Archive

Council nixes look at county police plan

April 2, 2014   ·   0 Comments

By James Matthews – Forming a countywide ad-hoc policing committee is out of Orangeville’s reach, says Mayor Rob Adams.

During the regular council meeting on Monday, Coun. Jeremy Williams put forward a motion that a Policing Strategies ad-hoc committee be formed to review the current delivery of municipal police services. Coun. Williams told The Citizen last week the committee would have been tasked to explore options to improve the delivery of police services and increase efficiencies, including possibly moving toward a county-wide police force.

Orangeville and Shelburne have their own police forces, while Dufferin OPP police the other lower-tier municipalities. During Monday’s meeting, Coun. Williams said amalgamating municipal police forces in Dufferin would be cost-effective. He said the main obstacle is that of politics: Municipal governments would like to keep control of their respective police services.

But it was all for naught. The idea died without another councillor to second the motion.

“Unfortunately, the motion as proposed was outside the town’s jurisdiction,” Mayor Adams said. “On the advice of our solicitors, council was unable to support it.”

The expense of maintaining the Orangeville Police Service became an issue during council’s attempts to finalize the 2014 operating and capital budgets. The OPS was the budget’s greatest spending concern. About 20 per cent of the town’s budget is OPS funding.

Amidst attempts to pass a budget with as small a tax increase as possible, the notion was broached of scrapping the OPS in favour of a contract with the Ontario Provincial Police. It was decided after a little wrangling to approach the OPP to prepare a costing report.

Such a report would detail what the OPP determines to be the town’s policing needs and what the provincial force would charge to meet those needs.

Coun. Sylvia Bradley, chairperson of the town’s finance and administration committee, said forming an ad-hoc committee would be premature as they’re still awaiting the OPP costing report, which she said could come as late as next year.

Mayor Adams, who sits on the police services board, said he’s behind efforts to improve policing in Orangeville and reduce the service’s cost.

“I’m open to any review of options to ensure value for taxpayers’ dollars,” he said. “There’s always room for improvement regarding police services. It’s been the biggest driver of cost for the municipality.

“We need to do everything we can to control those costs.”

Readers Comments (0)