The City of Surrey has released its draft five-year budget, which earmarks more than half of the property tax increases for 2023 to cover costs related to the police change.
A press release said the draft operating budget for 2023 was prepared without a decision on policing in Surrey but is based on the assumption that the RCMP will remain as the police force responsible.
The city says maintaining the Mounties will cost about $235 million less than the Surrey Police Force over the next five years, but “there remains a $116.6 million deficit created by the transition process “.
To accommodate this, the budget proposes a 9.5 percent increase in the general property tax.
This comes about three weeks after Public Safety Secretary Mike Farnworth said the director of police services wanted more information before deciding on the city’s plan to return to the RCMP as a police force.
The new Surrey City Council voted in December to send a plan to Farnworth calling for the RCMP to be retained, while Surrey Police Service urged it to oppose that plan, saying that stopping the transition would mean the dismissal of 375 employees, the dissolution of two police unions and the assumption of “irretrievable” would mean a cost of $107 million.
Mayor Brenda Locke, who campaigned to keep the RCMP alive, said in the release that the police crossing “experiment” is now costing residents and businesses.
“The money wasted by the police transition, combined with the so-called 2.9 percent four-year property tax rate introduced by the previous council, means we now have to catch up on key city services like hiring firefighters and bylaw officers,” said Locke.
“Surrey can hardly afford to continue with the police rotation and we are starting to get our finances in order with this budget.”
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