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Province announces new rural crime funding formula

Rural municipalities will start paying for police in April
westlock county
Rural municipalities like Westlock County will begin paying for policing services in 2020.

WESTLOCK - The provincial government will put an additional $286 million into rural policing over the next five years, but much of that money will come directly from ratepayers in rural municipalities.

Alberta Minister of Justice and Solicitor General Doug Schweitzer made the announcement alongside environment and parks minister Jason Nixon at a farm in Leduc County Dec. 4, touting the new police funding model as a historic step forward in preventing the amount of rural property crimes as it will add 300 frontline RCMP officers and another 200 support staff over the five years.

“Ensuring Albertans are safe, secure, and protected in their communities goes to the heart of who we are as a government. We want to ensure we fund law enforcement in an equitable and sustainable way that will ensure we have more police in our communities. With this new police funding model, we are making the single largest investment in rural policing since the March West and delivering on our promise to enhance public safety,” said Schweitzer.

Nixon added: “All Albertans deserve to feel safe in their own homes and confident that they will not fall victim to violent or property crime. This new police funding model will provide increased security and certainty for rural Albertans, and value for taxpayer dollars.”

Currently, the province pays 70 per cent of the policing bill with the federal government contributing 30 per cent. The new formula will see the rural municipalities that are suffering most from the high rural crime numbers pay a significant portion as well, which is new.

The formula will see those municipalities contribute 10 per cent of policing costs in 2020, followed by 15 per cent in 2021, 20 per cent in 2022 and 30 per cent in 2023.

Westlock County reeve Lou Hall, who had been in budget deliberations with council for the last two weeks, said that will amount “to $151,066 for 2020 and by year four it will be $453,524 … which equates to an almost two per cent tax increase (in 2020). So yes, it has an impact on our budget discussions. In fact, we’ve added another day to our budget discussions,” she said.

During its Oct. 8 meeting, council passed a motion to have the reeve and administration provide a response to the province on the proposed police costing model outlining the significant fiscal challenges the county would face should a contribution to cover police costs be required.

Numbers in the County of Barrhead would be very similar said reeve Doug Drozd, with a 10 per cent contribution in 2020 coming out to $160,000 in extra costs for the county. At 30 per cent in 2023, the county will have to find another $480,000 to fund their policing.

“We’re all feeling some necessary budget restraints right now,” said Drozd. “We’d hate to go back to the taxpayers to fund this. I accept that we should pay something for policing, but this is a little much.”

Opposition justice critic Kathleen Ganley called the new model a “historic tax grab.”

“The UCP is not putting a single dollar into this investment. Instead, they’re downloading $200 million dollars to the municipalities of this province, municipalities who are already looking at cuts,” she said, adding the NDP are in favour of additional frontline officers, but couldn’t get behind property tax increases to pay for the new model.

In Lac Ste. Anne County, news of the new formula is not sitting well with reeve Joe Blakeman.

“The county feels blindsided by the news, and disappointed in how it was disseminated. We had been told repeatedly by minister Schweitzer and his team that they are still consulting, contemplating and playing with formulas. Now all of a sudden the trigger is pulled and it’s out in the public domain without any prior notice to those impacted most by the plan.

“There is little doubt in my mind that the engagement process was a mere formality. In the final analysis, none of our concerns were addressed, and none of the province’s reassurances rang true. Now we’re left holding the bag, and our ratepayers are stuck with the bill.”

That engagement process though was something Athabasca-Barrhead-Westlock MLA Glenn van Dijken was particularly happy about.

Schweitzer visited 18 communities in the province in September to meet with residents, business owners, municipal officials and rural crime watch groups to gauge the problem.

“I’m happy the justice minister is taking this seriously and has not just talked about doing things, but is actually instituting change and I believe it’s necessary going forward that we move into a position where rural property owners can feel safe in their homes,” said van Dijken.

“When we sat down with the local counties there was concern about ability to pay, so that was taken into consideration. The one thing we did hear loud and clear was that if there was going to be any expectation to help fund, then they have to be confident that the money will go directly to having frontline services increased,” he added, noting the province is also creating a new Alberta Police Advisory Board, where municipal leadership will have a seat at the table, working in collaboration with law enforcement to ensure local needs are heard and implemented.

As far as finding so many new staff, van Dijken said there have been talks with RCMP to make sure that output is possible, which is part of why the model is being introduced slowly over five years.

“It will take time to ramp this up. The ministry has worked with the RCMP to ensure that they could hire and train enough people to fill the number of positions that were being created and RCMP are confident they are going to be able to do that.”

van Dijken also said the province is in talks with the federal government to take a look at the justice system in regard to repeat and prolific offenders. The province is also hard at work training Fish and Wildlife officers and Alberta Sheriffs to respond to 911 calls as part of the rapid response force, introduced last month.

“What we’re trying to bring into play here is increased enforcement that will help our rural crime situation,” he said.

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