City council is considering a recommendation of its public safety committee that would see it spend $250,000 a year more in RCMP policing targetting the downtown area – on top of the approximately $3.5 million it already spends annually with the federal police force for municipal policing.

The committee recommends hiring two additional RCMP officers at a cost of $200,000, who would be specifically assigned to downtown enforcement, while another $50,000 would be set aside for additional RCMP overtime to deal “increased downtown coverage … to help cover busier times when the two officers may not be available.”

Separately, the city is also lobbying the provincial Department of Justice to cost share with them two more new RCMP officers “targeted at gang and drug issues.” That request is going nowhere with the province at the moment.

If all this sounds familiar – “déjà vu all over again” in the purported immortal words of New York Yankees baseball catcher Yogi Berra – that may be because the ideas are very similar to the plan that collapsed in the summer of 2007 and led to Prairie Bylaw being brought to Thompson in the first place.

Perhaps a case of Back to the Future, Marty McFly. What goes around comes around – again.

In 2007, the city hoped to be part of a $70,000 RCMP pilot project that would have seen two community safety officers on the streets of downtown Thompson. Insp. Keith Finn, then the officer-in-charge of what was the Thompson amalgamated detachment, did what he could to make the pilot program fly, but the program wound up D.O.A. – or least it did for three years – buried in a sea of bureaucratic red tape at Mountie headquarters in Ottawa.

The project, first announced in April 2007, would have seen two community safety officers focus on bylaw enforcement such as the behavioural and graffiti bylaws. The project got bogged down in concerns in Ottawa about legal liability, among other things.

The new plan also calls for hiring and training an additional city bylaw officer at a cost of $70,000.

Brian Taylor is the city’s licence inspector and senior municipal bylaw enforcement officer. He is best known these days for his trips around town a couple of times a year with warrants issued under the Municipal Act by city manager Randy Patrick for seizure and sale of goods from business tax scofflaws, along with his work on taxicab licensing issues.

Prairie Bylaw Enforcement decided in May to pull out of Thompson in September after Labour Day when council chopped their annual contract amount by a third from $456,250 to $306,250.

Prairie Bylaw in April 2009 gave the city an $87,600 discount over the two years on its current contract, which was originally valued at $1.0001 million – or $500,050 annually, ending March 31, 2011, resulting in the $456,250 annual contract.

When Prairie Bylaw Enforcement owner Dave Prud’Homme declined in May to accept a $150,000 budget cut this year in return for reduced level of service, the city asked him to end the contract almost seven months early, and he agreed.

The public safety committee’s new RCMP plans for downtown and hiring an additional bylaw officer, anticipates using the money earmarked for Prairie Bylaw – plus some. In fact, Mayor Tim Johnston said in an interview May 13 he thinks the City of Thompson could come up with almost $400,000 – much closer to Prairie Bylaw’s current contract – if there was a viable or workable alternative.

The total 2011 costs for the new RCMP initiative and hiring their own additional bylaw officer total $320,000 for the City of Thompson. Again, that’s on top of the approximately $3.5 million annually the City of Thompson is already spending with the RCMP on its municipal policing contract.

The city has also had a long-running feud with the Manitoba Department of Justice over its repeated requests, that the province make Prairie Bylaw Enforcement peace officers to allow them to lay charges under provincial liquor legislation. Prairie Bylaw officers can only enforce bylaws of the city but not provincial statues, which can only be enforced by peace officers, such as the RCMP. Johnston notes some bylaw officers in Winnipeg have been granted peace officer status to enforce provincial liquor control statues and he wants to see that happen in Thompson as well.

The 68-page Setting Security Consultants report last January suggested because Prairie Bylaw Enforcement officers are not legally peace officers, they may not even have the power, amended behavioural bylaw notwithstanding, to stop someone and confiscate and dump their open liquor, let alone charge them. An amendment last year to the City of Thompson's behavioural bylaw allows for the “confiscation” of liquor by “a designated officer.”

It now reads, "In addition to being liable to the penalties of this bylaw, any person found to be in contravention of Part II, Section 2.05 of this bylaw may have any alcoholic or illegal substance in their possession confiscated from them and disposed of by a designated officer.”