NRP asking for 6.5% budget hike

Budget increase follows years of deficit spending by police board

After two consecutive of years of deficit budgeting, and a third possibly on the horizon, the Niagara Regional Police services board will debate a significant increase for 2019.

At a special meeting of the board scheduled for Wednesday morning — the first meeting of the board since newly elected regional councillors were appointed last month — the members will be asked to approve a $147-million budget, an increase of 6.5% from last year.

The 2018 budget of $143 million represented a 4.5% increase over 2017.

The board has yet to release its budget documents, and it is not yet clear if the service ended 2018 in the red as it had the previous two years.

Critics of the board, such as Niagara Region Police Association president Cliff Priest, have blamed police operational deficits as a consequence of poor management by the previous board. He has pointed to a zero per cent budget increase passed by the board in 2016 as the start of poor financial planning.

At the end of that year, police ran out of money and had to institute a freeze on discretionary spending. The NRP ended 2016 with a $3.3-million deficit and had to raid the service’s reserve funds to cover it.

The 2017 budget had to refill those reserve funds. It was also the same year the board, led by Niagara Falls regional Coun. Bob Gale, offered then-chief Jeff McGuire a nearly $1-million buyout package to get him to retire early.

As a result, Niagara taxpayers paid the full salaries of two police chiefs in 2018. Combined with a string of other unbudgeted retirements and an arbitrated contract settlement with front-line officers, the service ended 2017 $7 million in the red.

The board was again forced to raid reserve funds to cover some of the deficit and asked regional council for $2.4 million to pay for

the remaining shortfall.

In the past, Gale has told The Standard it is possible the NRP would have a 2018 budget deficit as well.

Last year, the NRP had to launch complex and expensive investigations into several incidents, including multiple shootings in downtown St. Catharines and the Pelham incident during which one NRP officer shot another. Large-scale investigations can quickly consume and exceed the NRP’s overtime budget.

Gale, who was reappointed to the police services board by regional council last month, has often touted the past board’s decisions to keep budget increases low as a success.

In addition to dealing with the budget Wednesday, the new board will elect a chair and vice-chair.