Kelowna alternate approval process a sham?

Ron Seymour 2009-08-30 Kelowna Daily Courier:

If the aim of the alternate approval process is to get things approved, it works perfectly. But city councillors know that many Kelowna residents believe the AAP is a sneaky device that‘s used, in the words of Coun. Luke Stack, when the city wants to pull the wool over the eyes of voters. So there was broad support among councillors last week when Mayor Sharon Shepherd suggested staff prepare a report on other options that might one day be used to get voter approval for contentious projects.

Shepherd doesn‘t like the AAP because she says it promotes “negativity,” in that projects must be sent to referendum if they‘re opposed by at least 10 per cent of the city‘s 92,000 voters. But the reality is that the outcome of the AAP is always positive, at least from the city‘s perspective. Since 2001, AAP‘s have been used 36 times, and not once has there been anywhere near enough signatures on petitions to send the project in question to a referendum.In fact, in two-thirds of the cases, there wasn‘t a single signature returned on a petition. The projects that have attracted zero opposition range from various leasing arrangements at the airport, to a lease for a restaurateur at Guisachan House, to an agreement with private property owners covering the operation of the lagoons in Waterfront Park. The most controversial AAP was for the H2O pool and leisure facility at the Mission sportsfields. A total of 4,521 people were opposed to construction of the $45-million complex, but that was still several thousand short of the number of signatures that would have sent the project to a referendum.

Prior to 2004, the number of signatures required to trigger a referendum was five per cent of a community‘s eligible voters.The Liberal government raised that to 10 per cent, in large part because of concerns from elected representatives in smaller communities that it was too easy for opponents of various projects to gather signatures from five per cent of voters. Also in 2004, the government narrowed the scope of municipal initiatives that were subject to either a referendum or AAP. The AAP itself is a device of relatively recent vintage, dating back to the late 1990s, when it was introduced as the counter-petition process by the NDP government.