The Municipality of West Grey will no longer discuss switching its police service, choosing to stay with its own police force.

Council members voted unanimously on Thursday to continue having the West Grey Police Service cover the municipality’s policing needs, while acknowledging that the force will need a new building in very short order.

“We were able to show our value to the community, and the support was certainly there.” said West Grey Police Chief Rob Martin, who added he and other members of the force are ecstatic about council’s decision. “We’re happy to continue serving the municipality with excellent police service for a long time to come.”

The @WestGreyPolice is pleased to announce that the @OurWestGrey Council has voted UNANIMOUSLY in a 7-0 recorded vote to maintain the West Grey Police Service.
We thank you all for your support.
We are – “The Right Choice – The Right Police” for West Grey.#staysafewestgrey pic.twitter.com/hpnDvf08zn

— West Grey Police (@WestGreyPolice) January 19, 2023

The decision follows a tumultuous 13 months for West Grey after council surprisingly voted in December 2021, without the support of either the Mayor or Deputy Mayor, to seek a costing from the Ontario Provincial Police in the middle of discussions about the construction of a new building to house the West Grey Police. At the time, councillors stated that it was “merely a costing motion,” due to increasingly higher policing costs, but Martin noted that the discussion “quickly turned to what would amount to the replacement of the West Grey Police Service by the OPP.” The motion passed by a 4-3 margin, with both then-Mayor Christine Robinson and Deputy Mayor Tom Hutchinson voting against the motion to seek the costing.

“It has been a big elephant in the room” says Mayor Kevin Eccles, who in his third term started the conversation about purchasing land in order to construct a new building for West Grey Police. “We can start going ahead. We’ve got a decision, we know where we’re at, and we’ll move forward with the best results for the residents of West Grey.”

The municipality will now have to get new architectural designs for the proposed new headquarters

“We will have to move forward on the building,” explained Eccles. “Identified late in the last term when I was mayor, we started work on it. The last four years there hasn’t been a whole lot of progress made on it, other than there’s a piece of property that has been purchased. We’ve known for a long time that the building needed to be rebuilt [or] repurposed. With that in mind, and with this decision, we can really start moving forward on producing a new building for the service.”

During discussion about the motion to end the OPP costing process, Councillor Doug Hutchinson became emotional when discussing the West Grey Police Service.

“There’s been a lot of public input, especially during the election, and right after this motion came up,” said Hutchinson. “I think it comes down to this council to make a decision. Why go from the known, to the unknown? We know what we have for service. We have a great force. The fact is, policing is expensive. It would be ideal if we didn’t need policing, but in this world, we need it. We need a police station. In my opinion, OPP is reactionary, while West Grey is proactive. Visibility is key, and I have trouble with the OPP on this. I don’t think we could get the visibility that we need.”

“It would be nice to have a crystal ball to see ten years from now what our policing will look like” continued Hutchinson. “Maybe it will be county-level, maybe it will be OPP, but at this time our public likes what we have.”

A report presented to council by accounting firm MNP on January 19 showed that switching to the OPP would initially be more expensive, but staying with West Grey Police could cost the community $6,700,000 over the next 15 years.

“It’s been a rough go for some of our members” said Martin. “A lot of our long-serving members didn’t join OPP and came to be members of West Grey. A survey found 100% of West Grey Police members wanted to stay with West Grey, so this is the best outcome we could ask for.”

Following the vote, Councillor Doug Townsend made a motion for staff to prepare a report on how much money has been spent on the police costing process.

“There’s the loss of the architectural design, that will all have to be re-done. There’s a lot of spinoff costs that have been incurred by the taxpayers of West Grey. I feel they need to know what those dollars cost them,” said Townsend.