Borrowing Opponent Urges Public Involvement
Sunday, March 18, 2012 @ 5:17 AM
Prince George, B.C. – The Prince George taxpayer spearheading the drive to stop the City from borrowing $3.5-million for a dike on River Road says public awareness and public involvement are the keys to the effort being successful.
Eric Allen says he’s feeling “fairly good” about the effort to get people involved in filing the Elector Response Forms required under the Alternate Approval Process invoked by council to halt the borrowing. 10 percent of the 53,511 eligible electors in the city must fill out the forms and return them to city hall to initially stop the borrowing. If that is attained, the matter would then go to referendum.
Allen says the first official notice of the AAP was published last week and will be again next week. Eligible electors then have until Tuesday, April 24th to return their signed forms to city hall. That can be done in person or by email.
Allen says people opposed to the borrowing need first of all to inform themselves and make the effort to get the Response form, fill it out and return it to City Hall. He also says we need to talk about the issue, adding that comments of Councilor Brian Skakun published Saturday on Opinion 250 are very helpful in putting the matter out in the forefront. Allen says “if we get more and more momentum, and more people talking about it, we will gather more support.” He is encouraging neighbourhoods to co-ordinate their efforts and work the neighbourhoods, selecting block captains to make sure people get their forms and get them in to City Hall. He says he is not conducting a door-to-door push just yet because people will sit on their hands and just wait for you to come.
Allen will start sending emails to individuals and businesses tomorrow, asking them to do what they can and advising them how to get the forms and return them. He says if there’s one thing we learned from the HST battle, it’s that it can be done if you get involved.
Allen says “we can’t go on borrowing for projects. We have debt servicing costs of $11-million this year and that will hit $15-million by 2015. It’s going up every year.”
Allen asks “why are we required to do the job our elected officials are supposed to be doing.” But he says we are and “we’ll take the fight as far as we can.”
Comments
Very important – You need to send in the 2 pages.
Just one question: Who is in charge of accepting the petition forms, safe guarding them and counting the votes impartially?
Has a legal firm been engaged to handle all this?
I’m not making any unfair suggestions but with the robocalls and all – one has a reason to become more suspicious every day.
Walter Babicz, Manager of Legislative Services, (or his staff) is the person responsible for receiving the signed petitions. He will, when the process is over, count the petitions and make a report to the Mayor and Council.
At this point that is how the system works. We just have to trust the system until we can get something better.
Seems to me that the numbers reported in the past were fairly accurate. I think that Babicz will do a good job. He was the one that came up with the recommendations to allow for emailing, and faxing, the form to City Hall, and also revised the petition form to make it somewhat more readable.
Lets hope for the best on this one.
PrinceGeorge is right. Walter may be an upstanding employee of Prince George City and I’m not suggesting otherwise but it is the ‘perception’ of a conflict of interest that most ethics committees are concerned with.
A law firm and one not connected to the city would be a very good choice for collecting and holding ballots. Why not Elections B.C. or Elections Canada?
A P.G.City employee is too directly connected to the issue at question. Its sort of like a hen giving her chicks to a fox for safekeeping until she can come and collect them.
Another troubling aspect is that the city is saying you must return not only the response form but also the second page of information about the issue. That, they say, is to make sure you have read about what you are voting against. Does that mean that if you don’t return that second page as well that your vote aginst the borrowing will be ruled invalid? Who is making that decision? And then who is to say how many Page 2s were or were not returned. Too many things about this process are leading to questions and concerns. As you say, it should be handled by a totally removed third party…the counting and the reporting.
I have no reason to not trust Mr. Babicz, but I believe it would be in everybody’s interest (including his) to have this entire matter handled by a neutral agency, such as an independent law firm.
It’s too important an issue to the taxpayers of the city.
I trust Wally but not the people who signs his cheques.
How does sending in page 2 show a person has read page 2? It only means page 2 has been printed. Not including page 2 and having a vote nullified is a bit of a stretch and could be grounds for legal action.
Realistically it should have been a mailer just like the HST referendum.
Having to include page 2 is something I could see gang green coming up with.
Resident, how would you know if your vote or others had been nullified or rejected and for what reasons?
All this could make a difference especially if the number of votes is very close or just over the threshold.
How does emailing the form include a person’s signature. Also if I email on behalf of someone do I just include their name???
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