The Town of Fort Frances is preparing to add its name to a list of municipalities calling on the province to re-absorb some of the cost of community policing.
During Monday night’s meeting of Town Council, discussion turned to a resolution letter received from the Municipality of Tweed, Ont., regarding the cost of policing in Ontario. In the letter, Tweed councillor Peter Valiquette noted that smaller municipalities (of 10,000 people or fewer) in the province operate on limited tax revenue, most of which is required to cover operating costs and don’t begin to cover significant infrastructure deficits. As such, Valiquette stated that the additional burden of paying for non-contract policing costs puts an incredible strain on those municipalities who are already facing “insurmountable challenges.”
“WHEREAS it is apparent that the Ontario Government has overlooked the needs of small rural Ontario,” the resolution states.
“AND WHEREAS Ontario’s small rural municipalities face insurmountable challenges to fund both upfront investments and ongoing maintenance of their capital assets including roads, bridges, water/ wastewater and municipally owned buildings including recreational facilities, libraries and other tangible capital assets… AND WHEREAS small rural municipalities (of 10,000 people or less) are facing monumental infrastructure deficits that cannot be adequately addressed through property tax revenue alone… NOW THEREFORE BE IT RESOLVED THAT The Municipality of Tweed call on the Ontario Government to immediately implement sustainable funding for small rural municipalities by reabsorbing the cost of the Ontario Provincial Police Force back into the provincial budget with no cost recovery to municipalities.”
In the resolution, Valiquette puts the spotlight on several moves the government has announced totalling in the billions of dollars, namely the repatriation costs of the Gardiner Expressway and Don Valley Parkway in Toronto, as well as Highway 174 in the Ottawa area. Valiquette notes that the cost of these repatriations (more than $9-billion) which affect only a small percentage of the province’s population is far more than the annual cost of policing contracts for non-contract O.P.P. locations (approximately $428-million), arguing the province could easily re-absorb these costs without impacting the annual budget in a significant fashion while greatly relieving small municipalities, who can then stretch their residential tax dollars further.
Town of Fort Frances councillor Steve Maki brought the resolution before council, arguing that while it isn’t immediately beneficial to the Town of Fort Frances, as it has a contract with the O.P.P, he feels there is value to signing on with the effort in the hopes that somewhere down the line the municipality will be able to leverage the situation in its advantage.
“I don’t necessarily believe that, if we were to follow suit with this, that the government is going to say the O.P.P. don’t have to charge us – we are going to get charged,” Maki said.
“This motion here is more for… not for towns with contracts but municipalities that don’t have contracts for O.P.P. placing. The gist of this is if we support this, down the road if all of these municipalities gain some leeway with the government and get their policing costs covered, even though ours isn’t, eventually we could put our hands up and say ‘lookit, folks… you’re paying for them, you’re discriminating against us, maybe we should get it free as well.’ Every municipality in the province is in the same boat as us, scrambling for tax dollars.”
Councillor John McTaggart noted that the resolution itself uses old terminology from the province’s former policing act, namely that of ‘5.1 Communities’ which would have included municipalities like Alberton that were non-contract with the O.P.P. Under the new Community Policing and Safety act there are no longer contracts.
Agreeing that the terminology of the resolution is outdated, Fort Frances mayor Andrew Hallikas nevertheless noted that the Town of Fort Frances is among the top three most expensive policing costs in the province, which he said is “not sustainable.”
“Even though it’s slightly different, I agree with the intent of councillor Maki that the government has to help small communities with some of these downloaded costs,” Hallikas said.
Maki noted he wished to see the municipality support the Tweed resolution with one of its own, with the mayor asking administration prepare a resolution of support for the next council meeting.
