Less than four months into his tenure as the head of the Lethbridge Police Service, Chief Shahin Mehdizadeh is already facing a significant cut to his organization’s budget.
On Monday, city council officially approved of a $1-million cut to the LPS budget in both 2021 and 2022, as it passed its newly-amended operating budget.
Mehdizadeh said he was disappointed with the decision, but understands that council needed to find savings over the next two years.
“This is not something that is new to Lethbridge, every municipality out there is looking at similar options,” he said. “However, when you look at economic downturns and when the economy isn’t going as well, that translates into increases in crime.
“I don’t believe cutting [the] police budget was the right thing to do. But having said that, I do respect the decision, and we move forward with it.”
The cut equates to about 2.5 per cent of the total LPS budget, and Mehdizadeh said it will more than likely mean fewer officers in the department.
“When you look at $1 million, it translates into about seven police officers that we are looking at,” he said.
City council’s final decision on the budget was made Monday, following a plea from Councillor Blaine Hyggen to reconsider the cut to LPS.
Hyggen’s motion was supported by Mayor Chris Spearman as well as Councillor Ryan Parker, but was ultimately defeated 6-3.
“The calls that I’ve received lately — safety is the number one priority for our community,” Hyggen told Global News on Tuesday.
“They are frustrated. There’s a lot of crime going on, and there’s not many people that I talk to that haven’t had their vehicle broken into.”
Both Hyggen and Spearman are members of the Lethbridge Police Commission, and Hyggen said he’s disappointed their pleas didn’t carry more weight with the rest of council.
“If someone comes forward with a resolution and they’re on a particular committee, I find that they will have more information because they sit on those committees and can bring that forward,” Hyggen said. “So yeah, it was a little shocking to be very honest, that there wasn’t more that actually supported the information that we had provided.”
While council approved of the cut, it also approved of about $2.3 million in funding for three LPS initiatives: the city’s community peace officers, the Watch program, and the Police and Crisis Team.
Councillor Rob Miyashiro said Monday that while funding could be used to fill gaps in other areas, council hopes to see the programs continue.
“It’s up to the police commission to determine how they are going to work that into their budget,” Miyashiro said. “It’s not up to us to tell them where they have to cut.”
Mehdizadeh said Tuesday he is firmly committed to the three initiatives, and has no plans to get rid of them.
“I don’t like to do that, because this is funding that was given to us based on good faith, because we do need these programs as well,” he said.
“If we have to run vacancies there might be an opportunity to run some vacancies in all the areas.
“But certainly those aren’t the programs I’m planning on stealing from.”
Mehdizadeh said a number of options are being considered, but he won’t be stretching his officers any further than they have already been stretched.
“I’m not prepared to have our officers do more with less,” he said. “The budget cut will translate into doing less with less. What that less translates into, I don’t know.”
Mehdizadeh and the police commission will now be tasked with formulating a plan to absorb the reduction, and they will be required to report back to city council by the end of February.