Niverville asks AMM to review policing costs

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This article was published 16/06/2016 (2841 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Niverville council is asking the Association of Manitoba Municipalities to look into the costs of policing in urban-rural communities.

Council passed a motion during their June 7 meeting to ask the AMM to bring their resolution to the province and have them commission a task force to review policing criteria in rural and urban municipalities and create a report on their findings within one year.

Mayor Myron Dyck said there are different criteria for policing in rural and urban municipalities, which costs more on the urban side.

“Once an urban municipality, which Niverville is, gets to a population of 5,000, there are other different requirements that are placed upon that community by other levels of government on what they need to do to provide the policing services,” said Dyck.

“The Town of Niverville, in communication with other urban towns and the City of Steinbach that would’ve gone through it a number of years ago, [find] it’s quite costly as far as percentage of total budget. Depending on what the 2016 census will reveal, we may be just at the 5,000 threshold or we may have five years grace until the next census.”

Dyck said council has started to have conversations about what their options are to provide policing to the town—whether that’s contracted service by the RCMP or a regional police service.

“For all that conservation, we said, ‘maybe as the province and federal government are starting to talk more and more about regionalizing things, would it make more sense to have a regional police force?” said Dyck.

“The RCMP does a tremendous and wonderful job for us and we are very fortunate to have them, but as we look at what it means to a community of 5,000 people, what could be better and what is more fair and equitable for all Manitobans as opposed to having this dichotomy between rural and urban?”

Niverville council brought their resolution to the AMM’s eastern district meeting Wednesday in Whitemouth.

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