‘No consultation’: Municipalities scrambling after double-digit spike in OPP costs

Several Ontario municipalities that rely on provincial police services are scrambling to revise their budget plans for next year after being suddenly saddled with skyrocketing law enforcement bills, a spike they say came with no warning or explanation.

The bills handed down by Ontario Provincial Police for 2025 represent a jump of more than 30 per cent in some cases, and at least one municipality is facing more than double the previous price tag, leaving local leaders to consider tax hikes or spending cuts to offset the costs.

“It’s outrageous to put this on our property taxpayers,” said Yvonne Hamlin, the mayor of Collingwood, a popular tourist destination known for its skiing.

The town of roughly 30,000 full-time and seasonal residents was told its policing bill would jump by 37 per cent next year, which would require a roughly five per cent property tax hike, Hamlin said.

“We’re going to get to not proceeding with projects that are on the books or potentially cutting services,” she said. “But there’s certain services (that can’t be cut). If you’re in a snow belt, you’re not cutting your snow plowing.”

An unexpected, nearly 20 per cent surge in policing costs for 2025 has put the southwestern Ontario community of Essex “kind of in a corner,” said the town’s mayor, Sherry Bondy.

The bill would add more than three per cent to the town’s total budget, forcing council to either spend less on infrastructure maintenance and capital projects or pass on the burden to taxpayers, she said.

“There was no consultation with us to determine if this was something that is even financially feasible for us,” Bondy said.

“It’s just hard when this drops on our lap a month before budget,” she said. “We really feel like the province should step up and help us with these costs.”

Some municipalities said they still haven’t received clear answers regarding their bills. They were told to tune into a provincewide webinar that would break down the policing costs and how they were allocated, but the presentation was then cancelled, they said.

Still, conversations between municipalities and the province continue, and many said they hoped a solution would be announced before they went too deep in the budgeting process.

“I’m confident that … the province will do the right thing,” said Cathy Miller, mayor of the Township of Pelee, a Lake Erie island community of roughly 230 whose OPP costs are set to jump by 107 per cent next year.

“But what I think is the thing standing out to me, as an elected official of the ninth smallest municipality in the province, is that I couldn’t get a meeting to discuss this,” she said.

“I think there’s quite a few municipalities that are feeling blindsided.”

Municipalities are already under financial strain due to inflation and “costly challenges” such as homelessness, housing and the opioid crisis and the latest OPP bills are significantly increasing expenses for some, said Robin Jones, president of the Association of Municipalities of Ontario.

“The Ontario government sees the problem and they’ve told us they are looking for solutions,” Jones said in a statement.

The organization continues to call for a review of the municipal and provincial funding arrangements for public services, including policing, she said.

“Each year the Ontario government siphons off $4 billion in municipal revenue to pay for provincial responsibilities like health care and social services. It’s not sustainable or effective,” she said.

OPP did not respond to a request for comment but instead referred questions to the Ministry of the Solicitor General, which is responsible for the force.

However, an OPP spokesperson told Global News last month that salary and benefits account for the bulk of municipal policing costs, which are then billed to the municipalities served by the force. The latest bills also reflect a return to “pre-pandemic workload levels,” the spokesperson told Global.

A spokesperson for the ministry did not answer repeated questions regarding the reason behind the sudden year-over-year spike in costs or how the change had been communicated to municipalities.

“We understand that some municipalities face additional costs due to their existing agreements with the OPP. We will work with these municipalities to ensure they are not negatively financially impacted by this,” Chelsea McGee, director of communications for the Office of the Solicitor General, said in an email.

Provincial police provide their services to about 330 municipalities that don’t have their own police forces.

OPP recover the cost of policing those municipalities through a billing model put in place in 2015. It includes a base cost per property as well as variable costs related to the number of calls for service and other factors, according to a document on the force’s website.

A new contract agreement ratified over the summer has also boosted OPP officer salaries, with the force now the highest paid in the province, according to its union. The four-year contract covers 2023 to 2026 and includes retroactive raises of 4.75 per cent for the first year and 4.5 per cent for the second, as well as 2.75 per cent raises for the final two years.

Miller, the Pelee mayor, said the town is happy with the services provided by the local OPP detachment and understands that some cost increases, such as higher wages, are inevitable.

But the price surge imposed on the town is dramatically out of step with what other communities are facing, which suggests something went awry with the formula, she said.

“It stood out as egregious to us,” Miller said, adding she initially thought it was a mistake.

Sticker shock has pushed some municipalities to consider switching to a different policing model once their contracts with the OPP expire.

Simcoe County’s council discussed the possibility of creating a regional police force at a recent meeting, said Hamlin, the mayor of Collingwood. The council includes mayors and deputy mayors for the county’s 16 municipalities, including Collingwood.

Bondy, the mayor of Essex, said that idea has been floated among municipal leaders in her region as well, along with a few other potential alternatives. So far, those conversations have all been informal, but the topic is on the books for a special council meeting in January, she said.

This report by The Canadian Press was first published Nov. 22, 2024.

Paola Loriggio, The Canadian Press