The Town of Athabasca will not be taxing local businesses to help fund a new Community Peace Officer (CPO) position. Instead, they will look towards a voluntary cost-sharing process with businesses in the community.
The Town of Athabasca will not be taxing local businesses to help fund a new Community Peace Officer (CPO) position. Instead, they will look towards a voluntary cost-sharing process with businesses in the community.
“This will not be a tax, this will not be a levy, ” said Josh Pyrcz, chief administrative officer for the Town of Athabasca. “This is absolutely voluntary. We will make an assessment based on the number of business that are willing to participate. ”
The Town held a meeting at the Athabasca's Senior Centre Aug 12. with the Athabasca District Chamber of Commerce and local business owners, to discuss the possible funding, total cost, and the potential duties of a new CPO.
Pyrcz said the total cost of a second full-time CPO would be roughly $80,000, including salary and benefits. However not everyone present at the Aug. 12 meeting was necessarily in favour of the idea of business owners or community members donating money to fund the new CPO.
“I think we need to work on how it gets funded, ” said Chamber president Todd Dutchak. “I don't think the businesses should pay any more (than what they have to).
“If we could get some kind of government grant instead of trying to put the onus back on the taxpayers, (it would be better), ” Dutchak said. “We pay a lot for taxes already, and that's what the general feeling was (at the meeting) as well, because the business people don't want to pay any more.
“Not everyone is going to voluntarily give $1,000, but if we can work our way through grants, like it was suggested by one of the other members, I think that would be more than adequate to help pay for this. ”
If the business community decides not to provide funds towards the new CPO, Pyrcz said he will look to other ways to add the position.
“If there is no desire, that's fine, ” he said. “(But) it doesn't mean I won't continue to pursue (getting a new CPO) because I think it's beneficial for a community as a whole. ”
One means to help reduce the overall cost of a new CPO would be to share the position with Thorhild County. Pyrcz said that the officer would be shared based on how much of the contract Thorhild County would be willing to pay. For example, if Thorhild County were to pay 50 per cent of the contract, they would get the CPO 50 per cent of the time.
Thorhild County has yet to confirm whether or not they would be commit to participating.
Pyrcz said the second CPO position would be launched on a temporary basis to start.
“This would be a pilot program; this would not be forever, ” said Pyrcz. “If it doesn't make business sense, then it doesn't make sense to do. If we do it for a few years and we don't see a decrease in vandalisms or thefts, we stop the program. ”
Members of the Chamber of Commerce and the business community agreed with the idea of having this as a pilot project to start things off.
“If it's something that works out really well, I couldn't see why we wouldn't have one of our own, instead of dropping a whole bunch of money on a temporary CPO, ” said Dutchak. “Let's share with Thorhild and let's see what kind of things we can dig up out of that. ”
The duties of the new CPO would be the same as the current one, with standard patrol and traffic control, but with more coverage throughout the later evenings.
“From the perspective that we do know … our coverage would take place during that late hours and evenings, ” said Pyrcz. “We're looking at community-wide patrol, not just for the business areas. ”
