Police Chief Paul Cook issued a statement this afternoon defending his request for an administrative fee of up to $25 to cover costs of issuing warnings for minor traffic offences.
We reprint the entire statement, unedited.
"The North Bay Police Services Board will be hosting two public meetings on Friday November 7th at 10 a.m. and on Saturday November 8th at 9 a.m. at police headquarters to discuss proposed changes to the Board’s Fee Schedule By-law specific to compliant notices or three-day reports (traffic warnings).
Fees for service or user fees are not new to municipalities or police services boards. The Board’s Fee Schedule By-law has been in existence since at least 1993.
This by-law details service fees that allow the Board to recover costs in relation to a variety of services provided by the North Bay Police Service, including providing the public with non-criminal record checks, motor vehicle reports, occurrence reports, audio recordings, video recordings, photographs, copies of officer’s notes. Should the Board move forward with this proposed change, this would be one more service that the NBPS provides that would be added to the existing by-law.
In fact, the revenue line in the Board’s 2014 Operating Budget for these administrative fees is $182,200. Included in this total are monies generated through the Board’s Intrusion Alarm By-law, which permits the NBPS to collect an alarm response fee of $60 after two false alarms. The total collected specific to alarms last year was approximately $2,300. It is important to note that the revenue being generated through these by-laws is based on a cost recovery model.
When a resident of North Bay or Callander commits infractions under the Highway Traffic Act (HTA) for equipment or documentation issues, city police have three choices under their discretionary powers, in accordance with the North Bay Police Service’s traffic policy. They can either issue a ticket that requires the offender to go through the provincial offences court process, they can issue the same ticket with a 72-hour compliance notice, or they can give a verbal warning. Compliance notices are NBPS stickers that police attached to the ticket. They give drivers 72 hours to correct the issue and notify police that they have complied, or go through the provincial offences court process. While the option for verbal warnings will continue to exist, the concern with verbal warnings is that there is no record of compliance.
Some compliance notices enhance road safety because they ensure that a corrective action has been taken by the offender. Although we have been involved in issuing compliance notices for many years, we have never charged an administrative fee to recover the costs associated with our members’ time when they are involved in this process.
There is a great deal of public pressure being placed on police services boards to attempt to mitigate increases to their annual operating budgets. Although fees for service are not popular and never will be, one of the other alternatives is to make cuts to our service delivery or programs. Based on our past outreach initiatives, such as the town hall meetings we hosted and the community surveys we conducted, the public has told us they do not want us to cut services. In fact, the community wants to see more officers dedicated to services such as school safety, victims of crime, domestic violence, youth programming, drug enforcement and protecting our seniors.
It is also important to note that no decision has been made by the Board at this point. We welcome the community to join us at our two public meetings where we can have an informed discussion regarding this proposal. The results of this meeting will be shared with the Board during their next meeting on November 12th prior to any decision taking place."
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