KAWARTHA LAKES-The City of Kawartha Lakes Police Service is bucking the trend in policing and have reported a surplus for 2017.
Chief John Hagarty says his service was under budget by about $125,617, due in part to lower than expected overtime costs by front line staff.
“We were quite frankly surprised at that because we were having at least two major investigations in 2017 and this is one of those uncontrolled areas where we budgeted about 175,000 for overtime and we came in at around $120,000.” Hagarty said.
One of those major investigations was the discovery of a body in a vehicle in a field southeast of Lindsay in May 2017. A post mortem determined the man had been murdered. Kawartha Lakes Police identified the victim as 19-year-old Bayram Abolhassani-Larki, who was last seen on Dec. 12, 2016 in the area of John Street and Front Street West in Toronto.
Police say these types of investigations are complicated, lengthy and can be expensive.
Police budgets across the country have been rising steadily and in some cases are eating up to 50 per cent of the municipalities operating budgets. AÂ study for the Fraser Institute in 2014 found one of the main reasons for the spiralling costs was the increasing number of officers in Canada per 100,000 population. According to the report per capita police expenditures rose more than 45 per cent between 1986 and 2012, while Criminal Code incidents per officer declined by almost 37 per cent. However the paperwork and regulations officers must file has also risen dramatically.
Hagarty says his officers have the ability of taking time off or taking the cash. Many of them decided to take the time off, so that brought the overtime numbers down. “All of us were expecting, because of a couple of major investigations, we would be in a deficit for sure but thankfully we have come in at a modest surplus.”
Mayor Andy Letham, a member of the Police Services Board, asked how it effects staffing requirements.
“So when your officers are taking time off in lieu of overtime is that creating pressures from a manpower point of view on the other side of it?” Letham asked.
Hagarty said it is a challenge. “The challenge of it is if we’ve approved it already and we have unexpected absences we have to fill in with overtime.”
The money will go into police reserves.
The total cost of policing the town of Lindsay and Ops was $7,666,715 in 2017.
