Villages dispute sheriff's comments on Hiram-Mantua police collaboration

After the Portage County Sheriff's Office canceled its 911 dispatch contract with the Village of Hiram, the village called for help from its neighbors in Mantua. Under a temporary agreement, Mantua will provide dispatch services to Hiram.

The Portage County Sheriff's Office released a statement on Facebook that sought to clarify the reasons they canceled Hiram's contract.

The Portager reported on Jan. 26 that the Village of Hiram was paying Mantua police $100 a day to handle its police dispatch needs until a more permanent contract could be finalized with another provider.

The Portage County Sheriff’s Office had been serving as Hiram’s dispatch hub since 2021, but on Dec. 17 gave the village 30-day notice that that contract was being canceled.

Sheriff Bruce Zuchowski stated in a Jan. 29 post that PCSO’s 13 dispatch contracts with agencies across the county are based on population, and that by merging the Mantua and Hiram PDs, that population had effectively doubled from 1,000 to 2,000. The 30-day notice “was intended to ensure fair and consistent treatment” across the contracting agencies, not to “abruptly end dispatch services” for Hiram, he wrote.

Zuchowski alleged that Police Chief James Clemens did not immediately respond to the PCSO’s notice and used most of the 30-day window to explore alternative options. He claimed that Hiram requested an additional 30-day extension only after that process proved more time-consuming than expected.

“While granting such an extension may have been convenient for Hiram PD, ongoing and unresolved issues related to the Mantua/Hiram merger, including liability concerns and public safety implications for the approximately 2,000 residents involved, made this request difficult for PCSO,” he wrote.

In effect, Mantua was accessing PCSO dispatch resources for free while Hiram paid the freight and the PCSO was expected to serve another 1,000 people, also for free, Zuchowski said.

In separate Feb. 2 emails to The Portager, Hiram Mayor Anne Haynam and Mantua Mayor Tammy Meyer stated that their village police departments have not merged.

“Hiram officers are currently assisting Mantua on a temporary basis while Mantua is in a transition period,” Meyer wrote. “Mantua has long maintained its own police department and dispatch operations, and that has not changed.”

In her email, Haynam wrote that she cannot explain how or why the PCSO is "erroneously" inflating population numbers. Hiram has the same population now as it did under the PCSO contract, and Mantua PD has its own dispatch center to serve its citizens, she wrote.

In his Facebook post, Zuchowski also asked why Hiram ultimately chose Streetsboro to provide its dispatch services when Mantua has its own dispatch center.

Haynam provided an answer. Left with no alternative but to find another dispatch service, Hiram obtained three bids, she wrote in her Feb. 2 email. None of the bids were from the PCSO, and village leaders settled on Streetsboro because its proposal ended up being the most cost-effective: “significantly lower” than Mantua’s bid and consistent with what the northern community had been paying the PCSO, she stated.

Hiram’s PCSO contract had cost $19,280 a year. Factoring in equipment needed for the switch, Haynam estimated that the Hiram-Streetsboro contract will have the village paying about $23,500 for the first year and about $20,000 annually thereafter.

At the time of the Jan. 26 article, requests for comment from the PCSO were directed to its PCSO 911 coordinator.

In the Jan. 29 Facebook post, Zuchowski stated his desire to clarify what he termed “inaccuracies.” 

“There are always more facts than one side may choose to share,” he wrote. “When those facts fail to support a preferred narrative, they are often omitted, leaving the public with an incomplete picture.”