Critical Assessment Of The Budget Process Employed In The Organization

The police service I currently work for is the Blood Tribe Police Service (BTPS). The BTPS currently uses the line Item budget. The main reason is that this is the type of budget we have always used. Another reason why a line item budget is used is that funding allocated for a self-administered First Nation Police Service comes from the First Nation Policing Program (FNPP). As this is a program the Blood Tribe Police does not have a revenue stream based on property taxes therefore funding cannot be increased. The amount of funding is decided with little to no consultation or negotiation with the First Nation. This is in contrast to municipal or city police services who are given a chance to request a funding and resource increase. As the stakeholders for the cities and municipalities have a vested interest in ensuring their community is safe, the requests are taken seriously.

In order to understand the process of how the budget is developed for the Blood Tribe Police Service, you must understand how the police service is funded. The Blood Tribe Police Service is part of the First Nation Policing Program which is a federal program. The federal and provincial government develop an agreement with the First Nations. This agreement results in the federal government providing 52% of the funding for the Blood Tribe Police Service and the provincial government providing 48% of the funding. As this is a federal program there is no guarantee of funding past the expiree of the agreement. This agreement in the past have been as short as 6 months and as long as 5 years. The amount of funding that is provided for the Blood Tribe Police Service is set before meeting with the community leaders. The amount that is decided upon is presented to the leadership in late February or the beginning of March. This puts the leadership of the First Nation in a position where they are forced to decide whether or not they want to take what is offered or lose the self-administered police service. The leadership of First Nation needs to ensure the safety of their community therefore have no choice but to take what is offered.

Since the Blood Tribe Police Service must wait for both the Federal and Provincial government to agree on the amount of funding they will provide for the next year, the preparation of the budget does not start until the police service is notified of what the funding will be. This is contrary to what is practiced by most police services who prepare a budget and send it to the funders for approval.

As the Blood Tribe Police Service depends on funding from the First Nation Policing Program it is difficult to start the budget without any idea of what the funding is going to be. For example, the Blood Tribe Police Service is running on an extension of the previous funding agreement for one year. The Police Service was not notified of the extension until the expiry of the previous agreement which ended on April 1st.

Our current practice is once the police service is advised of what the funding for the next year will be the chief of police and his executives’ staff will assess last year’s budget and provide recommendations for the coming years budget. Most often the increase is just enough to cover salary increases. Once the budget is agreed on it is forwarded to the police commission for approval. The only people involved in this process are the chief of police, the police service accountant, and the two Inspectors.The current line budget allows our police service to know where they stand and have a good estimate of where the police service will be at the end of the fiscal year. This is important as the police service is solely funded by a program, therefore, there is no money that is available should the police service go over budget. Policing expenditures such as overtime for completing investigations but t eh Blood Tribe Police Service is ineligible for reimbursement.

If the process in which the First Nation Policing Program is delivered changes, I believe a program or performance budget would be beneficial. The current restrictions and process of the funding agreement and the manner in which the First Nation Policing Program is delivered makes it difficult to use any other type of budget.