WPS Proposes Close to $17 Million Budget for 2021

Tuesday, 9 March 2021 05:15

It's budget season at Woodstock City Hall and the WPS proposed a policing budget of just under $17 million last week.

WOODSTOCK - The City of Woodstock is still working on budget deliberations.

It's expected they will vote on the final budget on March 18th. Last week, they heard from one of the biggest items on the budget, the Woodstock Police Service. Chief Daryl Longworth presented City Council with a budget of just under $17 million.

Longworth says they had to deal with $180,000 in loss of revenue during the pandemic last year and they were also saddled with some extra expenses.

"We had a $100,000 that we tracked throughout the year for additional expenses and that was mostly for protection of our people and the public. Our people came to work every day, they didn't have the ability to work from home for the most part because we interact with the public and we respond to the public's need and we have to go out into the public to do our job. So a lot of those expenses are related to personal protection equipment, masking, goggles, things like that. We had to do some renovations and make some additional purchases within the building, to ensure we are maintaining physical distancing while we are in the building. We also did a lot of extra cleaning last year."

Longworth says they have hired 8 officers over the last 18 months.

"A lot of it had to do with calls for service, over the past 5 years we have witnessed a 35 percent increase in calls for service. We also have about 10 percent of our workplace that are off right now on long term illness, WSIB related matters and that is kind of the norm right now in policing. We are fortunate it is only 10 percent, a lot of police forces are dealing with 20 percent of their workforce off on long term leave."

Two officers are now dedicated to foot patrol downtown, they now have a traffic dedicated officer, along with additional help in the drug enforcement team and the newly created Community Response Unit. The 2021 budget asks to hire two more officers this year as well. Longworth says the police service will need to grow with the community.

"We recognize that we are an expensive and costly part of our tax base in this community but we also recognize that this is a growing community and the Police force has to grow with the community or I'm afraid that in the future we won't be able to keep up with demand and deliver, not just the reactive piece but the proactive efforts the community expects from us as well."

Some of the highlighted goals in the 2021 policing budget include 75 percent more time spent on traffic enforcement, additional patrols and strategic enforcement efforts downtown, expanded capabilities towards human trafficking, domestic violence and sexual crimes of violence along with increased technical capabilities.