Councillors vote to change petition policy

By Kristen Curtis, Special to B-cause

City staff is proposing a new policy for residents wishing to petition for sidewalks on their streets.

The proposed petition policy states that when a local resident requests the installation of a sidewalk, or the local ward councillor believes that a sidewalk being installed would be beneficial to the neighbourhood, a survey will be sent to the members of that neighbourhood who can then vote in favour or against the sidewalk.

In the past, local residents who wanted a sidewalk would find people in their area sided with them to sign the petition and neglect those who opposed installation.

Coun. John Sless believes the new policy is an improvement over the policy currently in place.
“It’s an inclusive process,” he said. “It forces everyone to respond and have a say.”

In the past, residents who opposed a sidewalk being built had limited power as they could refuse to sign the petition for the new sidewalk, but didn’t have an outlet to vote against it.

The new policy takes into account not only the property owner who owns the area where the sidewalk will be built, but also neighbours from nearby streets who would use that sidewalk to get to a nearby park or school.

Coun. Jennifer Kinneman said that she was pleased by the idea of the policy, but was concerned about survey response rates.

She attempted to amend the proposal by asking city staff to allow for three points of contact in the form of letters to residents in order to achieve a better response rate.

The first letter would inform residents of the upcoming survey; the second letter would be the actual survey and the third letter would be a reminder for residents to fill out the survey and send it in.

Coun. Sless agreed with Coun. Kinneman, but voiced his own concerns about the way votes would be counted.

The new policy states that surveys not returned would be counted as a “yes” vote for the installation of a new sidewalk.

Sless disagreed with the idea of a non-response counting as a “yes.”

“In this room, if somebody doesn’t hold their hand up on a vote, that’s a negative vote, and that’s standard,” he said. “But in this process, if you don’t vote, it becomes a positive vote.

“You’re saying to someone ‘We’re going to do this to you unless you tell us not to’ and that’s wrong. I think it should be reversed. I’m certainly not a fan of negative billing and that’s precisely what this is. It’s called a policy but it’s negative billing.”

Coun. Greg Martin agreed that it is dangerous to count a non-response as a “yes” vote.

“I’d rather see a change in the wording that a no-response will be listed is a no-response,” he said.

In a motion considered friendly, Coun. Vince Bucci moved to amend Coun. Kinneman’s amendment to state that a non-response would not be counted a “yes” or “no” vote, but would be noted and tallied as a non-response.

Council voted in favour of the revised amendment.