Police budget approved; but not without objection from deputy mayor

In a recorded vote members of the North Bay Police Service Board passed the 2014 budget Tuesday, but only after a lengthy discussion period between North Bay Deputy Mayor Sean Lawlor and North Bay Police Chief Paul Cook.

Lawlor, who did not vote in favour of the budget presented, questions why the chief is presenting a budget close to $17 million and is only looking at 10 percent of the budget for cost savings.

“It’s made up of 90 percent of salaries, wages and benefits my view is if we continue just to look at that 10 percent of the budget to try and find savings in that area it’s not going to be effective and we are not going to be able to achieve the results that we are looking too,” Lawlor states after the public session of the meeting.

“We’re looking to achieve a 1.5 percent increase maximum at the City overall and with options down to zero. You know the Police Board budget represents a significant component of that, it’s actually one of the single, it’s the single largest budget that we’ve got so achieving a 1.5 percent overall city increase is going to be very difficult given the fact that one of our largest budgets is coming in at 2.2 percent.”

Mayor Al McDonald, who voted in favour of the budget, says the 2.2 percent increase is not ideal however, he says with certain cost increases and arbitration agreements there are cost increases that the police board can’t avoid.

He says council with have to work with other agency, boards and commissions to find cost savings for the city.

“I wish it was minus five to be honest with you but I get the realities of fuel costs going up, insurance costs going up, labour costs going up, so 2.2 is manageable in our overall budget and as I said we want 1.5 at the end of the day.”

Chief Cook did not hide he was troubled with the push back he was getting from Lawlor.

“We put a great deal of time, effort and energy in the budget, we involve our command staff team and our mid managers in assisting us in identifying the needs of our front line people to provide efficient and effective policing to the citizens of North Bay and Callander,” states Cook.

“The budget that was discussed in October was a 3.3 over the 2013 budget; the budget that was presented at the board today was a 2.2 percent increase. You know we removed about $181,000 from that budget that was discussed in October a great deal of work went into this and I took umbrage with the fact that the deputy mayor was questioning what we were doing with the 90 percent.”

“We’re running with one less forensic civilian, we have deferred the hiring of a constable from January of this year to September of this year you know there alone we’ve achieved over a $100,000 in savings. And we’ve removed over $100,000 last year of our sworn overtime budget and we’ve kept that number the same this year despite the fact our people are receiving a three percent compensation increase, so we looked at all areas of the budget and many of those individual lines were reduced.”

Cook says changes to 911 and staffing levels mandated by the federal government play a huge factor in the budget presented and encouraged the board chair to go to the feds for reimbursement.