OLDS — The man who presented a petition calling on town council to delay any decision on the future of Olds Institute and O-NET until after the Oct. 18 municipal election is not surprised that a town official has ruled that petition to be invalid.
Grant Spence presented the petition during a July 26 public hearing called by council to obtain input on a plan to turn the assets of Olds Institute into a municipally–owned corporation.
Earlier, council asked BDO Canada to serve as a receiver for OI in order to make that consolidation happen. O-NET, the community-owned TV, internet and phone company, has operated under the umbrella of Olds Institute.
Council has concluded that creating the municipally-owned corporation is the best way for it to deal with a debt and a line of credit totaling $18 million. The loans were obtained by the town to help the Olds Connected Community bring fibre optic cable to households in town on behalf of O-NET.
Spence told council the petition had collected 473 signatures in two-and-a-half to three days.
Michael Merritt, the town’s chief administrative officer, told council that the petition is “not sufficient” on two grounds.
The first is that under legislation, the petition must contain the signatures of 10 per cent of the population. Olds’ population was 9,185 people as of the last census, so 10 per cent would be 918 people. And those 918 people must all be eligible voters in the community.
Merritt said only 438 signatures met that standard, thus the petition was “not sufficient” on that one ground alone.
Secondly, Merritt said “under the MGA (Municipal Government Act), the act requires that the petition for a new bylaw must be on a matter within the jurisdiction of the council, as per the MGA or another enactment.
“As of the time of the petition, the assets of Olds Institute are not under the jurisdiction of the town but under the jurisdiction of the court-appointed receiver and thus, the petition is deemed not to be sufficient.”
The Albertan contacted Spence for his reaction to the ruling.
“Oh I wasn’t surprised,” he said.
Spence said he knew the petition was not likely going to be deemed sufficient even when he presented it – he said as much at the time, actually.
“It was more of a statement to say that you know, in two-and-a-half, three days, we almost got almost 500 people signing up who were very opposed to how council has handled this whole affair,” he said.
"(We) hoped that it might have some bearing on the decision-making process and might even influence the receiver as to how he finishes his job – or not.”
Spence was asked if he thought councillors were inclined to take the advice of the petition, whether it was legal or not.
“I think they need to know there’s a lot of opposition out here and they’ve got to be a little more sensitive to – well – they made some poor decisions and so it’s being reflected in what the citizens said when they signed the petition,” he said.
Spence was asked where the issue goes from here.
He said that’s the end of things as far as the petition goes.
“As far as their decision-making process, we’ve done what we can do and we just have to wait and see,” he said.
But Spence added he suspects there may be “some other things going to be happening in a while.”
When asked if that statement refers to the upcoming election, Spence said, “yeah, I suppose there’s going to be some people out there who may think that they might run for council, based on the fact that this one wasn’t making some very good decisions.”
However, Spence said he doesn’t plan to run for town council himself.
“There may be some people out there (who do run for council), I don’t know,” he said. “I hope so.”
