The Capital Regional District’s proposed Bylaw 4325 has been decisively defeated by Salt Spring electors via the alternate approval process.
Salt Spring CRD director Gary Holman told the Driftwood on Monday afternoon that CRD officials had already received more than the minimum required 910 elector response forms and hadn’t finished counting them yet.
“It is clear there is no consensus on the need for this service,” he said.
In order for a bylaw to be blocked by the alternate approval process, previously known as a counter-petition, a minimum of 10 per cent of eligible voters in the jurisdiction — or 910 on Salt Spring — must sign and submit elector response forms.
The bylaw would have established a community safety service, supported by Salt Spring property taxpayers to a level of $0.016 of $1,000 residential property value.
If fewer than 10 per cent of Salt Spring electors had submitted elector response forms by the Dec. 9 at 4 p.m. deadline, the bylaw would have been automatically enacted and the tax added to the 2020 requisition.
Holman said he is not planning to call for a referendum on the issue at this point.
For more on this story, see the Dec. 11 issue of the Driftwood.
I hope these AAPs are seriously re-examined as an incredibly insidious tool for adding projects to the tax requisition. This one was for a relatively small amount but it could have easily involved millions of dollars as we just saw in an AAP for $32,000,000 million that passed in Prince George! They are fundamentally unfair and should be characterized as not an ‘alternative’ but rather an Apathy Approval Process. Luckily Salt Springers have seen enough of this kind of mid-term taxation without a mandate, to have been pro-active in defeating this one.
Izzat so, that there “is no consensus on the need for this service,” according to Gary Holman? The unfortunately named petition against a very poorly thought out proposal does not exactly constitute a consensus, nor indeed did the proposal describe a service. The good news is that Santa is about to levy an humongous environmental tax on political messy speak.
A very big THANK YOU to Salt Spring Islander Gordon Lee for giving tirelessly of his time and energy in such a big and bold way to help bring about defeat of this hotly contested method becoming so commonly used to obtain taxation approval. While standing curbside in the centre of Ganges over the past number of days, Gordon provided much needed information along with ensuring ample supply of copies of AARP forms for Islanders to sign, a collection point for these forms as well as personally ensuring their delivery to the correct local CRD office Location.
Does the Driftwood know the actual strength of the number who managed to vote no? It would be interesting to report the actual number.
Hi Paul — The CRD is promising to provide the number of electoral response forms received by this Friday. We will post the number in a story on our website, Facebook and Twitter when we have that info.