EDMONTON – As Edmonton City Council continues budget deliberations, the Edmonton Police Service (EPS) wants to add more than 30 new positions.
“We’re still focused on violence reduction,” explained EPS Chief Rod Knecht. “So, we want to continue to see those trends for violence go down. We don’t want any more victims.”
Council has already determined there will be a property tax increase. It is now trying to decide how much the increase will be and which programs and services it will fund.
The proposed increase is 5.5 per cent.
However, with a number of big projects – including new recreation centres and the NAIT LRT extension – beginning in 2014, council doesn’t have a lot of extra money to work with.
Read more: The City of Edmonton and city services
EPS is the most expensive department funded by the city. Last year, EPS came to council asking for funding for 29 new positions – a $6.5 million request. Council declined the request.
This year, the EPS is requesting $6.13 million to pay for 35 new positions, including 31 sworn officers and 4 civilian members.
Knecht remains hopeful that this year, the request will be fulfilled.
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“I’m cautiously optimistic. You never know. At the end of the day, we’ll get what we get. I hope we get what our ask is. I think it’s a very conservative ask.”
Police responded to 5,900 more calls than last year, and Knecht says an additional 35 officers will help cut down response times.
“This gets us to a better place,” he said, “but it’s not going to get us to where we need to go.”
“We need some significant growth to start to drive down those response times. We’re concerned about the response times, obviously, and we think this budget will help us.”
On top of its initial request, the EPS is asking for an additional $1 million to fund eight positions for prisoner transport. Those officers would help move prisoners to and from the new remand centre in north Edmonton.
Knecht also hopes the police will be able to make the Community Action Team permanent.
“We’ve piloted that for 18 months. We see the value of that, Edmontonians have told us the value of that, and the groups that we work with in the community and levels of government have all said this is a good project for them to get behind.”
Budget deliberations continue on Tuesday.
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