The anticipated Barrie police deficit has nudged up to $1,512,485 so far this year, increasing for the third consecutive month.
“This was a very unusual year,” Chief Kimberley Greenwood told the Barrie Police Services Board during Thursday’s meeting.
Last month, the chief reported the deficit was $1.47 million, up from $1.1 million the previous month.
The city has approved $529,000 of provincial funding to offset costs related to COVID-19 and it is anticipated that police reserves will be used to offset some of the remaining $1-million deficit.
But Greenwood said the force will have to cover the remainder in coming years.
Police board member Lynn Strachan expressed concern about carrying the deficit into the future and asked about plans going forward.
“My general concern with the deficit is being in a deficit position as an organization and that it will take us more than one year to get out of that deficit position,” Strachan told BarrieToday following the meeting. “If we do run into extraordinary events in the coming year, how are we going to address that when we are already in a deficit position?”
Strachan said she was satisfied with the chief’s assurance that the board will receive monthly reports and a plan will be developed to ensure the police department remains financially stable.
“This is not something that we anticipated and we’re working diligently to recover as quickly as possible from this,” Greenwood told BarrieToday.
The financial variance report for the period ending Oct. 31 indicated that a $600,000 transfer from the service’s operating reserve would offset costs related to a retirement incentive program. Eight regular members and another three on long-term disability took advantage of the program.
Another 16 members announced retirement this year. Most of those were unanticipated, resulting in accumulated time-bank payouts in excess of budgeted amounts.
“We had COVID costs that were not budgeted for, we have had cancellation of secondments and we have had a significant number of retirements,” Greenwood said after the meeting. “As part of the incentives, we had planned three for 2021, but in actual fact we had an additional number… for a total of 27.
“That was unanticipated and we did not budget for those," she added.
So far this year, overtime is 111.7 per cent of the budgeted amount. Costs totalling $82,485 related to the EF2 tornado that hit southwest Barrie in mid-July, and $71,211 in pandemic responses attributed to the deficit.
Greenwood said investigation into the fatal shooting of a Barrie teen last month, resulting in three people being charged with first-degree murder, also added to the overtime costs. The department, however, is not releasing the overtime figure associated with the homicide investigation and how it contributed to the deficit.
Another additional expenditure estimated at $111,000 is related to software upgrades allowing for remote work.
A deficit of $391,643 related to the pandemic is predicted.
The force’s secondments program is running an expected funding shortfall of $248,712.
According to the report, some revenue sources — including criminal records checks, false alarms calls and paid-duty administration fees — were reduced in 2021 as a result of the pandemic and changes in business practices resulting in a $67,537 projected general funding deficit.
Greenwood said police spending has been cut off and there are no new expenses to the end of the year beyond salaries and benefits and regular commitments. But, she said, major incidents, like the homicide investigation, can require more resources than contained in the deployment model.
Once the figures for the year are finalized, the board will be asked to tap into the reserves to cover some of the deficit.
“We won’t be able to cover all of it, so it will be $500,000 entering into 2022 that we’ll need to recover over the next couple of years,” she said.
“Next year, we will look for savings in our budget that would cover the deficit. I would hope that we could find some revenue-generating opportunities that would help with that," Greenwood added.
Greenwood said she hopes that revenues lost during the past year as a result of the pandemic rebound with the resumption of regular activities.
