AUSTINTOWN — Austintown Township trustees voted unanimously Monday to retire the department’s two police dogs July 6, a move police Chief Valorie Delmont said will save about $20,000 per year.

Officials said the cut is the latest in efforts to reduce the department’s budget after a police levy failed in November.

“As you saw tonight, it’s our job, and we make tough decisions,” said Trustee Bruce Shepas.

“And with the support and the agreement of the chief of police, we made those cuts. Hopefully there’s an alternative means and those officers come through and we will revisit it. However,

there will be additional cuts. We continue to look at that budget every single day.”

Trustees told the department’s two K-9 officers, Patrolmen Jason Murzda and Brad McFadden, they will reconsider the vote if the police department is able to find outside financial support for the program.

Delmont said the board asked her to review several expenses in the budget and, of those she reviewed, none of the others had the potential to yield any meaningful savings for the department.

“I don’t think anything is lacking in the benefit, but it’s more that that was one of the items that had the biggest expense,” Delmont said. “Some of the other things were not considerable savings. So, that’s where I felt we could make the biggest dent in rectifying the budget.”

Delmont told trustees that between May and December 2024, the township’s dogs, Eras (McFadden) and Gunney (Murzda) were used 29 times, yielding 7 arrests, 12 searches, 13 tracks and were featured in two community events.

Cutting the dogs from the budget will save Austintown roughly $10,000 for the rest of 2025 and $20,000 next year.

“I think it’s a significant resource to have, and I believe in it for all the reasons officer Murzda listed,” she said. “But we are able to access dogs from outside of our agency, but they would not be available for every little thing.”

Murzda said that the department has more statistics but those are logged in a dedicated police dog tracking system that they do not have access to

because it was cut to save the department money. He said once he regains access to it, he can provide trustees with more details about the dogs’ usage.

“Aside from the dogs being able to indicate illegal narcotics, they do tracking, they do building searches, area searches, article searches and criminal apprehension,” he said. “They are a huge deterrent in so many ways, and a lot of bad guys will tell you they gave up simply because the dog was there.”

Murzda — who spent nine years as a Struthers K-9 officer, building that city’s program before he came to Austintown — said the township’s program has been in place since the 1990s. He has been a handler for Austintown for six years and McFadden for five.

Both Eras and Gunney are 7 years old and have about two years of service left before they would retire.

“These two are still in good shape and ready and willing every day to go to work,” Murzda said. “It’s a bond, there’s a bond between this dog and I and we know how to work together. We train together twice a month, we know how to read each other and we protect each other. He’s out there doing the same job we’re doing, only sometimes he can do it better.”

The motion will allow the officers to buy their dogs from the township for $1 each.

They hope it will not come to that yet.

Murzda told police he raised the funds in Struthers to build that department’s program, which is now self-sustaining with three dogs.

But Murzda said it may not be as simple as raising money. In Struthers, because the city was not legally permitted to accept donations, everything had to be run through the FOP union.

Murzda said he needs to sit down with trustees and determine what is allowed and if fundraising is even feasible.

Ohio Revised Code does allow townships to accept donations for the community’s benefit.

Delmont and trustees say they are optimistic that a fundraising effort would be successful.

“The Board of Trustees, the township administrator (Mark D’Apolito), and your chief of police are in agreement that this motion is going to move forward,” Shepas said. “However, I know that we talked about things and you had some very good points about raising money. This does not take effect until July 6. So, I challenge you and McFadden to make it happen. Find an alternate way of funding it. Talk to your union, consider what we discussed. You have two months, and the board will bring this back and we can reevaluate it before July.”

Santos said he only voted to approve the motion with the understanding that Murzda and McFadden would call him to discuss how to remedy the problem.

“I would feel more comfortable knowing that we have an avenue to retract this. We do have to move forward, because we do have a financial obligation that we have to take care of, we have to be good stewards of our money,” he said. “But I definitely want to find alternative solutions to this.I love our police, and this is the last thing I want to do. With the chief’s recommendation, I’m going to vote yes, but I want you guys to call me tomorrow. I will be more than happy to help raise the funds or advocate for them.”