A petition by Kneehill County ratepayers to have Alberta Municipal Affairs to inspect county operations has garnered the required amount of signatures this week.
As of Monday the petition had over 1,100 signatures after a series of open houses and grassroots efforts by a group of county residents who raised concerns over how county council and administration handled a number of projects, including the budget for the Churchill Water Service Area Project, the county’s rural fire strategy, and the hiring of county peace officers.
“We’re really proud of what we’ve done,” says organizer Paul Devos. “We don’t know what the petition will yield, but our only goal was to make sure the people were being heard and that decisions in this county were using input from the residents and transparency.”
“The grassroots awareness we’ve started is not going away.”
“We have no issue with it,” says Kneehill County Reeve Jerry Wittstock. “We’re confident we’ve done everything according to legislation and the Municipal Government Act,” he says. Once the petition is submitted Alberta Municipal Affairs will have 45 days to assess whether the signatures on the petition are valid, then it will be at the minister’s discretion to decide what the next step will be.
