City council has changed its tune about the future look of the police services board.
The province is requiring municipalities served by OPP to recommend a composition of their police services boards that better reflects the communities.
The board had recommended a move to a 10-person committee, up from the current five. It would include equal representation: one elected representative and one community representative from each municipality policed by Orillia OPP (Orillia, Oro-Medonte, Ramara and Severn), as well as two provincial representatives appointed by the Lieutenant Governor in Council.
Council committee wasn’t having it and voted last week for a nine-person OPP detachment board that would see proportionate representation from Orillia and the townships.
Some councillors felt Orillia should have more representation on the board because of the amount it pays for policing and because most calls for service are in the city.
Between that vote and Monday’s council meeting, Mayor Steve Clarke met with township mayors to discuss the board’s composition.
“As much as they understood that position (from council committee), they also spoke about the relationship that we do have … and the surrounding mayors and CAOs were unanimous in their desire to have equal representation on the police services board,” Clarke said before asking his colleagues to not ratify council committee’s decision and instead vote for the initial staff recommendation.
“As mayor and as chair of the police services board for the last number of years … I am quite confident that we can continue to work productively with our surrounding (municipalities).”
He also noted the changes to the board — expected to come into effect in the summer of 2022 — will be reviewed after a year. If council or the board decide it isn’t working well enough, an appeal can be made to the province, “and apparently they will consider a reformatting, whatever that may look like at that time,” Clarke said.
Coun. Ted Emond was among those who were vocal in their opposition to equal representation last week.
After speaking about it with the mayor, he said Monday, “I am of the opinion that equal representation is tolerable in this particular case.”
“However, I do believe that democratic institutions across the police should be representative of the populations that they are there to serve,” he added.
He spoke about the “exceptionally positive relationship” the city has with neighbouring townships — a point echoed by Coun. Pat Hehn.
“It’s a relationship that we don’t want to endanger,” she said.
Coun. Tim Lauer ultimately supported staff’s recommendation, despite voting against it last week, but he did seem frustrated.
“As far as all the warm and fuzzy chat, I’m just a little discouraged that we’ve asked our three partners to consider proportional representation and we’ve received a hard no and we’re immediately going in a different direction,” he said.
Policing is costing Orillia taxpayers $8.5 million, he pointed out before asking if there would be any assurance the city would get full value for what it pays and that there would be “no bleed” between its policing budget and those of the townships.
Kristine Preston, executive director of the Orillia Police Services Board, said once the changes come into effect, the billing process is expected to be largely the same. There could be changes in terms of grants, though. The city is guaranteed some grants until 2022. After that, it’s possible the grants will have to be shared with neighbouring municipalities.
Council unanimously voted for the staff recommendation Monday, but Lauer described his support as “kind of a probationary thing” and said he looks forward to reviewing it a year after its implementation.
“I’m going to really watch this closely,” he said.
