The Barrie Police Service's draft budget for 2022 comes in at almost $58.95 million in municipal funding, which is a 2.88 per cent increase over last year.
The police services board met Wednesday afternoon to break down the proposed budget, which includes several grants and other revenue sources. Police officials will present their proposed budget to city council later this year during municipal budget deliberations.
The municipal funding for the 2021 police budget was $57.3 million, which was a 1.95 per cent hike over 2020.
The lion's share of the proposed 2022 police budget includes salaries, benefits and overtime totalling just over $53 million, which represents 90 per cent of the overall budget.
Barrie Police Chief Kimberley Greenwood said policing in today's world brings many challenges that do not have simple solutions.
“Our community expects our service to embrace new ways of working and to build shared awareness and understanding,” she said. “The community expects, and deserves, a police response that protects them from harm, investigates offenses committed, prevents crime from occurring whenever possible, and attending to the social disorder in our city.”
With regards to staffing, Greenwood said in order to meet this year's budget demands, 10 positions were not filled.
“Looking at 2021, the board approved four new constable positions and a second deputy chief position, bringing our strength to 250 sworn members," she said. "However, to assist with the budget restraints, the four new constable positions were strategically gapped, as were six retirement positions.
“We remained at our 2020 strength of 118 civilian members and 245 sworn members," Greenwood added.
While Greenwood said the police department would prefer to be at 250 sworn members, due to budget issues they will remain at 245, but will need to increase civilian positions to 121.
Mayor Jeff Lehman, who sits on the board as a council appointee, said he was “quite comfortable" with this year's proposed budget increase of 2.88 per cent.
“I think we’re taking a small step back to the path that the service does need to be on, which is keeping up with growth," he said. "If I've learned one thing in 10 years, it's that council gets into real trouble, we all get into real trouble, in terms of big-dollar increases and percentage increase when we leave something alone for too long.
"We’re always better to have incremental increases that keep pace with demand or growth and I think that is the message we’re giving this year," the mayor added.
Meanwhile, the increase to salaries and benefits for 2022 from 2021 is just over a half per cent, or about $244,000. In comparison, Greenwood said that since 2016, salaries and benefits have increased at an average of $1.7 million from year to year.
The chief also noted 11 police members participated in a 2021 retirement incentive program, which resulted in a savings of $731,000.
“These savings resulted in the lowest increase to the salaries and benefits portion of the budget that we have seen in over one decade,” Greenwood said.
Operational expenditures represent 9.2 per cent of the budget request at $5.47 million. Some of the items involved in the operating cost include gas, insurance, maintenance, uniforms and equipment, technology infrastructure, and other costs.
The largest amount from the operations expenditures comes from the maintenance portion, where the police service is asking for a $330,000 increase.
“That will be looking at purchases of software that enables our members to work off-site as required and the ongoing annual costs for things such as our body-worn cameras,” Greenwood said.
The chief said Barrie police will also continue to review alternative response opportunities to ensure staffing resources are properly utilized. She mentioned mental health research to help police “establish the criteria to better direct mental health related calls to the appropriate resources.”
Greenwood told the board that the police service has committed to a long-term, evidence-based approach to policing and cited some recent events that were relatable to that approach.
“The tornado that struck in our south end, the Superior Propane fire and we had an incident at the Bell radio tower that involved a distressed individual who had climbed to the top,” she said. “These incidents serve as good reminders why continued investment in our members, in their training and information technology are all so very important.”
City police will look to evolve the alternate response unit to reduce its on-road resources. Greenwood said they will be partnering with the Ministry of the Attorney General and the Elizabeth Fry Society of Simcoe County to improve the adult diversion program and preliminary talks are underway.
City council must still approve the budget proposal when the municipal budget is discussed later this year.
To view the budget proposal meeting in it's entirety, head to this link.
