Police Services Board turns thumbs down on citizen appointees to its Finance Committees

Cobourg Police station. Photo by Cecilia Nasmith.

By Cecilia Nasmith, Northumberland 89.7 FM News

Cobourg

While the Cobourg Police Services Board unanimously approved adding two citizen appointees to its Strategic and Innovation Committee at last week's February meeting, adding two citizen appointees to its Finance Committee was more controversial.

In a recorded vote, the board also defeated the motion to add two citizen appointees to its Finance Committee.

The lengthy discussion found no opposition voiced to this change to the Strategic and Innovation Committee, but a clear divide on the other motion – former chairs Dean Pepper and Ron Kerr against, with current Chair Adam Bureau and Vice-Chair Sean Graham in favour.

Kerr and Pepper cited the confidentiality concerns that necessarily surround Finance Committee discussions, as well as the sensitive nature of some of the information that is considered.

“We who are on the board have a fiduciary responsibility to deliver adequate and effective policing – a citizen would not have that fiduciary responsibility whatsoever,” Pepper pointed out.

“They would have no information or knowledge or understanding of the legislation that we work with,” he added.

Pepper noted that 90% of the budget is concerned with such sensitive matters as their business-services division and human resources.

“Without clear direction and strict oversight, the board runs the risk of the financial advisory committee duplicating staff and work and challenging the governance and authority of the board.

“Committees that duplicate efforts also create competing priorities for staff,” he continued.

“There is the risk of committee members attempting to direct staff and drive projects. This potentially puts staff in an awkward situation.”

As well, as community members attempt to get up to speed on governing legislation, staff will be fielding their questions and requests.

“I can't see any good reason why we would have citizens on this committee,” Pepper stated.

Bureau pointed out that a lot of the board members are citizens as well, chosen through an application process and required to sign a Code of Conduct and Confidentiality agreement.

“So I don't understand why it would be such a pushback on something that's a big percentage of the community's budget, that we wouldn't have citizen input all the way from the beginning to the end,” Bureau said.

“I know one of my weaker points is budget. Going through the application process, checking out people that have the right skill set that I know would be way better than mine would be only an asset,” he added, noting that the result would be more openness and transparency on one of the town's largest budgets.

“I think one of the things this town has been blessed with is as lot of astute financial professionals that are very active in our community, that have a wealth of knowledge,” Graham said.

“Personally, after six years of being on the board, one of the downfalls I have found is sometimes the board seems slightly under-resourced. I look at this as an enhancement to the board. From a confidentiality standpoint, I totally agree there's no reason why we wouldn't put the proper processes in place to ensure that whoever was appointed as a citizen appointee would not be subjected to the confidentiality.”

As for getting up to speed, Graham expressed confidence that a candidate that survived the scrutiny to get to the committee would have “the diligence and bandwidth to get to that point, and could be a very significant resource to the police board with these very critical decisions around finance that we have to make.”

The police budget is 30% of the town's entire budget, Graham continued, “so I can't see how this is a detriment to the service, to the board. I only see a lot of potential gain.”

Pepper pointed out that the budget they submit to the town is the final result of reviewing a number of line items that council never sees. In effect, these citizen appointees will be privy to information that even council members would not.

“I can respect my colleague's position on this, but the exact same kind of confidentiality we all abide by would be strictly enforced very similarly to any other board,” Graham countered.

Bureau called for a recorded vote when the motion came to the floor. With a two-to-two result, Board Administrator Sarah Giddings pointed out, the motion was defeated.