The Safe Surrey Coalition majority on Surrey city council awarded a contract of $1,078,088.20 to Mainland Ford Ltd. on Monday night for the supply and delivery of fourteen 2022 Ford Explorer Police Interceptor vehicles for the Surrey Police Service.
That’s $77,006.30 per vehicle.
Mayor Doug McCallum and Councillors Doug Elford, Allison Patton, Mandeep Nagra and Laurie Guerra voted in support and Councillors Linda Annis, Brenda Locke, Jack Hundial and Steven Pettigrew voted against it.
“That is incredibly high,” Fleetwood resident Richard Landale noted. “The vehicles purchased are unmarked vehicles and have had no special equipment additions.”
Council set the expenditure authorization limit at $1,210,000, including contingencies and taxes. They are V6 models and will be marked with SPS decals.
A corporate report authored by Terry Waterhouse, general manager of the policing transition, Kam Grewal, general manager of finance, and Scott Neuman, general manager of engineering, notes the Surrey Police Service fleet will consist of “newly procured” vehicles that are owned by the city, and vehicles currently being used by the Surrey RCMP as marked vehicles.
“As the SPS becomes operational, the city will assume responsibility for all vehicles in the SPS fleet. In the early stages of the transition, both RCMP and SPS vehicles will be utilized,” the report states.
Coun. Linda Annis asked if the vehicles will need to be retrofitted to meet policing standards and be equipped with computer systems. “Do we have an estimate of what that cost will be?”
Waterhouse replied that that price is included in the “overall” amount. “I believe it’s about $6,500 per unit, for the specialized equipment, after each of these items in stock is delivered.”
Terry Waterhouse, general manager of Surrey policing transition. (File photo)
Coun. Brenda Locke asked why these vehicles are double the cost of the ones that were purchased by the Surrey Police Service in June.
Waterhouse said some vehicles were purchased for the executive team of the SPS. “Those were individual purchases as per the contract requirements by the board,” he said. “These are the first vehicles for deployment that would be kitted out. No other deployment vehicles have been purchased.”
Waterhouse told council that under the provision of the RCMP contract, when it terminates, there is an “option” that its vehicles and “other hard assets” be transferred to the city and become part of the SPS fleet.
“When that asset transfer is done down the road, those assets will become under the City of Surrey’s ownership, and then what would happen is the city would supply those to the SPS as their fleet,” Waterhouse explained. “The vehicles that are being purchased under this corporate report will be added in to that fleet so down the road the totality of the fleet will be the existing RCMP fleet plus any new purchases that they make.”
READ ALSO: RCMP pay increase will have ‘significant impact’ on Surrey’s budget
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