Surrey city council will vote tonight (Monday, May 12) on a motion Mayor Brenda Locke brought forward on April 28 that aims for city hall hire a healthcare administrator to help the politicians heal a dearth of healthcare services here.
Locke's motion is loaded with "whereas-es" aiming to direct city staff to research healthcare "access challenges" in Surrey as well as evaluate the legal, financial and operational feasibility of the City of Surrey employing or contracting family doctors to serve local residents.
She wants city staff to report back with options, recommend next steps and required resources within 120 days and look into establishing a healthcare administrator within the city manager's office "to coordinate this research, liaise with Fraser Health and the Province of British Columbia and advocate for equitable healthcare resources for Surrey."
But Coun. Linda Annis says Locke's proposed healthcare administrator is a waste of time and poor use of taxes.
"We do not need another costly city bureaucrat to tell us what we already know," Annis argues. "Instead, we need our 10 Surrey MLAs to do their jobs and get Surrey the healthcare infrastructure, staff, and resources we need and deserve. Frankly, we need to flex our political muscle more to ensure we're heard in Victoria and Ottawa. We do not need an expensive staff person at city hall advocating for our city. What we need is our mayor, councillors and MLAs working together, and stepping up to do what we were all elected to do by voters and taxpayers."
Annis said she expects a healthcare administrator, and the associated costs, to total more than $300,000 annually.
"Healthcare is a provincial responsibility, not a municipal responsibility," Annis noted. "The second our city steps into that area, the faster the Province will start downloading costs to our city taxpayers. We need to let the Province do its job, while our job at city hall is to push our 10 MLAs to speak up for our city, that’s their role in Victoria.
"Meanwhile," she added, "does anyone really believe that hiring a costly healthcare administrator for the city will be the end? Frankly, it’s just the tip of an expensive bureaucratic iceberg that will be prone to scope creep and the added costs that come with it."
Locke said she hasn't seen the Surrey MLAs "put up their hand" when it come to health care.
"So we can wait for that to happen or we can be proactive and look at opportunities for the city of Surrey for health care and not all health care means beds in hospitals it means all kinds of things – it means how do we do the preventative side, what are the things we can do in our city to support health care in our city," Locke said.
On the healthcare administrator, she said, "As a council, we need that person just to tell us where the gaps are. We don't automatically know the gaps, we don't know all of the numbers when it comes to people that are un-housed."
As for Annis's $300,000 figure, Locke replied, "I don't know – I don't know where councillor Annis gets her numbers from. We haven't even made a decision that it's going to be a full-time position, we haven't made any decisions where it comes to that. We haven't even had it pass council yet so there's not been a corporate report that would identify that. So I think councillor Annis is getting a little ahead of herself but if did, I would say it's money well spent because it's certainly something that we need to see and do in our city."
