Two years ago, Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass laid out an ambitious and expensive goal for her first city budget: restore the size of the Los Angeles Police Department to 9,500 officers.

At the time, the LAPD was struggling with recruitment, and Bass — just four months into her job — openly worried the department would soon fall below 9,000.

Now, the mayor’s hiring goal looks even more out of reach. With the city battered by a budget crisis and homicides falling by double digits, some are wondering: Just how low can, or should, LAPD staffing go?

On Thursday, the City Council’s budget committee provided a short-term answer, moving forward with a plan to cut the LAPD by an additional 300 officers — not through layoffs but simply by slowing down recruitment. Such a move would leave the department with 8,400 officers by June 2026, down from about 8,700 this year and 10,000 five years ago.

The slowdown, if approved by the City Council later this month, would free up $9.5 million, helping the city save some of the civilian workers at the LAPD whose jobs are among the 1,600 targeted for elimination in the mayor’s proposed budget.

But that wasn’t the end of it. Faced with a nearly $1-billion shortfall and several years of financial turmoil ahead, the five-member committee obtained an analysis from the city’s policy experts showing how much could be saved if the LAPD ramps down hiring even more, and for a longer period of time.

The answer? $385 million over five years, if the LAPD cuts the mayor’s police hiring plan for 2025-26 by 75%. Under that scenario, the department would bring on just 120 recruits per year — far fewer than the number who resign or retire — leaving slightly more than 6,600 police officers by 2030.

Councilmember Eunisses Hernandez, an outspoken opponent of police spending who sits on the budget committee, requested the analysis. She was one of three council members who voted against Bass’ budget last year, arguing that too much money went to the LAPD and not enough to departments that provide other critical city services.

The four-page analysis handed Hernandez and her allies, who have long called on the city to shift funds away from police, a road map for driving down police spending over the long term.

Hernandez, in an interview, called the committee’s decision to cut police hiring in half over the coming year — taking Bass’ proposal for 480 recruits down to 240 — a good start. She sounded intrigued by the numbers laid out in the analysis, saying it “lays out a very clear pathway” for future budget deliberations.

“This budget crisis is not going to be solved in one budget cycle,” said Hernandez, who represents part of the Eastside. “So I’m hoping we take this into consideration as we try to move this city out of this crisis.”

Others were more critical of the committee’s deliberations.

Sylvia Robledo, a former City Council aide who plans to run against Hernandez next year, warned that scaling back police hiring would increase attrition, result in officer burnout and force the LAPD to spend even more on overtime.

Real estate developer Rick Caruso, now mulling a second run for mayor, also blasted the committee’s approach, calling it “just more of the mismanagement we’ve come to expect from this City Hall.”

“Whether it’s a disastrous budget that will cut services while raising costs on working families, a downgraded bond rating, or fewer cops, Los Angeles is on the wrong track, and this budget will only make it worse,” Caruso, who called in 2022 for the LAPD to have 11,000 officers, said in a statement.

Bass spokesperson Clara Karger said in an email that her boss “has not abandoned her goal to grow the Los Angeles Police Department.” Karger argued that progress is still being made, with the LAPD receiving a record number of applicants and a larger number of officers staying in their jobs.

“Now, with new leadership in the Personnel Department and LAPD, we will eliminate barriers preventing applicants from becoming officers,” she said.

Karger would not say whether Bass would veto a budget that cuts the number of LAPD recruits in half, noting that the council is still “in the middle of the process” of reviewing the spending plan for 2025-26.

In recent years, a majority of council members have been willing to give Bass the money she needs to preserve sworn hiring at the LAPD, even as its ranks continued to shrink. But that equation changed once Bass proposed layoffs for more than 400 civilians working at the Police Department.

Budget committee members coalesced around the idea of slowing down police hiring on the condition that it save the jobs of some of the 133 specialists who carry out critical tasks at the LAPD, such as handling DNA rape kits or conducting fingerprinting analysis.

The committee didn’t bite on another Hernandez idea: halting the acquisition of new police helicopters. Hernandez, who pushed unsuccessfully for that idea last year, will almost certainly raise it again in coming weeks.

“I’m going to keep doing my best to try to move forward with fiscally responsible suggestions and decisions,” she said.