Come up with another new fee structure for background checks, Deans tells police
Less than two months after the Ottawa Police Service began charging people who need police background checks for their jobs in order to recover the cost of such a check, the city’s police board chair is looking to scrap the model approved by her predecessor.
Chair Coun. Diane Deans instructed police to once again present fee options earlier this month, at the same time the force was trying to solidify this year’s budget.
Chief Charles Bordeleau presented those options to the board’s finance and audit committee on Wednesday.
Any change to the policy, which only went into effect Jan. 1, would throw yet another a wrench in what is already a contentious draft police budget.
Last year, the previous police board approved a new fee structure in which all employed persons pay the full cost of a background check and volunteers pay nothing.
The average cost of a background check is $63, but with volunteers not paying, those costs gets shifted to those who need the check for their employment.
The months-old model means anyone who needs a background check for employment pays $90 — covering the force’s direct and overhead costs — with the service expecting $4.7 million in revenue.
The old fee structure still charged volunteers nothing but didn’t recover all police costs and charged employed people either $15 or $50, with additional fees for an express check or for someone out-of-jurisdiction.
Bob Gallagher, president and chief executive of the YMCAYWCA National Capital Region, told the committee the changes affected his not-for-profit organization’s large number of student, part-time or casual employees.
He asked that the fee be reduced for people working in the charitable or not-for-profit sector; that the force cap the amount of money it charges any one organization; return to the 2018 fees; or make specific agreements with organizations that serve youth or vulnerable people.
In 2017, non-profits accounted for 45 per cent of all employment-based background checks.
If the police force were to charge all non-profit employees $15 for a background check, it would lose $1.7 million in revenue this year.
Deans told the committee that while “budgets are not the time for making policy” she’d like to see a new draft policy by the end of the second quarter that would not be based on full-cost recovery.