Costs were higher: Riel
$420K tally for de-amalgamating Peterborough-Lakefield police didn’t account for everything, councillor Keith Riel says
Coun. Keith Riel says he’s concerned that a new staff report on the cost of re-organizing the police force may have drastically underestimated the bill.
The report, written by city treasurer Sandra Clancy, says the city paid about $420,000 to de-amalgamate the force in 2015.
But that counted only one-time costs: Legal bills, for example, and the price to replace signage, flags and letterhead when the name was changed.
Meanwhile Riel is upset that other costs were left out, such as a looming contractual dispute with the chief and deputy chief of police that could cost the city $460,000.
Police Chief Murray Rodd and Deputy Chief Tim Farquharson say they are each owed a year’s salary as compensation – even though they didn’t lose their jobs when the force re-organized.
There’s a clause in their contract that says that if the force dissolves – which it did, technically – they get a year’s pay apiece.
Meanwhile, Riel said he’s also concerned that Clancy’s report didn’t add up how much the city loses in annual revenue from the village of Lakefield, when the police force broke up.
On January 1, 2015, the Peterborough-Lakefield Community Police became a city-only force – for years, the nearby village of Lakefield had been a part-owner.
But now Peterborough Police patrols the village on a contract basis, and receives about $534,000 annually from Lakefield (a decrease from roughly $866,000 a year, back when Lakefield was a part-owner of the force.)
Riel says that if you add that lost $300,000 annually for four years (this council’s term), plus $460,000 for the contractual issue, plus $420,000 in one-time de-amalgamation costs outlines in the report, and that’s roughly $2 million.
“When all is said and done, it cost $2 million,” Riel said. “That’s what I have to live with.”
But Clancy points out in her report that the city has launched a lawsuit against Rodd and Farquharson; the city is suing for the $460,000.
She told councillors on Monday she didn’t add that compensation payment to the report because the outcome is far from clear.
Mayor Daryl Bennett added that it’s unfair to say the city is losing revenues from Lakefield when they had been charging a flat rate for years to patrol the village.
Investigating a crime such as a murder can cost up to $2 million, Bennett said. Yet the city was charging roughly $800,000 to cover all Lakefield’s policing costs, no matter what crimes may or may not occur in the village.
If there had been a murder in Lakefield, he said, “we were on the hook.”
Under the new contract arrangement, city police get to charge Lakefield more for overtime if a major investigation is needed.
Nonetheless, Coun. Dan McWilliams said the city made a mistake when it dropped the price for policing Lakefield by $300,000 in the de-amalgamation. It should have considered charging more, he said.
“Shame on us.”