Lansford Borough Council met in special session Tuesday night to hire a part-time code enforcement officer and handle four other items ahead of next week’s regular meeting.

Council hired Shane Monk of Tamaqua at a rate of $25 an hour, pending a background check. He will also be on probation for six months.

The zoning and ordinance committee met last week in executive session to interview Monk, and full council also met with him in executive session Tuesday before the move to hire.

Council President Bruce Markovich told Monk that the borough should have his paperwork in order within a week, get a job description out to him and then get him started.

Monk will start after his background check in completed, Markovich said.

Public/police

Council members spent more than a half-hour of their special meeting taking comments from the public. Discussion included rental license fees, overgrown vegetation, seeking additional revenue or taxes for rental/commercial properties to help fund police, the change in the real estate market and police scheduling and the current contract.

Much of the discussion, which became heated briefly, centered on hiring more police officers and shifting to eight-hour work days to provide 24 hour coverage, which Councilwoman Michele Bartek has wanted.

However, Police Chief Kyle Woodward said that the borough would only be “bleeding out more overtime than they are now” with eight-hour shifts.

“It’s not a magic trick,” he said. “If you’d sit down and do the math, talk to us and talk to me, you’ll see. I’ll show you that you’re going to burn through overtime and your taxes are going to go up.”

Councilman Jack Soberick, the former police chief, said that the matter should be handled under public safety, and Mayor Hugh Vrablic said that he has the “ultimate authority” over the police schedule regardless of motions sought by Bartek on changing shifts.

Woodward asked Bartek and council members to talk to him before moving ahead with changes affecting his department.

“If you have questions about anything, you just need to come and ask,” he said, noting that he has sent Bartek emails and got no response. “Yet, I stand here and you bash us.”

Bartek denied bashing the police department.

“If you’re looking at getting along with the police department and making stuff work, you have to talk to us,” Woodward said. “If you bring stuff like this up, it goes nowhere.”

Markovich asked why they don’t have 24/7 coverage, doing simple math with five officers working 40 hours a week for a total of 200 hours, and there are 168 hours in the week.

Woodward explained that all of the officers also have vacation, personal, sick and other leave or time off, in addition to mandatory training, which takes them off the streets of the borough.

Soberick agreed that with officers’ time off, there is a deficit in covering shifts.