While Langley City council approved the 2019 municipal budget only three months ago, and property owners still have until July 2nd to pay this year’s property tax, work has already begun on preparing the 2020 budget.
Policing is the single largest operating expenditure for Langley City at 25% of the total budget. These policing costs are broken down into three major categories: RCMP contract policing, detachment operations, and the community police office.
Because the federal government pays for 10% of the RCMP contract policing costs for Langley City, council is required to provide approval in principle for the 2020 contract policing budget to support the federal budget cycle.
As it has been for the last several budget cycles, the RCMP member strength for Langley City has been set at 51.35. This works out to one RCMP member for every 537 residents in our community which is one of the highest ratios in Metro Vancouver.
The contract policing budget is broken down into two major categories, local detachment and integrated services.
The local detachment contract policing costs are expected to increase from $8.68 million this year to $8.84 million in 2020. This is an increase of 1.84%. Wages, training, vehicles, and computer equipment are the major drivers of this increase.
The Langley detachment of the RCMP is a member of several integrated policing teams which provide services throughout Metro Vancouver for all RCMP detachments and some independent police forces. An example of an integrated team is the Integrated Homicide Investigation Team (IHIT). Langley City’s share of funding for these teams is proposed to increase from $1.25 million this year to $1.32 million in 2020. This is a 5.6% increase. This increase could have been higher, but the provincial government is increasing its funding contribution to IHIT from 10% to 30%.
More information about the integrated teams is available from the RCMP website.
Contract policing represents around 80% of Langley City’s policing budget. Langley City shares the cost of operating the Langley RCMP detachment building and civilian staff with the Township of Langley. The City also pays for the community police office in our Downtown. The remaining 20% of the policing budget will be finalized next year.
Langley City council gave approval in principle to the 2020 RCMP contract policing budget last night.
As I posted about recently, Langley City council gave first, second, and third reading to limit overnight camping at Rotary Centennial Park. For more information around why this was proposed, please read a previous post that I wrote.
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| Rotary Centennial Park. Camping is now restricted in the area inside the red square. Select image to enlarge. |
At last night’s meeting, council gave final reading, approving an update to our Parks and Public Facilities Regulation Bylaw to limit camping throughout all of Rotary Centennial Park. This is in addition to Douglas Park, McBurney Plaza, Innes Corner, and in city-owned buildings where camping is already limited. The rules around who can be in any park, plaza, or city-owned building has not changed.
Councillor Wallace was opposed to the final reading of the bylaw.
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