In an effort to not lose a Bonnyville RCMP position, the town has requested changing the enhanced position to a regular member.
During their regular meeting on Tuesday, Feb. 12, council passed a motion to submit a request to Canada’s Minister of Public Safety, Ralph Goodale, in hopes of keeping, and potentially adding, to the Bonnyville RCMP detachment for 2019.
Due to the town hiring their own peace officer, the contract for an enhanced position with the RCMP will run out at the end of the month. In order to keep the same number of officers at the detachment, the municipality has sent notification to Canada’s Minister of Public Safety to say they wanted it changed to a regular member.
Assistant CAO Bill Rogers noted the cost for the regular member had been included in the 2019 budget. In the interim budget, the position added $149,000 to the police services line, which brought overall the policing budget up to $1.5-million.
“The direction for administration was to add an additional RCMP member to our 2019 budget so the actual number of boots on the ground won’t decrease by the terminated position,” Rogers explained.
While they would like more members, Bonnyville detachment S/Sgt. Sarah Parke noted the request will ensure the detachment doesn’t lose any members.
“It helps us to keep warm bodies, and ensure that we have the boots on the ground to do our job,” she said.
In previous years, the town has budgeted for 13 officers, but in the end, was only billed for 11.
“By the time it all shakes out at the end of the year, you have sick leave, vacations, members transferring in and out, and stuff like that. We’ve always consistently had 11. We said, ‘wait a minute, we have the vacancies and pay for 13, we budget for 13, but we only get 11 at the end of the year,’” detailed Mayor Gene Sobolewski.
He added, the municipality wants the number of members they budget for to ensure they “have full complement of officers.”
By putting in their request, the town is hoping to end up with 12 at the end of the year.
“In the event that we’re somehow over, or magically get 13 for the first time, then we’ll be able to cover any overages with our RCMP reserve,” Rogers said.
He noted that while the enhanced job will be terminated, no members will be leaving the Bonnyville detachment as a result.
“There’s a lot of policing needs in our community, and we just want to make sure that staffing isn’t an issue,” Sobolewski expressed.
Rogers added, “(Council) wants to ensure law enforcement in the Bonnyville-area remains a focus. They certainly don’t want to see fewer members, if anything, we’re hoping to get an extra member out of this.”
