Calgary police defend 73% funding hike request

The Calgary Police Service is breaking down its four-year funding request to City Council. It's asking for a significant increase to keep up with growth. It's about ensuring that we get to your call. When you call 911, that you're going to have a police officer show up within the reasonable amount of time that we said that we're going to be there. CPS is asking for a 73% increase to its capital budget. It says it needs the funding to replace aging vehicles and fix up its facilities, many of which it says are more than 40 years old. It's also asking for a 19% increase to its operating budget. The service says it would be used in part to hire another 300 officers, with staffing trending behind population growth. We actually probably need double the amount of police officers that we're asking for, and it's going to take this service and this city. Probably two budget cycles to get to where we actually need to be. Police say the increase would cost the typical homeowner about $2.85 more per month next year. By 2030, that number would sit at $11.40 more per month. In the city's fall survey, crime, safety and policing ranked second on Calgarian's list of top priorities after infrastructure, traffic and roads. But with city council trying to limit any property tax hike, some say they're looking for ways to trim down the funding request. This is something we have to address, but if we can find some cuts in there in that capital budget or operating, I'm sure we're going to put up the task. The police commission says the city shifted close to $30 million from a rainy day fund to cover lost photo radar revenue, but it was never spent. If they had room in their budget to absorb the removal of photo radar, it calls into question what is actually going to be spent. CPS says it managed spending internally, so it didn't need the money. And we actually had a higher vacancy rate, and so that's actually what helped a bit tiny more. And so we went back to the city and said, Risk averted, we went back, we did our due diligence, we don't need the money. Council will debate the police funding request and other competing asks during budget deliberations in late November. Brendan Coulter, CBC News, Calgary.