City Council on Monday night voted in favour of entering an agreement with the province regarding their Community Safety Officer program.
The agreement that was voted on is to ensure that the $600,000 annual cost of running the program is split between the City of Thompson and the Province of Manitoba.
The two-year pilot program that began last May saw the hiring of community safety officers who undertook a three-week training course at UCN before beginning their full-time positions.
Mayor Dennis Fenske talks about the course and how the progress they’ve shown will benefit the longevity of the course’s life in Thompson.
“It provides us the opportunity to hire eight community safety officers, and we’ve seen significant decreases in a lot of statistics that have been tracked over the last number of years. It’s an ongoing, evaluation, and we will evaluate at the end of the first year, which is this summer, and then again at the end of the second year. And we will continue to lobby the Province of Manitoba for funding beyond the two years.”
The course will wrap up its second year on May 24th, 2017.
