HONESDALE BOROUGH, PA — The candidates for Honesdale Borough Mayor—incumbent Derek Williams and current borough councilor James Hamill—discussed their positions on the police force, infrastructure, the mayor’s role and more at a forum organized by the River Reporter. 

For the full forum, visit https://bit.ly/RR-2025-Honesdale-election-discussion.

Roles and responsibilities

Hamill said that the borough code identifies what the different responsibilities are for council and for mayor. 

“Currently, the borough code states that the mayor’s role and responsibility is to be the chief of public safety,” said Hamill. Previous mayors have mostly been ceremonial, other than their role in breaking ties and their position overseeing the police department, he said. 

Apart from that, the job of running the borough mostly gets done at the council level, said Hamill. 

Williams said he agreed that charge and control of the police force was one of the responsibilities strictly assigned to the mayor by the code. “You have kind of some loose ones, though, and those are where I find a lot of those nuts and bolts of the job being.”

Loose ones included preserving the public peace, said Williams, which involved “a lot of listening,” as well as declaring emergencies and enforcing ordinances. 

“Statutory responsibilities can sometimes be in a gray area,” said Williams—if he’s listening to a constituent and someone has an issue or a question, “I’m not in a position or comfortable telling that any of that type of stuff is outside of my jurisdiction.”

Police department

Williams said “historically, this has been a challenge for us, and it’s always been, to make sure we have enough money for the police.” Going back to the ‘90s and 2000s, grants were used to cover part of the departments’ salaries, he said. 

Williams said that while he was happy to talk with the public about their wants and needs for the department, piecing everything together involved tradeoffs. Overnight coverage might require another six full time officers, which might require higher taxes, he said; “I don’t know.”

Hamill pointed to nearby communities like Hawley, Waymart and Carbondale. “They’re able to hire a good number of officers. Honesdale’s not.”

Hamill said the borough needed to look inward to figure out why it couldn’t attract candidates. He proposed changing the culture of the department, something he called a “long-standing issue.”

“You go to, whether it’s Hawley, or any of these other communities, people know their police chief, and they are working in tandem with that individual and the rest of the police force. Here, it’s not the case, and I think that’s a leadership issue up and down, but I think we can fix that,” he said. 

Williams said that morale within the department can suffer “when existing elected officials are casting doubt on the police department on Facebook, or out and about in public.”

Hamill added that the borough paid for more than was budgeted in 2024 due to police department overtime. 

Immigrations and customs enforcement

Hamill said that, while local law enforcement did not have jurisdiction over federal immigration enforcement, capacity issues at the police department prevented them from building up the relationships that might provide advanced notice. 

Williams said that previous visits from ICE have come without any kind of advance warning. “They don’t need our support. They do whatever they want. That’s kind of the reality of the situation, and it’s difficult when that reality hits home and your neighbors are taken from their homes.”

Politics

Both Hamill and Williams got enough primary votes to run for both council and mayor. Hamill chose to run for both; Williams chose only to run for mayor. 

“I like being mayor,” said Wiliams, explaining his choice. “I find it’s a really good job, and to me, I get the same kick out of it as I would with any other elected official job. I don’t need the day-to-day vote. I don’t even need the tiebreaker vote. I just want to be there to discuss the things that are going on and make sure that the citizens have a voice in what’s happening in the borough.”

Hamill said that he has tried to serve as a voice of reason on the borough council, though often outnumbered in so doing, and would like to continue to serve in that role if not elected to be mayor. 

“But from the mayor’s perspective, again, I think that the electorate deserves to have a choice,” he said, adding that there being multiple people interested in the role helps bring accountability. 

Infrastructure

On street safety, Hamill said that many design things are in the works to address safety on Main Street. However, a lack of police presence regulating speeding has contributed to the current problems, he said. 

Williams said street safety is a systems problem that involves a lot of moving parts, and said that additional police enforcement would not solve the problems stemming from fundamental design issues. 

On stormwater, Williams said that Honesdale’s historic stormwater infrastructure was the result of choices that seemed good at the time, but probably would not be done today—like taking stormwater underground through pipes. The borough both needs to fix what is broken and plan for the future, he said. 

Hamill agreed that the borough needed to go back to the drawing board; it’s been over 50 years since the borough’s stormwater infrastructure has been updated, and it has seen increased rainfall in that time. 

However, it involved a lot of discussion to fix, said Hamill, discussion that extended to the state level beyond Honesdale. The borough has had “a very inconsistent and dysfunctional body politic in our community,” and hasn’t had the administrative personnel in order to address its issues, he said.