City council approves Regina police budget

After several hours of presentations and questions, Regina city council approved the Regina Police Service budget for 2023, as is, late Wednesday afternoon.

The 2023 budget is set to rise $6.3 million to $110 million, which is nearly two per cent of the proposed 4.67 per cent mill rate increase for the year. It includes a $5.3-million increase in the net operating fund and an approximate $1.07-million increase in revenues.

A handful of delegations raised their voices at the meeting over the police budget.

Many of the individual citizens were against the increases, a couple pointing out the yearly increases to the police budget. One man called it “absurd” and said the city should be putting money into a homelessness plan instead.

Regina Police Association president Casey Ward, who’s also a Regina police officer, spoke in support of the budget.

Ward spoke about the need for the resources in the police growth plan for members, including more members to take some weight off and a second psychologist to allow the Safeguard program to be extended to frontline members.

He said the city faces some unique challenges: A high call load, high crime rate, and high crime severity index.

“These calls affect our members. We don’t have the adequate time after a stressful or emotional call for ourselves to deal with the effects of a devastating call,” he said.

Ward said he’s seen officers crying in their cars after a tough call and then have to go to another call right away.

“We wipe the tears away, bury our feelings, and go on to the next call but this takes a toll on us,” he said.

The councillors peppered Police Chief Evan Bray with questions, some gnawing at the idea that if police were given less money, then money could be given to social programming such as work in dealing with homelessness. Bray pushed back on that.

Bray said afterward he is a firm believer in proper investment in dealing with the root causes of crime.

“But I also recognize that we’re one of the only organizations out there that are dealing with individuals that are finding themselves vulnerable and in crisis. And so taking away police in order to try and fund other agencies that don’t currently exist or will take a period of time to get stood up, I know will increase victimization and those most vulnerable in our community will be the most affected by that,” said Bray.

Bray said he also doesn’t want the budget choices to happen at the expense of his members, referring to the stress from workload and expansion of mental health programs.

A lot of work was done to pare down the police budget, according to Bray. He said there were lots of other requests and changes were made to the capital budget that saved nearly $5 million.

If police weren’t able to get the increase they had asked for, Bray said it would be a matter of looking at services police provide and cutting them. He said members will always respond to 911 calls, do criminal investigations and find a way to do traffic enforcement, but the proactive work they do could suffer.

“Those are asks by our community. The community is demanding that service from us and yet if we have to focus in on only that core response, then some of those things that are important to our community and are nice to have but we have the ability to not do them, those are the things that we would have to look at,” said Bray.

The 2024 budget prepared by Regina police was received and filed by council and will have to get final approval during budget talks next year.

Budget deliberations for 2023 will continue Thursday, with at least 75 delegations set to speak on the city’s operating budget before debate on that even begins.

Waste services funding

Late Wednesday evening, council also reconsidered the decision it made Oct. 26 around the affordability program for curbside waste services.

By a slim majority council voted to reverse the decision it originally made to provide the rebate in the affordability program to all low-income households and, instead, only extend it to low-income households with seniors and/or people with disabilities.

Editor’s note: This story has been updated to include more detail on the police budget increase and add the vote on waste services.