Police Board Chair believes 6.22% budget increase very reasonable

Richard Stivrins says a lot of hard work was put into the North Bay Police Board budget deliberations. 

Stivrins, the Police Board chair, says they are asking for a 6.22 per cent levy increase in operating budget, up $1.255 million over 2023. 

"We started in the 12s and got down into the low sixes and that was a lot of really good work done by our finance coordinator as well as our command staff and our senior officers," said Stivrins.  

"We were really taking a hard look at what we are doing and the ways we can do it more efficiently and we are happy we got down to where we got down to. 

"A big chunk of it is our annual increases in salaries and benefits and that type of stuff," explained the board chair saying that is responsible for about 3.5 per cent of the increase. 

"On the other side, we are doing a lot of things in regards to community engagement and visibility so we have some dollars that are getting allocated to being more present and visible and stuff the community has been asking of us to do. In the bigger picture, I think we have done a really good job of trimming the increases as much as we can."

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Last year, the Board requested a 10.78 per cent increase so Stivrins believes the 2024 increase is reasonable especially when compared to other communities. 

"When I look at other services across the province we are definitely at the lower end of the increases this year which is a credit to the command staff but also the members who go to work every day, work hard, and do what we ask of them," he said. 

Stivrins notes that technology upgrades also play a part in the increase such as the ongoing project to bring body-worn cameras to the service. 

"It's not just the cost of the body-worn cameras, it is the cost of the record-keeping, that type of stuff that you have for disclosure," explained Stivrins.  

"If you are going to have the body-worn cameras you have to have the ability to produce the footage when needed for various court actions so when we go live on it, we would be able to meet our disclosure requirements so that does drive some of the cost of policing here."