OLDS — The town’s chief administrative officer (CAO) says staff are attending information sessions on a possible provincial police service being set up in Alberta.
Once that information has been gathered, CAO Brent Williams says he’ll present it to council.
Williams made that pledge during council’s Oct. 3 policies and priorities meeting.
Currently, like many communities in the province, Olds is policed by RCMP.
However, in the past few years, the Alberta government has been promoting the possibility of setting up a provincial police service instead.
“The province of Alberta, they are pushing a provincial police study pretty hard,” Williams said.
He noted that the provincial government is offering $30,000 grants to municipalities and Indigenous communities to study the feasibility of creating a regional police service in their communities.
Siksika is one such community to have received such a grant.
Williams said town staff are attending some of the information sessions on this possibility and will update council on what they’ve found out some time in the future.
“We are agnostic when it comes to this matter, but if I was a betting man, based on the amount of attention it’s getting by the province, I think this is a foregone conclusion,” Williams said.
As a result, he suggested it would be prudent to prepare for the possibility of a police service other than the RCMP.
