OLDS — A proposal by administrative staff to add a third community peace officer (CPO) or hire a bylaw officer to complement Olds' two CPOs has been shelved by town council – at least for now.
Town council made that decision during a budget meeting late last year.
“Administration was directed to provide council with further data on bylaw compliance issues and capacity and bring forward service level options to prioritize what our CPOs focus (on),” chief administrative officer Brent Williams wrote in an email.
Had that position been approved, it would have cost the town another $85,000 or so, Williams believes.
During the budget meeting, protective services director Justin Andrew made the pitch for the extra officer, saying it could help enforce traffic rules and municipal bylaws.
Andrew said if a person with the skills or training for a CPO was not available, a bylaw officer could be hired and eventually trained up to the CPO level.
He said there’s a need to add a third person due to an increasing number of complaints from residents about a perceived lack of traffic enforcement and property issues.
“Everybody comes back saying that they want more enforcement, they want more patrols, they want more visibility,” Andrew said.
“And with the workload that is on our current officers, it’s getting impossible to meet those expectations and to provide that.”
He said adding a third CPO (or bylaw officer) would enable staff in that department to switch from a reactive stance where they simply respond to complaints to a proactive stance “looking for problems that need to be rectified.”
Andrew said currently, senior CPO Sgt. Paul Wright is spending much of his time ensuring that wording in the town’s bylaws can withstand legal challenges, because increasingly, some residents try fighting tickets and those matters can then eventually end up in court.
“We need that technical expert doing that work on a regular basis, which takes away from daily patrol, if you will,” Andrew said.
During an approximately 30-minute debate on the proposal, Coun. James Cummings voiced strong support for the hiring of a third position – but not a CPO.
He recommended hiring a bylaw officer to deal with issues that come under the town’s community standards bylaw such as property complaints.
Cummings said as things are right now, it can take more than a month before the current two CPOs are able to respond to a complaint.
He said hiring a bylaw officer would be cheaper than hiring another CPO and would free the existing two CPOs to deal with other concerns like traffic issues.
“This is exactly what our public has been asking for from Day 1. It gives more benefits that way than having a third peace officer, again underemployed, doing community standards bylaw stuff,” he said.
“We’re not a community of 2,000 people anymore. We’re a city of 10,000 and growing. We need to start looking in that direction,” he added.
However, Coun. Heather Ryan argued against hiring a third person in that department – CPO or bylaw officer.
Ryan said the town is already facing many other concerns, including the very expensive battle against I & I (inflow and infiltration of water into its sewer infrastructure.
The town anticipates that problem could cost the community $2.3 million. Earlier, councillors approved spending $.5 million to tackle the problem in the 2024 budget.
Ryan said instead of hiring more CPOs or bylaw officers, council should set priorities for what the ones they have should be concentrating on and let the other stuff slide.
“I think you need to set our priority with our RCMP, and our number 1 priority is traffic,” she said.
Ryan said the biggest complaint she heard during the recent Coffee With Councillors sessions was that residents don’t see police or CPOs around town enforcing the rules.
“I think we need to make better use of what we have before we start adding on extra people,” Ryan said.
“I’m simply saying we can’t concentrate on everything. We can’t do it all, and sooner or later we have to realize that.”
Ryan said not only would there be an extra salary to pay for, but presumably also another vehicle for that person to drive around town.
Andrew said the protective services department takes concerns about visibility very seriously.
He said some residents seem to have a mistaken impression – perhaps from TV shows or movies – that the way police officers fight crime is to race through streets and alleys in squad cars all the time.
But he’s been told by Olds RCMP commanding officer Staff Sgt. Warren Wright that officers could drive around all day and maybe catch one illegal act underway in “I don’t know, 50 days or something. It’s a ridiculously low number.”
“The reality is a lot of crime prevention and mitigation is done through complaints, where people are phoning in and saying ‘I've had this stolen,’ ‘I see this happening right now,’ and so they spend a ton of time responding to it,” Andrew said.
"The hard part is they could drive around town every day and if you don’t see it, ‘it didn’t happen’ and that’s the thing that we struggle with is trying to portray what that looks like and what that response is.”
He said staff resources are very thin.
“We don’t have the time in either entity to go out and proactively just spend time driving around, because there are too many files that are coming in that have to be followed up,” Andrew said.
Coun. Wanda Blatz said compared to similar-sized communities, Olds has fewer CPOs/bylaw officers per population.
She agreed Ryan and others that Olds is already faced with significant expenses to fight water loss.
However, the town’s population is growing.
“I just don’t want to see us have to be all of a sudden one day forced with having to hire three or four – either RCMP officers or CPOs.
“And I believe that we need to focus on what our residents have already told us about visibility and about their concerns with speeding and property damage and this could be one of the first steps in order to eliminate that problem."
As for Ryan’s concerns about providing a vehicle for that third officer, Blatz said the officers would likely be working on rotation, so all three wouldn’t need vehicles at the same time.
Mayor Judy Dahl agreed with Blatz’s comments.
“Our staff tell us all the time it would provide an immediate relief to the entire department with additional resources. We talk all the time about how we want to support our staff,” Dahl said.
Coun. Harvey Walsh said for him, the hiring of a third officer is “on hold,” due to concerns about cost.
Coun. Darren Wilson said for now, he did not support hiring another CPO or a bylaw officer, citing concerns about the cost adding to a potential tax increase. But he said that question should be reviewed annually or maybe semi-annually.
Wilson said he could see a need for expansion of the department down the road if the town’s efforts to create more affordable and higher-density housing result in a larger population.
Coun. Dan Daley kind of came down the middle on the issue, saying that on one hand, he agreed somewhat with Cummings’ argument, but he also agreed to a degree with Ryan’s.
His suggestion is echoed by Williams’ assessment of council’s wishes.
Daley said the town should take a more in-depth look at exactly what’s needed to make the municipal officers’ department more efficient and responsive to residents’ concerns, whether that would be another CPO, a bylaw officer or even an administrative clerk.
