The City of Windsor's cost of policing is increasing significantly.
The Police Services Board has approved a budget of $89,292,971.
That's a 6.4 per cent hike from the 2018 budget and still has to be approved by Windsor Council.
The increase is from three components.
A 1.8 per cent increase in salaries from contractual obligations totalling $1.5-million, an additional $1-million to create a permanent equipment replacement reserve fund and the largest piece, the hiring of 24 more officers at a cost of $2.8-million.
Police services board Chair - Mayor Drew Dilkens - says this shouldn't come as a surprise to council.
"It's fairly simple, you take where we started in 2018, there's the contractual obligations for salary increases and then it's really the hiring of 24 additional officers which was already out in the community, we've had the discussion about that and the need for that. Police officers aren't inexpensive, public safety is not inexpensive"
He says council will need to find ways to be able to afford the increase.
"It's pressure city council will have to face when they're looking at the overall budget, but one I think is very very important. I know in the past from my 12 years we've had annual budget pressures between $15 and $30-million and even in the years when we held the line on taxes we were able to find internal savings to be able to offset some of that"
Dilkens says there could be a tax increase in 2019 related to this bump up.
"You can't always do that, so it is another set of pressures that feed into the budget process but it's an $800-million budget, it's complex and when it comes to public safety we're going to make sure the right response is on the street to deal with the calls for service"
The 2018 Windsor Police Services budget is just over $83-million, making the increase about $6-million.