North Bay Police looking for significant budget increase for 2025

North Bay Police Chief  Daryl Longworth says he has been working hard to help improve police services in the city for 2025 without costing the taxpayers too much in the new year. 

Longworth presented a very detailed 2025 police budget in front of the North Bay Police Board on Tuesday morning. 

The new budget includes four additional sworn officers and three civilian staff, along with efforts to re-purpose some positions within the service. 

"What will the public see? Two dedicated foot patrol officers. An additional drug enforcement officer, along with another traffic enforcement officer," explained Longworth. 

"When we ask the community traffic and drugs are in the top three priorities so we want to deliver on that." 

However, the new budget comes with a 12.79 per cent increase from 2024. Longworth says they worked long and hard to bring it down from the initial 18.37 per cent increase. 

"When we first started looking at the budget we looked at what we need to have adequate, efficient policing in this community and keeping with the expectation as communicated through surveys, through meetings we have had, through conversations we have had, and that is where the 18.37 per cent increase came from," explained Longworth. 

"We also recognized we have fiscal responsibility with the tax base in this community so we went back to work and spent a lot of time looking at how we can accomplish what we want to accomplish through restructuring, through re-purposing, by looking at some vacant positions that maybe don't meet the priority levels that some of the other positions that we wanted to include so we just continued to work and work at that to get it down to the 12.79 per cent increase that I presented today and recognizing that this is a huge ask." 

Police Board budget support

Rich Stivrins, the police board chair supports the new budget proposal. 

"I am concerned about it yes and no," said Stivrins. 

"I live in the community, I am a father, a husband and a small business owner so we are all feeling the cost of life increases which everybody just feels at the grocery store, and we are cognizant this will increase the tax bill on taxpayers and that is one we will have to do to but this is an essential service and we are seeing across the province whether it is municipal services, whether it is OPP services, there are big increases coming and that is because the cost of policing is high and getting higher.

"I think my comments in the meeting were valid, we want to start putting a lid on these things, we are going to start investing in the social services side of things for a cheaper and more effective way of dealing with some of these issues and letting the police be the police and the social workers be social workers I think is the only way to put a lid on it but in the interim, we don't have a choice to fund our police service in this community."

Maggie Horsfield, deputy mayor and budget chief, also understands the reasoning behind the increase. 

"My role is to assess the needs of the community, assess the organization's ability to respond to those needs, and then come up with a plan to satisfy those needs so we are well positioned now but into the future as well and I think with this budget with the additions we are asking," she said. 

More visibility

Longworth believes the new budget is a reflection of what North Bay wants. 

"You will see more visibility," said Longworth. 

"The public wanted foot patrol, this budget will give them a dedicated foot patrol. We have supplied foot patrol over this past summer quite successfully but it meant pulling officers from other areas of the community, right up to the Chief as I was down there," he said. 

"That is not sustainable, I want to keep these officers in your neighbourhoods, I want to keep those officers doing the job they are supposed to be doing in the organization."