Editors note: An attribution connected with a quote from Ward 2 Coun. Cameron Kroetsch has been corrected. The article originally stated Kroestch said the Hamilton Police Service was “not taking budget conversations seriously.” In actuality, he suggested the Police Services Board isn’t taking the budget conversations seriously. That change is reflected in an update to this post.
Hamilton Police will be seeking a $13.3 million annual increase for its operating budget in 2024 when it meets with council for approval early in the New Year.
Chief Frank Bergen says the combined operating and capital budget will equate to $213 million next year and is representative of an increased need to provide adequate and effective policing despite challenges with employee-related costs
“This budget is a maintenance budget. It’s important to note that before we even opened our 2024 books, we are looking at a 5.92 per cent pressure,” Bergen said.
“The majority of these pressures stem from employee-related costs, which is 90 per cent of the total gross operating budget.”
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Downtown (Ward 2) Coun. Cameron Kroetsch weighed in as an early opponent to the increase, suggesting the Board isn’t taking the budget conversations seriously in asking for such a hike.
“I get asked a lot about police response to community concerns in terms of the different ways police respond: … drones and surveillance, traffic enforcement, the mounted unit. … I want to be able to dig way deeper into the human resources costs,” Kroetsch said.
In December 2023, the service asked the city for an operating budget of $195.85 million.
Bergen told Global News on Thursday that to mitigate staffing challenges and “meet the demands” of the community, expansion of partnerships with BIAs and other community entities would likely be needed aside from the funding.
He said staffing challenges in recent times have meant some initiatives have had to be shelved, like the ACTION unit, a project intended to reduce violence in the city’s most vulnerable neighbourhoods.
“We will continue this conversation, and the one thing that is positive is that the community is telling us what they want and they’re showing us what we need to do,” Bergen said.
“That helps us to deal with the prevention, the risk intervention and ultimately working in partnerships to make the city safer.”
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