Halifax Regional Municipality budget committee debates police budget

As police ask the Halifax Regional Municipality’s (HRM) budget committee to support an increase to their budgets, some members of the public argue that money should go elsewhere.

“What I’m really interested in is funding our communities. We’re seeing social services and systems struggle all over the city,” said Kate Macdonald, who attended the budget committee at Halifax's City Hall Friday morning.

Halifax Regional Police (HRP) is proposing an operating budget of $94.6 million – a $5.4 million increase from the previous year. The bulk of it would cover already negotiated raises for police members.

“I recognize the police budget has to raise because every year salaries go up, that’s all arbitrated,” said Sam Austin, the deputy mayor of HRM.

HRP Chief Dan Kinsella also wants to hire two sergeants – one to supervise recruitment and one for the K9 and Emergency Response Team, as well as a detective for the hate crimes unit.

HRP is also proposing to hire a police psychologist and occupational health nurse.

“We’re building a program where we can keep our people at work, return our people to work and make sure they’re ready,” said Kinsella.

Councillors discussed the possibility of opening those supports up to other HRM employees.

“It isn’t just police, it’s also fire. Even some of our 311 people in the call centre they deal with sometimes a lot of aggression,” said councillor Patty Cuttell.  “We need to keep staff working, whether they’re in police, whether they’re in other units in the municipality.”

Halifax District RCMP wants to add 16 more officers over three years, including four new members for the next fiscal year.  Hiring four new members would cost $716,000.

“It’s my role as a new incoming OIC to make sure that at 2 a.m. in the morning, we have the right amount of people to respond to the needs of whatever call,” said Halifax District RCMP Chief Superintendent Jeffrey Christie.

Earlier this week, the board of police commissioners voted to recommend the increase to the HRP police operating budget, as well as four new members for RCMP, but it didn’t agree to hire new HRP members.

“We’ve been talking about defund, refocus, retask and depressurize and it’s always going to happen next budget is how it’s looking to the public and that’s how it’s looking to me too,” said Halifax councillor Waye Mason.

“The men and women who are serving in our policing services, they need to be resourced appropriately,” said HRM-area councillor Becky Kent.

After a full day of presentations and debate, the budget committee voted to defer the vote on the police budget.