The city is chipping in to help Shelter House's Street Outreach Services program but some city councillors want to see how it's helping the bottom line.
The District of Thunder Bay Social Services Administration Board gave $50,000 and a van to get the program started last week. City council approved an additional $50,000 to make sure it keeps running.
Shelter House operations director Doug Forbes told council that the program had nearly 1,000 calls by the time its pilot run ended last April. On Monday alone two people at Shelter House were driven to the hospital by the program, which just last week would have required two ambulances.
While call volumes continue to increase for Superior North EMS whether the program is running or not, chief Norm Gale said it's possible S.O.S. means that call volume grows at a slower rate. It also means that there are times when a call that otherwise would have gone to EMS is diverted to S.O.S. when it's running.
"We cannot measure what we can't capture," he said.
Thunder Bay Police Service Insp. Alan McKenzie said calls for service shot up 25 per cent after the program ended last year. Officials and councillors spoke about how the program frees up emergency personnel to focus on jobs they were trained to do.
Coun. Aldo Ruberto said think about when a person doesn't need to tie up doctors in the emergency room, instead treating patients who need medical care.
"You're saving indirectly in getting the best that that person does," he said.
Forbes said some calls when a person was intoxicated meant that they were spending the night in shelter rather than jail.
"We replaced handcuffs with sandwiches," he said.
But Mayor Keith Hobbs said he wants to see where all of the savings and efficiencies actually are in police and EMS budgets. He proposed an amendment, which lost, to get administration to look into it. Police budgets rise every year and some of that is spent on thousands of calls for public intoxication. If S.O.S. is freeing them up to do other work than the savings and efficiencies must be shown somewhere.
He stressed he's not looking to reduce the police budget.
"If we came up with a system to stop every fire in Thunder Bay then obviously I'd be asking for reduction in the budget for the fire department,” he said.
Coun. Trevor Giertuga said it's more about efficiency. If the program saves 200 hours of police work, people should know about it.
For Coun. Linda Rydholm, the city owes it to people who want to know how they're money is being spent especially with budget season around the corner and tax increase concerns .
“If those taxes go any higher I've had many people tell me they would have to sell their homes,” she said.
But Coun. Paul Pugh said the program means police have more time for things like routine patrols to protect those homes.
"It's not something we can come back with a report on," he said.
Funding the program year-round will be considered during budget deliberations.
