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Originally Posted by jhausner
Surrey is trying to grow up and attract commercial and office buildings.
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I also get annoyed when people are like "Oh she should talk about nothing but dealing with the crime." I'll remind them the next time Mayor Gregor in Vancouver announces anything other than homeless related items since that's Vancouver's big problem and clearly he should only ever talk about that.
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Part of attracting business requires solving long-term problems. Surrey has gangland problems, that is a danger to everyone and brings down not only property values but investment opportunities. The crime problem should have been at the top of the list a decade ago.
http://vancouversun.com/news/staff-b...rime-this-year
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July 31 2015 Surrey RCMP stats show big increase in violent crime this year: 36%
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47 by the end of 2015
And then this year:
http://www.thenownewspaper.com/news/378822391.html
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May 10, 2016, Surrey RCMP investigating 34th, 35th shooting
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Vs a decade ago:
http://www.vancouversun.com/news/Ste...604/story.html
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09.30.2005
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And the killing of gang members has continued, with 10 murders since last fall of Indo-Canadians or their associates linked to gangs.
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What does that tell me? That tells me that Surrey First either didn't believe the crime problem to exist, or purposely waited for it to become a problem so they can get the province/federal government to foot the bill.
Same with the school system. I'm pretty sure Surrey knew it was going to be a problem, but the school district decided to keep building portables instead of actual schools. This could have been prevented had the school district been at the table with the city when they started planning these ill-advised sprawling developments, or maybe they were and were ignored.
But no. Surrey can't claim to be the best run city (That belongs to Burnaby, for now) when the Surrey city councils refuses to plan ahead and just kick the problems with short-sighted thinking to the next city council. Burnaby doesn't have Surrey's crime problem, but it does have Vancouver's housing problem, and is in fact worse than Vancouvers due to no requirements to replace rental units. But when we talk about which is the best and worst parts of Metro Vancouver to live in, people talk about Surrey like it's Detroit.