Surrey’s proposed 12.5% property tax increase up for vote

Surrey city council is set to vote on a proposed 12.5 per cent property tax hike Monday.

Most of the tax increase is to pay for policing services, as Surrey continues to be shrouded in controversy over the transition from the RCMP to a municipal force that began under Doug McCallum.

The city has said if the police transition continues, extra costs are not included in the budget.

The hike was initially proposed to be 17.5 per cent. However, the city opted to use the Growing Communities Fund — a provincial fund — to bring the hike down.

“Since the proposed budget was made public two weeks ago, the city has secured nearly $90 million from the province of British Columbia,” Mayor Brenda Locke said last month. “As a result, we are now in a position to revise the budget and bring the overall property tax rate down.”

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Premier David Eby has suggested the city’s plan to use the infrastructure fund to bring the hike down may be short-sighted.

“This is a one-time fund, so if you’re using this fund to fund operational processes in the city, maybe that’s okay for one year but what happens next year?” he said in March.

“Also, they know that the province is going to be coming to them and saying, ‘we need you to hit certain housing targets, we need you to build housing to support growing communities, the population growth that we’re seeing because we’re in a housing crisis, under the new legislation that we’ve passed.’”

The province previously explained that the Growing Communities Fund would provide $1 billion in new grants to local governments across B.C. The goal is to “help build community infrastructure and amenities to meet the demands of unprecedented population growth,” the government added.

The decision on whether the city will keep the RCMP or continue to move toward the Surrey Police Service is currently in the hands of the province’s solicitor general.

-With files from Liza Yuzda