Faced with the expected shortage, a key LA City Council committee moved forward Thursday with plans to reduce police officers and cancel Mayor Karen Bass' plan to create a homeless department within the fire department.

The five-member budget committee expressed initial support for the slowdown in recruitment, which will leave the Los Angeles Police Department by June 30, 2026, with about 8,400 officers, down about 10,000 from this year's more than 8,700 in 2020.

The move, if approved by the entire city council later this month, would be part of a bigger effort to restore efforts to eliminate the mayor's $14 billion proposed budget.

The slowdown in police recruitment since 1995 will minimize the level of oath-taking equipment for LAPD. But this will help save the work of 133 professional civilian workers, including handling DNA rape kits, analyzing fingerprints and taking photos of crime scenes.

Sessional Tim McOsker, who sat on the budget committee, called the decision difficult, painful and regrettable — but it was also necessary to retain the investigations done by civilian workers.

Bob Blumenfield, another budget committee member, said that if the city could protect the 133 experts, reducing the number of officials could be "a pill worth swallowing."

"These people are doing all this very important work for public safety, but they are not sworn in," Blumenfield said.

The Los Angeles Police Protection Alliance, representing more than 8,700 police officers, quickly issued an alarm after the oath of the personnel. The union accused the office of city administrator Matt Szabo’s office helping prepare the budget to seek “a grant to LAPD that literally endangered officials and our residents.”

"It's hard to take the city seriously when they sit on a nearly $15 billion portfolio, which can be reasonably used to alleviate the current budget crisis," the union board said in a statement. "City leaders need to cut pencils instead of trying to staff on LAPD."

Beth spokesman Clara Karger said the mayor will continue to engage with the Budget Committee to determine its spending recommendations. "The mayor continues to support the growth of the LAPD recruitment and LAFD budget and looks forward to seeing the final recommendations of the committee as it advances to the Council of All," Karger said in a statement.

Bass released a proposed budget last month called for layoffs of about 1,600 civilian workers, including more than 400 of LAPD. The cuts will affect a range of agencies, including those responsible for garbage, transportation plans and street light maintenance.

Councilman Katy Yaroslavsky, head of the budget committee, warned at the start of the meeting on Thursday that she and her colleagues would not be able to save every job.

“The reality is that there is no way to restore every position proposed by the layoffs. No,” she said. “Our work today is what makes us think the toughest tradeoffs are the most critical – reflecting the tradeoffs of the Council’s values, strengthening the delivery of core services and raising the city’s path to fiscal solvency.”

The recommendations made by the Commission are by no means completed agreements. The committee’s top policy adviser Sharon TSO’s chief legislative analyst will return to the committee next week and provide a full menu of cost-cutting strategies while retaining as much service as possible.

From there, the Commission will send recommendations to the entire Council, which must approve the budget by the end of May.

The city faced its biggest budget crisis in about 15 years, largely due to rising staff costs, soaring legal spending and a slowdown in the local economy. While the committee has been looking for ways to protect basic services from the scope of cuts, city negotiators have been trying to get benefits from unions representing public workers, such as postponing scheduled pay rises.

The increase in salary is expected to increase the budget this year by about $250 million, and so far, no deal has been concluded.

The two biggest cost-saving measures taken by the commission on Thursday were related to public safety.

The committee proposed to cut the number of LAPD recruits planned for future fiscal years, starting from $480 to 240.

The committee also took a proposal to kill the bass, calling for 67 additional posts to be added to the fire department to address the issue from the homeless crisis. She called for recruiting 50 new firefighters and creating a new street medicine team, a rare example of investment.

Critics argue that deploying street medical teams is cheaper than assigning work to firefighters. While this expansion may make sense in the normal budget year, it is difficult to support when city leaders compete for a massive reduction, Yaroslavsky said.

“I personally don’t plan to rule on existing urban employees who provide core city services … so that we can start a new program,” she said.

The commission also called for a reduction of up to $10 million in Bass internal security program, which brings homeless residents into hotels, motels and other types of temporary housing. As part of these cuts, council members plan to require some homeless people to take over roommates when moving into city-funded motels or other types of temporary housing.

Yaroslavsky said she hopes plans to reduce it to Inside Safe can save on work in the program, public works and police departments.

Council members also want to transfer workers targeted layoffs to vacant positions in institutions separate from the General Fund, which pays for basic city services. These agencies include ports, airports and the Ministry of Water and Electricity.