City council navigated two major public safety budgets on Friday, beginning with the Prince Albert Downtown Business Improvement District (PADBID) and followed by a prolonged and confusing debate over the 2026 police service budget. Although the presentations were separate, both pointed to growing pressures downtown and illustrated the difficulties council faced interpreting reserve movements, funding models and long term service planning.

PADBID executive director Rhonda Trusty told council that security teams continue to absorb thousands of incidents that would normally require police involvement.

“Our stats for 2025 for Downtown show security have dealt with over 5500 situations that would normally be directed to Prince Albert Police Services,” she said. She also noted that 6,302 call

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