Sarnia residents are being invited to a public meeting Monday evening with Chief Derek Davis to ask questions and hear about the city police force’s upcoming budget and business plan.
The meeting is set for 7 pm to 9 pm at Our Lady of Mercy Hall at 390 Christina St. N.
The $30.4-million city police budget for 2023, approved by the police board in November, is an 11.5 per cent increase over the current year.
It’s scheduled to be considered Jan. 16 by city council, which can approve or reject the budget but can’t make specific changes.
The service has said 8.8 per cent of the increase is the result of prior approvals and negotiated increases.
A draft version of the service’s 2023 to 2025 business plan, written following consultation with city residents, was backed in November by the police board members and will return in February for final approval.
“I want to explain in a little more detail what our intentions are – what we want to be able to do moving forward and how that manifests to the taxpayer,” Davis said about Monday’s public meeting.
“People will have questions, and I want them to have the opportunity to ask the questions so we can provide an answer.”
Davis said everything in the budget “is founded in community feedback” and “addresses concerns that were heard through our public sessions – through our community survey.”
The police service held a series of community meetings and conducted a survey leading up to the writing of the business plan.
Davis said the business plan, which the province requires of police services, “is the strategic direction” for the police department and guides its budget.
“We need to be addressing those strategic objectives,” he said.
Davis said police visibility was one of the key concerns heard from city residents.
“One of our proposals is the creation of a Sarnia police auxiliary unit, which is volunteers,” he said.
“Another area we’ve heard very strongly about are some of the social challenges that are in the community,” including homelessness and addiction, Davis said.
“From those flow other issues that impact our citizens. . . sometimes it involves crime. We have to take a new approach to dealing with some of these social concerns.”
Davis said he wants to talk Monday about a budget proposal for an Integrated Mobile Police and Community Team that would include representatives from social services and agencies.
It would bring those services together with the police as an “outreach team” to address some of the social issues, he said.
“We can start to do a little more of a preventative approach versus straight police enforcement response” by working “much more closely with our partners and service providers in the community,” Davis said.
The budget also creates a second Mental Health Engagement and Response Team (MHEART), where an officer teamed with a mental health nurse responds to individuals experiencing a mental health crisis.
“When police respond with MHEART, it’s very focused on the people in a mental-health crisis” with the goal of better addressing their needs “and to have better outcomes for everyone – for the hospitals, for us, for the individual experiencing the crisis ,” Davis said.
The move to add a second team is based on the volume of calls received and is also something the community “expressed they wanted to see,” he said.
The budget and draft business plan can be viewed at bit.ly/3GoAyzY