Feb 5, 2025 By Park Burroughs 4 min read

It was recently reported that a man lay dead in his home here for six months before family members living with him reported his death to authorities.

So sad that 64-year-old Michael Bebout, father of three children, could depart this life so unnoticed. So sad, and so suspicious.

News like this travels fast. The New York Post reported that checks made out to Bebout were illegally cashed after his death and that an investigation into the deceased man’s finances is continuing.

What must have been a surprise to many people reading and viewing this story is who was called to investigate: the Greene County Regional Police Department, based in Nineveh, just over 20 miles south of Washington. That department has been providing Canton Township police protection since the first of the year.

The house where Bebout died is at 500 Hayes Avenue in what is known as Washington’s West End. Technically, it is in Canton Township but is only about 300 feet from the city line. Would it not make more sense for the Washington police to handle this case and others in that neighborhood? Surely it would, but let’s not forget where we live. Our antiquated system of government that divides Washington County into 66 separate municipalities is the antipathy of common sense.

In a better world, Canton, South Strabane and North Franklin townships and the borough of East Washington would merge with Washington to create a city of 38,000 residents with a single administration and police department. Here’s some good advice: Don’t hold your breath until this happens.

Greene Regional Police, in addition to serving Morris, Perry and Wayne townships in Greene County, also has added South Franklin, Morris and now Canton townships in Washington County to its service area. They do this with 14 officers, only four of whom are full time, according to the Observer-Reporter. This service area amounts to 169.2 square miles – three times the size of Pittsburgh and nearly three times the size of Washington, D.C.

Greene Regional’s officers may be the finest, but with such an enormous area to cover, how responsive can they be?

For a municipality to maintain a police department is expensive. Police are paid well, as they should be, and the need for new equipment and maintenance is constant. The money for this comes from property taxes, so the boroughs and townships that are growing, where new businesses, industry and housing developments are always cropping up, and where property values are the highest are the places that can afford not just police but so many other facilities and services to benefit their residents. The schools in these communities are better because the greater tax base allows for higher pay for teachers and better facilities.

The municipalities along the Route 19 – Interstate 79 north corridor are doing great; the rest of the county, not so much.

You would think, from the self-congratulatory newspaper articles written by two of our county commissioners and the columns by Jeff Kotula, president of the Washington County Chamber of Commerce, that all of the county is basking in the prosperity heaped upon it by the natural gas industry; that we are growing by leaps and bounds with the drilling of each new well. So it might seem, if you’re viewing it from, say, Southpointe. But there are no corporate headquarters and luxury condos in Washington County south of Interstate 70.

What you are more likely to find there – and not at all in that prosperous corridor – are houses made unlivable by longwall mining, illegal trash dumps, littered roadsides and, in some areas, what might look like Appalachian poverty.

Washington County can’t be considered prosperous until all its residents have basic public services and a clean and healthy environment.

There are areas of this county that could really use industrial, commercial, residential and recreational development, and that cannot happen until their conditions improve. This is what our elected leaders should be working toward.

Park Burroughs is the former executive editor of the Observer-Reporter.