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Council Meeting/Documents/Letter dated May 17, 2024 from the South Island Mayors, Re: Police Dispatch Costs
Correspondence

Letter dated May 17, 2024 from the South Island Mayors, Re: Police Dispatch Costs

June 4, 2024Pages 47–491 section

A collective letter from ten South Island mayors to the Minister of Public Safety regarding the escalating costs and lack of equity in RCMP dispatch funding.

9.2.b) Letter dated May 17, 2024 from the South Island Mayors, Re: Police Dispatch Costs
May 17, 20242024/25 projected cost: $4.9 millionTransitional funding expires March 2025Requesting the Province's 70% share be continued

May 17, 2024

The Honourable Mike Farnworth, MLA Minister of Public Safety and Solicitor General PO Box 9010 Stn Prov Govt Victoria, BC V8W 9E2

Thank you for your response of February 29th, advising us to continue with our efforts to negotiate and sign agreements with E-Comm to provide police dispatch services for our municipalities and updates to the ADM. Thank you for also providing the requested list of policing jurisdictions within BC that will continue to have their dispatch costs fully covered by the senior governments. Unfortunately, this list, combined with our understanding that province-wide equity is not imminent, further reinforces our sense of being unfairly singled out for this significant cost impact.

On behalf of our communities, which continue to face financial pressures from all sides, we wish to resume our appeal for a further deferral of the assumption of costs for police dispatch. We understand the transitional funding provided through the Treasury Board will expire at the end of March 2025; we formally ask that you submit a new request to the Treasury Board for additional Transition Funding.

The reasons for our funding request have been well documented over the past five years and will not be fully detailed again here. In summary, however, the reasons for our funding request are centered around the following facts:

  • Province-wide equity: we strongly believe that all jurisdictions should be treated equitably with respect to RCMP dispatch costs, and the South Island should not be singled out for this change in funding model.
  • The burden of these costs was imposed on our municipalities without consultation. We understand this may have been an operational decision, but the Ministry was involved in the process from the outset and should have known what the cost implications would be on the member jurisdictions, even if the RCMP did not. Our communities deserved an opportunity to consider the costs and benefits of this decision prior to it being made.
  • When the decision was made to switch from OCC to E-Comm, the Ministry was completely prepared to keep funding the service despite the change in provider; it was not until the federal government pulled back on funding their 30% share that the Province decided to discontinue funding their 70%. At the very least, we would ask that the Province's 70% share be continued.
  • Based on the latest projections from E-Comm, outlined in a draft contract we received in late December, the 2024/25 cost for our 10 jurisdictions now tops $4.9 million. A further 6% escalation is anticipated for the following year, with warnings about future cost impacts associated with the transition to NG9-1-1 technology. These are substantial new costs for our municipalities, on top of escalating RCMP settlements and the full range of cost pressures that are too numerous to list here.

We will be contacting our local MLAs to assist with Treasury Board advocacy on behalf of our communities and to ensure they are fully briefed on the circumstances and impacts of this downloading of costs.

Thank you for considering this appeal, and for all your efforts to date in helping us find an equitable solution to this inadvertent error.

Mayor Kobayashi City of Colwood

Mayor Staples City of Duncan

Mayor Stone Town of Ladysmith

Mayor Goodmanson City of Langford

Mayor Little Town of Metchosin

Mayor Douglas District of North Cowichan

Mayor Jones District of North Saanich

Mayor McNeil-Smith Town of Sidney

Mayor Tait District of Sooke

Mayor Tobias Town of View Royal

Media contacts:

Page 47–49

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Extracted from: 2024 06 04 Council Agenda - Agenda - Pdf