City Police Anticipate Small Surplus For 2020

The Saint John Police Force is anticipating a $74,000 surplus for 2020, according to unaudited financial statements.

Senior finance manager Craig Lavigne presented the figures during a recent Saint John Board of Police Commissioners meeting.

Lavigne said the surplus represents 0.29 per cent of the overall $25.6-million dollar budget for 2020.

“I think this is a good news story,” Lavigne told the commissioners. “It was a challenging year but we managed to come in on budget basically.”

Total expenses were more than $118,000 over budget, in part due to “the unbudgeted cost of [the] body camera program, vehicles purchases and insurance,” according to a staff report.

The overages were offset by savings in overall wages and benefits, which were under budget due to a reduction in overtime and other personnel costs because of COVID-19.

Overall revenue was $192,000 over budget, mainly due to additional secondment revenue, extra duty revenue, and insurance and auction revenues.

“The Police Force will continue to find efficiencies through various continuous improvement initiatives, focus on areas of cost control and manage its budget in order to provide best value for money for the taxpayers of Saint John,” said the report.

Meanwhile, the $1.4-million budget for the city’s Public Safety Communications Centre (PSCC) is anticipated to have a $76,000 deficit.

Lavigne said revenue was down nearly $132,000 as several local service districts and other fire departments did not sign on with PSCC as anticipated.

“We’re certainly going to work toward 2021 getting the rest of these folks on board once we get all of our systems up and running,” Lavigne said, noting the cyberattack has contributed to the delay.

Expenses were under budget by $55,000, due in part to surpluses in training, travel and other services due to impacts from the pandemic.

While salaries and wages were also under budget by $289,000, officials said staff recruitment challenges caused “significant variances” with overtime.

A total of $120,000 was budgeted for overtime, but preliminary figures show the total came in at more than $454,000, which was $334,000 over budget.

“Staff will … continue recruitment to alleviate the amount of overtime incurred annually and negative impacts on current staff,” said the report.