Surrey police transition from RCMP will mean belt-tightening in other areas
Credit to Author: Randy Shore| Date: Wed, 20 Nov 2019 01:44:06 +0000
The cost of transitioning from the RCMP to a municipal police force in Surrey will put a lid on resources for fire protection, city services, and support for recreation and the arts in the coming years.
City staff note that establishing the Surrey Police Department will prevent the city from hiring any new firefighters, despite a recent review that identified “known pressures on the system.” No new police officers will be hired in 2020 either, according to the draft five-year plan.
Coun. Linda Annis condemned the plan as a threat to public safety.
“There is a hiring freeze in place across all departments during this budget cycle,” she said. “Whether it’s much-needed police officers or firefighters, we’re not keeping up as our city continues to grow, and this budget proves it.”
Surrey will instead spend $700,000 on a police-transition project office and $25.2 million on costs associated with the new municipal police force in 2020. Additional operating and one-time costs associated with the transition are estimated to be $130 million over five years.
Surrey will spend about $162 million on police services from the RCMP in 2019, plus $24 million for civilian support costs for a total of $186 million, according to the Surrey police transition plan. Those figures include a 10 per cent federal subsidy on RCMP contract costs, offsetting revenues, such as traffic fines, and provincial tax exemptions.
By 2022, with the RCMP contract off the books, the city is expecting to pay $205 million annually for policing costs, according to the draft budget. Annis is concerned that the municipal force is projected to cost about 10 per cent more than the RCMP contract and will put fewer officers in the field.
“Moving ahead with the Surrey Police Department is quite frankly sucking the life out of all the other infrastructure projects in the city,” said Annis.
About 1,000 people move to Surrey each month, many of them families that need recreation facilities to provide healthy activities for their kids, she said.
The city’s plan for $850,000 in capital spending on the arts over the next five years is “disastrous,” according to Ellie King, managing artistic director of the Royal Canadian Theatre Company.
“What is frustrating is that all that money is already spoken for,” she said. “We are left with only one viable performing arts space in the city.”
More than 5,000 people helped create a 10-year plan for parks, recreation and culture that called for “more arts festivals, more arts education, more arts support spaces,” she said.
“That comes directly from the people of Surrey,” said King, a recipient of the Surrey Mayor’s Award as a cultural ambassador. “This draft budget does not reflect the will of the people.”
Surrey Coun. Linda Annis outside Cloverdale Arena, which community proponents say is in desperate need of replacement.
A new community centre in Grandview Heights and a $45-million ice arena planned for Cloverdale have been postponed. The budget calls for $50,000 to “conceptualize” the Cloverdale arena next year and $10 million for the project in 2024.
“We aren’t very hopeful that anything will come from the 2024 budget item,” said Mike Bola, president of the Cloverdale Community Association. “It looks like (Mayor Doug McCallum) took $45 million from us to put toward his police project.”
The $10-million commitment isn’t enough to pay for even a single new sheet of ice, he said. Plus, the arena was built in 1972 and in need of replacement.
Surrey will go ahead with a $10-million park and field complex at Grandview Heights and spend $6 million for new fields at Tamanawis Park, both beginning in 2021. A handful of artificial field replacements and a cricket pitch are due to be funded in 2022.
Two large capital projects will be completed in the coming year, including a $7-million athletics centre at Bear Creek Park and a $45-million library, recreation and arts centre in Clayton.
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