The Greenfield Police Regionalization Study Committee is completing a survey to release to all Greenfield stakeholders by Oct. 1.
“This survey is going out to ‘stakeholders’ as opposed to just Greenfield residents because there are also business owners, people who own summer homes and people who work in Greenfield who interact with the police department and use their services,” said volunteer Sheila Nichols, who is a member of the committee.
The GPRSC was formed after Greenfield residents voted to explore the feasibility of regionalizing police services with Hancock at Town Meeting in March 2025.
Hancock residents voted in a similar warrant article to explore police regionalization with Greenfield.
Staff shortages in police departments are a nationwide issue, particularly in rural areas.
“Both towns are looking at this possibility as a way to cover all the shifts,” Nichols said.
Greenfield’s warrant article specified that the GPRSC will report back to the town by Town Meeting 2026 with a recommendation on whether or not to move forward with regionalization or to keep studying the possibility.
Both towns would have to approve police regionalization for the towns to proceed with developing a model for shared services.
“We want people to understand that we are just in very preliminary stages of this process right now,” Nichols said. “People say they don’t know even what regionalization is, so we are starting there, answering people’s questions and finding out if people are interested in regionalization as a concept. We are probably one or two years out from any kind of decision.”
The GPRSC will have a table at the Friends of the Greenfield Meetinghouse Oktoberfest on Saturday, Sept. 27, from 4 to 8 p.m.
“We encourage everyone to stop by,” Nichols said.
Since July, the GPRSC has met with the Hancock Police Regionalization Study Committee, the Greenfield Police Department and the Greenfield Select Board.
Nichols said the GPRSC committee is working in partnership with the Hancock committee.
“We have met with the Hancock committee, and we are working in concert with them and now we are working on parallel projects,” Nichols said. “We are both doing surveys, but since our towns have slightly different needs, we decided it made sense for each committee to create their own survey and get it out there.”
The GPRSC has been researching comparative reports on other towns in New England who have regionalized police departments, such as Temple and Greenville.
“We are doing research about what regionalization is and how it has worked in other places, and then we will look at whether it would actually be a good fit for our town,” Nichols said.
The committee will also host a public information session on Thursday, Oct. 23, from 6:30 to 7:30 p.m. in the Wensburg Room, downstairs at Stephenson Memorial Library in Greenfield.
The survey will be available in the Oct. 1 edition of the Greenfield Spirt, at Stephenson Memorial Library, the Town Office, the committee’s Oktoberfest booth, the Harvester Market and the Greenfield Transfer station. Links to the survey will be posted on the town website and the Greenfield Community Facebook page. Completed surveys should be returned to the Town Offices by Oct. 15.