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This article was published 4/7/2017 (1173 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Editorial

City Hall all but hung out the "mission accomplished" banner late last month after reaching a new multi-year contract agreement with the Winnipeg Police Association.

The only things missing were an aircraft carrier deck and the celebratory fly-by.

PHIL HOSSACK / WINNIPEG FREE PRESS FILES Winnipeg police Chief Danny Smyth

Civic officials proudly declared all of their contract goals were achieved, even though the agreement doesn’t seem to have met one of its most fundamental goals: to keep the annual percentage increases at or less than inflation. Over the past five years, the average hike in Winnipeg’s consumer price index has been about 1.6 per cent, according to Statistics Canada. Over the next five years, the police service’s 1,900 sworn and civilian members will receive a compounded average wage increase of 2.74 per cent. The city expects the equivalent number, less union concessions, is just under two per cent. Still, measured against the past 17 years, in which the average was 3.59 per cent, the new deal is a marked improvement. So, it appears, was the willingness of police to give as well as take — although they didn’t give anything that cost much, or has much impact for the current complement of well-paid cops. And the city certainly didn’t take anything away from a little-known and troublesome pension provision that continues to have very big long-term implications.

Police Chief Danny Smyth will be able to adjust shifts to put more officers on the street at peak times, cadets will have more duties and 30 desk positions that had been occupied by cops with guns will be assumed by lower-paid civilians with pencils. The goal is to shrink the overall sworn officer complement, but that’s in the long term, with the concessions’ projected cost saving over the contract term being $5.3 million.

The police association also made another small concession on minimum court-duty overtime, which amounts to a paltry $255,000 saving for a city facing a projected $80-million shortfall in its operating budget next year and close to $120 million in 2019. Nevertheless, taken as whole, city council Finance chair Scott Gillingham was pleased with the outcome of the negotiation.

"This contract slows the growth, the cost increases and makes policing costs more sustainable for the City of Winnipeg," Mr. Gillingham said.

Of course sustainability — the ongoing affordability of policing budgets burdened by salaries, benefits and overtime costs — is also a national issue. In Toronto, 90 per cent of the police budget is devoured by paycheques. It’s a reality that even Toronto police union members seemed to get two years ago when they voted overwhelmingly to accept a four-year deal that includes three years with wage increases of less than two per cent. That settlement appears to have set the model for Winnipeg’s slightly more generous agreement.

When the Toronto contract was signed, Mayor John Tory called it "a good start in containing the growth of police costs," but added a rider: "There’s much more to be done."

In Winnipeg, as well.

Here, there is one glaring area of dispute that should have been resolved but wasn’t even on the bargaining table. Winnipeg has the rare and dubious distinction of allowing police officers to apply overtime to their pensionable earnings. The city says it is "reviewing" the police pension plan and that the overtime issue is part of it. But it’s hard to see where — minus the clout of contract talks — the city will have any leverage. And that can’t help but leave the impression that it’s still the same old thin blue line having its way with the city’s deficit-projected big red bottom line. When it comes to controlling the cost of policing, the mission never ends.