A bizarre battle between supporters of the Halifax Police Department and the RCMP played out last week, as the Halifax Board of Police Commissioners tried to wrap its head around an unlikely scenario: What would happen if the 30-percent federal subsidy to the city’s contract for RCMP policing services in rural and suburban areas dried up?
On the basis of a consultant’s report that was leaked to the CBC, the commission recommended to council that the HPD should take over the RCMP work, causing an uproar among RCMP supporters. Councillor Sue Uteck came down firmly on the RCMP’s side, and demanded that councillor Russell Walker resign as chair of the commission. Uteck “is running for mayor,” Walker said, explaining Uteck’s umbrage.
The controversy was amped up another couple of degrees as council dealt with the issue with its knee-jerk response to everything: It met in secret for two days, fanning the flames of mistrust at every turn. In the end, though, council realized that in fact the feds won’t take away the subsidy, and so took no action at all: the RCMP contract remains.
This article appears in Mar 4-10, 2010.
Walker is dumb. He claims ‘Uteck is running for mayor’ when he knows damn well she has no chance and has no interest in losing the $70,000 a year for being a regular councillor.
He is also dumb for the complete mismanagement of the issue, although I think he probably had some help from CAO Dan English. All that money down the drain.
I haven’t seen folks this riled up, out here in the boonies, Since Harper kicked Casey out of the PC Party. We all know how that turned out at election time, when a Tory went up against Casey.
This commission really opened a can of worms with that recomendation. For me, its more about what’s the best deal. Which besides being an emotionally debatable issue for many out here, is a bit confusing. We don’t have any actual hard numbers. The Councillors themselves say they don’t have real numbers to go by…which in my mind means lets leave well enough alone. My neighbors & friends out here are adament that he mounties are by far the best thing we could have. But seeing as we have police being trained to similar standards , all the tools that one organization uses is available & used by the other, for me its more about, ‘are my taxes going to go up ,because policing costs are going to escalate.’
If that was how an informed choice was made to keep one or the other ,I would be all for it . If we just don’t know, I’m then all for leaving things the way they are. Simply because we know what that cost is.
Who will pay the extra when it does happen?
If the formula changes here what happens :
1) the province picks up the extra cost (very doubtful)
2) the residents in the areas policed by RCMP pay the differnce by an increase in taxes
3) A combination of 1 & 2 (possible)
If you live in Bedford, Halifax or Dartmouth any change has no effect on you other than as a provincial taxpayer.
The burbs have had a sweet deal for over 30 years, time to pay their own way. Some of them sneaked their kids into city schools and didn’t pay the extra cost but that has ended because education taxes in the city went down and in the burbs went up.