THUNDER BAY - The city of Thunder Bay the Police Services Board continue to look for ways to curb spending without cutting services.
During the Thunder Bay Police Services board meeting on Tuesday, city manager Norm Gale said the rising cost of emergency services in the city is significant.
“The cost increases for emergency services is increasing faster than the cost of other services in the city,” Gale said. “The other services are important as well. What this means is without correction, other services will either be constrained or we will have to increase revenue to deal with this.”
Gale added that demand for emergency services like EMS and police are increasing exponentially and first responders are feeling the pressure.
“The demands are real,” he said. “However, they’re not always core demands of what those services are set up for. Much of the demand is due to social economic factors, due to broader health care factors that are not necessarily emergencies, therefore, emergency services are not always the appropriate response for people who are in need.”
“EMS is a good example where many of the calls paramedics respond to are neither emergencies nor not life threatening, but that’s not to say that it does not require a response and those people do not need help,” he added.
Gale admits it is a complex issue that doesn’t have a quick fix answer. He said it will take several agencies and levels of government working together on alternative strategies, including instituting preventative measures that provide care or services that can prevent a 911 call being made.
Thunder Bay Police Service chief, J.P. Levesque, agrees that emergency services do face high volumes of calls and he hopes new programs, like the proposed mobile crisis unit, will alleviate pressure on responding officers and paramedics and help reduce costs.
The mobile crisis unit would have mental health workers riding with specially trained police officers to deal with mental health crisis. The Canadian Mental Health Association is currently looking to secure funding through the Northwest Local Health Integration Network.
“Should the police be dealing with mental health issues who are not violent or threatening anybody, but they do need that help?” Levesque said. “So I think that’s one of the things. Our training over the years has really evolved to include diversity and sensitivity to people with addictions and mental health issues. It has changed and continues to change and we just have to keep up with the times.”
Levesque also pointed out other initiatives to help reduce budgetary pressure, such as increasing the number of civilian positions at the police service.
“Its straight wage money,” he said. “The difference between a first class constable and a special constable is somewhere between $25,000 and $30,000.”
But Levesque added when it comes to planning for the police budget, there is no way to predict what will happen, which leads to the budget going into the red.
“I’ve been the chief for almost six years now and I presented a negative variance each one of those years,” he said. “It’s somewhat unpredictable. But then again, it’s not. We know that we are going to have a number of major calls throughout the year that are going to add to our overtime costs.”
Based on past experiences, unpredictability appears to have been taken into consideration when it comes time to planning the Thunder Bay Police Service budget.
“This year, there was a recognition both by the board and city council when they passed our budget that there are certain line items that need to be beefed up so we don’t keep going into a negative variance,” Levesque said. “I think they really understood that we just couldn’t keep coming back to council and reporting a negative variance.”
