Wawa Municipal Council is taking aim at policing costs.
In their meeting last night, Council passed a motion focusing on OPP cost increases - read by CAO/Clerk Maury O'Neill, it highlighted the "significant expenditure" within the municipal budget.
While the motion acknowledged the government's cap, it also highlighted difficulties for municipalities addressing such increases.
The motion went on to warn the increases are "a significant burden for small, rural, and Northern municipalities and is not, by itself, a sustainable long-term solution", calling for the provincial government to take measures including setting a "permanent, transparent, and sustainable multi-year framework" for OPP costs including a "reasonable, predictable maximum annual increase...taking into consideration municipal revenue growth, inflation, assessment growth, population growth, fiscal capacity, and affordability", recognizing "the limited fiscal capacity of small, rural, Northern" municipalities, ensuring increases don't "disproportionately affect property tax payers or compromise municipalities' abilities to deliver other essential services and infrastructure", and recognizing municipalities have "limited ability" to control rising costs stemming from provincial legislation, regulation, staffing, compensation, collective bargaining, and operational policy decisions, urging provincial funding or cost-sharing where "significant policing cost pressures" stem from those.