City forced to grapple with $1.64 million police deficit

The city may have to dip into its contingency reserve to cover a projected $1.64 million Brantford police deficit.

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That’s one of three options that were presented to the city’s finance committee on Wednesday. The city could also draw money from the police service reserves or add money into the 2024 police budget to cover the deficit.

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The meeting was the first time finance committee members were made aware of the projected deficit and comes as 2024 budget deliberations are set to begin. Most of the deficit is the result of higher than budgeted overtime expenses.

The deficit prompted a lot of questions from several councilors and Mayor Kevin Davis.

“I want to make it very clear that we at city hall have no control, influence or oversight of Brantford Police Services,” Davis said. “That comes through the chief, the deputy chief, the inspectors, the financial officers and the police services board.

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“Our job is to fund policing services and raise money through property taxes the money required to fund police services.”

Davis said the city has done a good job of that in the last five years, dedicating .26 cents of every dollar collected through property taxes to policing.

In exchange, the city expects a high level of policing services which, Davis said, has been provided especially in addressing issues like guns and gangs.

But the city also expects fiscal responsibility.

Although predicting overtime is difficult, Davis took issue with other over budget items including: meal expenses which were over budget by $111,000, equipment expenses that were over budget by $250,000 and armor supply expenses over budget by $150,000, to name just a few.

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“This speaks to a need for better budget controls because when you’re running over budget on so many line items you should be picking up on this early on in the year and taking steps to address it,” Davis said. “Otherwise, it wreaks havoc with our budget at city hall because we can’t run deficits.

“If there is a large budget deficit in one year we have to make it up in the next year in the property tax or raid the reserves.”

Davis said the deficit has major implications for the city and called it disappointing.

“I sincerely hope that the police board and senior police management are putting in place the kind of controls to prevent this from happening again,” Davis said.

Brantford Police Chief Rob Davis attributed the high overtime bill to a couple of factors including past budgeting practice.

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The service has historically understated the overtime budget instead of basing it on what happened in the previous two years, Chief Davis said.

Based on what happened in 2021 and 2022, when over time costs were $1.5 million and $1.8 million, the overtime budget in 2023 should have been set at $2 million, Chief Davis said.

Instead, it was set at $930,000.

As a way of addressing overtime, the service, in consultation with the police board, decided to hire additional officers to fill in for those officers who were off duty and on WSIB (Workplace Safety and Insurance Board).

However, the strategy didn’t work as anticipated because there aren’t enough seats or openings at the Ontario Police College to train the number of officers required.

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Chief Davis said the police department recently asked for 12 spots at the police college but only received four with a fifth added later in the process.

Chief Davis also told the committee that when he became chief, he inherited a police service where a number of financial controls were essentially non-existent. It was one of the reasons why he hired a chief financial officer.

Previously, police budgets were developed by a police service inspector.

That prompted a response from Coun. Dan McCreary.

“I must say that when the sworn staff came up with the budget, no one came here in November telling us they’d not kept track of expenses,” McCreary said.

Chief Davis said the police department is implementing measures to better control expenses including the hiring of a quartermaster to keep tabs on purchases and expenses.

The police chief and Tareq El-Ahmed, the services’ chief financial officer, will be back before the finance committee in December to answer more questions about the projected deficit.

To view the meeting visit https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6xJhN1KslCA

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