Saskatoon City Councillors are looking to make some cuts from the proposed budget this week, but the Saskatoon Police Service isn’t going to be one of them and neither is the Saskatoon Public Library’s budget. Councillors voted unanimously in favour of approving the police budget but it was a 6 – 5 split for the library budget.
The police budget includes five more Alternative Response Officers to be cost-shared between the City and the province, four more Patrol officers, three Community Mobilization Unit constables for neighbourhoods with specific challenges related to complex needs, a reintegration worker to support the mental and physical health of members in return-to-work programs, and a timekeeper to support the Fusion Payroll program.
Chair of the Board of Police Commissioners, Jo Custead, told City Council that the projection is for more than 150,000 calls for service by the end of this year, which is a ten per cent increase. She noted that a major driver of the workload is social disorder calls, including disturbances, many of which are related to mental health.
Chief Troy Cooper reported that the number of firearms-related calls have levelled out, but there is an increase in what police call edged weapons.”Knives and blunt objects, that sort of thing, that we find within encampments, with people who are suffering psychoses. Of course they take longer for our officers to attend safely and they take more resources.”
The Mayor and Councillors also thanked Chief Cooper for his time with the Saskatoon Police Service. He is retiring mid-January after 36 years in law enforcement.
The library budget includes an increase of 3.49 per cent in funding for next year and 3.54 per cent in 2025. Saskatoon Public Library CEO, Carol Cooley, explained to Council that they are dealing with a number of people with complex needs, so additional security resources were included in the budget ask. She says, “We would prefer not spend as much money as we do on security, but until the larger society deals with those complex issues there is not a lot a public library can do, other than manage behaviours that happen within our walls.”
Councillors Bev Dubois, Randy Donauer, Troy Davies, Darren Hill and Zack Jeffries voted against the increase and Councillors David Kirton, Cynthia Block, Serena Gersher and Hilary Gough, Mairin Loewen and Mayor Charlie Clark approved it.
