Belleville Councillor Jack Miller. (Photo: Quinte News)
The Belleville Police Services Board has passed its budget for this year.
It is going up by 2.6% and it is likely to go up by a little less once all of the revenues
from Provincial Offenses Act charges are known.
Councillor Jack Miller told the board that there was another $107,000 in provincial offenses revenue
coming which could be applied to the city’s police budget.
The Belleville Police Service budget for this year totals $17,703,000.
Belleville Police Chief Ron Gignac says when mandatory items like negotiated labour contracts and steep increases from the Workplace Safety and Insurance Board are taken out of the equation, the increase would be only 1.1%.
Meanwhile, if Belleville police officers ticketed drivers for every vehicle stop they made for Provincial Offenses Act infractions, they would’ve handed out around 30,000 tickets in 2016 and 2017.
Belleville Police Chief Ron Gignac told the Police Services Board that in those two years, officers laid 9,200 Provincial Offenses Act charges.
However, the Chief says that for every driver ticketed, two more were just given instructions on the law and sent on their way.
Meanwhile, the Chief says that traffic enforcement efforts by his officers were evenly split between urban Belleville and Thurlow ward, at 51% and 49% respectively.
