THUNDER BAY - The Thunder Bay Police Service continues to move toward the end of the year in the black, but Police Service chief Sylvie Hauth warns that financial concerns remain.
“We’ve just started the reinvestigation process, we just looked at a homicide very recently and an attempted homicide, I don’t think we are going to be finishing with a positive variance,” Hauth said.
“Right now when you look at the various numbers overall it presents as a positive variance, but unfortunately you see that there are some gaps in our current budget in terms of overtime example and our WSIB accounts.”
Hauth presented the third quarter variance report to the Thunder Bay Police Services Board on Tuesday.
According to the report, as of Sept. 30, 2019, the Police Service has a variance of $372,500 or just under one per cent favourable.
Once again overtime remains a major expense for the Police Service and is expected to have an unfavourable variance of $2.5 million by the end of the year.
“The projection right now to year end is we will be over in overtime, so we don’t have the money in that account to cover the overtime costs,” Hauth said. “Our overtime costs range from everything. You can appreciate the homicide scenes, we pay for postmortems going to Toronto, crime scene details, a number of things. And our current guns and gangs situation sees overtime hours as well.”
The city saw five homicides and one attempted homicide in the first two quarters, as well as an instance of kidnapping and numerous threats to Hammarskjold High School.
The WSIB account is also estimated to be more than four times what has been budgeted in 2019, coming in at $970,300 by the end of 2019.
The increase relates directly to the presumptive aspect of post traumatic stress disorder and that costs for PTSD are higher than any other illness.
“What I’ve highlighted for the board today, for the last five years, we’ve remained static at the same amount,” Hauth said. “Our costs for the last five years have increased exponentially, where we are in the tune of almost $875,000 projection in terms of costs on that account definitely surpassing what we are able to cover in that account.”
Grant revenue is also expected to have a negative variance of $503,200. This is due in part to a reduction of $231,500 to the Court Security and Prisoner Transport Grant and the new Community Safety and Policing Grant format and a reduction of $271,700 reduction in funds available when compared to previous funding models.
Other shortfalls in the third quarter variance report include $41,000 for equipment, $42,100 for computer services and maintenance, and $106,200 for vehicle maintenance.
Board approves 2020 proposed operating budget
The Thunder Bay Police Services Board also approved the proposed 2020 operational budget of $44 million for the police service, which includes an increase of 3.6 per cent or $1.5 million over 2019.
Part of the budgetary increases for the 2020 operational budget includes overtime, which will require an increase of $1.08 million.
Implementation of the Office of the Independent Police Review Director will also require an increase of $476,500.
The Police Services Board also approved an amendment to accepting the proposed budget that will see an additional increase of more than $600,000.
“Originally there was an increase to tackle overtime and part of the WSIB account,” Hauth said. “The board has chosen to ensure we fully fund the WSIB request. It represents an increase of $250,000 on top of the initial ask to bring us up closer to the projected final amount at year end and it also covers an increase to add six constables hiring to the process. It’s totality represents $667,000 increase to the initial proposed budget.”
Hauth said when preparing the budget she tries to look for trends, but it is difficult to predict violent crime or what grants will be available in the coming year.
“For the last five years we’ve looked at our violent crimes for example,” she said. “We have stayed for the most part fairly consistent or trending up. Other situations that kind of have really trended up are mental health calls for service.”
“We have applied for provincial priorities grant, which is human trafficking and guns and gangs grant, but I can’t forecast that in my 2020 budget because I still have no answer from the province if we were successful with that grant.”
Hauth is expected to provide a presentation to city council next week on work being done by the Police Service.
