Pros and cons to OPP billing plan

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?

Pros and cons to OPP billing plan

Postby Thomas » Mon Mar 24, 2014 4:28 pm

PRESCOTT - It's a tale of two communities that typifies a provincewide angst about police costs.

A proposed 2015 billing reform for Ontario Provincial Police service could save Prescott homeowners as much as 60 per cent on their police bill while in Rideau Lakes the change could add another $100 to the current $250 annual bill for OPP services.

The proposed model would see municipalities charged a basic, per-household fee - initially set at $260 but now believed to be as much as $350 - plus extra costs for actual service calls.

Not surprisingly, it won the support of municipal council in Prescott where the current bill is about $900 per household.

Mayor Brett Todd will reinforce his town's support for the billing reform April 11 when he meets in Ottawa with Ontario Minister of Community Safety and Correctional Services Madeleine Meilleur.

Todd said the government, OPP and the Association of Municipalities of Ontario (AMO) stand behind the new model but he is troubled that they have left the door open for negotiation.

“This has created a vacuum that has been filled with a lot of justifiable protesting,” he said.

AMO struck a committee with representation from all sizes of municipalities to study the plan and identify ways to offset a steep hike in costs for rural communities.

Todd said he sympathizes with their plight but argues towns such as Prescott have subsidized policing for years in rural communities and he believes the committee is “muddying the waters” over a proposed billing model that is fair and equitable.

The mayor calls it absurd to charge higher policing costs for urban areas just because they have a greater concentration of commercial and industrial business, as is the case under the existing billing model.

That amounts to being penalized for “being hubs of activity and employment,” he said.

Instead, the proposed reform rightly spreads the core costs among all users, he said.

Rideau Lakes Mayor Ron Holman has a different point of view.

The United Counties Warden is also its representative on AMO but he is not a member of the committee reviewing the plan.

Unlike Prescott's mayor, Holman says commercial and industrial properties should be charged a share of policing costs because they benefit from the service.

“I have a number of issues with the proposal but the basic one is, is using a household average the way to go?

“There has to be some sort of a balance, in my mind. It should take in other factors beside the number of households.”

Holman also wonders if the AMO committee will reach a unanimous conclusion considering the diverse makeup of the municipal leaders.

In the end, the best solution may be establishing separate billing models for different areas, he said, suggesting Northern Ontario, large urban centres and rural Ontario as three likely possibilities, he said.

http://www.recorder.ca/2014/03/24/pros- ... lling-plan
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