‘Shocked and disgusted’: Spike in OPP costs catching Ontario towns off guard

A spike in the cost of contracting the Ontario Provincial Police (OPP) is catching some towns by surprise, leaving one mayor feeling “shocked and disgusted.”

The OPP, which provides policing to 329 municipalities in Ontario, told Global News the price for its services is going up next year given an increase in workload and a major pay bump for its officers.

That increase will translate differently across the province, but municipalities like Collingwood and the Town of Greater Napanee are feeling caught off guard.

“I don’t know how we’re going to deal with this.… It’s just not fair to our community to get this level of hit for one year,” Collingwood Mayor Yvonne Hamlin said during a Monday council meeting.

“I’m totally shocked and disgusted, and we’ll be pursuing this.”

During that council meeting, Collingwood chief administrative officer Sonya Skinner laid out what the impacts would be.

Skinner said the town got its billing notice two weeks ago, and “it was quite a bit higher than expected.”

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How high? Roughly $1.94 million higher, she added.

“We were billed about $5.71 million last year to cover 2024, and the bill that we just received is about $7.11 million … which is 37 per cent higher than the previous year,” Skinner said.

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“It was somewhat astonishing. We did not have communication in advance that this type of change was expected, although I do understand there were media releases in the summer about new agreements that were made with officers in the union at the OPP, and there may be other items that are affecting the budget.”

In the summer, the OPP and Ontario Provincial Police Association ratified a four-year deal that has made its officers the highest paid in the province.

The contract covers 2023 to 2026 and the officers will see raises of 4.75 per cent retroactive to the first year of the deal, followed by an increase of 4.5 per cent in the second year and 2.75 per cent in each of the last two years of the deal. By the time the deal is up, a first-class constable will earn a salary of $123,194.

Gosia Puzio, a spokesperson for the OPP, told Global News salary and benefits account for roughly 90 per cent of OPP municipal policing costs. Under the Community Safety and Policing Act, policing salary and benefits are paid for by the municipalities policed by the OPP, Puzio said.

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Furthermore, Puzio said a return to “pre-pandemic workload levels” is being reflected in the 2025 bills.

“Under the current OPP billing model, all municipalities are paying the same base services cost per property, plus additional costs for calls for service, overtime, accommodations, cleaning services, prisoner transportation, court security and enhancements. The latter charges are added to the municipal bill only if applicable and/or are specified in the contract,” Puzio said in an email.

“During the pandemic, activity levels in billing components such as court security, prisoner transportation and, in some cases, calls for service saw an average decline, primarily caused by pandemic-related restrictions and closures. The decline in activity in these components was reflected in reconciled costs, which, on average, were lower than what would have been expected based on data trends.”

Each municipality receives an annual billing statement for the following year before the start of that year, and the estimated average cost per property for 2025 is $399, Puzio added.

“While this is the highest per property cost since the implementation of the OPP Billing Model in 2015, this cost continues to compare favourably to other police services in Ontario,” Puzio said.

Terry Richardson, the mayor of Napanee, told Global News its OPP costs have gone up 23 per cent – a $928,000 jump that translates to a six per cent tax increase on the town’s levy.

Richardson said the town has “done a lot of things” to try and keep the levy low.

“We’ve looked for efficiencies, we’ve found efficiencies and sometimes when you find efficiencies it comes at the cost of service levels,” he said.

“It’s disheartening at times, and with the things that are going on we really weren’t expecting an increase of this magnitude. It’s the single largest line item on our operating capital budget.”

In Collingwood, the OPP increase could represent a seven per cent tax bump on next year’s property bills, officials said.

“(A) seven per cent property tax increase without even looking at our own issues we’re going to have to have because our own staffing costs have gone up,” Hamlin said.

“This is a terrible thing we’re going to have to deal with.”

— with files from Fawwaz Muhammad-Yusuf and The Canadian Press