Billing model affects municipalities

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?

Billing model affects municipalities

Postby Thomas » Fri May 23, 2014 10:56 am

ALMAGUIN — If Ontario Provincial Police costs aren’t dealt with soon, municipalities won’t be able to afford OPP service.

Bill Vrebosch, mayor of the Municipality of East Ferris, says that if things continue the way they are the costs to his township will increase by 180 per cent in 2015.

“When I have to start looking at a 10 per cent increase in my municipal taxes just for police, that’s a problem,” Vrebosch says.

Vresbosch was recently appointed as the under-5,000 population municipalities representative on the Province’s future of policing advisory committee.

A motion has circulated to area councils requesting that the Province of Ontario take back the responsibility for policing small municipalities.

Vrebosch says that the response from councils to this resolution has been positive.

“Every day we get more endorsing our motions,” he says.

Now, a further resolution is requesting the property owners in unincorporated areas be required to pay their fair share for the noted services.

“For those communities not familiar with unincorporated areas, these only exist in Northern Ontario and those who reside or operate businesses in these areas pay Provincial Land Tax to the government for services,” says a letter from Baldwin Township. “However, the amount collected is in no way sufficient to be providing costs to these areas.”

“I’ve got to give credit to Baldwin Township and the Township of Nairn and Hyman and [Seguin Township Mayor] David Conn,” says Vrebosch.

“Had our small municipalities not raised this question, then this whole thing would have just simply been passed straight through and we would have had nothing to say afterwards. So I think what we did is we woke the province up to this and we woke up all the municipalities in the province.”

“We’re not against the municipalities who have come down in funding,” says Vrebosch. “We think they have a right to ask for that. Government should be mitigating to help these people, not spreading it across the province by household, which makes some of the other people pay for other people’s policing problems. We want to pay for our own.

“Municipalities are just plainly going to have to lock their doors. They just can’t afford this. That’s why we’re saying to the province ‘take back policing, we can no longer afford it.’ And the way they arbitrate these decisions all over Ontario, what’s to say that a policeman in North Bay should make the same money as a policeman in Toronto? But that’s what these arbitrators are doing. They’re allowing these people to get like settlements. Well, you know, the cost of living in these areas is different, the amount of money municipalities can afford is different. So police can’t be equalized across the province. Neither can other emergency services. We’re saying, ‘You have to start paying attention to local conditions here.’

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