04/10/2014

Today the AMO OPP Billing Steering Committee’s final report has been sent to the Minister of Community Safety and Correctional Services and the OPP.

This fulfills the Steering Committee’s commitment to provide its report and advice to the Province by early April.
 
It is posted on the AMO website along with related information, including the briefing deck used in the informational webinars.  Notice of the webinars was sent previously this week to the OPP policed communities.  The webinars will be occurring later today and tomorrow.  If you have not registered yet for a session tomorrow – please see the instructions below.

The Steering Committee’s job was twofold:

  • to review the proposed OPP billing model and to evaluate other alternatives that might address the different municipal concerns and interests raised since last fall, and
  • provide advice on the root causes of soaring police costs.
The Steering Committee was a balance of representatives from the diversity of all OPP policed communities, in terms of potential impacts from billing reform and type of service received (e.g. contract and non-contract), size and geography.  As such, it gave voice to and reflected the different and divergent viewpoints of the municipal community.  

Since its first meeting (February 14), the OPP Billing Steering Committee has undertaken a work plan that involved identifying possible options, considering them against a set of principles, analyzing selected alternative models and discussing the advice it could offer to the Province on both the billing model and other cost drivers that are making policing costs unsustainable.  

The report demonstrates the breadth of the Committee’s work and municipal governments are encouraged to review the full report to get a good understanding of all the work and analysis that informed the Steering Committee’s advice.  There is one overarching key finding – it is the Province that is correcting a provincial billing situation that it created and it is the provincial responsibility to mitigate the impact on taxpayers as a result of any billing change.