Right off the gate on Friday’s continuation of Wednesday’s Halifax Capital Budget debate, councillor Shawn Cleary took the police tank out of budget and put it on the Budget Adjustment List (BAL).
For new followers of municipal budget season, the budget adjustment list debates are the playoffs of budget season. Throughout the budget season councillors will identify things worthy of their own debate to decide if the line item is worth it. These are always things either increase municipal revenues/decrease municipal expenditures—aka a budget under. Or things that increase municipal expenses/decrease municipal revenue—aka a budget over.
Halifax’s bureaucracy got caught being sloppy during Friday’s budget debate about the “police tank budget under” which reads:
Direct the Chief
Administrative Officer to provide a briefing note outlining the impact
of removal of Armoured F350s – Emergency Response Team ($475,000) and
Armoured Rescue Vehicle – Emergency
Response Team ($600,000) from G36 of Vehicles, Vessels, and Equipment
of the Capital Budget to be considered as an option under budget on the
budget adjustment list (BAL) for Budget Committee to consider in the
2025/26 Budget. The briefing note should contain
information on type of vehicle (i.e., make, model, photos or renderings
etc.), proposed use of vehicle, and policies for use of vehicle.
It all started when councillor Shawn Cleary put a motion on the floor for the Halifax Regional Police’s requested tank to be removed from the main budget and sent to the budget adjustment list for a separate debate. This will happen because the motion easily passed, with councillors Sam Austin, Cleary, Patty Cuttell, Cathy Deagle Gammon, Nancy Hartling, Virginia Hinch, Tony Mancini, Jean St-Amand, Laura White and John Young voting yes. Only councillors Billy Gillis and David Hendsbee voted no, and councillors Becky Kent, Trish Purdy and, Janet Steele, and mayor Andy Fillmore, were absent.
As part of putting the motion on the floor councillor Shawn Cleary asked if he could also put the armoured Ford F-350s up for consideration since they were in the draft Capital Plan. There must be some mistake, that didn’t seem right to the city’s top bureaucrats, the CAO, the CFO and the chief of police told council that they had already bought the trucks, and they are in Halifax. They were approved last year. They’re about to enter service. They look something like this.
But as explained by the city’s chief operations officer, Brad Anguish, the buying of the armoured F-350s was approved by last year’s council as a phased purchase to save money: phase 1 money was spent last year to buy the truck, phase 2 money for putting the armour on the truck is due this year. It’s not unusual for a council to spread an expense over multiple budget years, but technically last year’s council only approved this year’s money in principle, subject to approval this year—and it’s a newly elected council that can make its own decisions.
It is extremely unlikely that today’s council will decide not to pay for armoured trucks we already have. The issue is that council *could* cancel the funding for the trucks we already have because it’s in this year’s budget book, which their power to alter is almost absolute.
If council decides not to pay for the F-350s this year, they will create an unfunded liability out of an asset we already own. Instead of buying a truck all at once, we decided to save a few bucks and buy it in phases, which has exposed the city to amateurish, unnecessary risk. Again, it is extremely unlikely that council will cancel the F-350s because it would be very, incredibly, unbelievably stupid. But they might cancel the tank, to save $600,000. Council has asked for an extensive briefing note on the tank and now has to do some homework. The budget adjustment list debate starts on March 19.
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This article appears in Feb 1-28, 2025.
You were an officer in the Canadian Armed Forces; surely you know the difference between a tank and an armoured car. If you can’t make your point without resorting to hyperbole, perhaps you don’t have one. This clickbait style of journalism undermines your credibility.