By Cecilia Nasmith/Northumberland 89.7 FM/Today’s Northumberland
Hit with a surprise $70,000 bill from the Town of Cobourg last month for managing financial affairs of the Cobourg Police Service (except for WSIB and OMERS), the Cobourg Police Service Board is asking to assume that duty themselves rather than inflate their budget by such a significant amount.
The town asked the board to formalize that wish with a Letter of Intent and, at the December board meeting, Dean Pepper submitted one for approval that expresses the intention of the board and the town “to migrate all financial management to the Cobourg Police Service.”
Pepper described this as taking over “complete financial management – all the bank accounts, Visas, payroll, accounts receivable, accounts payable.”
“I believe the library does something similar,” Chair Ronald Kerr remarked.
“They handle all financial management,” Pepper agreed.
The municipality gives them four chunks of money throughout the year, and they take that and administer their budget.”
Vice-chair Adam Bureau said he’d been under the impression that the service was only taking over payroll, not all the financial operations.
“$70,000 just for payroll?” Pepper responded.
“I was in business, and I had an outside agency do our payroll, and it was a lot less than $70,000. It’s the full financial management (being requested).”
Though he allowed that his business had fewer employees than the Cobourg Police Service, he expressed confidence that managing financial affairs in-house could be done for less than the town’s bill.
And when he brought that proposal to the town, Pepper continued, “they asked for a Letter of Intent, and that is what I produced and what will be given to them.”
Bureau added that a recent council committee meeting had resulted in the $70,000 request being taken off the budget.
As for the Letter of Intent, Pepper added, “maybe the town will want it changed. But you have to start somewhere.”
