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THERE’S
SOMETHING ROTTEN IN SURREY: WHAT MAYOR DIANNE WATTS NEEDS TO DO
By Rattan Mall
Surrey Councillor
Bob Bose came up with a staggering list of problems that plague Surrey when
asked by this newspaper
what challenges the City of Surrey faces.
Last month, Surrey Mayor Dianne Watts
had written about her achievements in this newspaper (2009 In Review: The
Future Lives Here In Surrey).
Bose, who’s been a mayor himself, noted
that Watts didn’t seem to talk about the challenges that the city faces, and
went on to point out a raft of them.
RCMP AND CRIME:
CREDIBILITY ISSUES
Bose started by
pooh-poohing Watts’ assertion: “This past year continued a downward trend in
criminal activity in Surrey, which demonstrates the effectiveness of the
services being delivered by the RCMP and the staff that support the RCMP in
their work” and her reference to the Crime Reduction Strategy.
He noted: “Well,
it’s not meaningful because crime is going down all over, everywhere, across
Canada.” He wondered how effective the Crime Reduction Strategy really was,
pointing out: “It’s important that when you make statements like that, that
they actually are supported by some kind of comparison, some kind of analysis
and, to my knowledge, it hasn’t been done.”
He pointed out
the absurdity of having “a police committee that consists of all members of
Council that never meets.”
Bose also
bluntly noted that “the RCMP is suffering from some serious credibility
questions.” He said he had great confidence in them, “but you cannot avoid
the fact that they have really been hit pretty hard on a number of cases that
have been badly handled.”
He added: “I
think it would be helpful if we had a discussion around the question of is
the RCMP responding to this credibility crisis and what measures are they
taking. And we haven’t met with the officer in command as a Council for a
long, long time. … We need to deal with this. They are a big part of our
budget. It’s part of what needs to be done in the city.”
When I asked him
if he was going to take this up with Watts, Bose replied: “It’s really a
question for Council. I would think that she should be frank about this and
maybe she doesn’t think there is an issue and we’ll see, but I am waiting for
an opportunity to discuss it with the [RCMP Chief] Superintendent and all of
Council.”
WARD SYSTEM
IGNORED
Bose exposed
Watts’ couldn’t-care-less attitude about a ward system for the City of Surrey
that this newspaper supports.
Bose resented
Watts’ personal attack on him when he brought up this issue. He recounted:
“We have a large community and I have raised the question of electoral reform
with her from time to time, with Council, and her response to the suggestion
that we introduce a ward system was ‘well, maybe we should have term limits.’
“That’s what you
would call a slap in the face given the length of time I have served on
Surrey Council. It’s hard not to see that as a bit of a personal affront.”
He added: “How
do we properly represent a community as large as Surrey with a population as
large as it is geographically and demographically? I think it’s a question
that needs serious discussion. The matter was referred by Council resolution
to a shirt-sleeve session – a chance to sit around and talk about it – it
never happened. Even though the Council passed that resolution – it’s a kind
of default position – I did not vote against it. I wanted to go to referendum
in connection with the last civic election and that was the response – ‘we’ll
just go ahead and have a little chat about it.’
“Well, it’s very
frustrating and I think the question of how we are represented is pretty
basic to how this city functions.”
BAD MANAGEMENT
OF GROWTH
Bose noted: “The
question of how we are managing growth is a serious issue and it doesn’t get
much discussed. We, as a city, are still pursuing growth as a goal in
itself.”
He criticized
Watts for talking about the challenges but not identifying any of them.
He added: “Well
let me tell you one challenge that we have and that is that there is no money
to build new schools in Surrey. There hasn’t been any new money since 2006 –
four years or better of no money - and yet we continue to grow and more and
more schools have their playgrounds covered with portable classrooms.
“And I have
raised this issue; it’s a very serious issue because as the city grows the
school district has no option but to rent portables for which the only source
of funds is their operating money. We’re already short of operating money and
there have been cutbacks and cutbacks. There is no money to maintain the
schools. Basic moneys to paint and repair, fix roofs, there’s been none of
that I think as long as there has been no capital money.
“I asked this
issue be raised with the school district and Council and we are having in
fact next week finally a meeting with the school board. But it should be
obvious to every member of Council, and certainly the mayor, that there is a
serious crisis out there.”
Bose also
pointed out: “We are developing whole communities for which
there is no money to build a school. Down in south Surrey in a
community that’s known as Douglas [between Highway 15 and Highway 99] and
growth there has been supported without any questions having been asked about
whether or not there’ll ever be a school and we should not be proceeding with
some of this development without assurance that the people who move into
these communities will have access to one of the most basic of services and
that’s proper public education.”
He added:
“Dianne seems unconcerned about that, certainly it doesn’t appear in her
state of the city address.”
BUDGET: NO
PROPER DISCUSSION
Bose told me:
“We have not had a proper discussion on the budget since Dianne was elected
mayor and there was not much before that either, but the business of
operating year after year after year without having what I would call a
serious discussion about our finances just seems to
me appalling.”
He added: “Let
me just illustrate by how much time the Council spent this last year in
dealing with its budget. We are by law required before adopting the annual
budget – capital and operating – to consult with the public.
“We go through
the motions of consulting the public, give them a few weeks to respond to a
draft budget which Council adopts as a draft budget. We had one session, one
meeting was set aside for this consultation, and it lasted 45 minutes.
“There was no
other particular effort. We don’t make a positive effort to go out and get
people to participate in the budget-building process. So the priorities that
are driven by the budget are not the subject of any public discourse.”
Bose noted: “By
no stretch of one’s imagination can you consider the process that we follow
here serious; it’s tokenism, and I think it’s
wrong.”
He added:
“Subsequent to that exercise, the Council sat for a further approximately
three-quarters of an hour to adopt the budget. Three-quarters! There was no
presentation by engineering, there was no presentation by the fire services
people or the police or parks and rec; no staff
presentations whatsoever, just ‘there it is!’ – it was presented.”
INADEQUATE
STAFF?
Bose said he
wanted the level of staffing in by-law enforcement, building inspections and
the building department to be reviewed, “because those are areas that we have
serious problems.”
He said he asked
Council not to adopt the operating budget, “where you decide on staffing
levels,” in December until they had had “a chance to really talk about
staffing,”
Oddly, the person
who seconded his motion, Councillor Judy Villeneuve, then proceeded to argue
that there wasn’t a problem, he said. Bose noted: “I don’t know how they know
there’s no problem!”
He added: “I
have since asked personally for a report on our staffing levels in by-law
enforcement comparing Surrey to other municipalities in the Lower Mainland,
namely, Richmond, Burnaby, Coquitlam, Vancouver, and I have not yet got it –
I was promised the report. But I have reason to believe that we may have
something fewer than half as many by-law enforcement people, for example, as
some of our neighbouring municipalities per capita.”
NO BY-LAW
ENFORCEMENT
Bose pointed out
to me that he was the only member of Council that attended any of the
sessions about large houses; he attended four out of five of them.
He said: “There
was a common [complaint] expressed by all people at those sessions that there
is no by-law enforcement.
“We don’t
enforce our own laws, so we’ve got this situation with members of Council who
don’t abide by our own laws in terms of secondary suites.”
He also pointed
out the fact of the mayor’s husband running a business out of her private
residential property – something that was first exposed by The VOICE last
November and which was followed up just last month by the Georgia Straight
newspaper of Vancouver and mentioned on CKNW radio station.
Bose noted:
“[The mayor’s residential property] is not zoned for it and there’s been no
by-law enforcement there that I have been aware of.”
He said:
“There’s a serious credibility question here around just providing the basic
services that the city deserves. We are nowhere near dealing with this thorny
issue of the large houses and the unlawful filling in of spaces and updating
the zoning by-laws so that it meets some of the basic needs.
“The question of
secondary suites: I am on the record of supporting a single secondary suite
in every single family home in this city and yet this situation sits out
there and nothing’s been done. I can’t believe that she has not identified
that as a major challenge. I think it is.”
SERIOUS
FINANCIAL CHALLENGES
Bose said he
wanted to know what Watts considers some of the real challenges to be
“because there are some serious financial challenges.”
He said: “They had
no trouble finding money for the Olympic festivals and moving forward
building facilities to support the Olympics. No discussion about [these].
“What about
other priorities?
“Two million
dollars have been spent to be, to my knowledge, with no direct benefits just
to be named as venue city. Another
$10-million-plus spent a bit in a rush to create the Olympic training centre
on Binnie Park in Whalley
and that’s a lot of money.
“And there’s $3
million I understand that’s being spent on the Olympic festival in Holland
Park. … That’s a more than two-per-cent increase in itself in the tax. You
generate over a million dollar from a one-per-cent tax increase. … It’s a
question of priority and that was never a part of any public debate leading
up to the Olympics.”
SECONDARY
SUITES’ PROBLEMS
Bose then
returned to the issue of secondary suites, noting that “right now we don’t
have a clue as to where we are going with secondary suites.”
He said the city
doesn’t even know how many secondary suites it’s got.
He added: “The
guesstimate may be 40,000. Well, under the circumstances, currently, they are
all illegal, except for fewer than 300 of them that were zoned for secondary
suites.
“What are we
doing about this? You’ve got to face up to the fact that secondary suites
exist, albeit illegal, everywhere in the city of Surrey.
“Most people
have no problems with one suite and they consider that fair enough. What
people have problems with are multiple suites and this question of people not
paying their fair share toward city services.”
He then pointed
out an interesting facet of this controversial issue. The school district
estimates the number of children based on the kind of housing in a particular
area.
He added: “The
school district can’t plan because we don’t enforce our own by-laws and they
have more children than planners tell them they are going to have; so they
don’t build for them. So we end up with 20-30 portables. We’ve had situations
in the past with well over 20 portables in a single school. I bet you those situations
exist today.
“It’s possible
for a child entering into kindergarten in Surrey to spend the next 12 years
of their school life in a portable classroom.
“The mayor and
the Council have to take some responsibility for this situation. They simply
have to manage the rate of growth.”
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