Guelph residents looking to influence city council decisions may soon be able to submit electronic petitions, but not the ones most often seen circulating on social media.
In a report to council’s committee of the whole on Oct. 4, city staff recommends changes to the procedural bylaw to allow “electronic format” petitions to be submitted, in addition to the traditional paper variety, provided they meet certain criteria.
Among those rules are that the person submitting a petition to council must be a resident, business owner or property owner within the city. The same goes for anyone who signs a petition prior to submission.
Also, petitions must be addressed to city council and request a particular action be taken. That requested action must fall under council’s legislated authority.
For electronic petitions, an email address must be provided in place of a supporter’s signature.
“Staff will do an initial review of each petition to ensure policy requirements have been met but are not recommending that signatures be validated due to the amount of staff time it would require and the lack of an accurate source of information to verify names and addresses against,” the report states.
Currently, only paper petitions are accepted for council’s consideration.
Petition websites such as change.org and ipetitions.com would not be accepted under the new policy, confirmed city clerk Stephen O’Brien.
“Many of the requirements of the policy would not be met,” the report states. “Petitions submitted in this manner may be included as correspondence on a city council agenda if the subject matter is related to an agenda item, which is how they have previously been handled by the city clerk’s office.”
The policy proposal follows direction from city council in March, when it was addressing other procedural bylaw amendments. A survey of residents at that time showed public support for electronic petitions, with 36 respondents (75 per cent) agreeing electronic petitions should be accepted and another eight (16.7 per cent) believing they should be accepted “under some circumstances.”
In addition to petition policy approval, city staff urge council to include the police in the governance review slated to begin next year and run through 2026.
Any decision made by the committee on Oct. 4 will move forward to a formal city council meeting later in the month for ratification.
