The call never went out to defund city police during Barrie’s first round of budget talks Monday night.
Councillors approved the 2022 operating and capital budget, along with its 2.92 per cent property tax increase, without touching or even substantially discussing next year’s police budget — a 2.88 per cent increase to $58.9 million from city taxpayers.
Coun. Keenan Aylwin said he doesn’t support the police budget, but was not going to try to change it last night as midnight approached.
“But I do think the ‘defund the police' movement is as important as ever,” he said. “We know that if we invest in the root causes of the issues that we see in our community, invest in people, invest in our communities, that it reduces the need for policing.
“I’m hopeful that we can continue to look at this budget and look at ways we can shift funding upstream, and I really think we need to have those difficult conversations.”
In general terms, defunding the police means reallocating some police funding toward mental health remedies, addiction treatment and social services while reframing the role of the police themselves — particularly in Black and Indigenous communities.
But Coun. Robert Thomson, who sits on the Barrie Police Services Board, pointed to the budget allocator, which annually asks city residents how they’d like their property taxes spent, or not spent.
This year’s results were 64.48 per cent of respondents wanting to increase police spending by five per cent, 16.35 per cent wanting to maintain spending, and 19.15 per cent wanting to decrease spending by five per cent.
“Do you think in light of the movement that has occurred for defunding the police, and what people are seeing globally, that we’ve actually awoken the silent majority when you see the budget allocation tool (results)?” Thomson asked. “I think if you asked any person ‘would you like a cheaper police force?’, they would say ‘yes’. But if you ask them if they want less police they would say ‘no’. And I think that survey is showing that.
"I believe that our community is speaking," Thomson added.
But Aylwin said last year’s budget allocator showed a majority of respondents wanted to reduce police spending, and council didn’t do that.
“We really need to rethink what safety truly means in our community, and that means supporting people with adequate services so that they don’t get to a point where we’re dealing with criminals on the street,” he said. “I look at surveys that actually have a methodology behind them and a majority of Canadians do support defunding the police now and shifting those funds, that funding, upstream to support people in our communities. I think that’s the answer.”
During 2021 city budget talks, two attempts were made to reduce the police budget and both failed.
The city budget includes $58.9 million for Barrie police next year, or a 2.88 per cent increase from 2021. The 2022 police budget actually totals almost $59.8 million — minus almost $5.65 million in grants, secondments and recoveries, then plus a transfer of almost $3.9 million to capital reserves, $220,000 for a radio system upgrade and legislative impacts of nearly $3.2 million.
Legislative impacts refer to supporting Ontario’s First Responders Act and Workplace Safety and Insurance Board (WSIB) reserve at just more than $2.8 million, and $371, 371 for the next generation 911 system.
Staffing is one place Barrie police has held the line in 2022. Its staffing plan calls for 123 civilians and 250 officers next year, but the 2022 police budget totals 121 civilians and 245 officers. The salaries and benefits portion the 2022 Barrie police operating budget totals $53 million, of which 76 per cent is salaries, 23 per cent is benefits and the last one per cent overtime.
Barrie police calls for service are roughly 20 per cent criminal and 80 per cent non-criminal, 60 per cent non-emergency and 40 per cent emergency.
City council will consider final approval of its 2022 operating and capital budget, along with the police budget, at the Dec. 6 meeting.
