County councillor Lou Maieron is curious about the number of calls for police service from around Wellington County.
Maieron cited the annual statistics presented at council on May 26 by Police Services Board chairman Lynda White as part of her monthly report.
He said Wellington North and Guelph-Eramosa Townships have roughly the same population as the Town of Erin. But, he noted, from 2005 to 2010, Erin had roughly 2,100 calls for service for each of those years.
In Guelph-Eramosa Township in the years 2005 and 2006, the number of calls was between 2,500 and 2,540, but that jumped in the next year to nearly 3,000 and that number has increased ever since then.
Maieron also noted that in Wellington North, the calls in 2005 were over 4,000, and then tapered off steadily until in 2010 it reach 3,172.
It made him curious why those two centres have so many more calls than his own community.
He asked, “Why is there such a discrepancy? Is it because of police stations within the borders?”
Mount Forest has an OPP station in Wellington North, and Rockwood’s OPP station opened in 2006.
Maieron said he was unable to “figure out why” from the statistics, places with similar populations have such divergent figures for calls for service. He said it seemed strange to him that Guelph-Eramosa had a 50 per cent increase in calls for service after the OPP station opened there.
White said she was unable to explain the figures, but she promised to try to provide answers at the June council meeting.
