracted by neighboring communities, including Midway and Robinson Township, and the Monongahela police department patrolled Finleyville.

The agreement will not change the way Canonsburg is covered, he said.

“We’re still going to retain our name. We’re just going to be servicing Houston,” Cross said.

Increased police presence in Houston is important, Stubenbort said, because the borough has welcomed several new businesses over the past couple of years, including two breweries, and a gas station is set to open this summer.

“We have the parks. We’ve gained about four or five businesses. Sheetz brings a lot of things into the mix. Houston is growing. We don’t have a big area to grow in, but it’s been changing,” he said.

To accommodate that change and increase police coverage, Houston earlier this year approached neighboring Chartiers Township about a potential partnership. Ultimately, Houston decided to work with Canonsburg Borough.

“We were always a mutual aid to their department and/or the state police,” said Canonsburg Mayor Dave Rhome, adding the Canonsburg Volunteer Fire Department serves as a mutual-aid partner to Houston’s VFD. “This is a historic event that has taken a lot of work to make happen, I think, from the mayor’s office to the council. We are just so happy that we were able to move forward with this and make a difference in the borough of Houston.”

Canonsburg is in the process of hiring a full-time police officer to cover Houston, and Houston’s police department is working to close all ongoing cases before closing its doors, Steubenbordt said. Canonsburg police department is scheduled to begin patrolling Houston Borough June 1.

“That’s a target date,” Rhome said. “There’s just a lot of things that have to fall in line.”

However, if both boroughs are ready, the start date could be moved up.

The contract will be renegotiated at the end of the three-year term, Stubenbort said. He and Rhome both expressed excitement at the opportunity for their boroughs to work together.

“I didn’t want to see my police department close. There was just no way around it,” Stubenbort said. “My main thing was to make sure that the residents of this community were protected. From the borough aspect, is to make sure that we have a safe environment. That’s the key, is to make sure that my residents have that protection.”