Editor:
Re: Challenges ahead for SCC, May 13.
Your columnist, Frank Bucholtz, states the Surrey Civic Coalition has little on which to oppose Mayor Dianne Watts and Surrey First for the civic election next November.
Bucholtz used my comments about the extraordinary number of portables on Surrey school grounds to illustrate his point that it would be hard for SCC to attack Watts and council on the schools crisis. And, like Watts herself, he deflected the blame to the provincial government.
It is true new school construction is funded by the province. It is also true there has been no new school capital funding for six years. But it is simply not true that there is nothing that Surrey’s council and board of education can do about it.
When SCC Coun. Bob Bose was mayor, Surrey’s schools faced the same portables crisis they do now. In response, the council and school board at the time worked in concert to withold building permits in new subdivisions until the city could be reassured that plans and funding for the required new neighbourhood school was in place. The result was that business, realtors and the development industry joined in with students, parents, teachers, and school staff to lobby the provincial government for more schools.
And during Bose’s terms as mayor – during the Social Credit ’80s and the NDP ’90s, a record number of new schools were built. The municipal council of the day got real results for Surrey’s students.
While SCC supports development that will make our city stronger and a better place to live, it is simply irresponsible to continue to encourage virtually unlimited development in neighbourhoods where the number of portables has reached crisis proportion.
Is the school crisis an important issue? The SCC thinks so. But ultimately, the voters will decide.
Stephanie Ryan, past SCC president