Voting

Voting on the Regional Board is more complicated than in a municipality where each councillor gets one vote on any one issue.

Sometimes, voting on the Regional Board follows that municipal council experience and is called an Unweighted Corporate Vote, where each director's vote is equal and each director is eligible to one vote.

Sometimes though, some Board members vote and others don't. Votes like these are more likely to occur for those areas participating in a sub-regional service and are called Stakeholder Votes. Stakeholder Votes would see only those Directors who participate in the service having a vote and that vote would be on a weighted basis unless otherwise specified in the service establishment bylaw.

Weighted Votes are based on a population unit (in the case of the RDCO, for every 5,500 people, an area is entitled to one vote).When a weighted vote applies to a Board decision, the Corporate Officer tabulates all of the votes assigned to each Director who votes in favour, then opposed to the motion on the floor. For most matters a simple majority one way or the other determines if the motion passes or fails however, on certain matters a two-thirds majority is required before a motion passes.

Other than Stakeholder matters, weighted votes typically apply to major financial issues, such as adoption of or amendments to the financial plan; acquiring, expropriating or disposing of real property, and authorizing borrowing and liabilities. These are called Weighted Corporate Votes.

Voting structure

Voting is based on the 2021 Canadian Census.

Westbank First Nation Councillor, Mike DeGuevara, is a non-voting Board member.