Regional Police table first draft of 2019 budget; 6.4% increase requested

By Mark Pare

Brace yourselves for lots of numbers, it is budget season!

Regional Police presented their first draft of their 2019 operating budget, and investing in people looks to be getting all the attention.

It was put on the table for discussion at Wednesday's Police Board meeting, and police officials are asking for a 6.4 per cent increase.

This would put the operating budget over $171-million dollars — almost $189-million in expenses, about $17.5-million in revenues — and over $156-million dollars in spending is going towards staffing costs.

Of note, police are asking for over $9-million dollars extra to help fund 52 new positions in 2019.

“We need to modernize our hours of work if we want to recruit and retain new talent,” says Police Chief Brian Larkin, “The reality is some of the hours we work are not the most attractive.  Seven days a week, 24 hours a day, every other weekend.  And we either have to look at different shift patterns or different shift trends that would allow us to do better work and meet the modern day family of two working parents, etc.”

Larkin goes on to say that short-term and long-term disability takes a toll on staffing and deployment levels.

“10 per cent of our workforce is currently absent from work through different forms of injury,” he says, adding some are also for good reasons such as parental leave to welcome children to the world.

When it comes to capital budget, police are looking to invest in 60 replacement vehicles and one new vehicle to add to their fleet.  Dollar-wise, that would come at a cost of just over $2.8-million dollars.

Other capital costs, which is part of a ten-year capital forecast, include investments in building renovations and upgrades, information technology and electric vehicle charging stations.

As for what it means to your wallet, the first draft would see a net tax rate impact of 1.38 per cent — or an increase of $27 to the average homeowner in the region.

The Board, however, has requested staff come back with two scenarios: one with a tax impact of one per cent, and another with a 1.2 per cent impact.

Larkin says the Board has asked to look at finding savings of between $2-million to $2.5-million dollars.

“We'll look within the organization to see if there's areas where we can do that,” he said, “But I want to stand firm that we need an expansion of resources.  It's the only way we can move forward.”

Larkin adds while they put a lot of homework into the budget, he is prepared to come back to the board in December with a revised budget.

“We want to be good corporate partners,” he said, “I use the analogy 'If you want to make a good soup, the ingredients have to be balanced.'”

“We don't want to impact public health.  We don't want to impact social service.  We don't want to impact our transportation and our road safety network.  We have a role to play as a good systems leader, and I look forward to December and moving this forward.”

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