Surrey residents to have a say on belt-tightening budget
Credit to Author: Glenda Luymes| Date: Sun, 01 Dec 2019 01:06:10 +0000
Surrey residents will have an opportunity to sound off on a five-year draft budget that will give them a municipal police force with minimal tax increases, but no additional officers or firefighters and limited support for arts and recreation.
A public meeting will be held Monday at 1 p.m. in council chambers to present the city’s five-year financial plan and give the public a chance to comment.
According to the draft plan, the cost of transitioning from the RCMP to a municipal police force will put a cap on resources for fire protection, city services, and support for arts and recreation in the coming years.
“It’s a bit of a Catch-22,” Coun. Laurie Guerra said Saturday. “Council voted unanimously to create a municipal police force. Now we have to pay for it. It’s the way it is.”
When asked if the lack of funding for the fire department would put public safety at risk, Guerra said “not at all,” adding the fire chief had “assured” council safety would not be compromised.
But Coun. Linda Annis said she is worried about both public safety and firefighter safety, as well “falling behind” on the infrastructure needed to keep up with a rapidly-growing population.
“We’re not building for the future,” she said.
About 1,000 people move to Surrey each month, many of them families.
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.
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In an interview last week, Ellie King, managing artistic director of the Royal Canadian Theatre Company, called the city’s plan for $850,000 in capital spending on the arts over the next five years “disastrous.”
The city has postponed a new community centre in Grandview Heights and a $45-million ice arena planned for Cloverdale. 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,” Mike Bola, president of the Cloverdale Community Association, told a Postmedia News reporter last week. “It looks like (Mayor Doug McCallum) took $45 million from us to put toward his police project.”
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 slated 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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Both Guerra and Annis encouraged residents to have their say at Monday’s meeting. The deadline for written feedback ended Thursday.
A spokesperson for Surrey Mayor Doug McCallum said the mayor would not be commenting on the budget until after Monday’s meeting.
— With files by Randy Shore
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