The Surrey Police Board and Surrey Police Union are butting heads with the city’s mayor, claiming she has released inaccurate information about the municipal police force’s budget in 2023.
On Tuesday, Brenda Locke released a statement detailing why the City of Surrey has refused to add 10 new Surrey Police Service (SPS) recruits to the payroll, stating the new officers were “neither approved nor budgeted for.”
Locke, who has vigorously opposed the provincially-mandated police transition, said the SPS budget approved in early 2023 was $48.7 million, but the fledgling force spent $75.4 million instead.
“Put another way, the SPS’s out-of-control spending in 2023 was 55-per cent higher than what they were approved to spend,” she said.
“Rather than working within the budget that was approved by the City, SPS made expensive hires that it could not afford, including up to 100 people on payroll that are not deployed on the front line.”
Her words triggered quick reaction from both the union and police board, which she chairs.
The union accused her of publishing “misinformation,” stating that the 2023 policing budget was initially formed under the assumption that the RCMP would remain the police of jurisdiction in Surrey. That changed last July when Public Safety Minister Mike Farnworth ordered the City of Surrey to phase out the RCMP in favour of the SPS — leaving sufficient additional funds in the budget to cover the SPS expenditures of about $75 million.
“It is patently unfair of Mayor Locke to grossly underfund SPS and then criticize for running a deficit when the total budgeted amount for policing is in surplus,” Surrey Police Union president Rick Stewart said in a news release.
Locke’s comments “sow confusion” and “undermine the credibility” of the SPS, the board and officers, he added.
While the Surrey Police Board arrived at different numbers than the union when it comes to the purported police budget surplus, it too accused Locke of “erroneously claiming” the SPS is running a deficit budget.
“With the decision by Minister Farnworth in July 2023, and the subsequent amendments to the Police Act that require the transition to be completed, Surrey Police Service officials worked with City officials to arrive at a budget of $75 million to carry SPS through to the end of 2023,” police board administrator Mike Serr said in a news release.
“Continuing her fight to ignore the provincial decision and requirements of the new Police Act, the Mayor refused to provide formal approval of the agreed to budget and is now misrepresenting this as ‘overspending’ in relation to her 70 per cent cut.”
The comments arose about a week after the union said the City of Surrey had refused to add 10 Surrey Police Service recruits to its payroll, accusing Locke of taking her frustrations with the police transition out on the new officers. At the time, the City of Surrey’s adviser, lawyer and former RCMP officer Peter German, said those marching orders came not from Locke, but from the city’s manager.
“The Surrey Police Service was provided with a budget of $48.7 million for 2023. They have exceeded it by $23 million,” he explained on Jan. 11.
“We are now up at somewhere in the area of $75 million. They were advised on Dec. 19th that they have exceeded the budget, and that they should not be incurring additional expenses and new hires.”
On Thursday, city manager Rob Costanzo released his own statement, calling the SPS’s assert that Locke erred in her claims about a deficit budget “wrong.”
“SPS’s own media release acknowledges that SPS vastly exceeded its 2023 approved budget. While SPS submitted a proposed 2023 budget of $157.6 million to the city, Surrey Council only authorized a budget of $48.8 million,” Costanzo wrote.
“SPS does not deny it has far exceeded that limit. By law, SPS is prohibited from spending amounts not approved by Surrey Council … Only Council approves the budget and SPS has overspent the budgeted amount approved by Council.”
The city manager said it’s “unfortunate” that new hires accepted jobs without being aware of the circumstances, which is “entirely due to SPS’s failure to be transparent with its recruits concerning its budget restraints and legal obligations.”
The tête-à-tête is one of many in the saga of Surrey’s police transition.
After initially supporting a transition from the RCMP to the SPS as a councillor, Locke campaigned on a promise to keep the RCMP in Surrey. She cited transparency concerns around the creation of the SPS and the taxpayer burden of a municipal police force.
Farnworth stepped in, however, ordering the transition to the SPS to continue amid his own concerns that replenishing the RCMP could tighten resources in places where Mounties are in short supply. He said Surrey failed to prove it could keep the RCMP without compromising safety elsewhere, and offered $150 million to support a return to the SPS.
Since then, the city has launched a nearly $500,000 ad campaign alerting the Surrey public of the costs of the “NDP police transition,” stating the dismantling of the RCMP in favour of the SPS will cost an additional $446 million over the next decade, resulting in a “massive double-digit tax increase” and less money for “schools, health and transit.”
It has also filed a court petition calling for a judge to overturn the B.C. government’s order forcing it to switch to the SPS.
“The majority of Surrey City Council is very concerned with the SPS’s free spending ways of taxpayer dollars. By law, civic budgets cannot run a deficit and must be balanced,” Locke wrote Tuesday.
“The continued spending of the SPS shows that they are either negligent of the law or believe that the law does not apply to them.”
At an unrelated press conference on Tuesday, Premier David Eby criticized Locke’s spending on lawyers and the ad campaign, rather than paying the SPS recruits: “I cannot see any justification for it.”
Editor’s Note: This article was updated on Thurs. Jan. 18, 2024, to include a newly-released statement the Surrey city manager.
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