By Cheryl Jahn

Waiting for a tax decision. Again.

Jan 27, 2021 | 8:23 PM

PRINCE GEORGE – February 8th. That is now the earliest taxpayers of Prince George will learn the tax rate for 2021.

A request for two additional RCMP officers has many questions for Council and they were not willing to commit more funding to that request without more information.

While the base policing budget of $28 million was approved, Superintendent Shaun Wright presented Council on Monday with a request for two additional officers. Those officers would be specially trained to address more of the social issues in the community.

“In order to meet the public expectations and improved levels of service delivery, the Strategic Plan will focus strongly on providing a more robust internal training program for the detachment in several areas, including the following:

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*Mandatory firearms and use of force options: Focus on achieving 100% compliance with mandatory re-certifications for use of force theory & skills, firearms and less lethal intervention options.

*Crisis de-escalation and mental health: Advanced training in the area of mental health and crisis de-escalation.

*Medical / life saving training: Training in areas such as basic traumatic medicine and swift water rescue.

*In service training: Locally developed training to address local service delivery gaps specific to the community of Prince George.

On Monday, Supt Wright noted that he doesn’t ask this “lightly.”

He noted that the lack of training resulted in the de-escalation, in part, to what lead to the disastrous outcome of the Dziekański incident at the Vancouver International Airport in 2007.

But, councillors still had a lot of questions about what was being requested.

Some had questions about the financial commitment. While it would be nominal this year, it would be a commitment of nearly $400,000 next year and potentially two years after that.

There were also some around Council who questioned why the City of Prince George is paying for training, not RCMP Depot in Regina.

Councillor Kyle Sampson called it a “slippery slope” to more downloading and Councillor Cori Ramsay questioned why the City was paying $28 million in policing if the officers aren’t adequately trained. There others, though, who noted that every community is different and what officers are asked to deal with nowadays is “wicked and complex.”

Whatever the position, there were still a great number of questions and the matter of that item of the budget was deferred to February 8th.