Another week, another chapter in the Surrey policing controversy.
“It’s incredibly frustrating,” said Eby, on the day it became known that the City of Surrey wasn’t
approving the additional funds needed to pay 10 recently hired Surrey Police Service officers for the duration of this fiscal year.
“These are folks who are willing to do the difficult work of policing in our communities. They need to get paid.”
On a technical level, this particular dispute is about the proper procedures when a municipal department spends more than council approved for that fiscal year.
“Public safety is not an issue, never has been. But this is about people hired after the board and the police service were notified that they were grossly over budget,” said Peter German, the high-profile lawyer and former RCMP officer now assisting Surrey in its quest to keep the RCMP.
German argues that the SPS has overspent by $23 million in this fiscal year during the course of its expansion, and that the city has no obligation to approve any additional dollars.
The SPS union doesn’t dispute the figures, but argues the city’s delays in passing a new budget for 2024 has created an awkward grey zone between a fiscal and calendar year, and they have a responsibility to ensure safety in the interim.
“It’s a bit of a game that they're trying to play with us,” said union spokesperson Ryan Buhrig.
“I think this is just another example of the city trying to obstruct and sabotage the policing transition.”
Now, in a regularly functioning municipality, if and when departments go over budget and need emergency funding, city council and staff would decide upon an short-term solution — generally an amendment to the current financial plan — in a fairly straightforward manner.
But Surrey isn’t a regularly functioning municipality. Its mayor and council are effectively at war with its biggest department, but can’t get rid of it unless they win their
legal challenges and/or the province backs down in forcing them to keep the SPS — part of the reason they’re more than a month
behind every other big municipality in creating a budget for the 2024/2025 fiscal year.
(For their part, last week Surrey told Metro Matters that they expected to come out with a full draft budget in March, and pointed out they had already done public consultation.)Eby said his government would ensure the officers got paid, but didn’t hint at any additional retaliatory actions.
The SPS said they would be appealing the decision to the provincial government, but if the police services director ordered Surrey to pay now, there’s no guarantee the city would abide by the ruling, given the current environment.
Which means that unless the B.C. Supreme Court rules soon, this might not be the only action taken by the city that he terms “frustrating.”
