The Toronto police board has unanimously approved a $30-million increase to the force’s 2019 operating budget — a move the city’s mayor and police chief said “strikes the right balance” but which was heavily criticized by public speakers at the board meeting Thursday.

The three-per-cent increase brings the 2019 operating budget back over $1 billion for the first time since 2016, and comes despite a city hall request that all divisions and agencies to freeze their budgets this year.

The Toronto police budget still must be approved by city hall in March. Staff will present the proposed city budget to council members for the first time on Monday.

Funding for police is the largest single line item in the city’s $13-billion operating budget. Last year, the average Toronto homeowner contributed $682 to policing from their property taxes or a quarter of their total property tax bill.

Chief Mark Saunders’s request for the funding hike comes at the three-year mark for the service’s transformational task force, its large-scale effort to modernize with a central aim to reduce ballooning policing costs. The initiative has seen a hiring freeze, greater emphasis on “civilianization” and the downloading of some non-emergency responsibilities to the city.

But despite these savings, a police workload increase, jump in violent crime and depleted number of officers has created what Saunders said in a report to the board was a need for further spending.

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Speaking to reporters Thursday morning ahead of the board meeting, Mayor John Tory took a markedly different approach to the police budget than during his first term, which saw the transformational task force plan approved with a key goal to cut policing costs.

“The 2019 police services budget makes significant new investments in community safety,” Tory said. “It will put more police officers on the streets as part of the plan to address the increase in violence that we have seen in the city.”

Board chair Andy Pringle called the budget “fair, good and balanced.”

Asked what he would say to critics who worry about the budget rising above the $1-billion mark, Saunders told reporters after the meeting that a goal of the transformational task force “wasn’t a mission in reduction of costs.”

“It was about being effective and efficient. It was about having a model that was nimble, that is more conducive of what today’s environment is. And we’re doing that,” he said.

Part of that process was the reduction of frontline uniform officers, “but it gave us an opportunity to build up on the other specialized resources that are necessary,” such as swapping in a special constable for jobs otherwise done by an officer, including guarding a crime scene.

But the additional spending was protested by members of the public, who told the board the money would be better spent investing in social programming to support youth and tackle the root causes of crime — not on increased police presence.

“It seems the police service is back to business as usual,” said John Sewell, a former Toronto mayor and member of the Toronto Police Accountability Coalition.

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“There is no justification for such a large increase at a time when all other departments are facing cuts, and more policing has not been shown to be the answer to the serious problems facing our city.”

Sewell also criticized the board for failing to provide a thorough, line-by-line budget, something the board heard wasn’t ready due to issues with last year’s municipal election.

The increase comes amid ongoing collective bargaining between the Toronto Police Association and the police board, after the previous contract expired at the end of last year.

Salaries account for the majority of the budget, an anticipated $758.6 million — up $6.8 million from last year’s budget — although the actual amount is not yet known.

When asked about the city's opening position on ongoing salary negotiations, Tory said police officers “have a very difficult job to do and I think that the way they're paid should reflect the difficulty and the danger in some cases of the job that they do,” but that officers also need to respect the fact that city taxpayers foot the bill.

According to Saunders’s report, there has been a workload increase of more than 10 per cent “based on ratio of calls per officer” over the last few years. That includes increases in certain types of calls such as those involving a person in crisis — up 16.1 per cent from 2016 to 2018 — and those involving an overdose, which have surged 37.3 per cent during the same period.

There has also been an increase in some key major crime categories, the report says, including auto theft, break and enters and murder; 2018 saw 96 homicides, a city record that represents a 48-per-cent increase over 2017’s 65 slayings.

At the same time, uniform staffing levels have decreased by nine per cent over the last few years, according to the report, with 295 officers leaving Toronto police last year. An estimated 250 officers are expected to leave this year.

In total, the service wants to hire more than 300 uniformed officers, 200 civilians, 122 special constables and 186 part-time retirees. Tory clarified that the hiring of 300 new police officers would be in addition to 200 hired just last year, which he also supported.

The number of officers has declined in recent years — a recommendation of the modernization plan — with an average of 5,615 officers in 2010 compared to 4,797 last year, or a decline of more than 800. According to Saunders’s report, the projected number of officers will be 4,800 in 2020 and 2021, alongside about 180 civilians who will do work previously done by officers.

Tory's support of the budget increase comes after he backed a request from the city manager for all divisions and agencies to try to freeze their budgets this year.

The mayor said they responded when there was need for restraint. But when asked if this police budget would back track on that work, he said, “When the need has arisen, as I think it did in light of some of the events with violence in the community last year, to invest in the police, we're doing so.”

The budget request “has been prepared with the objective of keeping the city safe, balancing this goal with the need to fund current public safety activities and deal with the changing nature of crime (e.g., cyber, national security), while transitioning to a modernized service delivery model that embraces partnerships and puts communities at its core,” Saunders wrote in his report.

Wendy Gillis is a Toronto-based reporter covering crime and policing. Reach her by email at wgillis@thestar.ca or follow her on Twitter: @wendygillis

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