The City of Kenora will be getting a five percent discount on OPP service next year.

The budget comes in at $6.77 million, a 15 percent increase from last year.

Inspector Jeff Duggan says they continue have staffing issues and one of the keys is filling some of the vacancies they have right now.

“It’s not like there’s people are banging down the door to come into policing in general, but we are having really good success with some local recruiting efforts and also some recruiting efforts in the west,” Duggan told city council at the Committee of the Whole meeting on Wednesday.

“And so we’re going to Winnipeg and we’re going to career fairs…job fairs.”

Duggan adds that come the new year, they are expecting a few more officers.

“We do have five recruits coming in February and an experienced officer we hope to get in the February class.  We have four more people in the spring class and we a number interests in joining the OPP and staying in Kenora.”

The OPP made an extended deputation Wednesday morning to explain how the costing for the municipality was done.

Duggan says Kenora has the highest base cost of OPP service in Ontario and very high calls for service, which makes up the cost of policing in the community.