The Toronto Police Services Board approved a billion-dollar 2016 budget, its largest ever, at a meeting on Thursday.

The budget, which passed unanimously, represents a 2.7 per cent ($27 million) increase over last year, with officer salaries and benefits making up the bulk of the increase.

It still needs city council’s approval.

Mayor John Tory said policing costs can’t continue to swell.

“We have to bring about fundamental transformation to modernize policing,” Tory said. “And that’s going to include ways in which we can constrain the growth in the budget and those are both works in progress.”

Toronto police Chief Mark Saunders initially proposed a budget that was $9 million more than the one that was approved on Thursday.

However, the board asked Saunders to come back to them with some savings.

The board will release a KPMG report in December on ways to cut costs, which includes the idea of closing all 17 police division buildings and replacing them with storefront operations.

“(The report) deals with questions like how you deploy police officers and how you can perhaps use people who aren’t police officers to do certain things,” Tory said.