So much for the showdown.

Police Chief Bill Blair was told by Mayor Rob Ford and the police board to make a 10 per cent budget cut. When he returned with a 1.5 per cent increase, saying the requested reduction of $93 million would necessitate layoffs and endanger the public, Ford’s hand-picked representative on the board threatened his job.

Less than three weeks later, Blair has proposed an increase of 0.6 per cent — and the man who uttered the threat, Councillor Michael Thompson, said the board will approve the proposal Thursday even though it is only $8 million smaller than the proposed increase the board firmly rejected on Oct. 5.

“It’s not what we were hoping for in terms of achieving a 10 per cent reduction this year, but the board has given the chief the option of achieving it over two years. He did come up with a reduction, and there’s an opportunity to reduce that further,” Thompson said.

He acknowledged: “We were looking for more. We were. But it just wasn’t found.”

Blair convinced the board, and apparently Ford, to allow him the leeway to make his “reductions” from a favourable initial figure. While all city departments have been asked to cut 10 per cent from their 2011 budgets, Blair began his own exercise with what he called a “2012 starting budget” number.

The 2011 police budget was $930 million. Blair’s “starting budget” added the $23 million in salary increases produced by this year’s collective agreement with officers, then added $26 million in other “pressures identified during 2011,” for a total of $979 million.

Using this figure, two Ford allies on the board, Thompson and council speaker Frances Nunziata, joined Blair in arguing that his $936 million budget request amounts to a $43 million cut — about 4.6 percentage points of the requested 10.

“It’s a huge reduction,” Nunziata said.

Councillor Adam Vaughan, a former board member and a Ford critic, laughed when presented with Blair’s argument, calling it transparent “spin.”

“If that’s the new normal, I look forward to the budget debate,” Vaughan said sarcastically. “The chief may have fooled the mayor. He’s not fooling anybody else.”

Vaughan has long agreed with Blair that a 10 per cent cut was unrealistic given the hefty officer pay raise — 11.5 per cent over four years — Ford proudly supported earlier this year. About 85 per cent of the police budget is composed of salaries and benefits.

“For all his bluster, the mayor is finding out you can’t govern with slogans. And the chief called him on it, and he won,” Vaughan said.

“That’s what we’ve all been saying: The collective agreement makes it impossible to cut the police budget. So they’re not going to. He chickened out. So much for ‘stay the course.’”

Nunziata said the board unanimously approved Blair’s proposal at a private meeting Wednesday. Thompson, citing a long-scheduled out-of-country personal obligation, said he cannot attend the Thursday meeting at which the board will hold its official vote.

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Blair’s proposal includes no layoffs. It assumes a reduction of 200 officers through attrition, no officer hiring for a second straight year, a 10 per cent reduction in senior management positions, “additional premium pay reduction of 10 per cent,” and leaving non-critical civilian jobs vacant for an “estimated net civilian attrition of 40 per cent.”

The board gave Blair the option of cutting 10 per cent over two years rather than the one year required of other city entities. He pledged to try to find a way to find $50 million more for 2013 with the help of an external consultant.

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