Police Board approves 3.22 per cent budget increase for 2021

The North Bay Police Board unanimously voted in favour of the new 2021 Police Budget at Tuesday's meeting.

The new budget comes with a 3.22 per cent increase.

Scott Tod, the North Bay Police Chief, says the increase comes due to the hiring of more officers.  

"The increase is actually for the four additional officers that we would like to put into our community response team," Tod told the media Tuesday morning after the monthly Police Board meeting held at North Bay Police Headquarters.  

Chief Scott Tod says the concept has been in the works for close to a year when the service requested an additional eight officers to be added to the service. Four of those new members will be dedicated to this new community response team in 2021.  

"We have talked about the community response team during the past two police board meetings and the importance that has for the police service and responding to the immediate needs of the community in regards to the crime that is occurring within the community, to assist small business, to assist citizens, service clubs, organizations. It's all in an effort to prevent crime from happening in our community," said Tod.  

See related: Police set to create new community response unit

The service is also looking to add a corporate communications position to the service as Tod says the service needs to do a better job of communicating through multiple social media platforms including YouTube, TikTok, and Instagram.  

"The second part is the corporate communications person which we think to develop a better and stronger social media platform," said Tod.  

"We have learned over the past couple of years that Facebook and Twitter alone are not the best way to communicate with the public and receive information from the public and we have to look at all the other media platforms out there to develop an efficient way for the police service to provide and collect information from the public, not including 9-1-1 calls for service.

"We have to look at all those platforms that we are not involved in right now. We also have to look in regards to Twitter and Facebook having a pro-active 24-7 response in regards to providing and receiving information."

Other additions to the budget include more technology for officers to use inside their cruisers as well as starting to prepare for the body-worn cameras for officers. 

The board approved 2021 police budget will now go to the North Bay City Council for final approval.