Hamilton’s Police Service Board will be taking a second look at its $213 million 2024 budget request in a special meeting just days before the city council is expected to finalize this year’s property tax hike.
Vice-chair Fred Bennick says the meeting will go ahead on Feb. 13 and he’s not surprised they will be revisiting the document following a vote Tuesday sending it back to the board to find “efficiencies.”
“It is definitely within the purview of the council to send it back, so I wasn’t surprised,” Bennick said.
The approved motion seeks a “review and consideration” that would cap any increase on municipal taxpayers to no more than four per cent over the coming 12 months.
The approved motion, put forward by Ward 2 coun. Cameron Kroetsch, seeks additional savings from a $19.8 million year-over-year proposed increase for the 2024 police budget.
Bennick disputes some of the numbers passed around by the council on Wednesday suggesting the service is seeking a 10.2 per cent bump “was not accurate” and is an 8.4 per cent increase, or $16.7 million, when the operating and capital portions are combined.
Employee-related costs represent the biggest portion of the ask with an estimated 90 per cent accounting for the total gross operating budget expenditures.
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The other pieces of the requested increase are attributed to the strategic plan, which focuses on community key elements like a missing persons unit and bettering of race-based analytics, and capital costs tied to infrastructure and equipment.
The vice chair said all of those areas could be looked at again but hinted at little room for change.
“We continue to ask our officers to do more with less … there isn’t much left to do,” Bennick explained. “We cut and cut and cut.”
Council will meet on Feb. 15th, a date on which it’s anticipated the 2024 budget will be approved.
Prior to a round of budget talks last week, the city’s finance staff proposed a potential residential tax increase of 7.9 per cent after pairing down an initial September projection that was almost double that number.
It includes a 4.3 per cent levy for “vital services and strategic investments” with a 2.6 per cent impact connected to provincial legislation shifting infrastructure costs for new development to taxpayers.
On Wednesday, council voted to remove a one per cent, or $12 million “placeholder,” for future hospital redevelopments which would appear to reduce this year’s projected residential tax increase to under seven per cent.
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