Eight councillors will face scrutiny next month when a city committee decides whether to take a closer look at their election expenses.

Sam Merulla, Chad Collins, Tom Jackson, Terry Whitehead, Doug Conley, Maria Pearson, Lloyd Ferguson and Robert Pasuta will face a potential audit when the committee meets in July.

Viv Saunders of Stoney Creek issued the complaints. Saunders has different concerns in each case.

Those concerns range from Collins's internet and phone costs to the amount Ferguson and Jackson allocated to voting day parties and volunteer appreciation.

Saunders said in an email that she isn't making the complaints lightly.

"This was an extremely difficult decision," she said.

"A lot of research has been conducted and a lot of discussions occurred with supportive confidants."

Saunders does community work through the Lakewood Beach Community Council, but says the complaints are unrelated to her other work.

Citizen complaints are the only way that election expenses are ever investigated. City staff take a brief look at the expense reports of municipal election candidates — including those in the October election — before they post them publicly. If complainants want to go farther than the citizen committee, they must do so at their own expense.

The committee already met this year to address a separate complaint into Conley's election expenses. Conley funded his own campaign of more than $17,000, but the spaces in his expense forms where he would list income were blank. The committee didn't recommend an audit.

Conley says he'll go through it again, but that it seems "frivolous."

"I'm not worried about it," he said. "I wasn't worried last time."

"That's life, I guess. I don't know."

The committee will deal with some of the applications when it meets on July 8, but will have to meet more than once to deliberate on all of them.