TIMMINS -- The Timmins Police Service Board says it needs more money in its budget to account for employees' wages and benefits.

And there's also a shopping list that includes replacing some long guns, fingerprinting scanners and a new $75,000 vehicle to transfer prisoners.

"The new prisoner van is a requirement in terms of being able to safely transfer persons in custody to and from different correctional facilities," said Marc Depatie, communications coordinator for the Timmins Police Service. "It's a mandate that we take seriously."

The board approved the $16.7 million budget for next year, which still requires approval from Timmins city council.

Police officials also shared statistics on motor vehicle collisions within the city.

From January to the end of September, there were more than 600 collisions, but police said that's a drop of 200 compared to last year. The police chief said it can be attributed to the COVID-19 lockdown.

"All of March and probably up to the end of April, you know, you could drive around at night and see very few vehicles on the roadway, so that kind of explains it for me in my mind," said Gauthier.

Police also said a problematic factor when it comes to collisions is the high number of people who fail to remain at the scene. They said there were more than 40 such incidents over the summer.

"There were some collisions that resulted in impairment playing a role, so the person involved in that would likely want to avoid police scrutiny," said Depatie.

As previously reported this summer, break and enters increased for a brief time and police also had to respond to more mischief-related calls. They also said there was a big jump in the number of mental-health related calls with so far, 85 more than last year.