Both the mayor and chief of police of Sarnia say it's not true that their city would have saved a million dollars annually by converting their local police force to the OPP.
The two spoke out after North Bay councillor Mac Bain said Sarnia went through the process two years ago and the saving would have been a million dollars annually.
See: Police review put on ice...for now.
But Bain defends his comments, pointing to an article in Sarnia's local newspaper.
See Sarnia Observer story here: Council ends OPP costing debate.
But Mayor Mike Bradley says that's just not so, and he was "stunned" to read Bain's comment.
"There are significant costs. By the time you do the payouts because they don't take any officers with over 30 years of service, it was somewhere between eight to 10 million for us to switch to OPP.
And costs weren't the only deterrent.
"You lose control. We have a local police board, local officers and when you switch to the OPP you get a detachment commander. The way they save money is getting rid of the civilians. so you lose control and there are no savings. At 10 million dollars to make the switch, we couldn't see the value.
"Having local control is the key --- the programs we offer in the schools, the morality squad that deals with drugs, and there's a great North Bay connection. It's the patch 4 patch program that (Nipissing MPP Vic) Fedeli is behind. Sarnia was one of the first advocates of that and we're delighted to deal with Fentanyl. that's what you get when you have local police officers saying 'We've got a massive Fentanyl problem. How are we going to solve it?'.They looked at North Bay."
Police Chief Phil Nelson has a budget of just under 22 million, up 2.4 percent this year, to serve 72 thousand citizens. North Bay's increase this year is 1.9 percent to $17.3 million to serve a population of about 56,000 including Callander.
"There's a bit of a move across the province to do comparisons to see if they can receive policing any cheaper, but the bottom line with us is that after they looked at the costs, they decided 'No, we'll stay with the municipal police service'. It's 10 million up front to switch over.
"When city council voted to go for the OPP costing and they (OPP) did their presentation, the consultant for the board did a presentation in response to that in June of 2010 and based upon all the input and information, there were no savings at the time," Nelson explained.
"You give up a lot of local control. I answer to a police services board, and my budgets need council approval, the board is hands on. There is a lot of municipal control. It's the same in any municipality."
In retrospect, Bradley says the decision to stay local was a good one.
"It was very divisive. It went on for three or four years but a group on council wanted to pursue it. It was not good for the service and it was not good for the community. It had an impact between the city force and the OPP no matter how we tried not to have that happen. It calls into question the value of the policing. The reality is there is not one large city in Ontario, besides Orillia (OPP headquarters) where the OPP police. They are not urban police. That's not what they do."
