Surrey city councillors, SPS raise concerns over city policing report
Posted December 12, 2022 10:42 am.
As the City of Surrey looks to vote on a report regarding its policing transition Monday, two city councillors, along with the Surrey Police Service (SPS), are raising concerns over the assumptions used in the city staff report.
Councillors Linda Annis and Mike Bose say the draft report, which is aimed at cancelling the transition to the municipal force and retaining the RCMP, is “incomplete, with some important numbers that don’t add up.”
Annis and Bose say for that reason, they will not be voting in support of staff’s recommendation to cancel the transition.
The report, titled Policing Surrey: A Plan to Retain the RCMP as the Police of Jurisdiction in Surrey, projects that the SPS would cost taxpayers an additional $31.9 million per year in comparison to the RCMP. Longer term, staff estimated keeping the RCMP in the city would cost about $924.8 million over five years. The SPS would cost an estimated $1.16 billion over the same time period.
Based on the analysis, staff estimate the RCMP could cost $235.4 million less than the SPS over the next five years.
Related Articles:
-
Surrey police transition to cost $235M more than keeping RCMP: report
-
Surrey Police Board responds to city’s spending freeze order
-
Surrey pushes ahead with plans to keep RCMP
Staff assumed there would be 734 sworn-in officers for either agency, as has been allocated in the city’s policing budget since 2018. The other costs were based on recent annual financial reports for each respective police entity.
Other factors such as federal subsidies for the RCMP and severance pay if the SPS is disbanded were also considered. However, noted that “this analysis does not contemplate the qualitative aspects of either SPS or RCMP policing services.”
“We ran on giving Surrey residents their say in a policing referendum,” Annis said in a statement Monday. “If we’re not going to have a referendum, the very least we can do is give our residents the whole story that gets all of the facts and numbers on the table. For instance, we want to see the SPS response to the report and whether they challenge any of the assumptions and numbers. It’s one thing to have your own opinion, but you cannot have your own facts, so I want to make sure that whatever is sent to the minister can stand up to scrutiny.”
Annis says during Mayor Brenda Locke’s election campaign, her platform said it would cost $521 million to switch to the SPS. However, the report puts that cost at $235.4 million over five years, while the SPS says the cost to switch would be $110.1 million over five years.
“We’ve spent four years dealing with this issue, so taking a few more weeks to get the facts straight so taxpayers know we’ve taken the whole thing seriously is worth the extra time,” Bose said. “At the end of the day, every number and every assumption need to be correct, if not we will end up making a costly process even more expensive. Doug McCallum’s approach to this issue was wrong and shortsighted right from the start, now we have the chance to do it right, and for us, that means giving our citizens confidence that what’s being presented in the report is completely accurate. After four years, Surrey residents want the facts, and they want transparency.”
In a rebuke to the city’s report, the SPS says the document raises a number of concerns “stemming from the plan’s over-reliance on financial and human resource assumptions.”
In a statement Monday, the SPS said it was not consulted for the report and added the assumptions and “omissions” don’t give Surrey residents an accurate picture of their options for policing in the city.
It says: “the report over-estimated the number of SPS officers who would transfer to Surrey RCMP; the report incorrectly says the SPS will have difficulty recruiting the remaining 419 officers needed; the report made no mention of the $100 million in “unrecoverable costs” to the city and taxpayers; the report incorrectly says the transition would take another five years, amongst others.”
“We believe that the many assumptions made in this report have contributed to the City providing an inflated cost to taxpayers to continue with the transition to SPS, which they have stated is $235.4M over five years,” Chief Const. Norm Lipinski said. “It should be further noted that this amount was previously purported to be $520M over four years by Surrey Connect during the recent municipal election.”
The SPS says until the province makes its final decision on the policing transition, the service “remains committed” to serving Surrey.
“This is truly an unprecedented situation where a police agency was approved and stood up over two years ago, and now a new Council is seeking to potentially reverse course and shut down a police agency with 375 employees who joined SPS in good faith,” Lipinski said. “This is a difficult situation for the employees of both SPS and the Surrey RCMP. I think it is safe to say that we are all hopeful for a prompt, but carefully considered decision by the Minister early in the new year.”
The Surrey Police Service is also preparing a report for the province regarding its ability to police the city. That report will be delivered to the province by Dec. 22.
–With files from Greg Bowman
