Doug McCallum’s Safe Surrey Coalition takes control of City Council

Surrey City Hall. (City of Surrey)

Doug McCallum will have the backing of a Surrey City Council dominated by city councillors that are a part of his Safe Surrey Coalition.

Defeating Surrey First’s Tom Gill and succeeding Linda Hepner, the longtime mayor was re-elected as the leader of the City of Surrey following an unsuccessful re-election attempt in 2014.

Seven of the eight elected city councillor candidates are with the Safe Surrey Coalition party and only one city councillor is with Surrey First. This ends Surrey First’s decade-long control of the municipal government.

Surrey First’s only seat in City Council is filled by newcomer Linda Annis, who is the executive director of Metro Vancouver Crime Stoppers.

Here are the City Council results as of 12:50 am:

Brenda Locke (Safe Surrey Coalition): 40,388
Doug Elford (Safe Surrey Coalition): 38,997
Laurie Guerra (Safe Surrey Coalition): 33,887
Jack Singh Hundial (Safe Surrey Coalition): 33,705
Allison Patton (Safe Surrey Coalition): 33,026
Linda Annis (Surrey First): 32,943
Steven Pettigrew (Safe Surrey Coalition): 30,749
Mandeep Nagra (Safe Surrey Coalition): 30,048

At the moment, the eighth seat on City Council may still be up in the air due to the narrow double-digit gap in votes between Mandeep Nagra and fellow Safe Surrey Coalition candidate Bableen Rana.

Out of the running for the seat, with the next largest number of votes, is Integrity Now’s Barbara Steele with 23,225 votes.

Safe Surrey Coalition campaigned on new urban development guidelines that will centralize growth around SkyTrain stations, promised to cancel all street-level LRT projects in favour of SkyTrain extensions, and replace the RCMP with a City-controlled and managed police force to better tackle crime and public safety issues.

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