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SCC spent just over $103,000 on council run

Surrey First spent six times that amount, however, SCC targeted spending on school trustee candidates.
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Surrey Civic Coalition focused its spending on winning school board seats in last November's election.

Dianne Watts' municipal Surrey First Team spent six times as much as its opposition party on its run for city council last November, and it paid off.

Surrey First won all nine seats on city council.

By contrast, the Surrey Civic Coalition (SCC) spent just $103,230 on council candidates in the last civic election. The figure works out to $12,903 per candidate.

The SCC did not run a mayoral candidate, so there were some cost savings there.

SCC poured most if its financial resources into four candidates – Bob Bose ($29,920), Stephanie Ryan ($23,486), former Surrey councillor Gary Robinson ($17,626) and Doug Elford ($17,446).

SCC candidate Rina Gill outperformed all party colleagues except for Bose, yet the SCC spent just $4,826 on her campaign.

And candidate Steve Wood received more votes than Robinson, for a cost of only $2,476.

SCC's per-candidate funding for council was less than what the party spent trying to get an SCC member on the Surrey Board of Education, perhaps because some of the incumbent seats for school trustee were up for grabs. The only successful SCC candidate was Charlene Dobie, who rang up $22,020 in expenses.

That's 26 per cent of the $82,699 the party spent seeking school board seats.

The party that almost swept school board – Surrey First Education – spent $55,110.

Candidates in last November's election had until March 19 to report their campaign contributions and expenditures.

Only Gill 22, who is in jail, failed to file is disclosures.

As The Leader reported last week, Surrey First spent $676,283 in total on the civic election.

The total spent by SCC on both school board and council was $185,929.

@diakiw