Media Request More Details And Access Regarding MJPS Budget Request

Should the Moose Jaw Police Services (MJPS) budget they provide to Council, the media and the public show more detail? And should the MJPS not have to answer questions about their budget from the media when presenting their budget?

Those were the two main concerns raised about the issue with Mayor Clive Tolley in the post Council media scrum. The questions were asked in light of other cities - Prince Albert, Saskatoon and Regina - their Councils are presented with a much more broken down and categorized police budget requests.

Mayor Tolley was asked the questions by MJ Independent in light of other cities - Regina, Saskatoon and Prince Albert - providing more details in their police budgets and their Chiefs of Police answering questions when their police budgets are presented to their respective Councils.

“I know that the police commission submitted their budget to the City and it is under consideration as all of the other submissions in the budget process. I am not sure what Prince Albert is doing versus what we are doing. I would like to have a closer look before I try to answer something like that,” Mayor Tolley said.

The Mayor said he could not comment about why Prince Albert broke their budget down differently than Moose Jaw does but he would get back to the media when he had a look at the budget documents.

A question was asked about the ease to interview the police chiefs in other communities about the budget but there was no other similar opportunity to do so in Moose Jaw.

“Well just because it happens somewhere else does not mean we have to do it here,” Mayor Tolley said, adding “but I will read what you have given me.”

“I will bring this up at the Board of Police Commissioners and see what the answer is,” he said.

MJ Independent asked the questions about the budget submitted by the Moose Jaw Board of Police Commissioners as their budget - along with other third party budgets - was accepted as part of the minutes at Monday evening’s meeting.

Mayor Tolley asked what sort of questions the media would like to ask the Board of Police Commissioners and a major one is the seeming paradox of the budget request for more money because crime is up but at the same time statistically reported crime is actually down.

“I am happy crime is down I want to see it go further down,” the Mayor said.

It needs to be noted the budget submitted by the Moose Jaw Board of Police Commissioners traditionally accounts for 22 - 24 percent of the total City of Moose Jaw’s Operations Budget.

Moose Jaw Today/Moose Jaw Express asked questions about the budget for the Moose Jaw Police Service (MJPS) and if it was not a double standard the MJPS did not have to provide detailed financials at a special meeting of Council for third parties seeking funding while all other third parties had to present detailed financials.

“I’m not sure if there are regulations or bylaws that cover that or not,” Mayor Tolley said before asking city manager Jim Puffalt if he could provide more detail about the regulations surrounding police budgets.

“The police commission works under separate legislation than the City. City Council is only allowed to approve their budget as a whole not the details. The details are approved by the police commission,” Puffalt said.

“By the time the documentation comes to the City is treated like school taxes where we have to collect the taxes for them but then again City Council only gets to approve (their) budget as a whole. Then again as you know the police service has their own legislation that covers how they do budgets and the approvals the cities have,” he said.

Puffalt said the City had not looked at what other cities are doing when it comes to police budgets and transparency so it was hard to comment on what is happening elsewhere.

As a member of the Moose Jaw Board of Police Commissioners the Mayor said there are certain things he could not discuss about the MJPS budget and the scrum was not the proper place to answer them.

Mayor Tolley said he had so far only attended one meeting of the Moose Jaw Board of Police Commissioners and familiarize himself with more budgets before he was prepared to answer questions about them.

“Me being relatively new but I really don’t understand the regulations around what you can, what can be shared and what can’t be…I am not really prepared to answer those questions tonight,” he said.

Mayor Tolley did say he would look over the police budget for Prince Albert and see if there was an opportunity to release more information under existing legislation as well as bring the matter up at the Board of Police Commissioners.