Safety and efficiency aren't cheap, the State College Borough Council said.

Attempting to maintain both for the more than 40,000 university students that overrun State College for most of the year costs a pretty penny.

And the borough says it may need more university dollars to pay for the extra police, fire and sanitation services a college town demands. But Penn State, citing the almost 775,000 it already pays the surrounding area, maintains the non-cash contributions a research university of its size and prestige gives back more than enough.

Council members, who discussed the issue again at a special meeting Nov. 29, asked borough staff to look at the annual budget and figure out what extra services exist because State College is a college town with a large student population.

Depending on what staff members find, the borough may ask Penn State to start paying more money per year than they already pay to cover the extra costs.

"We have more police due to the type of community we have," State College Police Chief Tom King said. "Staff should tell us what extra services exist because State College is a college town."

King said if the cost of providing extra police services is higher than what Penn State already contributes, the borough might ask for additional funding.

King said university-affiliated buildings downtown are tax-exempt because they are used for educational purposes.

In lieu of paying property taxes, Penn State gives the borough a lump sum -- called the PSU impact fee -- every year to cover governmental costs, such as sanitation and police, King said.

That amount, which stems from a 1992 negotiated agreement between the municipalities and the university, totaled $772,346.56 in 2006 and will be $803,803.11 in 2007. Each year the borough receives the majority of the total impact fee -- 57.19 percent -- because Penn State is located within the borough and receives the most student impact.

In 2006, that percent equaled $441,705, Borough Manager Tom Fountaine said. According to the borough's budget, in 2007, the borough will receive the lump sum of $459,695. The borough was estimated to have 39,728 residents in 2003, according to the last U.S. census data.

Centre County Commissioner Chris Exarchos said aside from the university and the State College Borough, Patton Township, Harris Township, College Township and the Centre County Commissioners also signed the agreement. Exarchos said the agreement was renegotiated in 2005 according to the Consumer Price Index (CPI), which takes into account the cost of living.

Fountaine said the amount, which is paid on or before Dec. 15, is adjusted annually according to the CPI. He added that the borough has always applied their portion of the impact fee to the Capital Improvement Program, which funds improvements of streets, parks, sewers, parking and information technology.

Dan Sieminski, associate vice president for finance and business and commonwealth operations, said Penn State pays for the impact fee through a variety of operations.

Sieminski said the impact fee is collected from university operations, like ticket sales for example, that people pay for and receive a service for in return.

He said the university collects a 50-cent fee on each ticket sold for entertainment events at the Bryce Jordan Center and theater events, as well as from purchases from the Penn State Bookstore and the Nittany Lion Inn.

Sieminski added that no funding for the impact fee is provided by student funds, like general funds or tuition.

Out of the borough's 2007 budget of $15,302,225, the State College Police Department is allocated $7,209,943. King said according to data from the most recent study, which was completed in 1995, Penn State students accounted for 51 percent of all arrests in State College. More recent results weren't available.

State College Mayor Bill Welch said there is an overlap between the age demographic most likely to commit crime and the age of students. He added that borough council needs to study other aspects about Penn State.

"You can't just say that Penn State is a problem because x, y or z costs us this ... you have to acknowledge the noncash contributions Penn State makes," he said. "State College would look more like Boalsburg if we didn't have Penn State. It keeps the rest of us younger."

Council member Tom Daubert said the borough has to provide a lot more services to the community because of the university, such as extra police at Beaver Stadium on game weekends, and the burden of paying for those services falls on the homeowners in the borough.

"We just have to keep the pressure on a little bit; people need to realize it costs money to run this town," Daubert said.

Penn State spokesman Bill Mahon said Penn State has always had a great relationship with the State College Borough and just signed a 10-year agreement with the borough in 2005.

"We have a very good relationship with the borough; PSU provides a lot of services to the borough," he said. "We have a Hazmat team that covers the local community, we have a lot of faculty and staff that make up crews of community fire trucks and our police department has a cooperation with the borough."

Welch said he thought the most significant non-cash contribution made by Penn State is the fact that 40 percent of Alpha Fire Co.'s volunteers are Penn State students.

"The day we have to have a paid fire company is the day you don't want to be a Centre Region taxpayer," Welch said. He added that the State College Police Department, which has about 60 officers, makes up the biggest part of the borough's budget and if the borough had to pay for 100 or more fire fighters on top of that, it would be "a staggering blow to taxpayers."

Council member Ron Filippelli said he can appreciate both the university's and the borough's sides of the issue.

"I do think it's a good time for us to take an inventory of the services we provide, the cost to the borough of the things the borough has to handle with the [student population]," Filippelli said. "We need an inventory of what it costs us and the taxpayers to provide these services. We need also to have an inventory of the services the university provides to the borough -- there are many services the university provides," he added.

Other Big Ten universities have a financial relationship with the towns they occupy, but not all pay an impact fee like Penn State does.

Alan Cubbage, vice president of university relations at Northwestern University in Evanston, Ill., said for the past couple of years, Northwestern has made an annual voluntary payment to the city of Evanston.

Northwestern has a combined undergraduate and graduate student population of about 13,000, and the non-student population of Evanston is around 60,000, Cubbage said.

He said the university makes a payment of $350,000 to the city of Evanston and an additional $350,000 to the Evanston School District. Then, the city and school district determine where the funding is needed.

Cubbage said Northwestern has its own police force and provides its own sanitation and trash pickup. He said the university only receives fire protection from the town of Evanston. Cubbage said the university's police force patrols downtown Evanston as well as the campus.

Cubbage said he thought Penn State students probably were the cause of a lot more problems in State College than Northwestern students are in Evanston.

"Northwestern students are generally not the cause of too many issues," he said.

Carol Shelby, senior director of environmental health and public safety at Purdue University in West LaFayette, Ind., said Purdue does not have a financial relationship with the West LaFayette City Council because the university is self-sufficient.

Purdue University has a student population of 38,712. The town of West LaFayette has a population of 28,778.

Shelby said Purdue has its own police and fire departments, and when there is a home football game, the university's athletic department pays an hourly wage to the extra police officers working at each game.

"We don't pay them a lump sum. It's on an as-needed basis," Shelby said.

Shelby added that because the town of West LaFayette does not provide Purdue with services such as trash pickup, Purdue does not pay them.

Diane Brown, senior information coordinator with Facilities and Operations at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor, said the university pays the city of Ann Arbor for a variety of services, but the payment does not come in one lump sum.

The University of Michigan has a student population of 39,533; the town of Ann Arbor has a population of 114,024.

Brown said that on football game days in Ann Arbor, the Ann Arbor City Police Department takes management of traffic control on the streets that run through the campus. She said as a result, campus police do not have to worry about traffic control and they spend their time working at the stadium. Brown said the costs of the Ann Arbor Police Department are then charged to the university athletic department.

Brown said the city pays for things like domestic water and fire services, but the university helps by providing things like new fire trucks for the fire department.

Exarchos said it's hard to compare the various impact fees some universities might pay versus those who do not pay any impact fee.

"Each university is different; even universities who don't pay impact fees may pay other forms of taxes," Exarchos said. "Different people contribute in different ways -- it would be difficult to make a comparison."