CLEVELAND (WJW) – The FOX 8 I-Team has found the City of Cleveland won’t be filling a lot of police jobs, but it does plan to hire more people to work in the mayor’s office.

Last week, city leaders announced they had decided not to fill well over a hundred police jobs to save money. The city says it likely couldn’t find people to take the jobs anyway.

So, at a news briefing, we asked the finance director about what’s in the proposed budget for the office of Mayor Justin Bibb. It lists a total cost of salaries and wages in the mayor’s office last year at $1,453, 028 and a cost for the same thing this year at $2,029,139.

Finance Director Ahmed Abonomah said the difference just reflects plans to fill open jobs in the mayor’s office.

We asked specifically if the mayor’s office is planning to hire people to fill those positions.

The finance director answered, “That’s the intent, yes.”

We followed up with, “Again, that just gets back to, ‘We’re not going to fill the police positions, but we’re going to hire more people in the mayor’s office.’”

Abonomah responded with, “As the chief and the chief director have noted, the intent is to go and hire the vacant positions in the police budget.”

The city says it hopes to hire new police officers, but, again, many more police won’t be hired to fill vacancies.

So, we said, “Let me ask you a different way. What positions are still to be filled in the mayor’s office? Maybe that’s a better way.”

The finance director, then, said, “I don’t have that in front of me. I wasn’t prepared to discuss that in this setting.”

We have followed up and asked city hall for a breakdown of those unfilled jobs and the salaries. When we get that, we’ll update this story.