No room to cut says Police Chief

North Bay Police Chief Paul Cook speaks during the Police Services Board Meeting on Tuesday. PHOTO BY CHRIS DAWSON.

City officials and the North Bay Police Services board met today after their monthly meeting. 

The main talk is about the Police Budget.  With cuts on the horizon, council had proposed that the service take a 1 percent budget cut. 

That’s a number that Chief Paul Cook says is completely unreasonable.  

“I think if we get into that we are definitely going to be cutting members from the police service and that results to cuts to service delivery, that’s not what we are hearing in our community, when we hold our town hall meetings, when we survey the community,” said Cook who will be meeting with city officials about the budget on Tuesday afternoon. 

“They want to see more officers dedicated to drug enforcement, dealing with youth crime, protecting our senior citizens, dealing with victims of crime. So for people that say why don’t you cut $150,000 or why don’t you have an additional cut of 1 percent or 2 percent or whatever the magical political number is for that individual member. I say back to him or her what would you like us to stop doing.”

Cook and Police Board Chair Dennis O’Connor made a budget presentation to city council in February.

“We understand that their process has been ongoing with multiple meetings and a lot has been discussed,” stated Cook.

“It’s my understanding that the mayor and the deputy mayor may be speaking to the board on this later today to see if we can find some additional savings so we will see where the board lands on that.  At this point all I can tell you is that the board has presented their budget and we haven’t heard back from council whether or not it has been approved or not.” 

But there may be a glimmer of hope.  the Service is coming off a 2014 year where they accumulated a $160,440 operating budget surplus which Cook says came from unexpected resignations.  

At city council Monday night, a tentative tax increase of 2.21 per cent is moving ahead as planned after the General Government Committee passed the proposed 2015 operating budget.