Victoria Police are being asked to cut $2-million from next year's budget request, as city council directs its different departments to cut spending in an effort to reduce next year's property tax hike.
Victoria Police Board Finance Committee Chair Elizabeth Cull says such a cut could result in laying-off five officers, at a time when they were originally coming to the city with a request to increase the budget and add additional staff.
"We would have to set aside all the new funding we wanted, which included four police officers - two community resource officers to do the good things that need to be done in the community and two that deal with the major crime. Some civilian support - we're very underfunded when it terms of our civilian support. But we'd also have to cut an additional five officers. Five of our existing officers,” says Cull.
“So we'd be laying-off police."
The issue came up when Cull spoke at a city council budget session. After the meeting, Cull told CTV Vancouver Island that she wanted the public to be aware of the situation. "A couple of weeks ago we received a letter from the mayor asking us to reduce our budget ask by $2.05 million dollars. And that is a huge amount to take out of our budget. It has significant impacts to our ability to deliver police services to our community but it also would require us to cut things that council and the community wanted to see more of."
Mayor Marianne Alto says this is part of a wider request to city departments to reduce their 2025 budget requests. “The property tax payers and the public of the city of victoria have told us that they would rather we cut programs than increase taxes."
Alto says council heard that message from the public through consultations as they face a potential 12% tax hike.