Last year during its budget deliberations, city council turned down a request from the Edmonton Police Service (EPS) for a second helicopter even higher tech than the existing Air One. At the same time, however, councillors found a similar amount (nearly $9 million) for two gold-standard bike lanes — one in the university area, the other downtown.

This year, council voted to give police less than half of the budget increase they requested, yet somehow still voted to increase your taxes next year (and in 2017 and 2018) to pay for more of their beloved LRT expansion.

Talk about getting their priorities mixed up.

I’m not saying police should always get what they ask for. When times are tough, EPS can’t be exempt from belt-tightening. Cop bosses can get too fixated on big-ticket purchases and not try hard enough to cut inefficiency.

But consider some numbers provided by EPS Chief Rob Knecht in his budget presentation.

Our city is still growing, not as fast as it was but fast enough.

That rise in population, plus the fact that the economy has slowed has led to an increase in crime. So far this year there have been 12,000 more calls to police than last year and an 11.1 per cent rise in violent crime.

Knecht had asked council for a $20-million budget increase over the next three years. He wanted to add another 24 officers between now and 2018 — between six and eight each shift, city-wide.

But council said, no. They agreed to give EPS just $8.8 million spread over the next three budgets. That will buy one more officer (maybe two) per shift for the entire city.

One more officer to handle 15 to 20 additional calls per shift. He or she is going to be veeerrry busy.

At the same time, council approved $11 million in additional spending this year alone for construction of the Valley Line LRT. Over the three years in which EPS is getting just $8.8 million, LRT will be getting close to $35 million more.

Hmm, let’s see, keeping all Edmonton citizens safer versus building more transit that will benefit only a few thousand a day? Seems like a no-brainer. But council didn’t see it that way.

It would be hard to keep municipal spending under control without tackling the police budget. At just under 15 per cent of the total, policing is the largest single expenditure.

So my point isn’t that the cops should be exempt from budget realities. Rather, I just think it is very telling that EPS gets less than half of the increase it asked from while LRT got all of what it wanted.

Nearly one-quarter of the property tax increase council approved on Thursday for 2016 to 2018 is the result of additional LRT spending. A little more than one-twentieth will go to hiring new police officers.

I can’t believe that reflects most Edmontonians’ priorities.

Council is also awfully proud of keeping property tax increases to just 3.4 per cent a year for the next two years, rather than the 4.9 per cent requested by administration. (In 2018, council’s increase will be 4.8 per cent, just 0.1 per cent shy of the bureaucrats’).

But this smaller increase was achieved almost entirely by shifting money from one account to another — by taking money out of a new provincial infrastructure grant and putting it into neighbourhood renewal.

That’s hardly bold or courageous.

The biggest budget trim councillors managed was to Chief Knecht’s request.

Frankly, I expect EPS will manage and manage well.

But again, that’s not the point.

The point is that once again council has it priorities backwards.