Municipalities across the province are being asked to join a letter writing campaign to press the province to review the current police funding model in a more timely fashion.

The Alberta Urban Municipalities Association is behind the push calling for a more equitable model as currently not all municipalities pay for policing, despite resources being stretched and a spike in rural crime.

AUMA President Barry Morishita says the province provides policing to municipalities with populations of 5,000 or less at no cost, as well as municipal districts and counties.

If everyone paid for the service they received, Morishita says perhaps we would be ahead of the rural crime problems.

“The RCMP or police presence in rural areas has been an issue for our members as long as I can remember and if we went to an everybody pays model of some kind, you know we could inject a significant amount of money into active policing and I think that would begin to deal with some of our problems”.

“We’ve looked at some models where if there were 30 - 35 million dollars which is I believe part of some of what comes into this community policing from the province, that represents about 200 officers and it’s a small contribution per capita based on the ones that aren’t paying”.

Morishita says criminals have figured out how policing works in rural Alberta and know it's vulnerable and are taking advantage of it.

He also points out there’s little in the way to prepare growing communities to take on policing costs.

“So as you approach 5,000 you don’t pay anything and then all of a sudden you’re paying 70% of the total costs.  It’s a huge issue for those communities that are in that area and we don’t have a really good way of transitioning them because we haven’t had a really good look at the way the funding model works.

The province has committed to review the funding model, but any consultations are not likely to take place until after the 2019 provincial election, the AUMA says that's not soon enough.

A number of local municipalities are receiving information on the AUMA’s letter writing campaign this week, as the Association reaches out to every municipality in the province for support.