Small towns handcuffed by policing costs

Obscenely high and unsustainable policing costs. OPP bills are destroying communities its officers are supposed to protect. Apparent self-interest is cloaked in the guise of public safety needs. Where is the political outrage while OPP costs continue to climb? Who is going to bring policing costs in this province under control?

Small towns handcuffed by policing costs

Postby Thomas » Sat Feb 21, 2015 5:48 pm

TIMMINS - While the Town of Cochrane has come out ahead on the issue of policing costs, Cochrane Mayor Peter Politis will continue to lobby the province for a more equitable cost formula for smaller communities.

Politis made the comments Friday at the winter meeting of the Northeastern Ontario Municipal Association (NEOMA), one of the many groups that has lobbied the province for fair policing costs for smaller communities that do not have their own municipal police service and rely on service from the Ontario Provincial Police.

Along with leading the fight as the mayor of Cochrane, Politis also served as chairman of the Mayor’s Coalition on Affordable Policing, which lobbied in recent years for the change in the Ontario Provincial Police billing model.

The province announced that change last summer. It split the OPP policing cost into two parts; the first 60% to cover basic police services (which works out to about $203 per household per year) and secondly, the remaining 40% will be based on the number of police calls and the nature of police call.

Prior to the changes, which came into effect on Jan. 1, Cochrane was paying more than $800 per household for OPP service. There will also be increases phased in over a five-year period related to future increases in OPP wages and benefits.

Politis told the meeting that more work has to be done to make policing costs equitable to all communities. He said this will be important to Northeastern Ontario.

“The problem was the formula was not an equitable formula. So while some municipalities paid less, we had other municipalities paying more than their share,” he said. “That created the inequity.

“You also have the real small municipalities that don’t have the taxes. There’s a lot of those up here in this part of the province. They’re going to get hit significantly with costs and this is something we have to find a more creative way to deal with, because they’re not going to have the tax bases to be able to pay for that, or to deal with that.”

Politis said this is something where the province will have to step up and take into account the fact that many communities in Northern Ontario are disproportionately small and remote.

“Somewhere along the line, we are hoping to convince the province they have a responsibility to the smaller municipalities which aren’t structured and don’t have the depth and the tax base, if you will, to pay for the services.”

Politis said he is hoping the province will be accommodating.

“The province has been pretty good actually,” he said. “At first, it was difficult. I mean you’re dealing with the police forces. This is a David-and-Goliath scenario if ever there was one. But the province has come a long ways. I think they recognize the policing model in the province is not working and it needs to be changed.”

Politis said he is cautiously optimistic at this time.

“There are challenges ahead, but I don’t see challenges that cannot be overcome.”

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