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Ottawa police seek nearly 3% hike in 2022 draft budget

The draft budget called for no new hiring, something the chief said was a compromise that had to be made to keep costs low.

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The Ottawa Police Service on Wednesday unveiled the first draft of its 2022 budget, asking for an increase of nearly three per cent over its 2021 budget.

The draft, which was tabled at a special Ottawa Police Services Board meeting, calls for a $346.5-million net operating budget, a $14-million increase over last year’s — and an approximately 2.86-per-cent increase on the service’s tax revenue to pay for the increase, akin to a $19 increase for the average urban household.

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“We’ve tried to balance all of the different expectations, requests for changes, the need for demonstrating fiscal responsibility,” OPS Chief Peter Sloly said of the budget. “In that process, we submitted the budget at 2.86 per cent, ideally to be able to find that balance point between all of those competing demands.”

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But the budget falls well short of a zero-per-cent increase — otherwise known as a freeze — which many community groups and advocates had called for.

Councillor Diane Deans, chair of the police services board, told reporters after the budget presentation that the board’s work on the budget draft was only just beginning.

“We will look for the art of the possible to see what we can do to trim those numbers while meeting our mandate and providing effective policing services,” she said.

Staffing costs remain the single largest item in the draft budget, but the service highlighted investments in a number of new programs that, according to an OPS media release, are intended to improve crime prevention, relationships with racialized and Indigenous communities, and “the need to work more closely with the social service sector.”

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One such investment will see $400,000 devoted to a new program that “will develop and implement a plan to identify calls for service that can be deferred to more appropriate community-based agencies,” Deputy Chief Steve Bell said during the presentation.

Bell said the program would be developed with the goal of reducing calls for service to OPS by five per cent in 2022.

Deans singled out the referral program as one area where the board could intervene and hasten the transition to having some community service providers respond to more calls for service.

“I think the board would like to see that expedited and we think that there are savings to be had as a result of expediting that process,” Deans said.

In a media release, the OPS also highlighted how the budget had turned up $5.1 million in “efficiencies and savings” through “a variety of management interventions.”

The draft budget called for no new hiring, something the chief said was a compromise that had to be made to keep costs low.

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“It will impact our ability to provide services at a capacity that we would have wanted to,” Sloly said of the budget. “We will be foregoing the 30 growth positions that had otherwise been projected for the service in 2022. Those positions would have gone to priorities areas … like traffic safety, like guns and gang and drug-related street violence, like our support to gender-related violence as well as ongoing front-line service needs.”

With the board receiving the draft budget, members of the public will have the opportunity to weigh in on it, both through delegations at a meeting of the OPSB finance and audit committee on Nov. 9 and through public consultations, which will extend through November until the board votes on whether to approve the budget or not at a meeting on Nov. 22.

Once the board approves a budget, Ottawa’s city council must sign off on it.

“I believe that a strong majority of members of council do not want to see a reduced police presence in their neighbourhoods and on our streets,” Mayor Jim Watson said at a special budget tabling meeting on Wednesday, suggesting most councillors would support the increase to the police budget, should it be presented to them.

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The budget is expected to face criticism from community members who have called for a reduction or freeze to the OPS budget in favour of greater funding for community public safety responses.

Sloly said a budget freeze would not be possible without important staffing cuts.

“The only way to get to a zero-per-cent level and sustain that through the compounded impacts would be to reduce the full-time equivalents, the employees of the service, significantly, and that would have a significant impact on the capacity of the service to deliver its services,” he said.

The OPSB had directed the OPS to draft its 2022 budget using its 2021 budget as a starting point and provide clear justifications for any additional funding.

In the draft budget presentation, the OPS attributed the bulk of the $14-million budget increase to inflation and rising staffing costs connected to contract settlements with its members.

The bulk of the OPS budget, over 82 per cent, is spent on its members’ salaries and benefits.

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