Police budget: number of new hires - 30 sworn & 16 civilians per year. We can make do with that.

By Pepper Parr

November 23^rd, 2024

BURLINGTON, ON

The Regional Police Services Board said in the budget presentation that the 2025 budget includes a relatively stable number of hires with just over 30 sworn and 16 civilians per year. We project that we can make do with that.

Regional Chief of Police Steve Tanner

“I believe our cost per capita certainly compared to what we call the big 12 police services in Ontario will always be the lowest” said Jeff Knowles, Chair of the Police Services Board who shared the presentation of the Police Services budget with Chief Steve Tanner who was on his feet for more than three hours.

“There’s a number of projects, essential projects, and some of you may have questions about what projects can we not go ahead with? We’re committed to a multi million dollar radio system, P 25 encrypted radio system that we have, there will be enhancements as well that are built in here.

“We have PSBN commitments so that we can transmit digital messages and information back and forth as we need to in today’s environment, we actually had multiple millions dollars of dollars in the capital project specifically for dark fiber, which we have removed from this budget. You’re not seeing the impact of that. We do need that at some point, but our understanding is between the region and their needs, paramedics and otherwise and some of the municipalities, we will be able to find a way forward.

“This is all for the greater good. These projects are ones that we are committed to, where contracts are signed by the board and the vendors. They’re not reversible contracts, and we could not do without them in today’s policing environment.

“There are risks and offsets; the impact of collective bargaining in 28, 29 and  30, along with the uncertainty of government funding. I’m hopeful that there may come a day in the not too distant future when our federal government may be providing some resources to policing. We have the impact of vacancies over time, part time,  wages. I’ve said before, we always purposely under budget for overtime. We probably spend at least three times, maybe more but we know we can absorb that, because in policing, we cannot hire all of our staff on January 1 Those funds that are not used for new hires that are not on board yet gets used to cover the protests, to cover the wonderful fireworks nights that we have in Bronte.

Jeff Knoll: Town of Oakville Councillor and Chair of the Police Services Board presented the Police Budget to Regional Council last week.

“We have a training budget. We have a training unit. We have provincial and national training needs. We do not budget for all of those. We could the budget would be significantly higher, but it would consume dollars where we can pay for those things, year after year. We do that out of what would have been a greater surplus. I’m sure your municipal councils would prefer and expect as much surplus as possible, because then, in our case, as a police service and working with the region, we can put that back into the cost of some of our capital programs and lessen the impact on our operational side.

“The implications of the new Training Act is just one of them. The C8 is probably the best example of capital and software being put to use. The impact of fuel prices is an ongoing concern. There will not be any electric vehicles; we are not at the stage where we can run electric vehicles as front-line police officers and save on fuel. I would be fearful of lithium batteries in some instances.

“I just wanted to close off the presentation with just a review of the of the expectations that we expect our current investments, so to speak, for this 2025 budget. Of course, number one, first and foremost, is to continue to be the safest large municipality in all of Canada, which is a statistic that we’ve been proud to boast about for almost two decades now, and that’s as per task Canada.

Current Police Services Board:

“It’s not us generating our own laudatory statistics that actually comes from the federal government, and we want to, of course, achieve best ratings in our key measures, best in terms of crime Severity Index, weighted crime clearance rates, staff to population ratios and costs per capita ratios, and above all, to be the leader in community safety and policing excellence to ensure every resident of Halton is safer tomorrow than they are today.

“Our other overarching goal is to always ensure that we send out our officers every morning, afternoon, or evening, and that they return in the same shape when they come back to their families and districts at the end of their shifts.”

And with that, they moved into Q&A.

We will cover some of that in another article.