Peterborough Police remain poised to ask city council for money to continue hiring in 2024, though council has asked police to pause its hiring next year to keep property taxes from surging.
“That’s a reasonable ask, from city council,” Chief Stu Betts said in an interview this week.
But Betts said it won’t stop him from requesting the money needed to increase staff enough to keep the community as safe as possible.
“My push — and my submission to the (police) board, and hopefully the board submission to city council — will be very much based on what our needs are, in order not just to maintain the status quo, but in fact to get better,” Betts said.
“Because if we’re maintaining the status quo, as we’ve seen, crime rates continue to go up. Clearance rates (the rate at which crimes are solved) continue to go down. That’s not a trend I think that we can afford.”
But Peterborough is facing a potential 5.59 per cent property tax increase for 2024 to keep up with expenses such as inflation and surging fuel prices.
That’s without police hires; with police hires, the 2024 tax increase would likely be seven per cent.
“There is no appetite in the community for a seven per cent increase,” said city finance chair Coun. Andrew Beamer in a text message.
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“Many residents are struggling to pay for food, gas, rent, mortgages, utilities. City council, outside agencies and organizations all need to keep in mind the taxpayer’s ability to pay, and rein in spending.”
Mary ten Doeschate, the chair of the Peterborough Police Services Board, said Tuesday that’s “wise.” But she also said city police needs funding “to do its job properly.”
“We have to keep the budget in mind,” she said in an interview. “I mean, this is taxpayers’ money. But we also need to make sure that the community is safe, and that the police are doing what they are supposed to do.”
Peterborough Police say they need 49 new job positions (both officer and civilian jobs) hired over five years (2023 to 2027) to keep up with a growing population, an increasing number of calls and officers off on short-term disability due to injury or post-traumatic stress disorder.
To hire 49 people within five years would require about 14 hires in 2024.
“Is that responsible? I don’t know,” ten Doeschate said. “Not with the way the economy is right now... So we’re trying to take that into consideration and go, ‘OK, maybe it’s not 14 positions, but how can we make this work?’”
In 2023 Peterborough Police received $29.1 million in operating funds from the city. It was four per cent — or $1.1 million more — than in 2022.
That included enough money to hire 11 people — a mix of officers and civilians — with start dates staggered in the second half of the year.
For 2024, police had proposed to continue with the hiring.
But at a city council meeting June 26, city council unanimously voted to ask the police board to pause hiring for 2024 to rein in the projected property tax increase.
Both Mayor Jeff Leal and Coun. Gary Baldwin sit on the police board, and on Tuesday both declined to comment, saying it’s appropriate for ten Doeschate to speak on behalf of the board.
She said that the board will publicly discuss the exact sum they may request of the city for 2024 at a police board meeting either in September or October (ahead of a 2024 funding request to the city, in November).
For several years police have asked for no more than three or four per cent increases. But now they’re facing understaffing, ten Doeschate pointed out.
“So we’re having to play catch up,” she said. “It’s never a good time for catch-up to this extent, but we have to do it sometime. We’re getting further and further behind.”
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