Council won't be comparing the cost of local policing versus the OPP.
After a Tuesday night vote, it was decided that investigating the cost of having OPP patrol in North Bay in lieu of the existing police, is now dead in the water, lacking the support of enough members of council.
And while the same thing happened two weeks ago, Coun. Mark King brought the item back to council through a motion for reconsideration. Not much changed Tuesday night, although the vote changed slightly, with a long-time advocate for OPP costing, and recently appointed Police Board member, Coun. Mac Bain now changing his mind and opposing the move.
Bain voted against having the OPP costs being studied, much to the disappointment of King.
“For a number of years at the Council table I advocated for OPP costing,” Bain explained. “I was very concerned during the budget time when the agencies, boards, and commissions came to the city of North Bay and a lot of council questions weren’t answered to the satisfaction of council members.”
At that time, Bain believed that Police Services board wasn’t working well with the city of North Bay where there could have been synergies with human resources and accounting systems. And while he supported OPP costing in the past, to his knowledge, Coun. Mike Anthony was the only other member wanting to investigate the costs, and it was always only for educational purposes.
But his views abruptly changed after being appointed to the Police Board to replace Sheldon Forgette who resigned.
“When Chief Shawn Devine was elected to his current position, I shared my concerns and viewpoints with him and once I had an opportunity to understand his vision for how he would change the police board, I made a commitment to him that for the balance of this term I would not ask for support to look at OPP costing,” Bain said. “I’m going to honour my commitment and I continue to be impressed by Devine, his administration team, and how they interact not only with the city of North Bay, but how they interact with many of our community partners.”
Bain is concerned with seeing partnerships with local community organizations drop as the OPP changed the processes in which the city was policed. He explained in some of his interactions with fellow Northern Ontarian municipal politicians, he’s heard of both satisfaction and dissatisfaction with service from the OPP, citing some councillors in other jurisdictions saying the following contracts with the OPP could have large increases and the option of switching back to a local police force would be nearly impossible.
“Some have not been happy with the OPP model and wish they could go back but have lost the infrastructure, their cars, their partnerships,” Bain said. “Devine is continuing to address changes that could be made, talking to the admin team. I’m sure as he moves forward there will be more and more changes people will see.”
And while Bain was satisfied with the outcome of Tuesday night’s vote, King was more than displeased with the outcome of his second attempt to save money by looking at an alternative.
“I’m very disappointed. This has been an ongoing process we’ve been working towards this for some time,” King said. “It really speaks to what North Bay is from a political standpoint, status quo is the option here, there is not real will to look at alternatives and that’s the unfortunate part.”
And while the vote was final at the council table, King was certain the stance taken by councillors on Tuesday night would be deeply considered by members of the public to recognize where North Bay is sitting politically.
And while there was mention of getting the vote to a plebiscite, King believes the timetable was too short at the moment and he said he’d be picking away at other issues moving forward.
“Councils decision to have 911 dispatch services provided by the police moved to fire department is an issue to me,” King said, bringing up the move during the last budget deliberations that took him by surprise. “It’s my intent to move forward with a motion that will request alternate methods to 911 service and that will spark a discussion about what other services are out there.”
Voting for the OPP costing motion was Mark King, Chris Mayne, and Mike Anthony.
Mac Bain, Daryl Vaillancourt, and Jeff Serran voted against, leaving a tie which Mayor Al McDonald broke with his no vote. Both Bain and McDonald are on the Police Services board.
George Maroosis, Derek Shogren, and Sheldon Forgette declared conflicts of interest. Tanya Vreboch was absent, having just given birth.
Voting down the notice of reconsideration means council cannot look at the issue for another year.
West Nipissing council voted a couple of months ago to start the process to change to the OPP. Midland changed over last week.
See: OPP in, local cops out as West Nipissing votes to make a change
And: As North Bay ponders, Midland dumps local police force in favour of OPP
