The Toronto Police Service is asking for a nearly $25 million funding increase in 2022 while warning that the potential for escalating premium pay to meet workload requirements will still present a “significant financial risk to the budget.”

In a report that will be considered by the police services board next week, Interim Chief James Ramer asks for $1.1 billion to fund the operating budget this year.

That is up 2.3 per cent from last year’s budget, however the vast majority of the increase ($23.4 million) is the result of increased compensation costs agreed to as part of the collective bargaining agreements with the Toronto Police Association and Senior Officers’ Organization.

In his request, Ramer says that the budget maintains staffing levels “ but does not address growth or increasing complexity” which are both topics that he says “will become relevant” for future budget discussions.

He also said that the budget relies on reducing premium pay by $3.5 million when compared to 2021, something which could pose some risk to the projections.

“Containing premium pay which has historically been significantly overspent to meet workload requirements, investigations (e.g. homicides) as well as planned and unplanned special events and protests, will continue to be problematic,” Ramer warned. “Managing within this financially constrained budget will mean having to be continually responsive and nimble in adapting to changing demands and requirements, and at the same time meet the priorities of the public. It will require the redeployment of uniform officers to key priority areas at the expense of reducing or eliminating other public safety services. It will also limit the service’s ability to effectively and efficiently respond to special and exigent events while still maintaining business continuity in other areas of the city.”

The Toronto Police Service has reduced the number of uniformed personnel by approximately 400 over the last decade, even as the city’s population has grown.

Ramer said that as a result there is now a single Toronto police officer for every 617 residents in the city, compared to one officer for every 427 residents in Montreal and one officer for every 510 residents in Vancouver.

He said that the modest increase for 2022, which comes on the heels of a 2021 budget that was frozen from the previous year, will enable the service “to invest in some key priorities, mainly through the reallocation of existing resources.”

Those priorities include having 18 officers fully dedicated to traffic law enforcement as part of the Vision Zero initiative and expanding the Neighbourhood Community Officer program, which currently has 178 officers across 38 of the city's 158 neighbourhoods

“This request is for a maintenance budget, essentially covering only the financial impact of the service’s collective agreement obligations in 2022,” Ramer writes in the request. “This maintenance budget will allow the service to maintain adequate service delivery throughout the city, while creating some ability to reallocate existing resources into priority areas.”

The Toronto Police Service typically accounts for about 10 per cent of the City of Toronto’s overall operating budget.

The city’s budget will go before city council for final approval in February.