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I would not want to play poker against Kelowna RCMP Superintendent Bill McKinnon. The man clearly knows how to play his cards.
He put on a dramatic performance at Thursday’s budget deliberation session, using both finesse and muscle to successfully lobby city council to give him more cops.
When it was McKinnon’s turn at the podium, he pointed out not only does Kelowna have fewer police on a per capita basis than pretty much any other Canadian city but it also has a high crime rate.
The result is a group of officers being pushed too hard as they struggle to keep up with the demands, he warned ominously.
“I’m burning my members out,” he told councillors, slowly chipping away at their resolve to hold the line on spending.
The situation is so dire he declared, that even though he was only asking to add 21 new officers to the city’s contingent of 141, what he really needed was 40. I imagine more than one councillor broke into a cold sweat as they contemplated adding around $5 million to the city budget while bumping taxes up another 5.5 per cent.
He spent the next 40 minutes going back and forth with the councillors who all expressed their concern and respect for the police but made clear they weren’t about to put Kelowna taxpayers on the hook to solve the area’s policing woes and they certainly weren’t going to do it in a year as economically devastating as this one.
But just as the council discussion seemed to be coalescing around a proposal to give McKinnon a bit of money to hire reservists to help out on an as needed basis while the city launches a review of protective services, he bottom lined them.
The minimum the RCMP needs to muddle through another year, is six more personnel, he said. “I need that to survive.”
It’s kind of funny that at some point during all this no one on council thought to ask McKinnon how, if staffing resources in Kelowna are stretched so thin, we are able to send 18 officers, including McKinnon, to Vancouver and Whistler to help out with the Olympics. It would just be good to know.
But in any case, McKinnon deftly maneuvered the debate to a place where Council couldn’t really say no without appearing recklessly unconcerned for community safety or the welfare of our police. So council unanimously approved the six new cops at a cost of $516,000, adding 0.57 per cent to this year’s tax increase and 0.76 per cent to next year’s and beyond.
Now I hope I’m not coming across as critical of McKinnon. While I think we should try to keep policing costs as low as possible, part of McKinnon’s job is to the advocate on behalf of his department and the officers under his command and on Thursday, he did his job well. I also have no doubt he will make good use of the resources he just won as well as any other resources he manages he persuades council to give him in the future.
We have to be careful however. Policing seems to be one of those areas where no matter how much money is put into it, there is always pressure for more. In some cities policing gobbles up as much as 40 per cent of a local government’s budget. Here, mercifully, it’s only about 20 per cent.
But every dollar spent on police is another dollar that’s not available to pave roads, take care of parks, build new recreation facilities or do a host of other things that city hall does to make this a more liveable place. We need to strike a good balance between competing important priorities.
We should also keep in mind that not every department has an advocate who commands as much attention and is as persuasive as Supt. McKinnon.
adrian@kelowna.com
250-575-3517
3 Responses to “Adrian Nieoczym: Supt. McKinnon deftly gets what he wants”
Tags: bugdet, Kelowna, RCMP, tax increase
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“It’s kind of funny that at some point during all this no one on council thought to ask McKinnon how, if staffing resources in Kelowna are stretched so thin, we are able to send 18 officers, including McKinnon, to Vancouver and Whistler to help out with the Olympics. It would just be good to know”
Because RCMP training, vacation and court dates are being put on hold during the Olympics. There are also much fewer tourists in Kelowna in February compared to the summer months.
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“But every dollar spent on police is another dollar that’s not available to pave roads, take care of parks, build new recreation facilities or do a host of other things that city hall does to make this a more liveable place.”
It sounds to me that public safety is a second or even third-order priority in your books, Adrian, and that it is not a component of livability at all. I guess you need to be reminded that Kelowna has one of the highest crime rates in the country, but perhaps that doesn’t matter to you. I’m sure glad that you don’t sit on city council.
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The City of Kelowna, like many other cities in BC, has some serious issues in regards to quality of life and a lack of law enforcement, which has led to this problem. A group of local residents have formed a committee in hopes of achieving a better quality of life by having our City Council respond to our concerns.
It appears that our local RCMP force has a different mandate then we would like. As residents, our concerns are safety, noise, and aggressive drivers, which all have a direct impact in our daily lives. Of course we do not feel that all the other criminal related issues are not important, it just doesn’t impact us as much, or as directly in most cases.
Residential areas are places we spend a great deal of time in, because this is where are homes are. Our homes are there to provide us with shelter and comfort. Our yards are there to provide us with some space to relax and spend some quality time enjoying the beautiful weather that this region has to offer.
Many people have the impression that Kelowna is a beautiful place to live. It could be a much nicer place to live if we had a better quality of life. Our lives are full of unnecessary stress, due to the lack of law enforcement, which in turn, has allowed aggressive driving and noise to become a huge, out of control problem.
Our present City Council does not seem to value our quality of life, nor are they responding to our immediate concerns in our neighborhoods. Thousands of complaints in regards to noise and aggressive driving have been documented, and no consistent, reactive form of action has been implemented.
The main reason that our complaints are not being dealt with is because of a lack of Police Officers. As our City has grown, our Council has not addressed the needs of a bigger force as other cities have, and are obviously spending our tax dollars in areas that they are concerned about.
A lack of budgeting for the dozens of officers that Mr. McKinnon requires means that Council is spending our tax dollars elsewhere, with no real concern for the escalating problems that are clearly evident in our local news.
Our present day Police force works on the basis of priority, where criminal activity is a first priority. The priority system must be implemented when there is a shortage of officers on any given Police force. Working shorthanded always proves to present problems in all aspects of life.
This priority system pushes our petty complaints of aggressive driving and noisy vehicles to the bottom of the list. Most residential complaints are not properly dealt with because of this system, which leaves a big percentage of the residential population frustrated to say the least.
When aggressive drivers know that they can get away with being “bad drivers” they continue doing so, and when others see that they can get away with the same actions, the problems escalate rapidly, leading us to the situation we are in today.
The same applies for the lack of noise enforcement, which is the part that effectively destroys our peace and quiet. Thousands of vehicles, including motorcycles, are constantly disturbing the peace with their noisy exhaust systems. The noisy vehicles travel in our residential neighborhoods disturbing our rest, enjoyment and sleep.
The noisy exhaust systems on vehicles and motorcycles seem to go hand in hand with aggressive driving. One would think that on any given day, these noisy vehicles would be easy targets for our local Police to stop and ticket, for either, aggressive driving, or excessive noise pollution, but this doesn’t appear to be the case.
Many new Drivers (“N”) have the attitude that they will never be caught while driving aggressively, or stopped for a noisy aftermarket muffler, or any other driving infraction, because they rarely see the presence of Traffic Law enforcement officers on our City roads. Many new drivers are forming excessively bad driving habits as a result.
Many illegal drug users also take full advantage of the lack of a Police presence, by openly using drugs while they are driving. I also believe that our current drug trafficking
problems may be lessened with increased traffic enforcement. One can clearly see why Kelowna is on the list of being a drug capital of Canada. The freedom to travel many miles of roadway without the fear of being stopped by local Police, once again enables more illegal activity.
Many more sobriety deprived drivers could be taken off our streets as well, which has been a growing concern of late, and once again quite possibly due to the lack of a complete traffic law group working around the clock.
Due to the lack of a traffic law enforcement plan, instigated by our City Council, residents must accept that while our property taxes go up, our quality of life is going down. I believe that part of the problem is that many Council members are not living in your average Kelowna neighborhood like we are, and thus not being bothered by issues that degrade our quality of life.
I am absolutely disgusted that I have to live in a society where traffic law is at the bottom of the list of priorities, and people have to be seriously injured, or die before reactive measures are taken.
One would think that this oversight should be on the list of priorities, and immediate action is needed to grant the taxpayers what they want. Instead of our Council members respecting our wishes for a better quality of life, they give us the impression that we are burdening them with our problems.
We don’t want to live in a City full of thousands of excessively noisy vehicles that have been modified to create the extra noise, or negligent vehicle owners who refuse to repair their failing exhaust systems year after year.
We shouldn’t have to put up with vehicles traveling 20-100kms/hr over the legal speed limit every day of the week, on any road in our City. We have laws that were created many years ago to protect us from these types of actions. What has happened to the common sense approach for dealing with an out of control society?
The solution is quite simple. Council members allocate funding for Traffic law enforcement officers and programs. The Officers have a quota to fulfill annually, which will provide revenue to fund all of the additional officers, and even have a surplus to provide subsidy for other RCMP members, thus reducing a tax burden on the typical homeowner.
Strategic planning by the Chief of Police, these extra Traffic Law officers can be used as well to fill other needs when the time arises, providing revenue quotas will be met.
The solution is a win-win situation for everyone. Residents will have a better quality of life, less stress, safer, quieter neighborhoods, and peace of mind. The City will not be burdened with needing to find funding to supply law enforcement, as this will be provided by all of the anti-law abiding citizens, who rightfully deserve to be paying for the service. The RCMP force will also be relieved of not having to operate short staffed.
Increasing traffic fines, doubling traffic fines for subsequent offenses, will surely provide adequate revenue to fund our Police force to administer future traffic law programs designed to increase our quality of life and safety in the years to come.
This simple procedure is not being implemented in our City, but other traffic calming measures that are being used, have not been proven to be effective enough to continue using. It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to figure out that the system that we have in place is not working and other immediate forms of action need to displace them. The only real solution is consistent law enforcement to ensure that all drivers are scared to break the law each and every time they sit behind the wheel.
Please continue discussion on the forum: link