Regional police budget sees $3.4M surplus in 2014

The Waterloo Regional Police Service is in the black after ending 2014 with a budget surplus of $3.4 million. 

The surplus was a result of a number of savings, the biggest one being a high number of maternity and parental leaves and retirements in the 2014 fiscal year. 

"The gap involved in those persons leaving, and by the time they take seed again and are re-hired, and the absences relating to mat leave and parental leave actually exceeded 1,600 weeks of employment, so those just innately drove the natural savings of salary and benefit dollars," said Joe Steiner, the director of finance for Waterloo Regional Police.

Steiner says the nature of the salaries savings makes them a bit of a fluke, and not something the service can count on in the future. 

"When we establish the salary planning component for a budget it's done in August and September of a previous year. At that point there's absolutely no knowledge or understanding as to what maternity, paternity, retirement or resignations hold," said Steiner. 

In addition to the salary savings, auction sales from police vehicles and new grant money helped push the budget over the top, he added.

Another factor was a cut to overtime hours. 

"The staff have been very diligent in trying to keep that number down. We did reduce the overtime budget because of that from 2014 to 15 by $100,000 and we'll see what that holds," said Steiner.

He also said of the $3.4 million surplus, just over $2.3 million will be deposited in the police service's information technology reserve fund, with the remaining funds going to a general equipment reserve.