The Bradford West Gwillimbury/Innisfil Police Services Board is protecting salary increases for South Simcoe Police Service employees in 2023.
When reviewing the 2023 draft operating budget at the recent board meeting, Acting Police Chief John Van Dyke said the service is projecting an increase in salaries and benefits of $1,588,488 — which makes up a total of 9.12 per cent of the total operating budget.
That figure includes a salary increase for all employees and wage increases, and step increases for a lot of the service’s junior employees.
The South Simcoe Police Service has hired about 25 constables over the past couple of years and is asking the Board for one less-than-full-time special constable that will start in January 2023; two new constables to begin in May 2023 (hired at the recruitment level); two Crown brief clerks and one redaction clerk in April 2023; and one less-than-full-time IT person (contract) as part of the Next-Generation 9-1-1 (NG9-1-1) project that will be starting up in full in 2023.
As per the CRTC website, NG9-1-1 will make it possible to provide additional details about emergency situations. For example, in the future, Canadians could send a video of an accident, as well as make medical information available to first responders. This will lead to safer, faster and more informed emergency responses.
Van Dyke noted that as a petrol-driven organization, the $45,000 increase for vehicles and marine from 2022 to 2023 is mostly because of the increased cost of fuel.
2023 Draft Capital Budget
Communications
There is $24,860 is allotted on the 2023 draft capital budget for radio equipment replacement, which includes annual maintenance, in addition to $35,000 for two radio projects.
Fleet
There is $300,000 allotted on the 2023 Draft Capital Budget for new cruisers and vehicles for the South Simcoe Police Service’s fleet, in addition to $120,500 for vehicle uplifting, which outfits all new vehicles in the fleet and removes equipment from old vehicles (this includes cleaning them and taking the striping off before sending to them to auction).
Information Technology
The service tries to maintain its computers every four years — in addition to the computers in vehicles — for a combined total of $76,200. The replacement of two audio recorders is required in the amount of $50,000, which is part of the NG9-1-1 project.
"Our current audio recorders are analog, they need to be switched to digital to accommodate NG9-1-1, which is a completely digital computerized project,” explained Van Dyke.
“As the board is aware, we need to replace the servers that house all of our security video in both the north and the south. That is because our current system only allows us to keep it for approximately 12 months, and we’ve run into some issues with the courts on not having video available for trials beyond that point, and essentially told by the courts that we need to retain at least 30 months’ worth of video, so we need to upgrade to a much larger server to house all that stored at a cost of $120,000,” said Van Dyke. “As the board is aware, we did look at cloud storage through Axon, but it’s far more money.”
Van Dyke noted that the $10,115 allotted for NG9-1-1 support on the 2023 draft capital budget was paid to Waterloo as a capital project, with $50,000 noted in 2023 for infrastructure and licensing.
In total, the service is asking for an increase of 6.75 per cent over the 2022 operating budget. The budget will be presented to both town councils at a later date.
"There’s two new councils and a lot of new council members on both. Budget discussions will happen early in the new term, so it will be quite overwhelming for them, and (with) budget pressures across the organization [there will be] some very difficult decisions to make. But both new councils will get orientation from South Simcoe police … so I appreciate you taking the time to do that before we get into the hard questions at budget deliberations," said Innisfil Mayor Lynn Dollin.
The last Bradford West Gwillimbury/Innisfil Police Services Board in 2022 will be on Dec. 14 at 10 a.m.
