Budget deliberations are continuing at Moncton City Hall today.
The hottest topic yesterday was the 9.1% increase in Codiac RCMP’s budget – a 1.8 million dollar increase for Moncton, bringing Moncton’s total share to $20,997,229.
Contributing to the increase are a 2.5% increase in salaries and benefits, more expensive administration costs and a new mobile radio communications system.
Codiac Regional Policing Authority Treasurer Paul Van Iderstine explains what the City is paying for.
“There’s three pieces, the consoles that go out to the communications centre, radios in the vehicles, the repeaters in the vehicles that extend the range and effectively the portable units carried by the officers,” says Van Iderstine.
One of the chief reasons for the increase is the upgrade to a new mobile communications system, which was one of the recommendations of the MacNeil report after the June 4th shooting.
Codiac RCMP Superintendent Paul Beauchesne explains the benefit of the new system.
“A police officer from PEI can come here with his car and basically be talking on the same system,” says Beauchesne. “Whereas when they did it before we would have had to give him a portable and there’s a limited amount of equipment.”
As well, General Manager of Community Safety Services Don MacLellan says we haven’t upgraded our system in 25 years.
“We’re having a hard time replacing radios, we’re looking for radios because they are broken down,” says MacLellan. “It’s a great time in history to be doing that because we hav a provincial wide system that will greatly improve communication.”
The 2 million dollar cost of the upgrade will be broken down into 3 yearly payments of $680,000.
As well, there will be on air costs of $325,000 each year once the system is up and running.
Deliberations resume today at 9 o’clock.
