The final decision on the future of the Owen Sound Police Service could be made tonight.
Mayor and Police Board member Ian Boddy predicts the question of keeping city police versus switching to the OPP will be put before council at tonight’s meeting and his guess is council will likely vote in favour of keeping city police.
“We kind of hoped to have it over by Christmastime and we’d like to get it over with for them,” says Boddy, in reference to the numerous civilian members who would be out of a job if the city went with the OPP, as provincial police already have their own administrative staff.
Last week, a special police board meeting was held where members agreed to do a service review at the request of council.
Boddy says the hope is to find cost savings of roughly $1 million in the city police service’s budget.
The costing process began back in 2016 during a city review of all its services. The City asked the OPP to price out their service according to what’s currently provided by Owen Sound Police in an “apples to apples” comparison.
After that pricing estimate was obtained, consultants with Levack Management presented a report to council earlier this month at its December 4th meeting outlining which service would work out to be the cheaper one.
The report showed after startup costs, the OPP would be about $1 million cheaper after roughly three years. Owen Sound Police had an budget of roughly $7 million in 2016.
Boddy says, “The police board is very much willing to look at those numbers from the OPP and see if we can put together a plan to get to similar numbers.”
He adds, “That’s always been the goal. It was certainly the goal when we went through service review with the rest of the city in 2016. We asked for the OPP costing in 2016 as part of that, and the goal is to see if we can do it more efficiently at a lower cost.”
Tonight’s regular council meeting is scheduled for 7 p.m. in the Hare Room at the Bayshore Community Centre.