The City of Surrey says on Thursday that it has greenlit a $284.5 million budget for the Surrey Police Service (SPS), an increased allowance of $45 million compared to last year\u2019s budget.<\/p>\n
The budget was a point of disagreement between the city and the Surrey Police Board (SPB), which originally requested a $91 million increase in November last year.<\/p>\n
The Surrey Police Union (SPU) warns that the reduced budget will lead to fewer police officers on the street, not more.<\/p>\n
\u201cYou cannot demand more policing, more visibility, and more capacity, while simultaneously gutting the resources needed to deliver it,\u201d said Ryan Buhrig, president of the SPU.<\/p>\n
He argues that the surge of extortion threats across the Fraser Valley, with Surrey at the heart of it, justifies the original proposed budget.<\/p>\n
\u201cCutting nearly $47 million from policing at the eleventh hour, while Surrey is facing an extortion crisis and while SPS is being asked to expand operations and assume additional districts, is reckless.\u201d<\/p>\n
Mayor Branda Locke rejected the original proposal back in November, calling it \u201cextraordinarily excessive.\u201d<\/p>\n
She said that Surrey would have to impose an 18 per cent property tax increase on its residents.<\/p>\n
Now, as the SPB and the city have settled their dispute, both parties offered a more conciliatory tone.<\/p>\n
\u201cI am happy the Surrey Police Board and City of Surrey were able to reach common ground on a police budget that provides the resources SPS needs to deliver services that the community deserves,\u201d said SPB chair Harley Chappell.<\/p>\n
Mayor Locke, thanking negotiators on both sides for developing a new proposal, says she is glad that the budget has found a balance between public safety and low taxes.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019m pleased to have a budget that furthers that balance,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n
The newly proposed budget accounts for an increase of $100 million since 2021.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The City of Surrey says on Thursday that it has greenlit a $284.5 million budget for the Surrey…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":486894,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[194299],"tags":[49,48,87674],"class_list":{"0":"post-486893","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-surrey","8":"tag-ca","9":"tag-canada","10":"tag-surrey"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/486893","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=486893"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/486893\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/486894"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=486893"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=486893"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=486893"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}