Grey-Bruce communities with municipal police services request funding

[Thomas]

Grey-Bruce municipalities with their own police services are raising concerns about not receiving the additional funding their municipal peers who contract the OPP for policing are being granted.

The mayors of Owen Sound, Hanover and West Grey have sent a joint letter to Bruce-Grey-Owen Sound MPP Rick Byers requesting equitable funding for municipal policing. Saugeen Shores Mayor Luke Charbonneau has sent his own letter to Premier Doug Ford with a similar request that the provincial government recognize the pressures ratepayers are facing due to the rising cost of policing.

Owen Sound Mayor Ian Boddy said on Dec. 16 that his municipality is affected when the OPP officers receive wage increases because the arbitration process sees those wages replicated at the municipal level.

He added that if they don’t try to keep the wages for their police service close to what one makes with the OPP, they risk losing officers to the other force.

“That provincial decision is going to affect all of us whether we have OPP policing or not and it is clear that those with OPP service have been subsidized for years and that is why the price has gone up,” Boddy said. “Now they are being subsidized again and it is only fair that the rest of us get the same support.”

The province announced in late November a proposal to provide more than $77 million in financial relief for municipalities facing increased OPP costs in 2025. The government also announced the continuation of the annual $125-million court security and prisoner transportation transfer payment program for municipalities that are home to provincial courthouses.

Locally, Brockton was facing a 30 per cent increase in policing costs for 2025, while Meaford was looking at an approximately 25 per cent rise, Georgian Bluffs 22 per cent, Grey Highlands 21 per cent and South Bruce Peninsula 15 per cent.

In making its funding announcement for OPP-policed municipalities, the province said the investment will help offset the 2025 impacts of OPP salary increases.

In July, OPP officers ratified a new four-year contract that covers 2023 to 2026, including retroactive raises of 4.75 per cent in the first year, followed by a 4.5 per cent increase in the second year and 2.75 per cent increases in years three and four.

In their letter sent to Byers, Boddy, West Grey Mayor Kevin Eccles and Hanover Mayor Sue Paterson highlighted their concerns as three of the province’s 44 municipalities that have their own municipal police force.

Along with the concerns about losing officers if their wages don’t keep pace with the OPP, it noted that Owen Sound, Hanover and West Grey are dealing with many of the same pressures being experienced by communities that contract the OPP for policing.

These include the “significant costs” associated with the implementation of the Comprehensive Ontario Police Services Act, 2019, the opioid crisis, homelessness and mental health issues.

“Yet we are not receiving the same financial support from the province to manage these rising costs, and have been left to deal with these rising costs on our own,” the letter states. “This is simply unfair.”

The letter notes that the additional funding to help offset the higher OPP costs comes from all taxpayers in the province, including those with municipal police forces.

“As such, ratepayers in Owen Sound, Hanover and West Grey are supporting not only their own police services, but also the communities that have contracted the OPP to provide police services,” the letter reads.

The mayors go on to request “equitable financial relief” to ensure they get “the funding we need to continue providing the quality policing our residents deserve.”

When reached by phone on Dec. 17, Charbonneau said he wrote a letter to Ford about a week ago requesting similar relief for his municipality.

“We are glad the provincial government has decided to help out those municipalities with OPP costs and we think that is the right thing to do,” said Charbonneau. “Our point is that those municipalities that have their own police services face many of the same pressures and many of those pressures have been caused by the province’s new legislation, the new policing act.”

Saugeen Shores is facing an increase of more than 15 per cent to its police budget in 2025, and Charbonneau said the increase is being driven by provincial mandates contained in the Community Safety and Policing Act, which came into effect earlier this year.

had ratified new four-year uniform and civilian collective agreements, running Jan. 1, 2024 to Dec. 31, 2027. The agreements included wage improvements that were “influenced by the changing nature of policing within Saugeen Shores and requirements within the new Community Safety and Policing Act.”

The pay increases for uniform police officers, special constables and jail guards were 4.5 per cent in year’s 1 and 2, and 3.5 per cent in year’s 3 and 4. Civilian support services staff received a $5,000 salary increase retroactive to Jan. 1, 2024, and then matched the percentage increases of the uniformed members starting on Jan. 1, 2025.

“Saugeen Shores has a great police service and we have a lot of great police officers and we seem to be able to recruit great people to be in our police service,” Charbonneau said. “It would certainly help us an awful lot if the province would provide the adequate amount of funding like they have chosen to do for those with OPP services, to help us continue to have a great police service.”

A request for comment on the matter was forwarded to the Office of the Solicitor General of Ontario, but a reply had not yet been received by deadline.

https://www.thepost.on.ca/news/local-ne ... st-funding