UCP won’t cut city police funding
Assurance comes after concerns were raised about CPS workload
The provincial government says it won’t cut policing grants to cities amid concerns in Calgary that the municipal force could be asked to respond to more calls beyond the city’s boundary.
A spokesperson for Alberta Justice Minister Doug Schweitzer said Thursday afternoon that there won’t be cuts to either of the two policing grants that help fund the police service in Calgary — the Municipal Policing Assistance Grant (MPAG) and the Police Office Grant (POG).
The assurance came in the wake of an anxious city council committee meeting Thursday, when concerns were raised about the possibility of increased demand on the Calgary Police Service from the city’s rural neighbours.
Mayor Naheed Nenshi suggested that while the city is facing significant policing challenges, much of the focus has recently revolved around rural crime.
“As much as we’ve talked about rural crime, urban crime rates are much higher,” Nenshi said following Thursday’s meeting. “We’ve been dealing with a bunch of very serious problems at the City of Calgary related to the opioid crisis, the meth crisis, as well as increase in gun crime ... The police are strapped and we need to make sure that the little bit of funding that we get from the province for our police service — the vast majority comes from property taxes, but some does come from the province — is protected.”
The City of Calgary is in discussions with neighbouring communities about policing in the region, including the services offered by RCMP and the possibility of implementing a regional police model.
At a recent regional gathering, Calgary officials said Rocky View County broached the subject of Calgary officers responding to calls in parts of the county that border the city — a suggestion met with concern and skepticism Thursday.
“You can’t have neighbouring municipalities getting a free ride off of City of Calgary property taxpayers,” said Coun. Jeromy Farkas, who sits on the policing subcommittee of the regional board. “Our police service is stretched to the maximum as is. And frankly, I’m going to go nuclear if we have a Rocky View or Cross Iron Mills police station before we have a Beltline police station.
“I’m open to having the conversation about how the city can collaborate with our regional partners, but it needs to make sense for City of Calgary property taxpayers first.”
City officials say CPS will always respond to significant emergencies that arise on the city’s border, including incidents such as a recent shooting at Cross Iron Mills in Rocky View County.
Farkas said there are also opportunities for collaboration when it comes to police training, but where there are significant costs involved, “then we need to have a conversation about who pays for that.”
Calgary police budgets have been squeezed this year by both provincial and municipal governments. The service has only received half of the provincial policing grants for 2019 — the remainder is expected to come after the Alberta budget is released, provincial officials say.
And municipal budget reductions in July saw $7 million cut from police spending.
Nenshi noted a number of areas where the city takes on costs that should be borne by other jurisdictions or governments. He said the city already spends between $6 million and $7 million annually on firefighters responding to medical calls, though emergency medical care is technically a provincial responsibility.
“We don’t want to end up in a situation where the Calgary Police Service are responding to calls in the neighbouring counties for people (or) businesses who deliberately chose to set up in the county so they could pay lower property taxes because (those counties) don’t have an adequate police service,” said Nenshi.
The police are strapped and we need to make sure that the little bit of funding that we get from the province … is protected.