THUNDER BAY – The city police force’s budget remains on track through the first quarter of the year.
The Thunder Bay Police Service reported a positive variance of one per cent - $409,000 – through the first three months of the year at their regular monthly meeting Thursday morning.
It’s definitely a good place to start, acting chief Sylvie Hauth said.
“The police budget, almost 92 per cent of our operating budget is made up of wages and benefits,” Hauth said. “It doesn’t leave a very big margin in terms of what we operate on, in terms of everything else we need to do on a daily basis.”
The police services board and city hall approved a $40.7-million operating budget for the force this year.
Though the finances remain on target, Hauth cautioned things could change before the end of the year.
“A lot of it is uncontrollable. If we have a lot of serious incidents that require our emergency task unit, if we are on site with a barricaded individual, overtime costs obviously are much higher,” Hauth said. “A lot of those factors sometimes are based on overtime costs and what’s happening in the community with serious calls for service.”
One significant factor in the police’s first quarter budget performance was the hiring of in-house legal counsel.
“I think that itself has already shown in the first quarter to be quite beneficial and cost saving,” Hauth said.
