A petition opposing the recently passed amendments to Bylaw No. 24-14 was delivered to the Town of Strathmore on Friday (Aug. 30) by local resident Claude Brown.
The bylaw allows up to 20 per cent of Strathmore homes to build garage and garden suites on their property, which they could rent out to tenants. The bylaw was passed back in July following a Facebook survey that received 230 respondents. According to Brown, his main goal was to receive more signatures than respondents to the Facebook survey.
"We've got three times the number of signatures as they had on their survey, and that to me is just spectacular," said Brown, adding that their petition received a total of 627 signatures, with 49 other residents voicing their approval of the bylaw.
Brown received help from Carol Tees, a resident who was one of the first people to sign the petition.
"I wasn't aware of any of this and was surprised that I wasn't aware," said Tees. "I'm really not in favour of the high density in the residential areas. I didn't buy in a residential area to have it high density, and I've found a lot of people that I talked to feel the same way."
Brown voiced his opposition to the bylaw on the day it was passed and has stated that although the petition has ended, he intends to continue advocating against the bylaw.
"The conversation will continue. Next election, I will be going door-to-door and talking with people about this very issue, and hopefully, it becomes a campaign issue," said Brown. "They didn't run on it. They basically invented it before they ran, and they passed it just after a long weekend, and I think that was really unfair to the citizenship."
According to the Town of Strathmore, the status of a petition isn't confirmed until it is officially declared by the Chief Administrative Officer. Council will be receiving a report from the officer at a future meeting that will outline whether the petition is sufficient or not.
Despite this, Brown and Tees will continue to make updates on their opposition through a Facebook group they created about the petition. The outline of Bylaw No.24-14 is also available on the Town of Strathmore website.
