Is Brockville a 'stand-alone town'?

When the Ontario Provincial Police analysts return, probably next month, with a fleshed-out presentation on the different options for policing Brockville, there will likely be two models under consideration.

The first will be the “integrated” plan mentioned briefly at yesterday's introductory meeting with the city's contact committee; the second will be a stand-alone detachment.

It's unlikely they'll present either of those options with any specific dollar figures, as we are fairly early on in the process. The city's police services board is expected to provide the OPP with the data it needs later this week, and the numbers will then be sent to the OPP's statisticians for crunching.

What we'll get next month will be concepts – how these different models work, in theory.

There are concepts, however, and there are facts. And facts are what drive us, inevitably, toward what is realistic.

In fact, the salient word, spoken at yesterday's inaugural contact committee meeting by OPP Superintendent Chris Lungstrass, was “realistically.”

Lungstrass, the director of support at the OPP's East Region, spoke the word in connection with the integrated model.

“Realistically, what would probably be the number one option from our perspective would be the integrated model,” he said.

That would see Brockville “clustered” with the Leeds County detachment, and serving as its “hub.”

Which I would translate as follows: it's safe to say the stand-alone detachment model, when properly number-crunched, will prove too expensive for Brockville's taste.

It makes sense. Mayor David Henderson has mentioned, more than once, that overhead is the only real area where an OPP service contract might save the city money.

It certainly won't be in salaries, given the OPP's promised pay spike next year.

Integrating Brockville with Leeds County is the only plausible way to achieve those overhead savings, since the cost of the command structure, the equipment and most likely the headquarters would presumably be shared across the county.

A stand-alone detachment would instead replicate many of those overhead costs the city would want to eliminate.

(We should not forget the significant one-time cost of building the OPP a new detachment headquarters in Brockville, or retrofitting the current police station to suit the OPP's standards. Still, in the long run the integrated model will be the cheaper one.)

So, along with the obvious and necessary discussion that will follow about the possible cost-savings of an OPP contract, another question will have to be asked: Is Brockvile a stand-alone town?

Is it critical to Brockville's identity as a city to have its own, stand-alone, independent police force/detachment, or will its citizens be content to be part of Leeds – its "hub," to be sure, but an "integrated" part of it nonetheless – in order to save money?

For some, preserving Brockville's stand-alone identity will be too precious to quantify in dollar figures, while for others, Brockville's future might well be as a critical part of a larger whole.

Inevitably, an OPP costing debate is about more than badges and bucks.