Budget 2025

Hi Charlie, Surrey’s Parks Division recently completed a study on parkland within the City’s Agricultural Land Reserve. While certified organic farming was considered, the focus is on employing regenerative farming practices and methods for farming activities on parkland. A pilot is underway for Mound Farm Park, one of the City’s biodiversity hubs and largest actively farmed park. 

Hi John, Surrey’s Biodiversity Design Guidelines include a focus on light and noise pollution abatement. In particular the Parks Division is exploring ways to reduce light pollution and implement more environmentally-friendly lighting in City parks. The recent 84^th Avenue extension through Bear Creek Park employed ground level (bollard) lighting along the pedestrian pathway to reduce the need for higher intensity lighting adjacent to natural areas.

Surrey is also upgrading to LED street lighting, which offers targeted illumination to reduce light spillover. The new LED lights are energy-efficient, long-lasting, and feature advanced controls. They are Dark Sky compliant, which minimizes light pollution and ensuring that only the necessary areas are illuminated. This approach enhances public safety and helps preserve the night sky, contributing to a more sustainable and environmentally friendly community.

Surrey’s budget process is underway. We are currently engaging the community to gather feedback on priorities and funding options prior to drafting a budget.  After community engagement, a draft budget will be prepared for review by the Finance Committee. Decisions have not yet been made around tax increases or other factors that may be needed to balance the budget. The draft budget will be impacted by resource allocation decisions, desired service levels, emerging priorities, external factors such as inflation, and findings from community engagement. It’s important to the City that residents have the opportunity to provide feedback on their priorities as the budget is developed. Feedback from the online survey and in-person events will help Council adopt a financial plan that reflects the community’s needs and priorities.

Hi Ravinder, yes, the open house materials will be the same at each event. We hope to see you at one of them!

On City park land, the Parks division manages and maintains riparian area lands. Invasive species removal and natural area plantings take place within these areas in many locations across our park system to improve the health of these ecosystems. In addition, clean-up of garbage and debris that may be dumped into these areas is carried out when the City is made aware of such issues.

In 2023, Council provided a sponsorship contribution of $15,000 towards the Surrey Food Bank Society’s Tiny Bundles Program through the Council Initiatives Fund (CIF). Council will carefully consider, in accordance with City policies, any future funding requests from the Surrey Food Bank Society.

Council must carefully consider emerging issues and community priorities, as well as the need to fund City services, amenities, and infrastructure. External factors must also be considered, such as economic inflation, materials and construction costs, climate change and extreme weather events. Protective services resourcing is a vital component of the budget.

It is typical for Protective Services to constitute the most significant portion of the annual operating budget for most, if not all, municipalities in the region. Public safety continues to be a key priority for Council. As part of the 2023 Five-Year Financial Plan, Council approved an increase of an additional 25 sworn police members per year, every year from 2023 to 2027 (with an additional increase of one member in 2024, totalling 26 sworn members).  

Additionally, Council also approved an additional 20 Fire Services positions and 10 Bylaw Enforcement Officers each year from 2023 to 2027. This annual investment of resources will enable the City to continue providing a high quality of service to the community while addressing increasing demand driven by increased population growth.

Rapid transit and bus service in Metro Vancouver is funded, delivered, and operated by TransLink. City of Surrey does not fund or provide transit services and is therefore not reflected in the annual municipal budget. However, Surrey does advocate for increased transit service and is currently working alongside TransLink on a long-range Transit Vision. The Transit Vision will serve as a roadmap to connect all Surrey communities in Surrey with increased transit service as the City grows to 1 million.

Funding for transit services in Metro Vancouver is outlined in TransLink's 2024 Ten Year Investment Plan.

Each year, Surrey Libraries prioritizes new budget requests based on strategic objectives and current organizational gaps in capacity and/or capabilities. New requests, along with requests for service level and inflation related budget adjustments, are presented to the Library Board of Trustees for discussion and direction. Once approved by the Board, the Library budget is submitted to the City for Council’s consideration. Council considers city-wide budget requests and adopts a five-year financial plan that best addresses the funding priorities of the City, while striving to balance the budget and maintain current service levels.

The Library Board of Trustees will be undertaking discussion of their 2025 budget submission in the near future.  Once approved by the Board, the 2025 Surrey Libraries budget will be provided to Council for their consideration.