Municipal petition activists say process flawed, even when it works

By Devan C. Tasa

When the City of Kamloops wanted to borrow $8 million to build a parking structure in downtown Riverside Park, a group of 12 people got together to stop it from happening.

“We came together and we came up with Friends of Riverside,” said Bob Gamble, who became the spokesperson for the organization. “We had to have some way to identify ourselves.”

The Friends of Riverside then decided that the best way to stop the city from constructing the parkade was to take advantage of the Alternative Approval Process, which allows citizens to prevent municipalities from borrowing money to fund capital projects.

When a municipality borrows for a project, it is required under provincial law to gauge public opinion. At one time, referenda were required to approve long-term debt. Today, however, B.C. municipalities are allowed to forego referenda in favour of what's known as the Alternative Approval Process. Under this system, if more than 10 per cent of a municipality’s eligible voters signs an official counter-petition within 30 days, the municipality must either cancel the project or hold a referendum. If no petition is circulated or too few signatures are collected, the project can go ahead.

It sounds like it empowers citizens, but even those who have used it successfully say the Alternative Approval Process is seriously flawed because it favours municipal governments.

The Alternative Approval Process was created in 2003 with the passage of the Community Charter, says Don Sutherland from the B.C. Ministry of Community, Sport, and Cultural Development.

According to the Minstry of Community, Sport, and Cultural Development, if the municipality chooses the Alternative Approval Process to get approval to borrow, it must publish two notices in a local newspaper two weeks apart.

The notices must, according to the ministry, include a description of the municipality’s proposal, state that counter-petitions are available at the municipality’s offices and declare that if more than 10 per cent of the voters sign a counter-petition in a period of 30 days, the municipality must either go to a referendum or drop the proposal.

“[The Friends of Riverside] had one goal: to have a successful counter-petition,” said Gamble.

In the end, they managed to gather 9,417 signatures, well above the 6,533 required. The project was dead.

The success of the Kamloops group was unusual.
                                                                                                                     
“There were around 200 instances [since 2008] where the local governments had to use the Alternative Approval Process,” said Sutherland. “Out of those instances, there were 160 of those situations where they did not get more than 10 per cent of the electors opposed to the initiative.”

Despite their victory, the Friends of Riverside expressed concern about the Alternative Approval Process, concerns repeated by other people in other places who have tried to use the system.

“I think at the end of the day you just want to walk away with the sense that it was fair,” Gamble said. “We would have not walked away with that feeling of fairness [if the Friends of Riverside had lost]”.

One concern was getting access to the counter-petitions. The legislation only requires that counter-petitions are made available at village, town and city halls.

“If I want to get a counter-petition, I have to go to the fifth floor of  [Prince George] City Hall,” said Eric Allen, an activist who organized a campaign to gather signatures to stop Prince George from borrowing money for a new RCMP detachment. 

Allen said the legislation should be changed to require that blank counter-petitions are available at all civic buildings to make it easier for citizens to get them.

Gamble expressed similar concerns about availability, but said the problem he faced in Kamloops was not caused by the legislation, but erratic implementation by Kamloops City Council.

“There was no reason in God’s green earth why that petition could not have been at the Tournament Capital Centre" (a large city-owned recreation and fitness centre), Gamble said. “The excuse given was to do with staff safety, which I could never fully understand and yet we had the petition in businesses.”

The Kamloops counter-petition was also available online, but Gamble said it was hard to find because it was described as an Alternative Approval Process instead of as a counter-petition.

Another concern was the 30-day period allowed to gather signatures.

“In the case of the parkade, the good thing was you knew well in advance what was happening, (because of extensive media coverage)” said Gamble. “But if a municipality sprung that on you yesterday, and you suddenly caught wind of what was happening and had to start organizing, 30 days would never do it.”

Allen agreed the time allowed was too short.

 “They always give you the minimum 30 days. They never give you 40 days or 50 days," said Allen. "They give you the bare bloody minimum, and that 30 days includes weekends and holidays.”

Lisa Zwarn, an instructor at the local government administration program at Capilano University, said 30 days was fair, but noted municipalities can manipulate timing.

“Being slightly Machiavellian, [a municipality could] do it in July and August where you don’t have as many people around versus doing it in September or January where you’d certainly capture more peoples’ attention,” Zwarn said.

Allen said that the Alternative Approval Process should only be applied to borrowing smaller amounts of money.

“On the big ticket items, what we need is to go to referendum,” said Allen.

Not everybody shares the activists’ concerns about the Alternative Approval Process.

“The Alternative Approval Process works,” said Prince George council member Murry Krause.

Krause said the process benefits taxpayers because it allows municipalities to avoid having costly referenda in which participation would likely be low anyway while still allowing citizens to have a say.

Zwarn says that the Alternative Approval Process is a good mechanism to measure citizen’s approval of a project, especially between election years when referenda are harder and more costly to organize.

“If the local government body has a good sense on how [a project is] going to be reacted to in the community, it’s a good way of going about it,” said Zwarn.

However, Zwarn says that sometimes the Alternative Approval Process might not be the best approach.

“If the project is not well understood, if the need has not been clearly articulated to the community, you may get a very strong reaction in the community saying ‘what are you trying to do behind our backs?’” said Zwarn.

Krause agrees that contentious projects that generate immediate feedback require a different approach.

“I think if it is really controversial, we have a responsibility to go to referendum,” Krause said.

According to Sutherland, before 2003, what would become the Alternative Approval Process existed under a different name (the counter-petition process) and enabled citizens to oppose the implementation of services within sections of a town or city. When the Community Charter was created in 2003 the method was given its current name and expanded so it could be used to allow voters to approve long-term debt for projects.

Explaining why the change was made, Sutherland said "it was a request from local government themselves. They had been complaining that to hold a referendum is time-consuming and can be expensive.”

In 2007, says Sutherland, the number of voters required under the Alternative Approval Process to force a municipality to either go to a referendum or cancel their plans was dropped from 15 per cent to 10 per cent of voters.