THUNDER BAY -- As goes the police budget variance, so goes the municipal budget.
On Monday, Thunder Bay City Council will hear its budget is projected to run a deficit between $300,000 and $760,000 by year’s end, mostly attributable to police overtime.
The Thunder Bay Police Service first quarter variance announced Tuesday showed a $300,000 projected deficit at the end of a season in which the police worked overtime to address three murders, a serial robber and three armed standoffs.
Final 2015 municipal budget figures have yet to be released. Despite the third quarter projection showing a likely $1.7-million deficit, City budget committee chairman Coun. Frank Pullia is confident the budget will balance.
He’s equally confident the municipality will be able to find savings and control costs early in 2016.
“The budget should not be interpreted as authorization to spend. To some extent it is – for capital items -- but in the operations, we need to find the savings to stay on budget,” Pullia said.
“We have made allowance in this year’s budget to take into account some of the increases in insurance and legal. The budgets have been adjusted so would expect we’ll now stay on budget.”
Coun. Rebecca Johnson was among the voices calling for the police to shave costs leading into the 2016 municipal budget.
Johnson was “surprised” and “disappointed” to hear such a considerable deficit is already projected so early in the year.
“Every year, the police budget is over budget and you can’t continue on that line,” Johnson said.
“It doesn’t matter if you’re a person in a residence or a business, you have to learn to live within your budget. You can’t continue to be spending way beyond that. If, in fact, that’s what the police are doing -- I’m sorry -- I think we have to provide that direction as a council and say, ‘learn to manage within your budget.’”
Johnson also pointed out one of two councilor positions on the Thunder Bay Police Service Board has been vacant for over a year.
Coun. Brian McKinnon occupies the other seat on the board. During budget deliberations in February, McKinnon urged council to understand overtime costs are predictably unpredictable.
“Every year the chief comes back with a decline in the budget and every year, these unforeseen things add costs,” McKinnon told council prior to its passing the 2016 budget.
Police Chief J.P. levesque cut 0.5 per cent in 2015 as council instructed but said he knew his department would exceed that reduced figure when he presented it.
“He (Levesque) has no control of overtime because if there’s a major incident – a homicide – immediately, you’re going to have a whole bunch of overtime," McKinnon said.
"If you have a catastrophic event, that’s going to be immediately a whole bunch of overtime. That all adds up to a negative variance, which nobody likes but police particularly are impacted by those events more than any other department.
“It’s not like we’re not aware of these things.”
