Opponents can only mail it in

West Kelowna residents opposed to the city’s plan to borrow money for a new water treatment plant won’t be able to organize petitions against the project. The city is using an unusual mail-in only method to gain the necessary voter approval for the $23.5 million borrowing scheme.

“The process does not permit gathering of signatures as could be done in the alternate approval process,” city spokesman Jason Luciw wrote in an email.

Instead, the city will mail information packages on the project forms directly to the 8,246 property owners served by the Rose Valley water system.

The package will include a letter of opposition. Anyone who objects to the borrowing plan must fill out the letter and mail it back to the city.

The cumbersomely named Council Initiative — Subject to Petition Against process is allowed under the Community Charter. Two more common methods used by municipalities to seek required voter endorsement for significant borrowing plans are a referendum or alternate approval process.

Under the latter process, if 10 per cent of a municipality’s residents sign petitions against a proposal, it must either be abandoned or put to a referendum.

People who are passionately against a municipality’s proposal typically organize large-scale petition drives, collecting the names of as many like-minded residents as they can.

This was done in 2016, when 3,871 residents signed petitions against West Kelowna’s plans for a new City Hall, and the proposal was subsequently defeated at referendum.

However, under the process being used by the City of West Kelowna to seek approval for the water plant borrowing scheme, petitions with multiple signatures are not allowed.

Opponents can only send back the one petition they are to receive in the mail during an as-yet unspecified 30 day period, likely to extend through part of August and September.

Also, instead of 10 per cent of residents’ signatures being sufficient to at least temporarily stop a project, the process that will be used this time sets a much higher threshold for the project to be paused: 50 per cent.

As well, all those petitions that are received must come from people whose properties collectively total at least half of the assessed property values in the Rose Valley service area.

The city says the unusual process is being used because of COVID-19. The city says the proposed borrowing plan is in the best interest of residents.