Belleville Mayor Neil Ellis says he has spoken to the chair of the Belleville Police Services Board and the Chief of Police for the Belleville Police Service to reconsider and look at the 2026 Police Services budget once again.
Ellis made the announcement during a meeting of Belleville City Council on Monday.
The Belleville Police Services Board put forward its 2026 budget during last Thursday’s meeting, calling for $33,524,718 in funding for the year, which is $4,531,218 or a 15% increase over the 2025 budget.
Following that decision, Councillor Paul Carr expressed “absolute shock” over the 15% increase, and made it known that he was opposed to it.
“Despite the lack of majority support of city council, I stand by my idea that a value-for-money review is long overdue. Perhaps this budget may reconsider that idea,” Carr said in his statement at the time.
In their own statement, Chair of the Belleville Police Services Board Heather Smith and Belleville Police Chief Murray Rodd released a joint statement in response to the criticism, saying that the increase was “necessary for proper service delivery.”
During Belleville’s council meeting on Monday, Mayor Neil Ellis, who also sits on the Belleville Police Services Board, spoke about the budget.
“I said at an open session of the police board that the process would be for this to come back to council. It would come to budget in February, and from there, council would have a decision to make whether that is to send it back, as we have done before, for the police board to look at,” Ellis told council.
“Unfortunately, if we wait till February, we’re in a situation that we won’t be able to print tax bills.”
Ellis said he spoke with the chair and the chief on Monday about looking at making changes to the budget before that February meeting.
“I want to ensure you that it is understood that this is not a comment on the exceptional work of the men and women of the service and the audit committee or the budget committee that did the budget, but it’s rather an effort to ensure that affordability for the community we all serve is considered to the fullest extent possible,” Mayor Ellis told council.
Mayor Ellis noted that this doesn’t mean that anything will happen with the police budget, but this way it can be fully discussed at council’s February budget meeting.
