Service, not dollars, was the focus of questions at Monday night’s council meeting about the Barrie Police Service budget for 2022, which asks for city funding of just more than $58.9 million next year, or a 2.88 per cent increase from 2021.
“The budget was prepared and guided by a number of key factors — the service’s strategic business plan, requirements needed to fulfill our core policing responsibilities, public expectations, evidence-based delivery of police services and increasing financial pressures,” said Greg Ferguson, chairman of the Barrie Police Services Board.
“As the city of Barrie continues to grow, as do the community’s expectations of its police service, we believe this budget requirement balances fiscal constraints while at the same time meeting our obligations under the Police Services Act and the expectations of our community," he added.
But after Police Chief Kimberley Greenwood presented the 2022 budget, Deputy Mayor Barry Ward wanted to know how speeding and noise was being addressed.
“If you asked any councillor what are the two things that the public’s most concerned about from the police, they’d say speeding and noise,” he said. “It wouldn’t even be close, anything else wouldn’t be close. These are the things we get complaints about all the time.
“So is there anything in the budget in terms of those areas that relates to an increase in service?”
“The Barrie Police Service is committed to safety and law enforcement in our community. If you look at our strategic plan, our priority and objectives are safer roadways and pathways” Greenwood said. “And we are committed to certainly community safety and enforcing all provincial laws, including some of the bylaws that the City of Barrie have available to us.
“We have a dedicated traffic unit with one sergeant and eight police constables that are highly trained not just to do enforcement on our roadways for speed and noisy mufflers, but we have skilled individuals that are breathalyzer technicians," she added. "They perform duties in regards to field sobriety tests, so our traffic unit, along with our operational services are committed to traffic safety, but specific to the noisy mufflers we have participated in a number of initiatives to address this issue back when it became an issue that came to our attention.
“So we are listening, we are hearing what our councillors are saying, the members of council before us. We are listening to our community that have concerns in this area, we have a specific form that councillors and the community can report," the chief said. "When I look at the work that we’re doing, it is evidence-based and it is data-driven where our enforcement are, so we have our traffic hot spots and those are our community safety zones and our high-collision areas and that is where we are investing in our resources to address the concerns by the community and ones that we have identified through evidence and data.”
Coun. Keenan Aylwin asked about the community safety and well-being plan, as well as for some detail and specifics about how the Barrie police funding is being dedicated and targeted to the plan.
“Can we expect a bit more detail in terms of the actual funding dollars and how that’s being allocated toward the treating of those holes in the plan, because that’s not something I saw tonight in the presentation,” he said.
Greenwood answered in detail.
“As I’ve already illustrated in the presentation, we are committed to the plan,” she said. “We have 11 of the 15 action items and our community and our safety well-being unit. The priority for the service when we talk about community safety concern approaches, we are always going to have an incident response.
“We have a crisis or risk intervention response to it, harm prevention and social development approach to it, so we are looking at a new deployment model for high harm and disorder, and we are basing this on a Canadian harm index that has been developed internally," the chief added. "When we look at the number of resources assigned to the community safety and well-being units, we have 18 specific members of our service that are solely responsible for community safety and well-being.”
Coun. Sergio Morales, who’s also chairman of the Downtown Barrie Improvement Association (BIA) board, asked about policing in the core.
“There have been businesses which have had an increase in break-ins. These are not so much crimes of opportunity,” he said. “It’s disheartening. Businesses are trying to recover from COVID.”
“When we look at the resources that we have deployed, in the downtown core… it’s not just individual safety we are focusing on, it’s community safety, individual safety and business safety and we will continue with our efforts to support businesses and residents across our city,” Greenwood said.
Police spending is traditionally the largest segment of Barrie’s annual operating budget, but that percentage is dropping. This year it is 21.8 per cent, last year it was 22.2 per cent.
Coun. Robert Thomson, who sits on the police services board, asked how Barrie police spending compares to other municipalities.
“When you look at the Barrie Police Service, we aren’t even close to our comparators at 2.88 per cent increase,” Greenwood said.
Earlier this year, council set an increase maximum, or cap, of two per cent for the tax supported budgets of its service partners — excluding legislated changes and growth-related service level requirements.
The 2022 Barrie 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.
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.
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 Barrie police budget totals 121 civilians and 245 officers.
Barrie councillors are scheduled to discuss the 2022 operating and capital budget at the Nov. 29 general committee meeting, and approve it at the Dec. 6 city council meeting — although there could be more meetings between those dates.
The Barrie police 2022 budget is included in this process.
