THUNDER BAY - With a majority of homicides taking place in the last six months of the year and legal fees incurred by the Police Services Board, the Thunder Bay Police Service will finish its 2018 fiscal year more than $1.2 million in the red.
Police Service chief, Sylvie Hauth, presented the fourth quarter variance report for the Thunder Bay Police Services $40.7 million budget to the Police Services Board on Tuesday.
The variance as of Dec. 31, 2018 is $1.276 million or 3.08 per cent unfavorable.
“We had not projected to be that high,” Hauth said. “There are a number of things that factored in. The four areas I touched upon, one of them is our overtime budget. A lot of the eight homicides this year happened in the late part of the year.”
Overtime was a major contributing factor for the negative variance, with the overtime account running $519,900 over budget.
This is due in large part to the increasing level of violent crime in the city. In 2018, Thunder Bay Police investigated eight homicides, six attempted homicides, 151 sexual offences, seven non-familial abductions or attempts, 10 complex child pornography investigations, and an average of one robbery per week.
Other areas that negatively impacted last year’s budget include an unfavourable variance in the Workplace Safety and Insurance Board account, which was $343,400 over budget.
“We have a number of officers who are currently off for a variety of reasons and our WSIB account remains underfunded and that shows a negative variance of almost $343,000 in terms of our WSIB account,” Hauth said.
Training and travel expenses were also well over budget, finishing the year with a $111,400 unfavourable variance.
“There are a number of factors that get rolled into our travel and training account, one of them is our post mortem investigations,” Hauth said. “A lot of our deaths, in terms of conducting post mortems, end up in Toronto. It is very costly as a service because we are sending not only the deceased person, but an officer along, which results in overtime and travel costs.”
The Thunder Bay Police Services Board also came in with what was called an unprecedented unfavourable variance of $242,900. The average variance for the board between 2014 and 2017 was $5,600.
Hauth called 2018 an atypical year for the Police Services Board, which included a report from the Ontario Civilian Police Commission and incurring substantial legal fees because of the Stacey DeBungee case, as well as the search for a new police chief.
“The board has never really had a detailed budget,” Hauth said. “The costs this year are basically allocating to them as per the recommendations to have a distinction from the police service and really standing on their own, separate from the service and the city, in order to function as a board.”
Revenues were also down in 2018, with user fees and service charges having an unfavourable variance of $489,000, which Hauth said is due to extra service duty being used less.
“It is not cheap obviously and everyone, through the events they are conducting, don’t necessarily require a police presence,” Hauth said. “What we’ve done, because of the trend we’ve seen in the last few years, we are mindful that we need to adjust and not really project the same costs that the revenues that we were expecting seeing as those costs have been reducing the last few years.”
Grant revenues were up, however, ending the year with a positive variance of $65,200.
Other significant expenses included $126,700 for vehicle maintenance, $131,800 for general expenses, $65,300 for equipment, $48,600 for radio/radar maintenance, and $76,600 for computer software maintenance.
The federal and provincial governments have made no firm commitments to provide the Police Service with financial assistance to address increasing violent crime in the city and Hauth said she understands it will be a difficult year ahead.
“I am trying very hard to stay on budget,” she said. “We do have recommendations we are dealing with and working through and hopefully have a budget this year that gives me an opportunity to move forward on the priorities we have settled on for 2019.”
The Police Service started the year with a positive variance of $409,000, but slipped into the red in the second quarter by $52,800 and $293,600 in the third quarter.
