The Reminder is making its archives back to 2003 available on our website. Please note that, due to technical limitations, archive articles are presented without the usual formatting.
A cash-strapped City of Flin Flon sees no room to maneuver in trimming rising policing costs, a public forum heard last week. At the forum, held to discuss city council's proposed protective services fee, questions surfaced over whether Flin Flon still needs a 10-member RCMP detachment. 'The cost of policing is sort of a given for us right now,' Municipal Administrator Mark Kolt said in response. 'We were given a choice: take it or leave it, form your own police department or pay what we tell you to pay with the formula we developed.' Mayor George Fontaine, though not present at the forum, has made similar statements. Last year the mayor said he was displeased when council was given a new RCMP contract to sign even though they had no involvement in the negotiations between the Mounties and the province. But in an e-mail, RCMP spokesperson Cpl. Miles Hiebert said staffing levels at a detachment 'are agreed upon between the Government of Canada and the municipality (in this case, Flin Flon) in accordance with the terms of the Police Service Agreement.' Regardless of the specifics, at the end of the day the city is responsible for the lion's share of its policing costs. In 2012 the bill came in at a projected $1.26 million. That represented a 27 per cent raise _ $345,700 _ over the amount budgeted in 2009-10. Even still, it amounted to just 11 per cent of the city's overall budget. At the April 16 forum, held at the City Hall Council Chambers, a man in the audience asked whether 10 Mounties is still a suitable number given Flin Flon's population decline. 'Why are we paying for so many people when our population has gone down?' he asked. Coun. Ken Pawlachuk replied that 'that's what $1.2 million and over 5,000 in population pays for.' 'The deal is, (if) you've got 5,000 people or more, we get what they (the RCMP) give us,' he said. At no time did Coun. Pawlachuk or any of his colleagues indicate that Flin Flon needs fewer police officers. Indeed such a suggestion could prove contentious considering the community's crime rate, on paper at least, rose 32 per cent between 2010 and 2011, the last year for which stats are available. Kolt pointed out that Flin Flon has far fewer Mounties than The Pas, which experiences higher volumes of certain types of crime. See 'Various' on pg. Continued from pg. He clarified one misconception by saying that 'technically' Flin Flon is not funding the RCMP's Northern Traffic Unit. While that Cranberry Portage-based unit is no stranger to Flin Flon, its members in fact serve the entire northern Manitoba region. Cpl. Hiebert said the RCMP use 'a variety of factors' to determine staffing and resource levels at individual detachments. 'They factor in population, crime rate, caseload, geography, crime severity and what types of crimes are occurring in the area, and look at the location specifically,' he said. 'They use this information as indicators or requirements, keeping in mind that they include additional information pertinent to the decision, including consultations with the province for provincial members and consultations with municipalities for municipal members.' Cpl. Hiebert said it is important to note that in addition to police resources at the detachment level, communities served by the RCMP also have access to specialized units such as major crimes investigators and search and rescue. 'The RCMP are committed to providing quality police service and being accountable to the communities we police,' he said. Last week's forum was not the first time city officials have expressed concerns over how the RCMP are funded. Late last year, council convinced the Association of Manitoba Municipalities (AMM), an influential lobbying group, to push for a per-capita funding model with the police force. Manitoba communities currently pay for RCMP services based on which population category they fall into. A difference of just a few people can raise or drop the price tag by hundreds of thousands of dollars. At the AMM's convention in Winnipeg, member communities adopted council's resolution calling for a system that has municipalities pay on a per-capita basis. No specific figures were mentioned. The long-term implications of such a change would be, as far as Flin Flon is concerned, unknown. If Flin Flon's population remains above 5,000, for instance, it is possible a per-capita system would save the city money. But if the current system remains in place and Flin Flon slips below 5,000 people, Mayor Fontaine has estimated policing costs would likely go down 80 per cent. Such dramatic savings would likely not materialize under a per-capita system. Even if the province does not adopt a per-capita system, Mayor Fontaine has said he hopes the resolution will at least prompt the province to reevaluate the current funding model. Council's AMM resolution said the current funding model 'is based on artificial population thresholds, and leads to some municipalities paying too much, relative to their population, for policing services, while others pay too little.' The Flin Flon RCMP includes one staff sergeant, one sergeant and eight constables, though one of the latter positions is currently vacant due to a transfer. Council's proposed protective services fee _ the subject of last week's public forum _ would see the cost of policing and firefighting removed from local property taxes and replaced with a uniform fee paid by every home and business. The goal of the fee is to raise what low-end homes and businesses pay in taxes while creating wiggle room for future tax increases on high-end properties.
