The Nelson Police Department will hire two new officers this year if the city approves a three per cent increase to its budget.
The City Of Nelson’s 2024 draft budget shows the department being allocated $5.5 million, which is up $158,958, and accounts for 19 per cent of city spending.
The department had requested a 6.45 per cent increase to cover rising wages while also hiring two more officers, which Chief Donovan Fisher told city council would help address staffing shortages.
Chief financial officer Chris Jury said the department will instead see a smaller increase that still allows for it to have 23 officers by the end of the year. Those hirings will be staggered to offset the impact on this year’s budget.
“We tried to work with the chief and say, ‘OK, what are your needs, and where can we find a compromise for lack of a better word of something that will work for them, but also keep things kind of at an incremental pace?’”
The department has been operating without a full compliment for more than a year. Two officers died in an avalanche in early 2023, while others have left voluntarily or were placed on leave due to ongoing misconduct investigations.
Fisher said the department has also loaned only one officer to the RCMP’s Integrated Road Safety Unit for the year instead of three that had been re-assigned in 2023.
He still believes the department requires 25 officers to be effective, which he hopes to have by 2026.
“I’m happy with the ways the city’s worked the budget for us that we’re still able to do some additional hiring. Obviously there’s a few areas where I would have liked to have seen more of an increase, but I also understand that’s spread across the entire city.”
Public feedback on the budget, which can be seen online at nelson.ca/203/Budget-Financial-Reports, is underway now. City council will vote on the final draft prior to May 15.
The reduced increase to the police budget means the department is also making changes to a short-lived initiative that had only just begun last year.
Community service officers Jasmine Uppal and Heidi Quillan had been hired to patrol downtown Nelson after outcry from businesses about increased crime and drug use. They didn’t have an enforcement role, but instead served as department liaisons who could speak with Nelson’s street community and businesses.
That program is being cut back. Quillan has been reassigned to her former posting in bylaw and the department will re-hire just one community service officer for 2024.
Most of the pair’s salaries were paid for by a donation from the Nelson Police Foundation, but city efforts to find provincial funding for the program failed.
Fisher said the program can’t be entirely funded by the existing police budget, but he does believe it is fiscally responsible to continue because it removes what he describes as lower-level tasks from the duties of front-line officers.
The coming year will be used to review what further roles community service officers might fill and whether or not the program should continue into 2025.
“I think we need to focus a little bit more on some of those ancillary type duties that we saw the CSOs doing,” said Fisher.
“A little more presence in the schools, and then going forward we’ll have a chance this year with going into spring and summer and early fall with a number of public events that we didn’t really get a chance to embed the CSO into last year and see how that works.”
Two officers aren’t the only expenses being added onto the police budget.
Fisher said the rising costs of training require an increase of $22,000 over last year to a total of $90,000. The department’s dispatch will also undergo a $170,000 renovation to upgrade 911 services, which it is federally mandated to do by 2025. The provincial government also previously announced $3.5 million in funding for the Nelson dispatch.
Fire department
Nelson Fire and Rescue will see an 11 per cent budget increase, up $299,702 to $3.05 million.
Jury said the fire department’s budget is typically influenced by the amount of grant funding it may receive for its various programs. This year’s rise is related to inflationary increases to wages and a request to pay for more overtime.
The major city expense for a new fire hall is still set for 2026. This year’s capital budget sets aside $1.5 million for that project, which the city has tentatively estimated to cost $16 million.
Jury said the city still needs to complete design work on the new hall as well as find land for it, but that it makes financial sense to start setting aside funds now.
“It would be a significant project and not one that we probably would want to fund entirely with reserves.”
Another future expense will be the need for a new ladder truck in 2027, which the city estimates will cost $2.7 million. Jury said the vehicle’s size means it won’t fit in the current hall’s building and will have to arrive after a new hall is built.
Bylaw office
Nelson’s bylaw officers will relocate from the police department to city hall this year.
The draft budget shows a 25 per cent increase to bylaw operations, up to $624,413. Jury said this will allow for the hiring of a manager and also have bylaw work out of city hall, which he said is typical for municipalities.
Jury said the changes will allow for the city to reconsider how its bylaw officers operate.
“I think there’s a lot we could do with bylaws, as far as not just going out and looking at parking, but to be that more educative piece of talking to folks about watering restrictions or moving your car on even sides of the street during winter or being a bit more proactive on that type of thing as opposed to just the enforcement side.
“It seems like an opportunity to utilize them in a little bit of a different way.”
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