Township of Langley Mayor Eric Woodward offered a sympathetic voice to Surrey in its dispute with Metro over regional planning
Two days after Surrey city council voted to withdraw from the Metro Vancouver 2050 regional growth plan, the mayor of Langley Township said he has sympathy for his neighbour’s argument.
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“If Surrey is committed to the currently unanimously endorsed direction to leave Metro 2050, on the regional planning aspect, I think the Township of Langley would also have to evaluate what that means for us,” said Mayor Eric Woodward.
Langley Township sits on Surrey’s eastern border, and Woodward said splitting at least Metro’s regional planning function “feels maybe a tad inevitable.”
Woodward took Postmedia News’s questions after a Surrey Board of Trade event Wednesday that was supposed to discuss regional growth with Metro chairman Mike Hurley and TransLink mayor’s council chairman Brad West.
He was responding, however, to the broadside Surrey council delivered Metro on Monday with its unanimous vote to withdraw from Metro’s growth plan over what Surrey Mayor Brenda Locke characterized as an “unaffordable and unaccountable” regional district.
Surrey Coun. Pardeep Kooner, who made the motion, was also at Wednesday’s Surrey Board of Trade meeting, but didn’t want to talk about the issue further until city staff reports back on whether there is even a process to withdraw from the Metro plan.
Regional districts, such as Metro, put together regional growth strategies under the auspices of provincial legislation. Officials from the Housing and Municipal Affairs Ministry were unable to respond to Postmedia questions by deadline.
In her motion, however, Kooner cited a misalignment between Metro’s 2050 growth plan and Surrey’s own vision.
And Tuesday, Kooner, who is also a director on Metro’s board and chairwoman of its finance committee, told Postmedia she had raised questions last September about how Metro’s development costs are calculated “to ensure equity for our residents, that still haven’t been answered.”
“That is just not acceptable,” she said.
Locke, in a news release, argued that the latest Metro 2050 strategy “imposes unfair costs and expectations on our community” that don’t reflect Surrey’s own vision for its city.
She also called for a meeting of South of the Fraser mayors and councillors to determine next steps in a campaign to press Metro for a fair allocation of services and costs to their taxpayers, which Woodward said he is keen to attend.
Hurley, after the meeting, said he learned about Surrey’s motion to withdraw through the news “like everybody else” but wanted to work with Surrey council to understand their specific concerns, but “as far as Metro 2050 is concerned, I have no idea what the issues are.”
Woodward said Hurley is correct to push for more discussion to resolve the planning issues that Langley Township, Surrey and other municipalities have “before we get too far before ourselves.”
However, Woodward added that Metro at least needs to review the formula for altering the 2050 plan, which requires a two-thirds majority on its board of directors to approve amendments.
“(That) is a very high bar, and I think it’s unreasonable that Vancouver and a couple of other small municipalities can essentially tell the City of Surrey what to do with this land use,” Woodward said.
Hurley, however, said Surrey voted in 2023 to approve the Metro 2050 growth strategy, along with all 21 of its member municipalities, and defended the existing amendment process.
“I think we’ve made five (amendments) to this plan already,” Hurley said. “And over the years, we have made, I think, 14 amendments to the different plans.”
Surrey’s revolt over the regional growth strategy, however, comes at the same time that Metro faces bigger questions about its governance related to the bombshell revelation of the $2.86 billion cost overrun on its North Shore wastewater treatment plant. Metro is in the middle of three reviews, one related to services and cost efficiencies, a governance review and an independent review of the North Shore plant, which are expected to report back later this year.
As for the regional growth plan, Hurley said “the mechanism is that we sit down with the CEO and myself, and we start there” to sort out Surrey’s issues.
“Can we solve this? Is there a way to solve this? Is there a way we can work together,” Hurley said. “In the past, that has always been achieved, so that’s why I’m confident that can be done again.”