The chief of the Waterloo Region Police Service says any further staffing reductions would have a noticeable impact on the quality of policing in the region.

Chief Matt Torigian made those remarks as the Police Services Board met Wednesday to get a first look at the service’s proposed 2014 budget.

Torigian had previously been asked to limit any tax increases brought on by the budget to less than one per cent.

“We are working diligently to try to meet the target,” he tells CTV News.

“We are sharpening our pencils, looking at every single item literally down to $20 items.”

Among those lower-cost items is pepper spray, which WRPS believes it can save 11 per cent on by purchasing directly from manufacturers.

But it’s staffing levels that take up the bulk of the $135-million police budget, as about 85 per cent of the service’s costs relate to salaries and benefits – and that’s not likely to change.

“It would be our recommendation that we not go below the operational level and the deployment levels that we have today,” says Torigian.

The police board has been presented with three different staffing options – hiring eight new officers to replace officers who left the service in previous years, letting three officers planning to retire do so without replacing them, and letting those officers retire while also cutting another three positions.

None of those options would bring the WRPS into line with the budget target set out for them.

All senior officers were offered buyout packages earlier this year. Three superintendents and one inspector accepted the buyouts, and will be gone by December.

“Some are retiring from positions that we might not need to fill or might not necessarily need to fill right away,” says Torigian.

With those departures taken into account, WRPS is still facing a shortfall of nearly $1 million in order to meet the 0.9 per cent increase target set out.

Torigian says he hopes hopes the police board might approve a budget representing a tax increase in the neighbourhood of 1.1 per cent.

Police board chair Tom Galloway says it’s too soon to tell if a budget with a 1.1 per cent increase would be approved by either the police board or regional council.

“The board has not given any hint that 1.1 (per cent) would be acceptable,” he says.

Torigian says frontline officers spend only about 25 per cent of their time dealing with actual crime, with the rest of their shifts used by calls for service often involving mental health issues or nuisance matters.