cross-posted from: https://lemmy.world/post/19641276
That does include parking enforcement. Which is done through that half of Townhall. Oh yeah, that’s the other part. They get literally half the real estate of town hall which is delightfully unsubtle.
But yeah, remember specifically that freaking the cops taking on all of these duties, or having these duties thrust upon them outside of their control whatever version of this that you buy into,. Having a whole bunch of unrelated social functions being addressed under the regions of the police forces is the criticism, it’s not some separate part. Why, does parking enforcement or local security or non union road crews get organized and paid from the police department instead of the local government?
Weirdly enough, that almost exactly reflects how much safer a cops job is when compared to, say, a food delivery drivers
My town:
“We’re going to reduce the increase in the police budget from a planned $260 million a year to $224 million a year.”
“ZOMG! YOU’RE DEFUNDING THE POLICE!”
(Somehow $1 billion in 4 years is “defunding”).
City budget is $8.2 billion. 224 million / 8.2 billion = 2.73%.
For my (Canadian) city:
Total expenses are $207.6 million
Police, Fire Rescue, and Ambulance are listed together at $35.7 million, or 17% of expenses.
The biggest expense is Social Housing and Welfare at $72.5 million or 35% of expenses.
My region breaks it down per property 100k of property value, could get actual numbers but as a % looks like 36.5% for police services for the whole region. Looks like total tax levy is $483 million for the region.
Parks and conservation 1.3%, public health 9.9%, community support 18.1%, transit 7.3%
Actually looking into it, those numbers aren’t accurate reflections of total budgets, total budget is closer to a $1 billion with provincial/federal funding and wastewater charges, policing looks to actually make up ~22% of that total, community services ~46% ~14% public health, parks 0.7%, housing ~3.7%, transit ~8.4%.
Gotta say, the breakdown for property taxes as the big summary I’m not a fan of, just give me overall expenses.
It’s 31% of my city’s entire budget. Our parks service gets over 5 times less and we have a crazy number of parks here.
But hey, the police needed a new station! The old one was all of 7 years old! And it only had a regular 50 inch TV, not a 4k one!
Meanwhile the best playground in the city has had all it’s mulch piled to the side for months, with nobody, including several city and county officials I’ve spoken to, knowing why.
Fun thing: that police budget is actually down percentage wise. Money wise it’s up by a million, but our wonderful mayor decided it would be brilliant to not renew our garbage pickup without another option on the table. Now we have trash pickup that’s twice as expensive and won’t pick up trash in the back yard for the elderly without them paying almost $150 a month for the service.
I hate this town
I think something like 54% of my city’s budget goes to police. Every year they ask all departments to make cuts and the police always come back asking for more.
If you need help, the police will not help you here
