Despite increasing enrollment, the Surrey school district is facing a budget shortfall of $9.5 million. Yet, the board is, at the same time, planning to construct itself a brand new District Education and Conference Centre at a cost of $80 million.

This is the wrong project, at the wrong time, at the wrong place.

The reasoning behind it makes sense. The board currently leases office space across the city to accommodate staff, leading to a lot of running around and inefficiency. However, their justification on economic savings due to new efficiencies amounts to only $1.5 million per year. It would take over 50 years for those savings to justify the construction of this new building.

TransLink itself is also running into planned budget shortfalls in the coming years. It too, like the district, has been saving a slush fund. The difference though is that TransLink is using that money to sustain operations without service cuts for the next two years. The School District, however, isn’t using any of this saved money to preserve the current state of education. Instead of protecting the quality of our schools, the board is willing to slash funding and make cuts, while spending millions on a pet project.

Not to mention the DECC is being built at 140th St and 92 Ave. We all want to see the City Centre develop and one of the keys to making that happen is the relocation of City Hall – it will stimulate development in the downtown and bring thousands of daily workers to the area. With 500 people projected to be working out of the DECC daily, and the fact that the building incorporates a conference centre – something currently sorely lacking in the City Centre – the question becomes, why isn’t the board constructing the DECC in the City Centre? The City of Surrey owns a lot of land in the downtown – perhaps a deal can be struck to share resources. It would obviously benefit the area just as much as relocating City Hall would.

Ultimately though, this is about the students. How does building an $80 million Conference Centre, at a time of budget cuts and staff layoffs, at all help the students of Surrey aspire and achieve their best in school? This is the utmost self serving project I have ever seen a civil service undertake.

We need to immediately halt this project. Money from construction needs to be used to sustain the current budget levels until the economy revives. Furthermore, the School District needs to work collaboratively with the City and private developers to ensure this major public facility will be built in the heart of our new downtown.