Peterborough Police can only keep 25% of surplus funds

Request to keep all of nearly $500K surplus from last year rejected by city councillors

Peterborough Police can keep 25 per cent of the nearly $500,000 surplus it has on its 2019 budget, councillors decided on Monday — not all of it, as the police had requested.

Coun. Dean Pappas, the city’s finance chair, moved that the city give back 25 per cent.

Coun. Kemi Akapo said she would prefer the city to keep 100 per cent of the surplus.

“But I know that would never pass,” she said, adding that she would instead support the idea from Pappas.

The city is facing at least $6.8 million in lost revenues due to the COVID-19 pandemic, Pappas pointed out. His idea (which councillors approved at a committee meeting Monday) is to give police 25 per cent of their surplus and take back 75 per cent to start refunding COVID-induced revenue losses.

The police force is the only city-funded agency that must get permission from council to keep a surplus, and in recent years council has taken back 50 per cent of any unspent money from Peterborough Police.

That was the recommendation from city staff in a financial report councillors received on Monday: give half the 2019 surplus back.

On a budget of $25.6 million for 2019, city police used about $25.1 million — for a surplus of $496,435, according to a recent staff report from police.

In late March, the Peterborough Police Services Board voted to ask city council for the entire surplus back to fund some special projects, including new officer safety initiatives, new training to help officers deal with calls involving mentalhealth crises and IT upgrades.

But council voted on Monday to give police $124,109 (25 per cent) and keep $372,327 (75 per cent) to start repaying the losses the city took due to forfeited revenues from sources such as transit and parking, in the COVID-19 pandemic.

Coun. Keith Riel said he supported the idea of giving back 25 per cent of the surplus because “it’s a tough budget year” — and because he says the police department has reserves it could spend.

The police service had $1,047,243 in reserves as of Dec. 31.

Coun. Gary Baldwin, the police board chair, was the only councillor who voted against the plan; he said the money would help the police buy “21st-century technology.”

It’s the seventh consecutive year that police are careful enough with their money to have some left over, he noted.

Baldwin also said using reserves is a bad idea: “You need some reserves — it’s a smart way to budget.”

Coun. Henry Clarke said he usually would agree that police “handle their money very, very well” and that it’s nice to give it back.

“However, given that we are facing $6.8 million shortfall ... we have to ask police to assist us, this year.”