MOOSE JAW — , which means the Highway 1 photo radar camera may sit idle during that time.
The fact that the automated speed enforcement (ASE) camera may not fulfill its function of catching speeding motorists over the next 730 days concerned police Commissioner Jamey Logan, who raised the topic during the police board’s April meeting. He also pointed out that the zone near the bridge will be 60 kilometres per hour instead of the typical 80 km/h.
“People seem to be obeying that (60 km/h zone) for now, but we’ll see how things progress,” he remarked.
Logan asked Acting Chief Rick Johns whether it was possible to move the camera — even temporarily — to Thatcher Drive East since motorists sometimes pushed the pedal to the metal. He also wondered if that was a conversation the police board or Moose Jaw Police Service could have with the province.
Johns replied that the police service has already begun such discussions with SGI, since that Crown corporation owns and operates the cameras.
“… we’ve thought of the same thing to have a camera that’s perfectly operational and might go to better use elsewhere … ,” he said, noting he would keep the board informed of those talks.
Johns added that the agency can ask SGI whether it wants to keep the ASE camera where it is to act as a deterrent in the construction zone.
Operating budget update
For the first time in several months, the police service provided the police board with an operating budget update.
The agency has city hall’s finance department produce its monthly revenue and expense report summaries, but the latter is sometimes unable to do that because it’s busy with other municipal activities like finalizing year-end financial reports.
Johns said the police service received the operating budget update just before the board meeting and had a brief opportunity to review it. From that analysis, he noted that there was “nothing this early in our budget cycle to warrant concern,” but the agency would continue to track those numbers.
Meanwhile, the acting chief said some revenue and expense lines that were near or already at 100 per cent of budget were that high because the agency had front-loaded them at the beginning of the year. For example, leasing costs for software licences that must be paid at the start of the year.
The operating budget update report showed that the subscriptions and publications expense line had a budget this year of $5,000 and was already at $5,717.
Johns added that front-loading certain revenues and expenses will not affect anything else in the budget.
In response to a question about being “back on track” with receiving regular monthly operating budget updates, Lisa Renwick, the MJPS’s finance officer, said she spoke to the city’s finance department and it has just finished year-end reports.
“What I wait for is written notification that the month has closed, so I just received notification (the day before the meeting) that they had closed it … ,” she continued.
Renwick added that the city’s finance department would likely send her the March data for the police board’s May meeting since that municipal department is “always a month behind.”
Logan said it was acceptable that the operating budget updates would be only a month behind, whereas he would be concerned if the police board began receiving updates that were two to three months old.
The next police board meeting is Wednesday, May 21.
