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.
Flin Flon is part of a small coalition of Manitoba communities asking the province to help deal with rising police costs. The Large Urban Policing Working Group met with Justice Minister Gord Mackintosh last week to discuss the growing price tag that comes with the RCMP. "It's become, as I have said to the minister, disconcerting," said Flin Flon municipal administrator Larry Fancy, who represented the community at the meeting. "The cost is dictated [at the national level] and we have some serious concerns over that; there's no ceiling on that amount." The group didn't ask for a specific solution, only that the province review its options on the matter, which Minister Mackintosh vowed to do. Once covered entirely by the federal and provincial governments, policing services began costing the City of Flin Flon money about four or five years ago. In 2003, the City spent $53,000 for the RCMP after figuring in a reimbursement grant from the province. If nothing is done to address the situation, Fancy feels that figure could easily approach $80,000 over the next several years. Fancy believes that the RCMP's desire to attract and retain quality employees, the creation of new police programs, and the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks have driven up policing costs. Ottawa, as usual, has covered 30 per cent of the RCMP costs. The problem is that the province's reimbursements have not kept pace. That's what prompted Fancy a few years ago to bring up the issue at an annual meeting of the Association of Manitoba Municipalities, which lobbies the province on behalf of communities. And so the Large Urban Policing Working Group was formed consisting of Flin Flon, The Pas, Thompson, Dauphin, Portage la Prairie, Selkirk and Steinbach, Fancy said the policing cost to Flin Flon has so far been minor compared to its northern neighbours in The Pas and Thompson. In 2002, The Pas was left holding a bill of nearly $500,000 while Thompson paid $660,000. "This is something we have to address," said Fancy.
