Prince Rupert residents will have to make their views known directly to City Hall if they have any opposition towards a pair of Loans that the city is looking to move forward on and if they believe such loan requests should be subject to a full civic referendum process.
At Monday night's City Council session, the City councillors followed the lead of Mayor Lee Brain in voting to make use of the Alternate Approval Process when it comes to consulting the public on the need to borrow money for the City's Water Dam project and an expansion plan for the Ridley Island land fill site.
During their February 26th Council session, Council was advised by the CFO that the loan requirements would mean that they need debt financing of 10,000 dollars for the Dam, 10,000 dollars for the landfill site.
You can review the notes on the explanation of the loans process here.
From their review of Monday, the Council members chose the AAP option following a presentation from the City's Chief Financial Officer, with Ms. Corinne Bomben outlining the nature of the two options, their cost and the length of time required to deliver a verdict from each.
As she explained it, of the two options available towards public consultation, the AAP option takes less time and comes at a lesser cost to the community.
"A referendum requires a question to be voted on with a simple majority deciding. Voting eligibility is the same for voting at a municipal election with the cost associated for the referendum being similar at around 35,000 dollars, voting day needs to occur within eighty days of provincial approval of the bylaws.
The Alternate Approval Process requires a public notification of the intent to borrow funds and a time period for voting members of the community to state their opposition. The process takes six weeks from first public notification, if more than 10 percent of eligible voters state their opposition then the matter proceeds to a referendum. The cost of the Alternate Approval process is estimated at 7,000 dollars"-- City of Prince Rupert CFO Corinne Bomben, explaining the two options for consulting the public on two required infrastructure loans.
Following her review of the options, Mayor Brain outlined his preference that the Council make use of the Alternate Approval process, seeking the comment of Council towards that option.
Councillor Niesh led off the discussion in support for the AAP model, noting how the referendum option would most likely deliver low turnout and would be more costly than that of the AAP option, he also noted that anyone with opposition to the plans could use the AAP to force a referendum.
"I'm definitely in support of the Alternative Approval, I just feel that going through the process of having basically almost like an election, we find that turnouts at election are low already and I feel that turnouts at something like this would even be even lower. And I feel that its cost savings that we can save by doing it and if there is a group of people that are really against doing this, then they can make their campaign to get people to sign against doing it this way."
The Councillor also observed that they are both projects that need to be done.
"I feel that this is a lot more streamlined and we'll be able to move ahead on these projects a lot faster, which is basically going to save us money also. And these are projects that need to get done, whether if we do the alternate process and that fails, well then we're just having to go to a voting system anyways, so I think we should move forward with the Alternate Approval Process"
The Mayor added to the discussion by noting that thanks to the city's hard work, they would be able to cover the cost of the project payments through other resources than tax increases.
Observing as how it would be different question if the city would have to significantly raise taxes, a position that they are not in when it comes to these initiatives.
Ms. Bomben also noted that there will be no increases to water rates and that the loan payments for the water dam are anticipated to be paid through Watson Island leasing revenues, while the landfill loan to be covered by existing landfill fees with no increase anticipated there either.
Councillor Cunningham reinforced how the two loans would not impact on the city's taxpayers.
They were the only two council members to weigh in on the topic prior to the vote.
Council then delivered two motions, one for each Loan Authorization request, with both consultations to make use of the Alternate Approval Process.
You can review the discussion from the City's Video Archive page starting at the 44 minute mark.
Some of our notes on how the AAP option works and how it has been used in the past can be found from our preview to the Council work of Monday.
The City will be advertising the process ahead for residents in the local paper and hopefully through their website providing full details for the public and setting the deadline for that participation in the AAP option.
More notes related to Monday's City Council session can be explored from our Council Timeline.
Further notes on Council Discussion themes can be found from our Council Discussion archive.
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