THUNDER BAY – Taxpayers will be on the hook for a $300,000 shortfall in the Thunder Bay Police Service’s 2015 budget but the police chief said he knew costs would exceed the allotted $37.7-million before the year even began.
“Last year when I presented the budget to the board for 2015 -- back in 2014 when it went to council -- they asked me to shave another 0.5 per cent off,” J.P. Levesque recalled.
“I knew at the time it was going to lead to a negative variance and it did.”
TBPS posted a 0.087 per cent overdraft in its final 2015 budget in a report to its board on Tuesday.
It dodged an even larger deficit by procuring $300,000 in additional provincial funding.
Levesque attributed unexpected costs to overtime and legal fees, adding wage and benefit costs make up 91 per cent of the budget.
The only savings he can find, he argued, would result in service and staff reductions, actions that would require the approval of a civilian oversight organization.
“There are a number of line items that we continually underfund to try to get the budget passed at council,” he said.
“Unless at some point we’re willing to reconcile some of those accounts, I can’t see that changing a whole lot.”
