Prince George City budget talks began at yesterday’s (Monday) City Council meeting, and one of the hot topics brought to the table was how much Prince George was paying for RCMP services.
After the request for more information that was brought up on December 20th, Councillor Cori Ramsay said she did some digging of her own, and found that other communities were paying less for RCMP.
“Nanaimo, who has a population of 90,000, only 20,000 more than us, has only twelve more officers, they have 154 members, but their budget is $28 million, $2 million less than what we are paying. That is a very great comparison, but why is the City of Prince George paying $2 million more than Nanaimo, and they have twelve extra members?”
Ramsay said PG pays more per officer than other municipalities on average.
Councillor Terri McConnachie thought it was unfortunate that the only area that the RCMP would look to make cuts is with services like the Downtown Safety Unit.
“In my opinion it’s not far off from I’m challenging administration to find savings, and Mr. Babicz comes back and says ok fine, no snow removal on the Hart highway. There you go, you want some cuts, there it is.”
McConnachie said that the report created a lot of fear and chaos, and that she was hoping for some meaningful dialogue.
It was noted multiple times throughout the discussion that the work that RCMP officers do is important, but the rising costs are concerning.
“We need police, we need well trained, well equipped police officers, and moral is essential, and they do the work that we all need them to do, and we don’t want to do. But at the same time it seems like the only thing rising faster than crime is the cost of policing,” said McConnachie.
Superintendent Shaun Wright noted that calls for service have increased for police in PG.
“I won’t beat around the bush, Prince George, we all see the crime severity index every year, we’re a fairly high crime community, as are many western and particularly northern communities, not a shock.”
He added that the cost should be looked at beyond just population comparisons.
Wright suggested bringing in a consulting firm to analyze the volume of calls the detachment gets, as well as the kinds of calls, and develop strategies on how to manage the resources available to officers.
It was also noted during the meeting that Prince George and other municipalities are still in an ongoing battle to try and get the Federal Government to cover more of the costs associated to retroactive pay, and wage increases for RCMP officers.
A proposal to increase the amount of RCMP officers was on the table as well.
The document suggested that two training officers could be brought in to create an internal program to better prepare officers for things like crisis de-escalation and basic trauma medicine.
Another two officers could be brought in as Investigative Support Team investigators to try and relieve pressure from frontline officers so that they could cover more immediate calls or proactive duties.
No decisions on where money should or should not go have been made yet, those deliberations will start on Wednesday, January 26th at 3:30 pm.
The City also looked at making cuts in other areas, like halting the rise in budget for Snow Control, cutting some of the road investment budget, stopping the welcome sign upgrades, and possible cuts to city departments like Human Resources and Economic Development.