The province’s auditor general for local government released a report on Tuesday on the City of New Westminster’s policing, but the city is already working to implement the auditor’s recommendations.
Gordon Ruth, auditor general for local government, examined the city’s practices to determine whether the city effectively oversees its policing services and if it has effective oversight of the police budget.
“Overall, it’s a very positive audit,” he told the Record. “What we found in the process was that the City of New Westminster had really solid strategic and financial planning practices in place. The city was able to really make sure its policing services were aligned with the city’s priorities. They are continually monitoring policing performance.”
The report includes three recommendations for the city.
· The City of New Westminster should consider working with the province to develop police board member transition guidelines that stagger the terms of members, for inclusion within the Police Board Governance Manual.
· The City of New Westminster should consider identifying a combination of financial and operational measures and targets linked to strategic priorities that include longer term outcomes.
· The City of New Westminster should separate training costs from salary and benefit costs in police expenditure reporting.
“Those are largely enhancements of existing practices,” Ruth said. “We have three recommendations. One really relates to governance, another is about considering some long-term performance measures to assist them in their work, and the other is just some additional transparency minor adjustments in some of their expenditure reporting.”
The City of New Westminster has developed an action plan to address recommendations in the report.
The auditor general for local government has completed or is working on five performance audits of local governments’ policing services, with reports on Port Alberni, Surrey, Merritt and New Westminster completed, and work underway in Williams Lake. In most cases, Ruth said the audits have included four to six recommendations for local governments.
“What is unique about the New West audit is New West also has an independent police force and an independent police board,” he said. “When we were actually looking at police service expenditures, because they are a significant expense for local governments, what we try and do is get a representative sample from a number of local governments. New West, for example is a medium size, it’s located in the Lower Mainland and it’s the only audit with an independent police force. It’s a different audit in that sense. It makes it somewhat unique.”
Mayor Jonathan Cote, who chairs the New Westminster Police Board, said the city is pleased with the audit’s findings.
“I think the City of New Westminster fared very well with the auditor general’s report looking at our police department,” he said. “Other than some minor recommendations for improvement, I think the result is very positive for the work and how the city interacts with the police department.”
Cote said the city has already started to move forward with the planning and the management recommendations. He said the recommendations are relatively minor and easy to implement.
Gary Holowatiuk, the city’s finance director, said the report focused on police services but applies to the city’s performance overall.
“It was a performance audit of the city and our oversight,” he said. “It just so happens that a big part of the oversight of municipal police services is done through the police board.”
The police department recently completed its 2016 to 2019 strategic plan, which addresses one of the auditor’s recommendations.
The provincial government established the auditor general for local government in 2012 to monitor the performance of local governments.
“This is the 13th audit since the office opened,” Ruth said. “We have issued 63 recommendations and 61 of those have been accepted by local governments so I think that’s a good measure of value, the fact that local governments are accepting the large majority of recommendations we have made.”
