The Mayor of Okotoks still wants to know why the provincial government wants its own police force.

Tanya Thorn says her mind hasn't changed since last week's announcement from the justice minister of a deployment model.

"There's very little detail of what is the problem we're trying to solve, and so without knowing what that problem is it's really hard to evaluate a deployment model to determine whether that model solves that problem."

She says the issue of costs keeps getting pushed down the road.

The Town of Okotoks has a Municipal Police Service Agreement with the federal government for the RCMP and at last week's technical briefing Thorn says she was told the government would have to figure out what a new agreement would look like.

"It's still super light on details for me as an elected official for Okotoks to go to my residents and say this makes good financial sense for us, this will give us better public safety, this will improve these three things that you've said are a problem, I have none of those details yet and in fact what I do have leads me to believing it makes it worse for my community," Thorn says.

One issue the province has talked about is having better oversight over the police than they do now with the RCMP but the mayor says they have good communication now.

"Don't get me wrong, there are challenges with the RCMP and with the RCMP model, however, we have a great working relationship with our detachment and our detachment commander, I have a monthly conversation with them, we get a quarterly report that keeps us apprised of where we are with resources, crime statistics, lasts year we did a community engagement survey, well we did it in partnership with the RCMP, the RCMP went out and met with the community to find out what our priorities should be," she says.

"So they heard feedback from my community in setting those priorities and one of them was community visibility so this summer they launched foot patrols and bike patrols, they're at community events, that's all in response to what Okotoks residents have wanted to see."

The idea of having more frontline officers, she says, is something the province has control over and they don't need a new police force to put more boots on the ground.

She wonders if the province has $366 million, the estimated cost of the transition, and why it doesn't put that money toward some of the public safety issues already out there.

Thorn has been the chair of the interim police advisory board for the last two years which brings the department of justice, municipalities and K Division, which covers the RCMP across Alberta together and there have been significant shifts in what K Division has been doing.