LONDON, ONT. -- The loudest message during a public input meeting about city hall’s 2021 budget— it’s time for council to ‘defund the police’ and redirect funds to community-based agencies.

“Invest in people, not police. The safest communities have the most resources, not the most cops,” said Alexandra Kane of Black Lives Matter London.

Londoners were given up to five minutes to express their opinions on municipal spending and taxation ahead of budget deliberations on Thursday.

The majority of speakers called for policing reform as defined by the ‘defund police’ movement.

“It means reallocating or redirecting funding from the police to other government agencies. That’s all it means,” explained another speaker.

In June, a Black Lives Matter rally in Victoria Park drew an estimated 10,000 people calling for an end to systemic anti-BIPOC racism in London.

Two weeks later a second rally, aimed at drawing attention to the ‘defund police’ movement drew a crowd of about 1,000 people.

In September, the London Police Service redirected $500,000 of its budget to the creation of a special Crisis Outreach and Support Team (COAST) to compassionately respond to calls about people in mental distress.

Public pressure to shift more funding away from traditional policing puts council in a bind.

"The London Police Services Board is really the partner who can make adjustments to the police operating budget,” explains city council’s budget chair Josh Morgan. “The municipal council does not have the authority to dig into the line-by-line components of that budget.”

Councillor Morgan expects city hall’s legal team will remind council of its jurisdictional limitations prior to any discussion of the police budget on Thursday.

In 2016, city council sought to reduce the budget increase sought by the London Police Services Board, but eventually backed down the day before a provincial arbitration hearing.

“What’s key in this, is for council to get some information about the box we can operate in. Obviously, there are some things we can do as a municipal government and there are some things that we can’t,” adds Morgan.

The police budget is the single largest expense in the 2021 budget, representing 18 per cent of the cost to deliver municipal services.

Civic Administration recommends a 3.8 per cent increase to the tax rate in 2021.

On Thursday, council will take part in budget deliberations, including several business cases that could increase or lower the tax rate.