Local municipalities and police services boards are working on a plan to ensure community safety and well being. Changes to the Provincial Police Services Act now requires all municipalities to have a Community and Safety Well Being Plan in place by the end of this year.
“The Community and Safety Well Being Plan states that you have to identify the risk factors to municipalities, mental health, crime, drug addiction, overdose, suicide, other things like that, but you're taking into consideration those risks and prioritizing a way to reduce those risks," said Trevor Seip, the spokesperson for a working group that's been formed in Huron County. “So we're talking with all of the service groups to get information as it relates to the county and the municipalities as a whole, to understand what those measurables are today and how these plans can be put in place to measure successes.”
Seip said all of the nine municipalities in Huron County are required to have a Community and Safety Well Being Plan in place by the end of this year.
“This working group is laying the framework for an advisory committee that's going to be established so that each of these service groups are not going to have to talk to nine different municipalities, they're going to be talking to one and communicating and trying to get all of the information," he said.
Seip said, as part of that process, residents in each of the nine Huron County municipalities are being asked to fill out a survey that can be found on the Community and Safety Well Being website or go to their municipal office for a paper copy of the survey.