The Cornwall Community Police Service board are asking for a 1.56 per cent increase for 2018.
Retiring Chief Dan Parkinson submitted the proposal to the board Wednesday during the monthly Police board meeting which would bring the 2018 total to a WHOPPING $18,669,015 or $51, 147. 99 per day!
The CCPS still is not disclosing enough information to the media and public. Only recently, thanks to pressure from CFN viewers, have they started to publish daily call counts in their media releases.
For example the City of Cornwall pays nearly THREE times as much for policing per person than SD&G pays for the OPP in spite of the much larger area of coverage for the OPP. Ironically many of the CCPS staff including the Chief himself live outside of Cornwall. Last year there were 62 officers on the Sunshine List of public servants who earn over $100,000 per year.
Splitting the difference between costs of the two forces would put nearly $5 million dollars per year into desperately needed infrastructure for the city.
The CCPS clearly are carrying too top heavy a load of senior officers and have been delivering far more services per incident than the OPP would. Because of salary arbitration there are no savings possible on wages for police, but the amount of officers dispatched per incident is clearly higher than in many communities in this region.
Clearly there needs to be a hiring freeze until certain older staff sergeants can be retired and a wage freeze as well as many on the Sunshine List website had very healthy raises.
Cornwall for example is nearly on par with Toronto for per capita police services, much higher than Ottawa or Kingston which makes no sense for a community with shrinking crime numbers as its population is greying faster than most.
What do you think dear CFN viewers? Is it time to draw the line and for Council and our CAO and CFO to actually investigate the police budget with a paring knife?
You can post your comments below.