Questions of ‘strong mayor’ veto powers remain after province attempts to clarify police budgets

The provincial government says municipalities can’t use strong mayor powers to limit police budgets. CTV’s Bryan Bicknell with local reaction.

The chair of the Sarnia Police Service Board says the board is still weighing options in its bid to build a new police headquarters.

The comments follow a letter from Ontario’s Solicitor General to municipalities that mayors cannot use so-called strong mayor powers to challenge police budgets.

“We sent the letter to council requesting that the veto to be vetoed, basically, and that the five million [dollars] be added back into the budget,” explained Board Chair Kelly Ash. “We are re-evaluating, looking to see what we can get accomplished with the funds that we do have, while still hoping that council does deliberate over the $5 million so that we can get started.”

Late last year Sarnia Mayor Mike Bradley vetoed the city’s police budget request of $5 million to begin work on a new police headquarters. Bradley insists he’s not about to re-open the city budget.

“This idea that police boards now, without any accountability, they’re not elected and they don’t report to the public and you can’t remove them, will now be able to say to any town, ‘This is how much money we want each year, and govern yourself accordingly. You’re going to have to find money or kill other projects that are really important to your community because we’re number one,’” he said.

In London, the police budget has also been a sensitive item.

The most recent police budget passed two years ago in the city’s four-year budget cycle increased police spending by $672 million.

The London Police Service has since returned $2.3 million in a bid to keep municipal property taxes at bay, explains London Mayor Josh Morgan.

“It’s a pretty high bar to set for a municipality to not supply the budget, which is why my approach has been to work closely with the police board as a member of the board. And this board has returned dollars for the past two years,” Morgan said.

Introduced in 2022 for Ontario’s largest urban centres, strong mayor powers were expanded last year to include all 216 Ontario mayors. At least one legal opinion suggests this was when questions of interpretation began to arise.

London Coun. Sam Trosow is a retired Western University law professor. He believes the strong mayor legislation was rushed.

“I think if it was the intention of the legislature to categorically exempt police services matters from the act they would have or they should have said so. And they probably rushed this through so quickly, maybe they didn’t even bother to think about it,” he explained.

“But I think that the mayor of Sarnia is within his rights to challenge this part of the budget,” Trosow said.