The North Bay Police Service's Board approved a 4.47 per cent budget increase for the 2022 budget. The news came out during Tuesday's Police Board meeting at North Bay Police Headquarters on Princess Street.
The budget goes from $21,552,459 in 2021, to $22,514,897 in 2022.
The increase includes the hiring of a wellness coordinator, a quality control officer, and support staff for the transition to the new Digital Evidence Management System.
"At the end of the year we start looking at a needs analysis as to where are we going thing year and what are the programs we are looking to put in place, what support are we going to give our members and how are we going to provide additional or more robust services back to the community so that is really where we are starting our budgeting process and try to develop that out from growing as an organization in terms of the service we provide and the technology we can embrace to help support the community," explained Mike Daze, North Bay's Deputy Police Chief.
Daze says the service is looking forward to the addition of a much-needed wellness coordinator.
"We have officers around the country struggling with occupational stress injuries; PTSD," he explained.
"We need to be there to make sure we can proactively support and help those members. That's those here and away from work. It's a full-scope program that brings in a wellness navigator; somebody who has the expertise to come in and support our members making sure they can link them to important programs and work with our members to identify their needs."
Daze says about 90 per cent of the budget is consumed but salary benefits and human resources.
"With that 10 per cent the key is trying to identify new technologies, new programs, new units, and new ways of deploying with services evolving to match the needs of the community," explained Daze.
"It is really those other areas that we look to say how do we modernize the service we provide, what is our critical response, what has happened in the last two years of the pandemic in terms of our call volume and what we see and how we respond and how do we project that possibly into the future. Then how do we staff it?"
