City Police will look at ways to cut costs

The Sault Ste. Marie Police Service board has voted to enter into a contract with advisory firm KPMG in an attempt to reorganize Sault police operations.

"There is a lot of discussion around the escalating costs associated with policing and budgets and KPMG is a recognized expert to come in and look at our police service, to see if they can find savings and alternative service delivery models to our community and our clients," said Robert Keetch, Sault Police Chief, speaking to SooToday after Thursday's board meeting.

"They're going to look at our staffing model and provide an opinion…a lot of municipalities are undertaking these studies, they've done about 200 in North America and Sudbury is in the process of finalizing theirs."

All of this, Keetch said, does not mean Sault Police will be cutting back on police officers.

It could be, however, a matter of possibly "civilianizing" some duties police officers currently perform, such as delivering presentations to students.

"We're not educators, so are we the most appropriate individuals to deliver that content (such as presentations to students on road safety, bicycle safety or the dangers of drugs) as fully trained, fully armed police officers?"

"You could take someone with a university degree and a teaching certificate and teach it as good as officers, and then we can take our trained officers and redeploy them to where it's more appropriate and increase our ability to respond to emergency calls for service or other activities that require a fully trained police officer."

There are also people with forensic degrees, for example, who could specialize as forensic experts within the police service, Keetch said, as another example of freeing up more officers for the front line.

As a result of entering into a contract with KPMG to undertake a "Strategic Plan for Organizational Change," the Police Services board also approved a temporary moratorium on all non-operational full-time hiring while KPMG is compiling its report ('non-operational' meaning officers who do not work on the frontline, or civilians working in departments such as records or communications).

"There may be some activities identified in the report that will speak to the potential staffing levels, both civilians and officers within the collective agreement," Keetch told the board.

"We're asking for a six-month window while KPMG makes its recommendations," Keetch said.

The moratorium, which took effect as of Thursday's board approval,  won't affect seniority, benefits or vacation entitlement or the normal process of promotion in rank or salary increases for officers and civilian staff.   

The Sault Police Service's current complement is 137 officers, and just under 200 civilian employees (full and part time). 

KPMG's final report is expected to be received by the board by September 30. 

The fee for KPMG's report is "less than 100,000 dollars," Keetch said. 

In other news from Thursday's Police Services Board meeting:

• The board officially appointed Christopher Cuglietta and Kelsey Wilson as members of the Sault Ste. Marie Police Service.  The two were hired as police cadets April 25, 2016 and are currently at police college, returning to the Sault in August and will be introduced to the board at its September meeting.
• The board approved issuing 10 additional taxi licenses to Union Cab.