"Safety, safety, safety."
Those are the top three priority areas of service that Orillia politicians want to see from the Orillia OPP, said Coun. Ralph Cipolla at Monday's council meeting.
Council passed a motion detailing its top three priorities for the OPP. First is downtown street safety with a priority on a mental-health sensitive approach. Second is cracking down on speeding vehicles, loud vehicles and impaired driving. Third is butting out street drug and weapons crimes.
All three boil down to public safety, councillors stressed.
Those priorities will be communicated to the Couchiching OPP Detachment Board. The board formed last October, replacing the former Orillia Police Services Board.
The newly constituted board now includes representatives not only from Orillia but also from the townships of Ramara, Severn and Oro-Medonte. The board put out a call seeking municipal input to its 2025 local action plan. Coun. Cipolla is the chair of the board.
The request for the top three policing priorities had originally been brought to council in November but was postponed until January after Coun. Janet-Lynne Durnford requested the need for public input rather than a council-only decision on the priorities. The public had until the end of December to submit responses.
Respondents communicated their lack of feeling safe due to the abundance of homeless people downtown, homeless encampments, open illicit drug use, pollution of drug paraphernalia and related crimes, councillors heard.
In the report to council, citizens asked for more foot patrols in the downtown core and requested an Orillia OPP detachment in the downtown.
"A common theme from the feedback we got was a request for a downtown detachment. And we certainly heard from the (OPP) commissioner that that may be an option," said Coun. Durnford.
Durnford added she is not in favour of encampment enforcement due to legislation on the issue coming from the province and her desire to see "a rights-based approach there."
Coun. Jay Fallis said he heard from constituents that they'd like to see a "friendly face to downtown safety and one of the focuses being a mental health response to those issues.
"I realized a mental health response is not always possible, but in a lot of cases, it can really calm down a situation and make it a lot easier for everyone involved. So that's certainly one I put right at the top of the list," said Fallis.
Complaints about drunk driving, speeding and vehicles making excessive noise was also a top issue with constituents, Fallis said. Street level drugs and weapons enforcement was the third topic Fallis said he heard needed improved police service.
The Couchiching OPP Detachment Board will take Orillia's top three priorities to meetings with the Orillia OPP Detachment Commander Coyer Yateman in the near future, council heard.
