SURREY mayor-elect Doug McCallum on Monday called on the chair and directors of the Metro Vancouver Board to cancel this Friday’s meeting, the last one scheduled before new mayors and councils across the region are sworn in beginning next week, and to leave its agenda, including next year’s budget, to the Board those councils will appoint.
McCallum noted that on October 17, voters in 13 of the region’s 21 municipalities chose a new mayor, including Vancouver, Surrey, Richmond, Coquitlam, Delta and both Langleys. Those municipalities are home to more than 2.1 million people, about four in every five residents of the region, and they hold 114 of the 145 votes on the Metro Vancouver Board. Surrey, the fastest-growing city in British Columbia, holds 29 of those votes.
On Friday, October 30, the outgoing Board is scheduled to consider agenda packages that run to 1,190 pages across Metro Vancouver’s four boards, and to approve the 2027 Budget and Five-Year Financial Plan: the document that sets what every household in the region pays for regional water, sewer, garbage and parks, already nearly $900 a year for the average home. The law gives the Board until March 31 to adopt its financial plan. Its next regular meeting is November 27, by which time every new council will be sworn in and will have named its directors.
“Thirteen days after voters replaced 13 mayors, the old Board plans to sit down and pass next year’s budget. That is not how you treat voters,” said McCallum. “I am calling on the Board chair and the directors to cancel Friday’s meeting. If something truly cannot wait four weeks, deal with that one item and leave everything else for the Board the voters chose. Nothing in 1,190 pages is more urgent than that.”
McCallum, who sat on the regional Board for more than a decade as Mayor of Surrey, said an outgoing board approving a budget after an election might go unnoticed in a year when little changed. This is not that year.
“I know how that Board works. In most election years a few seats change and nobody notices. This year 13 cities, home to four out of five people in this region, changed mayors, and the new councils will appoint new directors within weeks,” McCallum said. “This is not about any individual director. It is about respect for the voters. Surrey holds 29 votes on that Board, and not one of them should be cast on next year’s budget by anyone other than the directors chosen by the council Surrey elected on October 17.”
