Six full-time police officers in Jim Thorpe Borough is not enough, its mayor proclaimed recently, and a discussion will take place about adding a seventh halfway through 2015.

Mayor Michael Sofranko said filling gaps with part-time officers isn't a solution and hopes to take up the matter with the borough's police committee in the coming months."For the last four or five years when we have had manpower issues, the answer has constantly been hire part-time officers," Sofranko said."We hired one in December and lost one in January with a knee injury. We talked about a full-time officer at our budget meetings. We did manage to get some money there. We are going to try and tighten this budget. If we keep things in line, I'm hopeful we could add one in the middle of the year."To back up his request, Sofranko outlined statistics from nearby departments.Lehighton borough has 5,400 residents with 10 full-time officers, Palmerton borough has 5,200 residents with eight full-time officers, and Kidder Township has 1,185 residents with six full-time officers.In contrast, Jim Thorpe has around 4,800 residents with six full-time officers.Councilman John McGuire was quick to point out he wasn't concerned about what neighboring towns were doing."Our department logged 4,238 incidents into the alert system in 2014," McGuire said. "According to the International Association of Chiefs of Police calculations, we should have six patrolmen given that number. I'm all about safety in this town, but I want to make sure we're justifying what we are doing. We have to afford to pay for everyone, but the residents also deserve the proper coverage. I've always supported our police force."Sofranko said that is what the committee will attempt to do, noting a generally accepted officer-to-citizen ratio of two full-time officers for every 1,000 residents."We actually have four patrolmen to put on the street," Sofranko said. "I'd just like to see more part-timers used in areas that are most cost effective. Scheduling has become a nightmare with the call volume we have here. We always need part-time people, but we are in a serious need of manpower to continue to get the numbers we are getting."The borough reported a record number of drug arrests, 63, in 2014.