Doug Paaji’s Financial Mismanagement To Blame For Surrey’s Finances, Says Surrey First!

Surrey is proposing a whopping 17.5 percent tax increase, citing the Surrey Police Service (SPS)-RCMP debacle for soaring city budget. Surrey First Councillors Linda Annis and Mike Bose say former mayor Doug McCallum’s financial mismanagement at city hall “has finally caught up with the city’s finances” and taxpayers are now facing “sticker shock” with threats of a 17.5 per cent tax increase worth more than $400 for the average home.

By PD Raj – Senior Writer DESIBUZZCanada

SURREY – Surrey is proposing a whopping 17.5 percent tax increase, citing the Surrey Police Service (SPS)-RCMP debacle for soaring city budget.

The City said this week that the 2023 Draft Operating Budget has been built without a decision on policing in Surrey, and the financial model is predicated on retaining the RCMP as the police of jurisdiction. While maintaining the RCMP will cost an estimated $235M less to operate over five years than the Surrey Police Service (SPS), there remains a shortfall of $116.6M created by the transition process. As a result, a proposed 9.5% General Property Tax increase to fund the 2023 Policing.

 “It is now clear just how much this misguided experiment to change policing in Surrey is costing Surrey residents and businesses,” said Mayor Brenda Locke. “The money wasted by the policing transition, combined with the so-called 2.9% property tax rate for four years implemented by the previous Council, means we are now having to play catch up on core City services, such as the hiring of firefighters and bylaw officers. Surrey can ill afford to continue with the police transition and we are starting to set our finances straight with this budget.”

The property tax increases proposed in the 2023 General Operating Budget are as follows:

*9.5% General Property Tax increase to fund Policing Shortfall (approximately $219 for the average single-family home).

*7.0% General Property Tax increase (approximately $161 for the average single-family home) to fund:

General inflationary pressures

*Hiring of additional 25 police officers, 20 firefighters and 10 bylaw officers for 2023

City Wide Operations (non-public safety)

*1.0% Roads and Traffic Levy. (approximately $23 for the average single-family home).

If the proposed increases are approved, the City’s portion of property taxes for the average assessed single family home in the City of Surrey would be $3,000, which would place Surrey in the middle for property taxes collected for the respective average assessed home in Metro Vancouver.

A public meeting of the Finance Committee will be held March 6 at 2pm to consider the 2023 Budget. The public can provide comment in person at the Finance Committee meeting or through written submissions. The deadline for written comments is noon on Friday, March 3, 2023.

Surrey First Councillors Linda Annis and Mike Bose say former mayor Doug McCallum’s financial mismanagement at city hall “has finally caught up with the city’s finances” and taxpayers are now facing “sticker shock” with threats of a 17.5 per cent tax increase worth more than $400 for the average home.

 “Mr. McCallum’s famous and fictitious, 2.9 per cent annual tax increases, his complete lack of a plan to build much-needed infrastructure, his constant deferral of maintenance, a lack of transparency around policing, and the potential cost of shutting down the police transition, have put our city and its taxpayers in a precarious financial position,” said Annis. “At the same time, we’re still dealing with a lot of financial assumptions about the cost of keeping the Surrey Police Service, or continuing with the RCMP, and that lack of solid information has bothered me right from the start. An independent set of eyes on numbers provided by the RCMP and the SPS would have ensured we had the best and most accurate information, something we still do not have, and something that’s critical to making good financial decisions for the city. Facts, not fiction, that’s what we need as we build the 2023 budget.”

Annis said keeping the SPS would save millions in severance costs, but keeping the SPS means higher annual policing costs than those charged by the contracted RCMP.

 “The Mayor says the SPS would cost about $250 million more than the RCMP over the next five years, but the SPS disputes that figure,” said Annis. “Again, we don’t have a credible third party checking any of these claims, and as a result, our 2023 budget is being built on sand rather than a bedrock of facts we can count on. For instance, the budget makes a big assumption that if the SPS is disbanded that half of the SPS members would join the RCMP. SPS members are more likely to join another municipal police service, like the Vancouver Police Department, which is looking for 100 new officers. It is unlikely that very many SPS members will decide to join the RCMP, which is a completely different organization and culture. Every police force is hiring, so it is more likely SPS members will go to municipal forces than the RCMP.”

Bose said he wants city hall to look at options, rather than imposing a damaging tax increase on families and businesses in a single year.

 “There isn’t a family or business in Surrey that isn’t stretched right now, and the last thing our community needs is city hall making their lives harder,” explained Bose. “This financial mess wasn’t created by the residents of Surrey. But like every mistake made by incompetent and short-sighted politicians, taxpayers are the ones that have to clean it up. So, I’m saying to my colleagues at city hall, we should be looking at ways to limit or reduce the pain.”

Annis said one option would be a more affordable increase brought in gradually over three or four years.

 “There’s an old rule in politics that you do the unpopular things early in your term, because people might forget by the next election,” said Annis. “But a 17.5 per cent increase in a single year is a lot more than many people can handle, and I doubt any of us will forget about it down the road. Frankly, it’s incumbent on all of us on council to look at the financial capacity of our citizens and find options that don’t damage families and local businesses over the long term. It’s the least we can do, particularly when the problem we’re facing started right here at city hall in the first place.”