Kingston-area municipalities see big hikes in OPP cost estimates

[Michael Jack]

Upcoming 2025 budgets see double-digit increases for policing costs

SYDENHAM — As municipal governments get down to the task of setting their 2025 budgets, many in the Kingston area face big increases in what they pay the OPP for policing.

Municipalities, many of them smaller, more rural communities across the region, are faced with increases that will ultimately be passed on to residents through higher property taxes.

The estimates the OPP provides to municipalities ahead of the budget deliberations are usually reduced slightly when the actual costs are known, and that difference is applied to future contract costs.

But even with these reconciliation amounts, many local townships are looking at double-digit increases in projected policing costs.

In 2024, South Frontenac Township paid about $2.9 million for OPP services. Next year, the township expects to pay almost $3.3 million, a 14.9 per cent increase.

“We are seeing a significant increase from the base 2024 to 2025,” the township’s chief administrative officer Louise Fragnito wrote in an email to The Whig-Standard.

Next door, in Central Frontenac Township, the story is the same with an expected 14 per cent increase in projected OPP costs, said Michael McGovern, Central Frontenac Township treasurer.

Central Frontenac Mayor and Frontenac County Warden Frances Smith called the policing cost increases “another gift from the province that keeps giving.”

“The province should be paying for their Ontario Provincial police, we have very little to no say yet we pay the bill,” Smith added. “These types of huge double-digit numbers are not acceptable, but we have to just pay the million plus dollars!

“No more gifts Province, our taxpayers can’t afford it.”

In Loyalist Township, councillors are to consider the 2025 budget with an estimated policing costs of more than $2.9 million, an increase of more than 20 per cent from the $2.4 million the township paid in 2024.

“This increase alone would represent a 2.2 per cent increase in the tax levy,” said Loyalist Township spokesperson Trevor Cornelius.

The increase in policing costs alone is expected to add more than two per cent to Loyalist township’s 2025 property tax increase.

Greater Napanee faces a projected increase of 23 per cent.

The OPP referred media inquiries to the Office of the Solicitor General.

“We understand that some municipalities face additional costs due to their existing agreements with the OPP,” Sydney Dubin, a spokesperson for the Office of the Solicitor General, wrote in an email to Postmedia.

“We will work with these municipalities to ensure they are not negatively financially impacted by this.”

— with files from Luke Henry/The Belleville Intelligencer

https://www.thewhig.com/news/kingston-a ... -estimates