After 3 proposals, city council approves $102M Regina police budget for 2024

City council approves $102M RPS budget WATCH: After three proposals, Regina city council approved the $102 million Regina police budget. Wayne Mantyka reports.

City council approved the Regina Police Service’s (RPS) 2024 budget Wednesday morning by a vote of 9-2.

The final approved funding totals slightly more than $102.7 million.

It comes after the Board of Police Commissioners sent back proposals three times to RPS to find more efficiencies within their operations.

Those findings reduced the 2024 RPS operating budget by $1,075,800 and the mill rate by 0.38 per cent from what was in November’s proposed budget by administration.

“This has an impact on the completion of our growth plan from 2020,” Deputy Chief Dean Rae told councillors. “It means we have to push back capital projects to future years.”

That included the completion of renovations at the new RPS headquarters.

The increase in RPS operation costs is largely in part to salaries.

$100,640,200 of RPS’s budget covers salary and benefits for its 671 permanent employees and 15 casual full-time employees.

The service is also requesting an increase of one civilian position and six officers – while the provincial government is funding an additional two officer positions.

“It is a smaller amount but it’s more bodies,” Rae explained. “So it does help.”

Rae said its current membership experiences a high rate of stress and work-related injuries.

“At any given time, about nine per cent of our staff are off from a variety of work-related injuries,” he explained. “In addition to this, we are also experiencing increases in both our call load and crime rate.”

In 2023, there have been 52,765 calls for service so far, Rae said.

According to RPS, the year-to-date crime rate for this year is up seven per cent.

“If we have healthy officers, we’re going to meet the demand placed on us,” Rae added.

Masters asked Rae how many officers RPS needs to hire to keep up with demand.

“There is no set number but it is dependant on the patrol workload assessments,” Rae responded.

“You are in a massive deficit and that is a significant increase to the force,” Masters went on to say. “Reasonable growth at a reasonable pace to ensure [RPS] is maintaining what it needs to.”

The approval was not without questions on if RPS funding is too much.

“It is still quite high,” said Ward 8 Coun. Shanon Zachidniak. “I regularly hear concerns from residents who have concerns about the continued elevated ask of the police budget.”

Tracy Raison, manager of financial services, believes the force is responsible with the funding it receives.

“We try not to have the concept of ‘spend or you lose it,’” she said. “We seek and see where we had to cut in previous budgets or find things that are falling behind.”

RPS also has a 5-year capital budget plan that began in 2023. The 2024 allocation totals $3.38 million, a slight decrease from what admin projected.

Next years’ forecasted capital budget is nearly $8.5 million.