It’s taken several weeks but the results of a municipal petition on a proposal to change the Corporation of Delta’s official name to the City of Delta has finally been made public.
According to a report made public Thursday, the number of electors in the municipality is estimated to be 69,928. The number of elector response forms required to prevent the reclassification is 10 per cent, or 6,993. The total number of response forms submitted and verified was 1,506, just over two per cent. As far as those who registered their opposition, 1450 forms came from South Delta while just 56 came from North Delta.
Council will discuss the report Monday and the next steps to change the municipality’s title to the City of Delta.
Council earlier this year gave the go-ahead to begin the legislative process to change the municipality's classification.
Delta was established in 1879 as a district municipality and given its current title as the Corporation of Delta, based on the community's population density and geographic size at the time.
Since then, other municipalities have changed their titles, calling themselves cities or townships, while Delta's title remained unchanged. It's now the only municipal jurisdiction in the province calling itself a corporation.
An earlier report to council notes that a civic delegation to Rotterdam, Netherlands, highlighted the challenge of having "corporation" in Delta's official name as officials there mistakenly assumed a Corporation of Delta was a private business.
The municipality advertised the proposed name change and had forms available at civic facilities that residents could sign if they were opposed. The electoral response forms had to be submitted by March 31. Ten per cent of the electorate could have stopped the change in what's called an alternative approval process.
More on this story next week.
