Kelowna RCMP budget doubled over past five years
Kelowna is preparing its budget for 2025, and the RCMP is going to cost the city twice as much as it did five years ago. The preliminary budget for police services for 2025 is $76.7 million. Although the budget isn’t finalized yet, that’s the current plan. In 2020, the...
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Kelowna is preparing its budget for 2025, and the RCMP is going to cost the city twice as much as it did five years ago.
The preliminary budget for police services for 2025 is $76.7 million. Although the budget isn’t finalized yet, that’s the current plan.
In 2020, the Kelowna RCMP had a budget of $34 million. The largest leap was from 2023 when the police services budget was $48 million, and 2024 when it jumped up to $70 million.
The drastic budget increase correlates with the rise in the cost per RCMP member.
In 2025, the Kelowna RCMP is contracted to have 244 members, up from 183 in 2019. The average cost per RCMP member this year is $236,000 compared to $173,000 in 2019.
The budget also cites Kelowna’s unusually high caseload.
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“In 2022, Kelowna has a caseload 44 per cent higher than other communities in B.C. with populations greater than 15,000,” reads the budget document.
In 2025, the preliminary plan has a total expenditure budget of $838 million, so the RCMP account for roughly nine per cent. The city’s fire safety budget is $41 million, or roughly five per cent of the budget.
Salaries and wages account for $10.8 million of this coming year’s RCMP budget, and most of the remainder is used to deliver services. In 2019, salaries and wages for the RCMP cost the city $5.5 million.
The Kelowna RCMP has requested to hire seven regular members, three call support clerks, an intelligence analyst and a disclosure specialist to work with Crown counsel.
Property taxes will cover $65.8 million of next year’s RCMP budget.
Although policing costs have been increasing drastically, Kelowna’s property tax increases have been steady at around four per cent. This year property taxes are going up 4.34 per cent, which is lower than many neighbouring municipalities.
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