THUNDER BAY - After starting 2018 more than $400,000 in the black, the Thunder Bay Police Service has slipped back into the red during its second quarter of operations.
Acting police chief, Sylvie Hauth, reported to the Thunder Bay Police Services Board on Tuesday a negative variance of $52,800 to end the second quarter.
The $40.7 million budget came in with a positive variance of one per cent, or $409,000, to end the first quarter last April.
One of the most significant changes from the first to second quarter was vehicle maintenance costs, with a change in variance from the first quarter to the second quarter of $99,500, which Hauth said is due to an aging fleet.
“Generally, just looking at the numbers, we’ve had a lot of issues in terms of our vehicles,” she said. “We have a very aging fleet. We’ve had vehicles removed from service last year through the Ministry of Labour just because of the age. We need to keep the vehicles on the road and repairs are costly.”
Several years ago, the Thunder Bay Police Service made the change from strictly using sedans to including SUVs, a change that was welcomed by the officers, Hauth said, because of the weather.
“However, when you change models of a vehicle, it includes different cages, different wiring, and a lot of different things that have to be added, so the cost of one vehicle became one-and-a-half so we didn’t get as many vehicles as we required with the money we had, so we got behind,” she said. “It’s a matter of catching up now and getting back up to a reasonable level for the fleet to be effective and new.”
Looking ahead to the end of 2018 fiscal year, several items are project to be over budget, including travel and training costs over by $115,100, as well as materials and services over by $458,200.
However, labour accounts are forecasted to be $867,400 under budget, primarily due to six retiring officers of first class standing being replaced by new officers of fourth class standing, translating to a savings of $4.50 per hour.
The overtime account is also forecasted to be under budget by $73,100, but Hauth said given the unpredictable nature of police work, these numbers are subject to change and depend on the number and severity of incidents to which police respond.
This summer, there have been several resource intensive incidents, including a 26-hour standoff on Windsor Street, reported gunfire on Piccadilly Avenue, and two homicides that are still open investigations.
“They obviously are very time consuming and resource intensive and have an impact on our bottom line,” Hauth said. “Any major incident has an impact on our budget. When we have years that are high in homicides or very serious incidents, we do a lot of work initially very quickly and its very resource intensive.”
“At the end of the day, those incidents are costly, but we need to have all those resources in place for successful resolutions to the situation.”
