Saturday, June 14, 2008

Crowsnest Centre Petition, What's happening?

Received a number of calls about the Crowsnest Centre Petition.
Questions I'm being asked!
When will council know the status of the petition?
We has council do not have the answers yet, the petition was presented to the CAO several weeks ago, according to the MGA he has 30 days to get back to council on the validity of the petition.
When will that be? Council is usually the first and third Tuesday of the month, for the month of June the second council meeting was rescheduled to June 24th.
What is required for the petition to be valid?
Putting it in layman terms;
According to Section 223 (2) (a) of the MGA 10% of the Population must sign, based on the last census we had 5756 people which means 576 signatures.
What constitutes a petition? Section 224 (1) one or more pages each of which must contain an identical statement of the purpose of the petition.
What is a valid petitioner? Section 224 (2) (a-d) must contain printed surname and given name, the petitioners signature, street address of the petitioner or the legal description of the land on which the petitioner lives, and the date on which the petitioner signs the petition.
What else is required? Section 224 (3) (a-b) Each signature must be witnessed by an adult person who must sign opposite the signature of the petitioner, and take an affidavit that the signatures witnessed are those of the persons entitled to sign the petition.
Is there enough signatures on the petition? We don't know yet, but if you read the local media a person is led to believe that there are 700 signatures on the petition.
Are there enough valid signatures on the petition? If the 700 signature number is real I would have a tough time believing that they are not valid, I would suspect that the organizers of the petition went over it with a fine tooth comb before they handed it in.
What if there is enough valid signatures? Then my understanding is that we have to hold a plebiscite within 90 days, of the petition being presented to council.
Do you believe that everybody that signed the petition supports the Centre? No I don't but I'm sure some people would disagree with me.

These are all the questions I have been asked so far, I hope the above is informative, if you have any comments or further questions, please place them on here, or email me at deanward4@msn.com

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