Waynesburg hires two patrolmen
WAYNESBURG – Waynesburg Borough Council voted Monday to hire two full-time police patrolmen to fill vacancies that will be created with the retirement of Chief Tim Hawfield and the eventual resignation of patrolman Brian Tennant.
Council hired Marcus Simms and Asa Winters, both now part-time patrolmen on the force, for the full-time positions.
Winters has been a part-time patrolman with Waynesburg for several years and is also a part-time officer with the Cumberland Township Police Department. Simms has been a part-time officer with Waynesburg since October and is also now employed as a deputy sheriff.
Council had followed a procedure using civic service tests for the hirings. Both men have also been working with the department. “They have proven themselves as effective officers, and I believe they will be even more so when they are full time,” Hawfield said.
The department will have seven full-time officers and one part-time officer with the hirings. Its complement is eight full-time officers, Hawfield said.
Hawfield will retire in July. Council voted last month to promote patrolman Robert Toth to the chief’s position. At that meeting, council also voted to hire Mike Simms, Marcus Simms’ father, as borough manager to replace Bruce Wermlinger, who is leaving borough employment this summer.
Tennant has been on unpaid leave since February to run for sheriff. In the May 21 primary, he won both the Democratic and Republican nominations.
Council voted Monday to extend Tennant’s leave until Nov. 11, after the general election, at Tennant’s request. It also voted to donate at that time a Ford Explorer used by Tennant for his police dog to the county. The vehicle had been donated to the borough when Tennant started the department’s K-9 unit.
In other business, Wermlinger noted that the lease for natural gas underlying the borough’s Meadowlark Park and its former dump expires in August. At solicitor Linda Chamber’s suggestion, the borough will give the company written notice of the lease’s expiration.
The borough leased the gas rights under the about 100 acres of land to Tanglewood in 2010. The company agreed to pay a signing bonus of $1,000 an acre, or about $100,000, and royalty payments of 20 percent on the sale of natural gas extracted from the property.
Tanglewood had three years to drill for the gas, which it has not done. At the end of the three years, if it fails to extract the gas, the lease is voided and the borough keeps the signing bonus.
Engineer Dan Haught of Fayette Engineering told council he had met with borough administrators to prepare a schedule of work on the project to separate the borough’s storm sewers from its sanitary sewers.
Haught said his company would be conducting dye and smoke testing today on the borough’s south side. The borough is required by the state to make the changes in its sewer system, a project estimated to cost $4 million, by the end of 2015.