The Editor,
Re: “Budget backlash in Surrey,” the Now-Leader, March 9.
So Laurie Guerra has the effrontery to get up before council and decry the huge property tax increase for 2023, much of which is due to the over-budget policing transition. Perhaps Guerra forgets her and her slate’s instrumental role in ramming it through with no consultations, no transparency, denied freedom of information requests and toxic misinformation for starters.
It’s absolutely over the top to blame a council that has been in office for fewer than six months for where we are at today.
Yes, there will be unwinding costs if we retain the RCMP, but the Surrey Police Service is far from complete and there will be additional costs if they take over. Either way, we pay.
OUR VIEW: Surrey taxpayers clearly at their limit
What I would like to see is a proper accounting of where the money has gone. How could something originally projected around $30 million balloon to over $200 million? That is not OK. It really doesn’t matter which service prevails as the damage is done and our local government has managed to flush $200 million down the toilet regardless of the outcome.
Now the only question is, do we as taxpayers want to pay an additional $31.9 million annually above and beyond what it will take to keep the RCMP to fully transition to the Surrey Police Service? The fact that the combined services are now smaller than the budgeted RCMP roster was in 2018 and we have 50,000 extra residents hints at further increases regardless of the service provider.
Too bad Surrey residents needed a shock like this to wake them up. There were many many voices who predicted this outcome but those voices ignored by Mike Farnworth, Doug McCallum and the majority of his crew.
Perhaps next election more than 35 per cent of the electorate will scrutinize the candidates and their pledges and get out the vote. Don’t vote, don’t complain!
Perhaps some good can come from this and we can petition our MLAs to sponsor a law that will call for mandatory referendums for uncosted election pledge changes of this order of magnitude moving forward. An uncosted election promise would then undergo a cost benefit analysis and go before an educated and informed electorate.
Bet you the transition never would have happened if we’d been given that choice.
Mike Bildstein, Surrey
newsroom@surreynowleader.com
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