Surrey could soon have a school trustee by-election at $840K cost, if judge so rules<\/p>\n
Published 2:35 pm Thursday, October 29, 2026<\/p>\n
A judge might decide whether Surrey will have a school trustee by-election at a cost of close to $840,000.<\/p>\n
The situation involves Garry Thind, re-elected trustee on Oct. 17 and then elected Conservative MLA in Surrey-Guildford a week later, Oct. 24.<\/p>\n
Once sworn in as MLA in coming weeks, Thind will be disqualified from being a school trustee, Surrey Schools confirms.<\/p>\n
Moving forward, if a court application is made under the Local Government Act, a judge can order that the trustee position is vacant, resulting in a by-election, or order that the candidate who received the next-highest number of votes \u2014 incumbent Gary Tymoschuk, in this case \u2014 be declared elected in place of the disqualified candidate, says a school district statement sent Thursday, Oct. 29.<\/p>\n
Under the legislation, the Chief Election Officer, a candidate in the election, or any four electors may apply to the court for a determination, the Now-Leader is told.<\/p>\n
\u201cAny application must be filed within 30 days of the certification of the election results, which is November 20,\u201d Surrey Schools says in an email.<\/p>\n
\u201cAs a result, the District cannot comment on what Garry Thind\u2019s election as an MLA means for filling the final Board seat or the possibility of any by-election. That will depend on whether a court application is made and, if so, how the court rules.\u201d<\/p>\n
The district statement adds: \u201cInitial cost estimates provided to Surrey Schools by the City of Surrey place the cost of a by-election at approximately $840,000. The district is mindful that the costs of any trustee by-election would be funded entirely by the school district.\u201d<\/p>\n
On B.C. election night, Thind indicated that BC Conservative party officials \u201care looking for options if there is any legal way of not getting a by-election done\u201d for his vacated school trustee position.<\/p>\n
\u201cPeople will be very happy if there is no cost involved in getting a by-election done for one seat.\u2026 We don\u2019t want an additional cost to incur on taxpayers,\u201d said Thind, who entered the B.C. election race after he\u2019d signed up for re-election as a school trustee with the Surrey First Education slate, which included Tymoschuk.<\/p>\n
Thind, whose name remained on the civic election ballot despite him not wanting it there, ended up placing second among trustee candidates with 43,900 votes.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Surrey could soon have a school trustee by-election at $840K cost, if judge so rules Published 2:35 pm…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":951116,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[194299],"tags":[49,48,87674],"class_list":["post-951115","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-surrey","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-surrey"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/951115","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=951115"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/951115\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/951116"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=951115"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=951115"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=951115"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}