Mayor Clive Tolley says he will bring concerns about the Moose Jaw Police Service’s 2022 budget — and its lack of details — to the next Board of Police Commissioners meeting.
Moose Jaw media raised concerns about the police service’s budget during a media scrum following the Dec. 6 regular council meeting.
The main concern is that the police agency’s 2022 operating budget only includes the request for three new officers and a funding increase of $498,719, or 4.67 per cent. The document — unlike other budget reports — does not include a line-by-line breakdown of revenues or expenses.
The police budget comprised 23.2 per cent of the City of Moose Jaw’s budget this year.
The Board of Police Commissioners did not question the lack of details during its mid-November meeting when the budget was presented. Likewise, city council — including councillors Dawn Luhning and Doug Blanc, who sit on the board — did not say anything when Police Chief Rick Bourassa presented the budget during council’s third-party budget meeting in late November.
Robert Thomas, a reporter with MJIndependent.com, asked the mayor whether he thought the budget was detailed enough for residents or the media. Thomas pointed out that Moose Jaw media cannot ask questions after the police board’s meetings here, unlike in Prince Albert, Saskatoon or Regina, which also provide detailed budget documents.
Thomas held up a file folder containing the Prince Albert Police Service’s 2022 budget. He also provided the mayor with a copy before the scrum started.
The reporter pointed out Prince Albert’s police service has adopted new COVID-19 protocols that will allow that agency to save $50,920 this year, which is only known because of its detailed budget. In comparison, no one knows how much of Moose Jaw’s police budget goes to salaries, mental health initiatives, new officers, or pandemic protocols, as examples.
“I’m thinking more in the way of transparency,” Thomas added.
In response, Tolley replied, “I know that the police commission submitted their budget to the city. It’s under consideration as all the other submissions in the budget process. I’m not sure about what Prince Albert is doing versus what we’re doing. I’d like to have a closer look at it before I answer something like that.”
Simply because a police agency elsewhere provides detailed budget documents doesn’t mean that should happen here, Tolley continued. However, he promised that he would read the information Thomas provided.
“I’ll bring that (the concerns) forward to the police commission and ask some questions and see what the answer is,” he added.
Tolley was then asked whether it was a double standard for the police service to provide a budget document that lacked information while other third-party community groups had to provide detailed documents to receive funding. He replied that he was unsure if there were regulations or bylaws to cover that.
He deferred to city manager Jim Puffalt, who pointed out that the police commission works under separate legislation from the city. Council can only approve the budget as a whole and not the details, which the police board handles.
“It’s treated not a whole lot different than school taxes, for example. We (the city) have to collect the taxes for them, but again, city council only gets to approve the budget as a whole,” Puffalt said, adding the municipality could not comment on what other communities were doing with their police budgets.
The next regular city council meeting is Monday, Dec. 13.
