Residents Favour Keeping South Simcoe Police

By Meade Helman AWARE News Network June 15 2013
Two days ago, on Wednesday June 13, a special meeting of council was held to allow residents to comment on the proposed conversion of SSP (South Simcoe Police) to OPP. The room was packed, the crowd spilling into the hallway.

Nineteen people got up and spoke during public forum. Thirteen spoke in favour of keeping SSP, each received varying amounts of applause from the crowd, despite the mayor making an effort to quell the applause. The six that spoke about going to OPP didn’t receive any positive reaction from the crowd.
Albert Wierenga, BWG resident, said that Mayor Doug White should withdraw from discussion and voting because of his long-term association with the police board. He then began to raise a question of a possible conflict of interest involving Councillor Carl Hordyk, but was stopped by a loud point of order from the councillor and the Mayor’s decision that the comments were inappropriate. The gentleman moved on to the next section of his presentation
Dave Morton, resident of BWG and former purchasing executive presented a detail analysis that showed that the not only were the savings from OPP minimal, there was a possibility of major costs.
EDITORIAL COMMENT: In 2014 the OPP will become the highest paid officers in the province and they will stay there. It is disingenuous to think that you can hire the highest paid officers and save money. The folks that talked of savings kept quoting the initial savings of $1.7mil / year promised when this proposal was first introduced. The town’s own projection shows no positive results for the first few years and the town would have to borrow money to implement.
One has to wonder why our council chooses to ignore the numbers and push this forward.