POLICE SPENDING

$92.5M budget approved

The Regina Police Service will have $92.5 million to work with next year, but Chief Evan Bray didn’t get everything he was looking for.

Council approved the police budget on Monday, day one in its two-day budget marathon. The city will contribute about $82.5 million to police operating spending for 2019, with most of the remainder coming from provincial and federal grants.

That’s 5.8 per cent higher than the city’s 2018 outlay for RPS.

Bray said the force has searched hard for savings, and is now at the point where there’s little left to cut. He said the budget was “heavily scrutinized.”

Council can only give an up or down vote to the police budget, which is first reviewed by the Board of Police Commissioners.

“There were numerous times it was given back to us to rework,” Bray said. “And keep in mind that we don’t step into that process thinking we’re going to ask for the moon and the stars.

“We come in with something that we think meets the needs of the organization. Even that was scaled back.”

He said he came to the board looking for about seven new positions. He got only one new superintendent. Bray said he also had to cut $1 million of the service’s capital request, which came in at $4 million for 2019.

That forced RPS to defer some spending needs, like replacing laptops.

Bray acknowledged that the police budget is a big chunk of city spending. But he said it has stayed steady as a proportion of the total — at about 20 per cent.

He said some new spending comes from “uncontrollable costs,” like fuel prices. But some comes from changes in policing, especially the need for cyber capabilities. The service is set to spend $2.66 million on information technology next year, much of it on software licences.

Coun. Joel Murray, who sits on the Board of Police Commissioners, pointed out that some investigations may involve crypto currencies. “If that investigation goes down that rabbit hole, RPS has to follow it,” Murray said.

Bray said moving into the former STC building will eventually save money for the police service, but only once it’s able to end leases at other locations.

“I’m hoping that we’re going to see some of that occur over the next couple of years,” he said. “It’s probably about a year of construction work that’s going to be done.”

In the short term, the service is stuck paying operating costs for the new space, as well as the leases.