Expecting to save on police spending, dozens of small municipalities across Ontario have traded in their local police forces for OPP service over the past two decades. In doing so, they signed their rights away. And now -- hit with soaring police costs that blew up this year when the force’s 6,300 officers were awarded a whopping 8.55% raise -- they want a new deal that guarantees them a say in the price or in how their communities are policed.

THE PROBLEM

Response times are fine, crime is plummeting and the service provided is good, mayors of the 324 communities policed by the OPP agree -- but there’s a big problem.

The cost is killing them.

As cities wrestle with increasingly unmanageable police budgets, the issue -- brought to a head with the recently announced 8.55% raise for 6,300 OPP officers -- has reached a breaking point in some rural communities.

Mayors of municipalities that switched to OPP to save money on administration and equipment updates -- dozens have traded in local forces during the past two decades -- say their towns are scraping by to pay the bills.

Told they must pay anyway, they want change.

And they have suggestions: Pull policing out of the municipal budget or give municipalities a say.

“Say for pay, that’s what we want,” said Norfolk County Mayor Dennis Travale, adding his community of 65,000 likely would have had a tax break if not for the OPP raise.

Instead, Norfolk residents were slapped with a 1.4% hike.

“The frustration is we don’t have a chair at the table, so I have to throw rocks and grenades from the sidelines,” Travale said.

It’s become so bad some mayors have hinted at bankruptcy, while others mull returning to municipal forces. But for most that’s not an option.

“Your upfront costs are going to be tremendous,” Travale said. “We’re in for the long run.”

The way it works now, the province tells OPP-serviced communities what the police budget will be and how staffing will work.

“We have no control over that money,” said Peter Politis, mayor of Cochrane, in northern Ontario, and where households pay $820 this year for police services — triple what they paid a decade ago.

“The province makes all the decisions . . . You can’t have us pay for your service while you go and do whatever.”

Four years ago, Politis, Travale and four others formed the Mayor’s Coalition for Affordable Sustainable Accountable policing. The group has grown to 150 members.

“We want some control over how many police officers there are, and what they are doing,” said Politis. “Do we need three police officers to go into a school and tell kids to wear a bicycle helmet? No, we don’t.

“Taxpayers are choking right now on the taxes they pay in this country.”

jennifer.obrien@sunmedia.ca

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THE SOLUTION

For years now, Ontario communities have said they’ve been handcuffed by the OPP, forced to pay soaring police costs with no say in how their communities are policed, how many “boots are on the ground,” so to speak.

And under the OPP’s complicated billing system, that has meant paying costs that varied greatly across the province -- with household policing bills ranging from nearly $1,000 in some towns to a jaw-dropping $9 in one tiny Manitoulin community.

Admitting the system isn’t fair, the OPP has pitched a billing model under which every household would pay a base amount of $260, topped up by a calls-for-service cost starting in 2015.

“Our billing model has frankly been a mess,” said OPP Commissioner Chris Lewis. “It was based on workload, so if you were in a rural township with a couple hundred houses, you virtually paid nothing. You got a police force, ready to go, but because they were never used you never paid for it.”

Households in the next town -- which could be across the street according to the town line, such as the case in Bancroft, northeast of Peterborough, could pay hundreds of dollars more because schools, businesses and a hospital mean more calls for service.

“Now everybody on both sides of the road is going to be paying the same thing,” Lewis said.

Though the new billing model has the support of a committee struck by the Assocation of Municipalities of Ontario, which hopes to make recommendations on implementing the model by the end of March, leaders of some towns that have enjoyed lower costs say a sudden hike could hurt their taxpayers.

Ultimately, the province will decide whether to implement the new system.

“We can’t take those kinds of increases,” said Bill Vrebosch, mayor of East Ferris Township, south of North Bay, who calculates policing costs on his taxpayers’ bills -- now about $134 a year -- would more than double under the new system.

Vrebosch claimed the model essentially asks most municipalities to subsidize communities that are heavy users of OPP services. “This whole process is pitting municipality against municipality,” he said.

But it’s a start, said Mayor Peter Politis of Cochrane, northeast of Timmins, head of the Mayor’s Coalition for Affordable, Sustainable, Accountable Policing.

“I don’t care who you are, what your justification is, you have to pay more than $9 for policing services,” said Politis, referring to the situation on Cockburn Island, in the Manitoulin area.

- With files from QMI Agency

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Annual cost of policing

Throughout Ontario: $3.8 billion

Cost of OPP policing: $1 billion

Cost of OPP policing in municipalities: $360 million

Average cost of policing, per household, in Ontario cities: $700

Average cost of policing, per household, in towns policed by the OPP: $368 (though it varies greatly)

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Equalized billing

Proposed equalized billing model to take effect in 2015: $260 base cost per household for police services, plus calls for service.

Under current model

Cost for police service varies greatly, with Cockburn Island at the low end -- paying $9 a year per household and Atikokan and Kenora at the high end, paying about $1,000 each .

$9: Cockburn Island (there are some summer residences there, but no one lives there year round)

$125: Tiny Township; pop. 12,000

$134: East Ferris; pop. 4,500

$580: Tecumseh; pop. 25,000

$820: Cochrane; pop. 6,500

$1,000: Atikokan; pop. 2,600

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OPP BY THE NUMBERS

6,300 police officers

2,300 civilian employees

77 detachments (150 locations within them)

87 satellite stations

5 satellite stations

5 communication centres with 911 call takers and dispatchers

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Expenses

In 2011/2012, OPP operating expenses totalled $979 million

Staffing cost was 87% of that

Municipalities reimbursed $362 million of the total

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What the politicians said

Madeleine Meilleur, Minister of Community Safety and Correctional Services, said the government is doing its best to fix a complicated system.

“It’s not the right model. I don’t think our model is transparent. It’s difficult to understand and it’s not fair to municipalities,” she said.

She also said if mayors are counting on being able to negotiate with the province on how policing will actually happen in their communities -- and some are -- they should prepare for an uphill battle.

Tory MPP Steve Clark, his party’s community safety and correctional services critic, said he’s received a “stack” of letters from mayors who’ll see tax bills rise in their communities if the OPP operation goes to an equalized fee model.

“You’ve got chaos in the municipal sector, with people not knowing whether their billing will go up or down,” said Clark, who raised the issue during question period Thursday.

Peggy Sattler, the NDP’s community safety and correctional services critic, could not be reached.

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Average salary for a first-class constable

OPP $94, 702

London $90,215

Toronto $90,623

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OPP pay, by years of experience

2-7 $90,623

8-16 $93,342

17-22 $96,061

23+ $98,780

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Dollars and cents

After a two-year freeze, OPP officers received an 8.55% pay increase -- the result of a provincial government promise to make them the highest paid in Ontario.

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How OPP is trying to reduce costs

46 projects ongoing, including surveys, environmental scans and deployment analyses.

Hiring of 200 civilians to write reports (dictated over phone) so officers can remain out on patrol.

Awaiting direction from the government’s Future of Policing Advisory panel, which has representatives from 12 organizations -- half of them police associations and services.

Source: OPP

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Criticism from auditor general in 2012:

Between 2004/2005 and 2011/2012, crime rates reported by OPP dropped 10%, Crashes: Fatalities down 45%, injuries 32%, calls for service stable. But costs were up 27%, mostly from hiring.

OPP had little control over scheduling and most officers chose 12-hour shifts, resulting in overstaffing during slow hours compared to the busy afternoon hours. Sundays also overstaffed about 20%.