Last year was a difficult one because of the pandemic, but a report to the Saskatoon Board of Police Commissioners tomorrow (Thurs) will show that because some of the Police Service assumptions were proven to be conservative, the tally ended up under budget in 2020 by $914,200. That’s despite the Saskatoon Police Service budget for wages going over by $456,500.

The report says the largest driver for being over budget for wages was overtime, which was $784,600 over budget, but that was offset by staff vacancies and other staff compensation savings. Overtime hours ended up being about 52-hundred more than expected, but the total at 58,064 was still almost 11 per cent below 2019’s hours. Investigative support had the largest number of overtime hours at 10,661, due to higher serious and violent crime occurrences which began in 2019 and carried over into 2020. There were 16 homicides in Saskatoon in 2019.

Revenues were higher in 2020 by $200,700 and total expenditures were under by $713,600. Provincial funding was almost $500,000 higher than budgeted, mostly for Traffic and Combined Traffic Services support. Federal funding was just over $130,000 more than anticipated, and that came from sending officers overseas to train locals in policing techniques.

The just over $900,000 surplus will be returned to the City of Saskatoon Corporation.