The Saskatoon Police Service (SPS) held a brief budget meeting Wednesday afternoon.
During the Zoom meeting, police chief Troy Cooper discussed and recommended some operational changes that could add some more money to the budget for the next two years.
“Since our last meeting, we discussed the impact on the police service if one of those positions was deferred,” said Cooper. “The overall salary savings by deferring three positions to July 2022 instead of January 2022, would be $194,600 in 2022 and $30,800 in 2023.
“That would reduce the total indicative budget over the two years by $956,000.”
Cooper said they were careful with the deferral of positions and they would have the least amount of impact on daily operations for the police service.
The three recommended positions are as follows: One officer who is used in serious and violent crime or homicide investigations, a special constable assigned in tech crimes/digital forensics and an audio/video disclosure position.
Cooper says all positions would be filled from within for the time being. He adds in the case of the homicide investigator and digital forensics, the total time it takes to complete these tasks may have to be extended or prolonged.
“Unpredictability of it. Staff are not recruited for this specific position, “Cooper said. “The volume of work with the most appropriate staffing position. Currently, we are working on recruiting across the board and for the interim, we would defer these three positions.”
Cooper says the police service is constantly playing catch-up with staff due to the increase in size in Saskatoon’s population.
Comments