TORONTO – The Toronto Police Services Board voted unanimously to approve a budget freeze during a special meeting at City Hall Monday night.
The result means no additional police officers will be hired for the upcoming year, however there will also be no layoffs.
Last month, Toronto Police Chief Bill Blair proposed to trim $2.3 million from the $946.9 million police operating budget, still $19.1 million over the target set by the city.
The board wanted a widespread freeze as mandated to all municipal departments for the 2013 fiscal year.
Photo credit: Jeremy Cohn, Global News
Board chair Alok Mukherjee said some of the money used to maintain the zero per cent increase will come from the annual police surplus fund.
“Year after year, we’ve had fairly significant surpluses,” said Mukherjee. “We’ve allocated $6.7 million of that to balance the 2013 budget.”
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However, the police service will still be required to go back to the drawing board to find other areas to offset the budget requirements.
Blair had said if a freeze was instituted that significant cuts would have to be made to officers and civilian staff.
But the board insists that won’t be the case and promised to add 80 positions in the future..jpg "Bill Blair meeting")
Photo credit: Jeremy Cohn, Global News
Following the end of the meeting, Blair explained to the media that around 250 officers and staff who are in line for retirement this year will not be replaced, putting the police force in a deep hole in 2013.
“My responsibility is clear, I put the numbers to the board, and the board makes the decision and we’ll deal with it,” said Blair. “There’s an unallocated amount of money that we’ll have to go and find.”
If the freeze is maintained as is, Blair admits the police force will be down around 400 officers by the summer of 2014.
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