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LETTERS: Policing issue a constant reminder to Surrey to have higher level of skepticism

Editor:
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Editor:

Re: City staff had no part in SPS negotiations: Grewal, March 16

Surrey General Manager of Finance Kam Grewal confirmed the City was not involved in negotiating the Surrey Police Board and Surrey Police Union agreement, signed in March 2022. This agreement committed our City to salaries and benefits in the hundreds of millions of dollars and contingent liabilities exceeding $80 million in the event the Surrey Police Service is terminated during the police transition.

In June 2020 the province appointed seven police board members by an Order of Council. The eighth member of the board is the mayor of Surrey who acts as the chair of the board but is an ex officio, with little or no ability to direct the police board.

Essentially, the City has no control over the policing budget and has only limited recourse to challenge the budgets, which is significantly different from the negotiated RCMP contract that allowed flexibility in controlling the number of active officers on duty.

What has become very clear to me is that the Surrey Police Board has one objective only, to ensure the Surrey Police Service continues to operate and be funded without meaningful input from our elected officials, administration, or the citizens of Surrey.

While our former mayor, Doug McCallum, signed the March 2022 agreement between the SPB and the Surrey Police Union he had no ability to change or negotiate the terms. So much for his dream of our police service being “controlled by the people of Surrey and responsible to the people of Surrey” as he proclaimed in his inaugural council meeting in November 2018.

Although our current council is attempting to stop the SPS transition, I believe this is unlikely to happen.

The burden of all the future escalating costs of policing will be a constant reminder to the citizens of Surrey to have a higher level of skepticism when our future politicians ask for support of plans which can significantly impact our future.

Ultimately the responsibility for funding the financial costs rests with the citizens of Surrey. Few of us vote in our municipal elections and our destiny was sealed in November 2018 with the election of nine public officials who each received support from less than 13.5 per cent of eligible voters.

This small percentage of voters gave our politicians the authority to spend hundreds of millions of our dollars. I hope we have learnt a painful lesson and those days of our elected officials not being held accountable are behind us.

Al Ecclestone, Surrey