Murray Wood: Who's being fooled this April 1?
Murray Wood says every day is April Fools Day in the disinformation age and, as ever, some people will never believe the...
On Day One of 2026–27 budget deliberations, Regina City Council approved the Regina Police Service’s (RPS) $131.88 million gross operating budget request.
Council passed the budget 6-5 with councillors Mark Burton (Ward 4), Jason Mancinelli (Ward 9), Shobna Radons, George Tsiklis (Ward 2), Sarah Turnbull (Ward 5) and Mayor Chad Bachynski voting in favour, while councillors Clark Bezo (Ward 10), Victoria Flores (Ward 6), David Froh (Ward 3), Dan Rashovich (Ward 1) and Shanon Zachidniak (Ward 8) voted against.
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$116.18 million will go towards RPS’s net operating budget and more than $7.74 million for its capital budget in 2026.
For 2027, the RPS’s request was $123.58 million for operating and $8.7 million for capital budgets.
RPS’s 2026 net operating budget represents a 6.7 per cent net increase from 2025 and a 2.2 per cent mill rate increase (or $7.26 million).
Once again, RPS’s submission is expected to be the largest item of the forecasted 15.69 per cent mill rate among all the city’s service partners.
Procedurally, council is not allowed to amend the police budget or give directives to police; they can simply vote to approve or reject the budget. If the budget was rejected, it would be up to the Board of Police Commissioners to return with a new submission.
Acting city manager Jim Nicol said a police budget submission hadn’t been sent back by council since at least 2012-2014.
The councillors who voted against the budget on Monday said it was only fair for them to ask RPS to find efficiencies in the given potential cuts looming over other services, organizations and programs.
“I feel like there is absolutely nothing to lose by sending it for another look at a time when we are asking all of our partner organizations to do the same thing,” said Zachidniak.
“… I think it’s a small extra step that we can take to provide a sense of security to all of us that we are doing our due diligence.”
When presenting the budget, Chief Lorilee Davies said RPS worked hard to keep its request as lean as possible.
“I had my team really dig into it. My numbers people and my research people — and they said that there is nothing in there that talks about inefficiencies,” Davies said.
Pushback to another increase
Speaking as delegates, many Regina residents spoke out against RPS receiving yet another funding increase, with some even calling for a funding freeze.
“No one’s ever shown me a report that shows that more money in police reduces crime,” said Shawn Koch. Koch also questioned the increased investment into RPS, given the many tough financial decisions council is faced with during this year’s budget consideration.
Marian Donnelly, with Creative City Centre, said she has nothing but respect for RPS, but admitted she was surprised at its budget request, considering that other services and organizations are considered “open game” for budget cuts.
“I’m not saying don’t increase their budget. I’m asking if they can manage with a $5 million increase to operating and maybe a $5 million increase to capital, instead of the requested seven to eight,” she said.
“That $4 million off the police budget could be invested in the other 150 organizations in the city, funded by the Community Investment Program. Those organizations contribute a lot more to crime reduction than the increase to police would achieve.”
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