By Shane O'Neill

Budget committee reserves decision of 2017 police request

Nov 25, 2016 | 6:00 AM

Amidst declining tax revenues and the prospects of a 3.2 per cent property tax increase, the city’s police service is asking for an increase to its current operating budget.

Prince Albert’s public budget committee meeting got underway Thursday. The day started with the city’s biggest yearly expenditure as Police Chief Troy Cooper made his presentation at City Hall.

The force requested a budget of just over $16 million an increase of nearly $1.2 over 2016.

Chief Cooper explained the requested increase is meant to cover the purchase of a dedicated vehicle for the Victim Services Unit and the hiring of three new full-time staff. The staff consist of one patrol officer, beginning in Jan. 2017, one community safety officer for bylaw enforcement and one I.T. specialist for video recovery and computer systems support.

Despite the ask for additional funding for more staff, Chief Cooper said roughly 80 per cent of policing costs come from the city, with the remaining 20 per cent coming from other revenue streams. But, in recent years, those sources of funding have been harder to come by.

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“We do our best to go to other sources before we come to the city,” he said. “I think the biggest threat to policing in Saskatchewan right now is not crime, it’s the economy. Where we used to go to the province or S.G.I. or other partners and look for funding sources, that’s slowly becoming less of an option for us.”

In response to the perceived high cost of policing in Prince Albert over other jurisdictions, Chief Cooper explained the type and frequency of calls his force responds too, require more resources than others.

He said, “I’d like to highlight the fact that it’s not the cost per officer that makes policing expensive in P.A., it’s the number of officers required that makes it expensive here.”

In 2015, P.A. had the highest number of calls per officer in the province, with the most frequent calls being for intoxicated persons and disturbances. Calls of this nature often require multiple officers and take up resources that would have been dedicated to other duties.

According to Cooper, the hiring of a new patrol officer would allow the police service to increase the number of officers on patrol to 12 for each shift.

The proposed police budget doesn’t include any increase to capital expenditures and operations, instead to reduce the burden on the existing workforce.

Council moved to table the approval of the police services budget until Friday, after the rest of the city’s budget had been determined and council and the budget committee had a better idea of the resources available to them.

By the end of the day, they were able to find roughly $46,000 in savings from the proposed budget.

They will meet again today to make a final decision.

shane.oneill@paNOW.com

On Twitter: @stroneill