Surrey mayor suggests need for 18% property tax hike due to police budget | Daily Hive

Surrey mayor suggests police budget proposal triggers need for 18% property tax hike

Surrey Police Service

A sharp political divide erupted at Surrey City Hall this week after the release of the proposed 2026 budget for the Surrey Police Service (SPS), prompting duelling statements from mayor Brenda Locke and opposition city councillors.

The provincially-appointed Surrey Police Board unveiled its draft budget on Tuesday, outlining a proposed $91-million increase over the previous year.

According to Mayor Locke, that level of spending would translate into an 18 per cent property tax hike for Surrey property owners if approved. This would be one of the steepest single-year property tax increases in the city’s history, if not the highest.

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Locke condemned the proposed increase, calling it “extraordinarily excessive” and signalling she will not support the budget in its current form.

“As Mayor, a top priority of mine has always been to improve public safety while protecting taxpayers from costly tax hikes,” said Locke in a statement.

She emphasized that although Surrey must continue its transition to the SPS — a provincial mandate that she opposed for years — the City must prevent “significant tax hikes at a time when affordability remains a top priority.” She insisted that the board’s proposed budget far exceeds what taxpayers can reasonably sustain.

“Surrey taxpayers want to see action to improve public safety, and we’re prepared to make those investments. But they also expect us to be prudent with public money,” she said.

Reacting to the mayor’s position, city councillors Mandeep Nagra and Doug Elford asserted that the real budget request from SPS is $69.9 million, not the $91-million figure provided by Locke. They said the municipal government already has the reserve funds and unspent policing dollars to cover this increased budget, with no property tax hike needed.

“Brenda Locke has spent her entire term sabotaging the SPS transition. She is not acting in good faith. This is a political vendetta and Surrey families are paying the price,” said Elford in a statement.

City councillor Linda Annis, a vocal supporter of the SPS transition and Locke’s challenger in the upcoming mayoral race in the October 2026 civic election, issued a sharply worded rebuttal, accusing the mayor of turning the draft budget into “another of her anti-SPS political footballs.”

Annis argued that the rising costs Locke is criticizing stem in large part from the mayor’s own efforts to halt and reverse the transition, which was initiated in 2018 but has faced repeated delays and legal battles.

“It took less time to win the Second World War,” said Annis, pointing to what will soon be eight years of transition work. She blamed Locke for stopping hiring in 2022 while attempting to cancel the SPS and for pursuing a court challenge the City ultimately lost — actions Annis says added both time and expense.

“The SPS needed to ramp up again when she failed in her costly court case, and that came with costs,” she said, noting that the SPS recorded a $25-million surplus last year and remains within the provincial government’s provided overall $250-million transition funding to the municipal government.

According to Annis, part of the financial pressure stems from the RCMP not redeploying officers out of Surrey “as quickly as originally planned,” a dynamic she describes as a provincial and City operational issue rather than an SPS problem.

She urged Locke to review the budget “thoroughly and with transparency” rather than using it as “political theatre,” stressing that the draft represents just one piece of a multi-year financial plan as the SPS scales up and the RCMP gradually withdraws.

According to SPS, Surrey has comparatively low per-capita policing costs — about $476 per resident, compared to $538 in Delta and $675 in Vancouver. For many years, there have been suggestions by municipal officials that Surrey’s police workforce size is not adequate for its growing population, changing needs, and the geographic size of the jurisdiction.

The largest budget line in the SPS budget is labour costs. Compared to 2025, the proposed 2026 budget includes an increase of $62.4 million in salaries and benefits to achieve a 23 per cent workforce growth — from 1,039 staff in 2025 to 1,277 in 2026, including 808 police officers and 469 civilian staff.

There are also growing one-time transitional, equipment, and other costs, such as the SPS request to buy 75 new vehicles — 68 cars and seven motorcycles — in 2026, as many vehicles transferred from the Surrey RCMP to SPS are near the end of their lifespan. This is more than double the historical average annual replacement rate for vehicles.

Earlier this fall, Locke called for the need to hire 150 additional police officers to better address extortion crimes impacting the South Asian community and businesses, and she reaffirmed her commitment this week to boosting staffing levels.

But Nagra accuses the mayor of refusing to fund them. Annis says she wants to see 300 additional police officers hired over four years.

The municipal government will now begin a formal review of the proposed SPS budget. Both Locke and Annis say they support strengthening public safety — but the clash signals that policing will once again remain a central issue in the next civic election in less than a year from now.

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