In a second part from the story we brought you last week, a petition that had collected close to 200 signatures in the village of Elbow regarding the community's plans surrounding a brand-new multipurpose centre was found to be insufficient.
In a notice that was posted publicly last week, the Village explains how the petition was officially rejected and maps out its next planning stages when it comes to the future facility in the community.
The notice reads:
"On April 19, 2021, Kim Trew filed a Petition for Referendum with the Village of Elbow鈥檚 Acting Administrator.
Acting Administrator, Andrea Mundreon then consulted with our Legal Counsel, Brownlee LLP, to review the petition for further insight and legality purposes.
Andrea Mundreon, Acting Administrator for the Village of Elbow, finds that the Petition is not sufficient to meet the requirements of The Municipalities Act.聽 鈥淭he Petition does not set out the subject matter of the Petition with reasonable clarity and certainty.聽 As a result, it is not possible to draft a resolution or bylaw based on the purpose statement of the Petition without Council having to make assumptions and fill in the gaps in order to put a question to voters that 鈥渁ccords鈥� with the Petition.鈥�
Council is committed to a continuance of sharing information and hosting public meetings related to the Line 19 Regional Multiplex project as the information is received and becomes public information.聽 聽The public meetings will provide Ratepayers an opportunity to directly receive the up-to-date information, express concerns, bring forward questions, discuss our options with our existing buildings, make changes when possible and make informed decisions.聽
Our preliminary outline for such is as follows:
- June 30th - Deadline for Request For Proposal (RFP) Responses
- June 30th 鈥� July 31st - Work with the Line 19 Regional Multiplex Committee to decipher all RFP information. Develop a budget and a long-term financial plan.聽
- July 31st 鈥� August 15th 鈥� Host Public Meetings and answer frequently asked questions to further inform the Village of Elbow Ratepayers and the Line 19 Community of all the up-to-date information received, release the budget numbers and long-term financial plan based on the information received in the RFP Responses."
A contact from within the petitioning group who reached out to this reporter says the group was always aware there could likely be a legal way out, but they had hoped that with the number of signatures collected that morally they should've proceeded with a vote.聽 The group says that they will meet and see where things go from there.
