06-26-2021, 02:10 AM
(06-25-2021, 04:51 PM)plam Wrote:(06-24-2021, 11:54 PM)jeffster Wrote: Begs the question: has the region gotten so bad that we need a huge police budget? Are others so unimportant that we take away their only outlet for cultural enlightenment? Is it hard for us to help out low-income parents struggling with childcare expenses? I get we need to keep things under budget, but it appears at time that we're penny wise and pound foolish.
I think the police budget should be reallocated to non police social services. However that takes a pretty huge fight to implement due to provincial legislation: the police force proposes a budget and then regional council has to vote it down and go to arbitration...
Shocking. If the province wants to force each city to pay for policing, it should just do it itself.
Otherwise, each municipality should decide how much it wants. If it decides to suddenly cut the budget by 50%, then that’s what happens (subject to labour law etc., but that’s no different from suddenly chopping anything else the Region does by 50%).
While policing is in fact essential, the amount that is spent on it and how it is allocated is a legitimate subject for actual political debate. And there is nothing special about policing that makes the chief or the police board better positioned to determine what the budget should be than the politicians. Imagine if the transportation (roads) department worked this way. Hmmm, on the other hand, imagine if transit worked this way…