Letter to the Editor
Editor,
Being away from Meaford for a few years now I find it heartwarming to be able to read this well-written TMI paper. An excellent source to be informed about events and on-goings in and around the Municipality of Meaford.
Well, a few things have changed, but in my opinion quite a number of problems seem to be sticking like a dog poo to a door mat. One of these things is the everlasting debate about policing by the OPP or the OSPS.
Let me just go back a few years, exactly to the time when I came to Meaford in March of 1995. One of the first contacts with public meetings was an event in the Meaford arena, on the discussion table was a proposal by the OPP to serve as Meaford’s policing service. In spite of a strong lobbying effort by at least five PR experts from the Orillia OPP offices, including also a number of former OPP officers from Meaford, this proposal was quite decidedly turned down.
Let me remind you that at that time there was an OPP office just east of our Chrysler dealership available on a contract basis a phone call away. There were a total of five more meetings in Meaford and in the Blue Mountains with the same OPP attempts in the following years. These meetings were all held in the evening, accessible to all citizens. All of those proposals were resoundingly rejected.
Then came Mike Harris and his “common sense” government, trying to save provincial money by taking over local police forces by the OPP and loading the costs onto the backs of those small municipalities. The deal in Meaford was done at lunch time with the help of OCCOPS, an OPP lobbying group with only half a dozen Meaford residents present. The town of Meaford was railroaded and overruled by a relatively large number of invited residents from the townships of Sydenham and St. Vincent.
The amalgamation of these townships were also a deed of the Harris government, as well as the ill-fated closing of the Meaford, Wiarton, Lions Head, Durham etc. hospitals with the help of the so-called Restructuring Committee. So, now we still have the OPP and with it the debate about quality and costs of service.
Let me remember one more time, we once had an excellent Meaford police service with over 100 years of history, we just shortly before had merged with the Thornbury police forces. What do we have now, do we have a dedicated OPP service? Do we have an open service office in Meaford? Do we have a Police Services Board by Meaford citizens that can deal with problems on a daily or monthly basis?
The answer to all this is a clear NO!
Residents now have to take any troubles to the office in Chatsworth, more than just a few miles away. I have seen people waiting before the so-called Meaford office for hours, and if you try to get police help at the Thornbury office, I wish you good luck. The Meaford office came to its demise not by democratic decision, but by decree of Mr. VanLanduyt, at that time commander in Chatsworth, who did not get enough money from the council of Meaford. Is the OPP a democratic institution? Not in my opinion! And when it comes to costs, I can only remember, that in the first few years of the OPP in Meaford the costs went up immensely, especially for the residents of the proper town of Meaford, while the township residents paid only a fraction.
And now a new council is elected. I wish them all the best, some of my personal adversaries have been ousted, and the old price manipulations for services are still going on as well as the lobbying by former OPP officers and their relatives. I just hope for the sake of Meaford, that the residents will remember, that Meaford at one time was debt-free and booming, even without the scarecrows. Please, wake up! I have a few other things to bitch about, but I’ll leave that for the next time.
Helmut Mayer
Long-time resident in Meaford, now in Germany in the city of Bielefeld
