Councillors are asking how the City can better execute AAP's if and when required in the future, including limits on forms available and better communication. (File photo/NanaimoNewsNOW)

By Alex Rawnsley

elector approval

‘It became such a lightning rod:’ Nanaimo Council seeking clearer rules around AAP use

Jun 13, 2024 | 4:15 PM

NANAIMO — Better internal rules around the execution of Alternative Approval Processes (AAP) are hoped to avoid a repeat of the last nine months for the City of Nanaimo.

Following two scrapped AAP’s to fund a sorely-needed upgrade to public works facilities, the City is trying to avoid a trifecta by creating policies around how the process is handled, what’s available to the public and how the City can meet provincially required timelines.

Those new procedures will be guided by Council direction, and a new 50-page report authored by consultant Lisa Zwarn, which looked at what happened during AAP’s attempted in the fall of 2023 and winter of 2024 to borrow upwards of $48.5 million for a new public works facility, known as the Nanaimo Operations Centre.

After closing the first process in November 2023, the City was challenged on its public notice by a local lawyer and opted to follow an initial legal opinion and nullify the results.

“In terms of what went wrong, staff doubted the strength of their processes when one resident applied pressure to the system,” Zwarn’s report stated. “This is not unusual since the standard is 100 per cent compliance with the legislation. Unfortunately, the legal opinion upon which staff relied has been changed upon further reflection.”

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An AAP is effectively the opposite of a referendum, where ballots received are meant to express opposition to a proposal by the City, usually linked to borrowing money.

Ten per cent of eligible electors, or just under 8,000 people in Nanaimo, are required to submit the relevant forms for the proposal to be stopped.

The first AAP in fall 2023 saw just 3,035 forms received, with numbers similar for the second AAP in early 2024 which was ultimately cancelled as a result of administrative errors discovered.

Failure to secure borrowing approval through the AAP has left the Nanaimo Operations Centre project in limbo and had councillors asking what the future of the AAP is in the city.

Coun. Ian Thorpe said during a Wednesday, June 12 governance and priorities committee meeting he supported further use where appropriate.

“The first AAP we ended up cancelling under an abundance of caution is how I would term it, but staff acted in good faith. We followed a recognized process. Other communities are following the same process as we speak, it’s commonly used. It’s not something that we dreamt up, it’s not a conspiracy theory to deceive people.”

To further cement keeping AAP’s as an option where appropriate, Council has asked staff for a policy outlining key points, including communication plans and the number of forms available to each person.

Under past AAP’s each resident has been allowed to collect up to 100 forms per day throughout the 30-plus day duration of the process.

Councillors ultimately opted for 10 forms per person throughout the AAP.

They also instructed staff not to consider mailing out ballot forms, along with electronic options for submissions citing financial and privacy concerns.

There were also cost considerations regarding the online submission of forms.

“We don’t recommend at this time a fully electronic form that you could fill out and do DocuSign,” said Sheila Gurrie, City director of Legislative Services. “Per DocuSign signature is $3 to $4 and we have no way limiting the amount of submissions one person could do, so for risk of abuse of that system it could become very costly.”

The policy itself will come back at a future governance and priorities committee meeting.

It’s hoped to dispel some misinformation and rhetoric and provide the City with more clear guidelines to better communicate to the public when being questioned on the process.

Multiple members of Council cited personal experience with those opposed to the AAP over recent months, along with recounting instances where City staff were verbally abused.

“It became such a lightning rod and staff were very unfairly treated by some members of the public on that,” Coun. Tyler Brown said. “I was present in the lobby for some of those interactions, just sitting in a chair and seeing them go down. I’ll be nice, but they were shameful and ridiculous.”

Mayor Leonard Krog echoed Brown’s comments in some interactions he’d been a part of with people opposed to AAP’s, but said the process was a necessary one.

He told the meeting Council is elected by the public to make these decisions, but the AAP provides a welcomed chance for further input.

“The Alternative Approval Process is basically a restriction or an opportunity for the citizens to express their concerns around a particular financial matter, and to be quite specific, around long-term borrowing for specific projects…otherwise we make those decisions.”

Councillors also directed staff to prepare a motion for the upcoming Union of B.C. Municipalities meeting around issues with the AAP process and asking the province to update or otherwise adjust its requirements.

Staff were also asked to prepare a letter to the province based on Zwarn’s report, asking it to address some of the recommendations which arose in it.

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