Image: Huron County Courthouse
Huron County council is giving their support for a funding request from the Town of Goderich to help mitigate increasing court security costs.
Since the province had downloaded court security costs to municipalities that host provincial court proceedings, the town would be on the hook for an additional cost of at least $185,000 for the 2025 fiscal year.
Goderich Mayor Trevor Bazinet explained that since the courthouse is used by all lower-tier municipalities, it wasn’t fair that Goderich would be responsible for covering the costs for court security, prisoner transfer costs, and in the case of the Goderich courthouse, a new metal detector.
Other members of council agreed that it wasn’t entirely fair for host communities to be responsible for covering the shortfall, but also supported the county to ask the Ontario government to take over the expense.
While the motion to have the province re-take up the expenditure, council approved that $200,000 would be added to the 2025 budget, and that in future years would consider the cost of court security in future budgets, while continuing to reach out to the province to cover the extra costs, considering they pertain to provincial judicial activities.