Stop the bleeding: Why Sarnia needs a police reset, not a $231 million vanity project

In Nathan’s latest column, he breaks down the staggering lifetime cost of Sarnia’s proposed new police headquarters. He argues that Chief Derek Davis and the police board are prioritizing empire-building over the financial reality of Sarnia homeowners.

I just can't let this go. I love Sarnia too much to shut up about this. I cannot for the life of me fathom how we as a city have let one man drive this absurd narrative that the police, who do 95 per cent of their work offsite, need a shiny new facility to temporarily jail more people.

I probably won't stop until the Sarnia Police Services board concedes and gives up on this project publicly.

It reminds me of when I was younger and listening to church pastors try to raise money from their congregations for renovations and paved parking lots. Even as a kid, I could tell it had more to do with the ego of the pastor than the health of the community.

There is another piece here that I haven't talked about yet, that I want to break down.

Let's talk about how money actually works for a Sarnia worker.

If you buy a modest $300,000 home in this city today and sign up for a 30-year mortgage at 5.0 per cent interest, you aren't just spending $300,000. By the time you finally own that dirt, you will have paid back approximately $580,000. Nearly $280,000 of your hard-earned labour—your missed dinners, your overtime, your stress—is handed over as pure profit to a bank.

Now, look at what the Sarnia Police Service wants.

In 2022, when Chief Derek Davis took the reins, the police operated on $27.36 million. Just three years later, the board is asking for $36.7 million. That is a $9.3 million annual increase in the time it takes a toddler to learn to talk.

The current police budget reflects an explosion of administrative bloat that treats Sarnia's taxpayers like an infinite resource.

On top of this massive increase, the Chief says he cannot make do with a building that is only 40 years old. He wants a $91 million police fortress that architectural assessments warn could actually balloon past $120 million. When you factor in the 30-year interest, we aren't talking about $91 million. We are looking at a $176 million monument to containment.

Or if the architect warnings are correct, we are looking at $111 million in interest and a staggering $231 million overall cost to the taxpayer.

The absurdity reaches its peak when you realize the board is calling a building from 1987—the year Lethal Weapon came out—an obsolete relic. For any Sarnia family living in a post-war bungalow or a 100-year-old Victorian, the idea that a 40-year-old building is unusable is an insult to your intelligence.

Our high schools last triple that amount of time and are still being used as vital community hubs.

This isn't just an unfortunate budget increase; it is a cold, intentional transfer of community wealth from vital local services into a police fortress that even the board's own engineers admit is a discretionary want rather than a structural need.

Four key individuals are currently steering the Sarnia taxpayer into a 30-year debt trap to fund this empire-building. Outgoing chair Paul Wiersma took a $4.4 million repair bill for the current station and helped turn it into a $91.1 million requirement by citing health and safety as a non-negotiable shield. He is promoting a $231 million path over a $4.4 million fix.

Current chair Kelly Ash authorized a legal demand against Mayor Bradley to restore $5 million in planning costs that he rightly vetoed. She is prioritizing a legal battle for fortress funding. Meanwhile, Vice-Chair Anne-Marie Gillis claims to be confused by the board's legal aggression, yet she remains a functional vote for a board that views police vanity growth as more urgent than community recreation.

Think about the annual debt payment required for this bunker. The $5.87 million needed every year just to service the interest and principal is almost exactly the amount the board is fighting the Mayor for right now. For comparison, the city spent less than $1.5 million total on maintaining the current building over an entire decade. Now, we are being told it is a crisis that requires a total teardown.

This is a manufactured narrative, a piece of copaganda designed to force consent for a building no one needs. While we are told we can't afford a community pool or a recreation centre without wading through miles of red tape, the police board is fast-tracking a project that locks our children into decades of debt.

We are being asked today to say yes to $111 million in interest alone so the Chief doesn't have to work in a building from the eighties.

It is time to stop the bleeding. If Chief Davis cannot focus on the actual work of keeping this community safe without demanding a $231 million vanity project, he should resign. Sarnia needs a police leader who understands the value of a dollar and the reality of the people paying the bills, not an architect of debt who views our city as a personal fiefdom to be fortified.