Kimberley City Council has approved in principle that the Kimberley RCMP Detachment will be staffed with eight full time equivalent municipal officers. However, Council has also directed administration and the RCMP NCO to manage members transfers and leaves so that staff is at seven full time equivalent members.
This is something that the Detachment does every year, Mayor Don McCormick says.
In a report to Council, Chief Corporate Officer Maryse Leroux said that as a community with a population under 15,000 , each year the City of Kimberley is obligated under the Municipal Police Service Agreement of 2012 to pay 70 per cent of the cost of providing and maintaining the RCMP’s municipal police unit in Kimberley. The Federal Government funds the remaining 30 per cent.
On an annual basis, the RCMP require a letter of approval in principle stating the number of FTE members required for the next RCMP fiscal year and estimating the resulting contract cost for the provision of policing in Kimberley. The purpose of the letter is not to commit the City to the numbers reflected in the letter, but to provide the RCMP with information for budgeting purposes and allow them to ensure that the Federal Treasury Board can secure their share of the municipal contract costs.
Historically, the practice of the City of Kimberley has been to provide a letter approving eight FTE members for the municipal police unit and subsequently requesting that the RCMP manage the local unit such that the actual number of FTE members utilized is
maintained at seven. As such, the City budgets for 7 FTE members and maintains an RCMP Contract Reserve ($259,886 balance at Dec, 31, 2019) to fund any budget overages resulting from the unit exceeding that level of staffing.