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Talking about responsible allocation and management of police funding shouldn't be so stigmatized.
When we elected our most recent Edmonton City Council in 2021 tax-levy support for EPS was $384M, plus $22.5M from traffic enforcement ($406.5M total). Assuming a one per cent rise in salaries each year, police funding is projected to increase to $437.4 million in 2024 and then $451.5 million in 2025 from $423 million this year. This represents an 11% increase to EPS funding, all a result of changes made in the last two years alone.
Following several years of consistent approving funding increases to EPS from City Council, Council chose in August 2023 to continue funding EPS via a funding formula, rather than by service packages, which is how the city funds all other civic departments which have to come to council to bring forward additional expenditure requests for debate and approval known as service packages.
Here’s the basic structure of the EPS funding formula;
- The previous year’s funding for police is the starting point for the following year.
- EPS staffing expenses rise at the same percentage of Edmonton’s population growth.
- Non-staff spending rises in accordance with a specialized inflation rate specific to police expenditures.
- Funding to accommodate salary settlements is added on top of the other increases.
- EPS is still permitted to ask council for additional money to handle unexpected costs, like the visit of a Pope or introducing body worn cameras.
So, how do we contextualize this. What does it all mean? And why you should care.
The City of Edmonton recently approved their 2023-2026 budget. The budget is the City’s plan for where it will get money (revenues) and how it will spend it (expenditures) for the next 4 years. It maps out how property tax dollars and other funding will be invested to provide the programs, services and construction projects Edmontonians rely on. One component of the budget is the city’s operating budget, a financial plan that outlines how the city intends to allocate its resources to provide various services and functions to its residents and maintain its day-to-day operations.
In the chart above you can see that in 2023, the city’s operating expenditures were roughly $3.3 billion dollars. With the largest single expenditure being EPS at 14.8% of all spending for the year.
More EPS Funding = Higher property taxes
We’ve heard recently of some needed tax increases in the fall adjustment of the 2023-2026 Edmonton city budget. When you consider the recent salary settlements that the city has had to pay EPS officers in addition to needing to backfill revenue lost to the the provincial government cutting photo radar, it is clear that the the largest driver of municipal property tax increases is policing.