Sault Ste. Marie Police Service is looking at upping its budget to more than $40.1 million for next year — representing an 8.19 per cent increase in spending over the previous year.
According to numbers provided by the chief of police, the majority of the proposed increase — 6.4 per cent — is attributed to salaries and benefits, namely increases due to collective agreements while satisfying training requirements and other expenditures in accordance with the Community Safety and Policing Act (CSPA) that went into effect earlier this year.
The police service also sees a need to increase its spending due to the eventual hiring of three new full-time employees (FTEs) over the course of next year.
“Policing costs money,” Sault Ste. Marie Police Service Chief Hugh Stevenson told members of the local media following the open session of Thursday’s police board meeting. “The number one cost of policing is your FTEs.”
Another 0.7 per cent increase to the proposed budget covers operating and capital costs, while Sault Ste. Marie Police Service anticipates a more than one per cent decrease in government funding for next year.
Stevenson also noted that more money will also have to be spent on the hiring of additional dispatchers and special constables because of the new Next Generation 9-1-1 (NG9-1-1) system that’s being rolled out across Canada.
The system will enable voice, text messages and data to be received by 9-1-1 communications centres when emergency assistance is required, while giving emergency operators and dispatchers the ability to identify the location of a call using GPS coordinates. It’s anticipated that Sault Ste. Marie Police Service will require one additional dispatcher per shift as a result of the new technology.
New weapons for officers, meanwhile, have also factored into some additional police spending.
Sault Ste. Marie Police Service has been approved to take $245,000 from its capital reserve fund in order to purchase new, 9mm pistols for all frontline officers and members of its Emergency Services Unit. Stevenson said the current handguns being deployed are well over 20 years old, and that the police service had an opportunity to buy all new 9mm pistols in bulk.
The new pistols are expected to arrive within the next month and will be phased in over the next year. “We were getting cracks in the weapons, couldn’t get parts for them, so it was time to change the weaponry,” he said.
Another $53,000 will be drawn from the capital reserve fund in order to purchase more Colt semi-automatic carbines in 2025 to meet new requirements under the CSPA.
“We already have them, but the new act has required that all frontline vehicles have that weaponry in the vehicles. So, we had to buy more of them — and that’s why we’re taking it out of the capital budget,” Stevenson said.
The proposed 2025 budget of $40,170,897 will be brought before city council Nov. 12.