The OPP have seemingly handcuffed Midland-area taxpayers into paying more for responsive services, but that still could be a cheaper alternative than reforging a new municipal police force.
Municipalities receiving their OPP billing costs for 2025 also received a large increase in those costs, with Midland cited for a $6 million grand total bill which Mayor Bill Gordon said was $1 million more (at a 4 per cent tax increase) than the 2024 bill.
Gordon drew attention to the 26% increase through his personal website last week, where he noted that other regions across the province had also received large increases. He proposed various factors for the hike including collective agreements and calls for service.
He also cautioned that with the town facing an additional 6 per cent municipal tax increase heading into the end-of-year discussions for the 2025 budget, that additional 4 per cent would warrant tough decisions.
During a 2025 budget outlook overview at last month’s committee of the whole meeting, a report from CFO Lindsay Barron pointed out that for resident tax bills in 2024, Midland council could only control roughly 59 per cent of net costs, while the other 41 per cent were out of council’s hands as decided by the county, school boards, and the OPP. A placeholder of just $190,000 was marked for the estimated 2025 increase at the September meeting.
MidlandToday contacted the town for comment on the increased billing, with both Gordon and Barron responding by email.
“Other municipalities within the County of Simcoe as well as Grey County are experiencing similar increases,” wrote Barron. In the 2025 billing statement, a 2023 year-end reconciliation was included which had an increase for overtime, contract enhancements, and court security service that was increased following the pandemic; these services weren’t previously billed.
Gordon responded “municipalities all across the Province got significant increases” with expected costs rising from the OPP collective agreement, “but none of us had any idea to what degree”.
When asked if council had any control over reducing the OPP billing cost portion of the resident tax bill, Gordon said there was none. “It is not negotiable and unless the town experiences a huge decrease in calls for service, we have no reason to believe that it will go down again.
“If this has taught us anything, we may see staggering increases every 3 to 4 years when the OPP contracts are renegotiated,” Gordon added.
Barron noted that the OPP standard billing model was calculated factoring in property counts and calls for service in town. “Midland also pays for court security activities provided at the local courthouse.”
MidlandToday asked if town residents were getting their money’s worth for what they had been paying for OPP service, as well as for the new increase; Barron stated the responsive service to the community would be “approximately $83 per property”.
Gordon replied: “We seem to suffer from lack of proactive policing as the officers are tied up responding to calls for service.” He noted the town’s investment in automated speed enforcement for 2025 as well as exploring private security options for the downtown core which would be sent to OPP for follow-up.
“These are normally core services of the OPP but they struggle to do proactive enforcement ‘in’ our community and instead prefer to do traffic enforcement on the perimeters on CR- 93 and Hwy. 12 where they are positioned to respond to calls in the neighbouring townships,” said Gordon. “Midland consumes the lion's share of their service when compared to our neighbours in the detachment area, due to our population and business density and being the hub of the North Simcoe.”
Midland had its own municipal police force until a 2017 decision by council chose to disband the Midland Police Service and its board in 2018 to transition to the OPP as a cost-saving measure. When asked if re-establishing a police force would be viable, Barron replied: “Projections indicate that the costs would exceed that of the OPP today.”
Gordon agreed, adding that other mayors had there were “rumblings among other mayors about the desire to upload fire and police service to the county (in addition to transit and water/wastewater) to centralize the operations” for efficiency and savings.
“Midland's decision to disband (its police) cost us over $5 million, with $3.5 of that remaining unpaid,” said Gordon. “Accordingly, we have not ‘saved’ any money in the switch.”
Restarting “a new police service”, according to Gordon, would require all the set up which could be expected, including purchasing “radio systems, vehicles and equipment,” and more. “Not the least of which are the costs of recruitment – wages and benefits – where those costs would not be much cheaper than OPP.”
“The cost to go back may be appealing if we did so with at least one of our neighbours (like) Penetanguishene, our smaller urban neighbour,” Gordon offered. “The addition of Tiny and Tay (Townships) would help spread those costs over more ratepayers as well.”
He expressed interest in exploring a joint “North Simcoe Police Service” as he coined, to explore cost-benefit analysis estimates even if only “to assuage assumptions of savings and service levels / response times. To some that may appear like throwing good money after bad, so I'd want to hear from the community about the desire to explore that option.”
When asked where residents could most effectively voice their opinions or concerns on the anticipated tax increase, Gordon stated that they should be “channelled to the Province of Ontario, to both our local MPP and the Ministry of the Solicitor General (as) municipalities have no ability to challenge the costs. I have already raised the concerns with (Simcoe North MPP Jill Dunlop) last week.”
An email from the Office of the Solicitor General said: "We understand that some municipalities face additional costs due to their existing agreements with the OPP. We will work with these municipalities to ensure they are not negatively financially impacted by this."
Barron noted that town staff would be attending a policing bureau information session later in the season, with added information to be conveyed as part of the 2025 budget process which will culminate in formal discussions between January 28 through 30 next year.
Gordon said the challenge for council would be in managing the increase through other means, as altering the policing bill itself wouldn’t be an option. He raised potential variables such as “wildly and irresponsibly” draining reserves, “irresponsibly” skipping or significantly underfunding infrastructure deficits despite “provincially-required asset management undertaking” which would lower taxes in the long-run, and even noted that council could hypothetically “stop repaying the $3.5 million left from disbanding the Midland Police Service”.
“The province has put us all in a very tight spot,” Gordon summarized. “We cannot run deficits like they can. We have to balance the books each year and now that we all know the infrastructure deficit, there is no excuse to underfund or not fund the reserves - and yet we can't drive our residents into insolvency by passing along staggering provincial increases to services for which we have no control.”
