OPP Billing Model

Wednesday, 20 August 2014 15:17

Ingersoll's Mayor says the new model will reduce the cost per household for policing in the town

INGERSOLL - Ingersoll's Mayor is welcoming changes to the billing model for Ontario Provincial Police services.

It was announced last week the O-P-P is introducing a new billing model that the government says will simplify, clarify and more evenly distribute costs among municipalities.

Ted Comiskey says small towns such as Ingersoll have been paying a premium for policing over other communities over the past 10-15 years with some of the smaller communities not paying the actual amount per household to balance out and make things equal.

"What it will do is reduce our cost per household to an extreme amount that we could look at, maybe over the next five years, savings up to $300,000 toward our policing costs."

Comiskey says he was involved with Mayor's Coalition and they realized the equalization of costs per household across Ontario was way out of whack.

"There are some municipalities that weren't paying police costs at all or that were paying a $1 per household for police costs where we as such, were paying up into the $500 range per household. The mayors got together and said there's got to be some sort of balancing that can be done."

Comiskey says everybody will have the same base costs with the calls for services added on top. He says the base will drop for Ingersoll while it will increase for other areas.

He says this will help to stabilize their taxes and get them in balance with other communities but it does not necessarily change the cost of policing.

"All it does is it balances it out. I believe that we have to concentrate on why is policing costing us so much to begin with? That's where I'm going to continue on the fight to say hey, hold it. This is great. This is great for our community and it certainly is an asset but why are policing costs so high compared to other provinces?"

The changes are expected to be phased in over a five year period.