Surrey, April 24- Surrey Mayor Brenda Locke has said that a provincial report, according to her, that was hidden from public for a year has confirmed her concerns that Surrey Police Service (SPS) costs will “skyrocket” over the coming years.
In a statement, the Mayor the report, commissioned by the Province and developed by Deloitte, reveals new details that confirm “the SPS will cost Surrey taxpayers a whopping $750 million more than the RCMP over just a 10-year period”.
“This report confirms that the province has been hiding titanic level costs from Surrey taxpayers,” said Mayor Brenda Locke.
“The Premier and Solicitor General said they had no idea where the City of Surrey was getting our cost estimates from, when they were sitting on a report that showed the true cost to be hundreds of millions more than we had even imagined,”the Mayor added.
According to the City of Surrey, the report, which the City received as part of upcoming legal proceedings, has been filed with the court and is publicly available.
The City of Surrey requested a copy of the report when its existence was first made public a year ago, but that request was denied by the Province, the City said.
“As recently as November 2023, the Solicitor General told media that the report confirmed the province’s cost estimates. However, submissions from the SPS clearly show plans for an anticipated staffing level of 958 officers shortly after becoming police of jurisdiction, and to move to a two-person vehicle deployment model. This alone would result in an estimated $45 million annual incremental cost over the RCMP, and does not include other transition costs previously estimated by the City,” it said.
“It is clear that the province did not want this information to be made public,” added Mayor Locke. “I don’t know how to look at this other than a complete betrayal of trust. They have known that the cost of this transition would be hundreds of millions more than the City’s own estimates, and they hid that information from the public for a year. If it wasn’t for the fact that they were required to finally disclose the report as part of the City’s legal efforts, taxpayers would have found out when it was already too late,” the Mayor said.