HUMBOLDT — Humboldt is moving ahead with a new approach to dealing with bylaw and traffic enforcement.
Currently, Humboldt uses a bylaw officer, which is only able to enforce municipal bylaws.
At its June 27 meeting, council voted to move forward with a community safety officer program. A joint municipal-provincial program, a community safety officer can enforce municipal bylaws, enforce traffic laws and 10 other provincial acts, deal with not-in-progress complaints of mischief and theft under $5,000, and make arrests.
“I think this program is a good move for the city,” said Coun. Rob Muench. “What this is going to do is give us a way of taking some of the some of the workload off the RCMP in the community [so they can] look after the more serious issues that we face every day. This gives us another tool for the city to go after some of the things that we think should have attention.”
The city’s current bylaw officer program costs around $92,000 per year. A community safety officer program is expected to cost around $125,000 per year.
In his report to council, Justin Tarrant, the city’s bylaw officer, said the city would take a share of any of the traffic fines imposed by the community safety officer, which would help pay for the program.
There will also be around $37,000 in start-up costs. They include $4,500 for uniforms and equipment, $8,800 to upgrade the officer’s vehicle to provincial standards, $2,000 to detail the vehicle, $10,000 for a record management system and $12,000 for a contract with provincial dispatch in Prince Albert.
The bylaw officer has already taken the community safety officer training at Saskatchewan Polytechnic in Prince Albert and Radar/Lidar training with the Humboldt RCMP. A 2014 Chevrolet Tahoe with a lot of the equipment was acquired in a straight trade for the previous bylaw vehicle, a 2009 Ford Escape.
The city expects to start the program in mid to late August.
