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The general managers of the two largest irrigation districts in the province are heading to court after one of them failed to win a seat on the other’s board.

At issue are both the legality of the date the 2021 election was held on and the alleged solicitation of “mail-in” ballots that were produced on voting day with no list of voters.

This is no small matter since the irrigation districts have more customers than many B.C. cities, providing water for tens of thousands of residents.

“They’re big places,” Bob Hrasko, the general manager of Black Mountain Irrigation District, told iNFOnews.ca. “They need professional management and good policies and proactive policies that build trust.”

While he works for Black Mountain, which has 26,000 customers and serves 6,000 acres of farmland, Hrasko has a five-acre dairy and chicken farm in an area of the city called Ellison.

Its water comes from the Glenmore Ellison Improvement District, which serves 23,000 residents and more than 2,000 acres of farmland.

Hrasko has issues with the way farmers are billed for water in the district where he lives and other concerns about the way the Glenmore water utility is run.

Those concerns, along with the way Glenmore staff responded to them, were enough to entice him to run for election to the Glenmore board last year, with the full support of his own board.

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He was joined by Joe Petretta, an Ellison farmer with similar concerns. They ran against two incumbents, Lee-Ann Tiede and Horst Gram, for two of the five seats on the board. Elections are staggered so only part of the board is up for election each year.

Election day was April 28, 2021. The ballots were in two boxes. One held those cast that day along with ballots from the advance poll. The other contained so-called “mail-in” ballots.

“The mail-in ballots were counted first,” states a court document filed by Hrasko. “The mail-in ballot box was a black plastic bin that was brought by Kevin Burtch to where Ms. (Dawn) Williams was seated. At that point in time, there was no lid, no seal and no lock on the bin.”

Burtch was a poll clerk and Williams is the general manager of the Glenmore Ellison Improvement District who was serving as returning officer for the election.

That’s a role Hrasko has filled with Black Mountain on three or four occasions in the 18 years “off and on” that he served as general manager.

(He went off to do consulting work from 2015-18 at which time Williams filled the position. Hrasko said he was “pulled back” in when Williams left to work for Glenmore in 2018.)

Hrasko's court action is an appeal of the election, filed against Williams.

It wasn’t just that the ballot box was unlocked, according to Hrasko.

“The number of votes and the number of names crossed off on the voters list was not checked on election night and was not provided to the candidates,” Hrasko’s filing to the court says. He has still not seen the list of who cast those votes, although he’s been told Williams expects to produce it at the court hearing, scheduled for June 20.

“In the days leading up to the election, Ms. Williams and other GEID (Glenmore Ellison Improvement District) staff personally delivered mail-in ballots to constituents upon their request and, at times, waited for the constituent to fill in the mail-in ballot then took the ballot back to the GEID office,” the filing continued.

Williams, in an affidavit to the court, seems to refute that claim.

“Please also find attached as exhibit "C" to this affidavit two pictures I took of the still locked mail-in ballot box (the "Mail Ballot Box"),” her affidavit says. “These pictures more clearly show the locks on the Mail Ballot Box. I took these pictures on January 26, 2022.”

In other words, it appears her photos of the locked boxes were taken about nine months after voting day.

The votes cast that day and in an advance poll were counted together, with Hrasko and Petretta receiving in the neighbourhood of 180-190 votes each versus about 145 for each of the incumbents.

But those weren’t enough to turn the tide from the “mail-in” ballot count that came down heavily in favour of the incumbents.

Of the 163 mail-in ballots, two were disqualified. Of the rest, 141 went to Tiede and 142 to Gram. Hrasko and Petretta got 21 votes each from the mail-in ballot box so they lost the election.

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While, to the layperson, the fact that election officials allegedly went out and solicited votes then did not produce a voters’ list, seems to be the key to the case.

Hrasko, however, said his lawyer sees his challenge of the legality of the election itself as his strongest weapon.

He contends that Glenmore was not able to change the timing of the election even though it was in the midst of the COVID pandemic.

The Ministry of Municipal Affairs issued a ministerial order in September 2020 allowing irrigation districts to vary the timing of their elections because of COVID.

Hrasko contends that order applied only to those irrigation districts on a list attached to it. Williams, in her affidavit, says “I relied heavily on the guidance provided by the Ministry of Municipal Affairs and Housing” in interpreting that ministerial order.

Williams’ lawyer, Sean Pihl, told iNFOnews.ca that he could not comment on any of the allegations because they were still before the courts.

In the meantime, the two incumbents are going about their board business as if they were duly elected, Hrasko said.

His court case is an appeal of the election. He suspects, if he wins and forces another election, many board decisions made under the legal cloud may not be legitimate.

Before the case goes to court, this year’s election for the Glenmore board will be held. It’s for one position only.

“I would have run again but I’m in a court case,” Hrasko said. “Not with them. I’m not in a court case with Glenmore or the board, I’m in a court case with this returning officer.”

Despite the controversy, and despite Hrasko’s efforts for the Ministry to intervene, Glenmore has appointed Williams to, again, be the returning officer for this year’s election, which will be held May 19.

“It would not be wise for me to run because I have a court case against the returning officer, so if I get on the board, I have to step out of the room every time anything about that gets discussed,” Hrasko said.

Former Kelowna city councillor Graeme James is running against incumbent board chair Steven Bonn.

Hrasko says he has nothing against Bonn or any of the trustees but feels the Glenmore Ellison Improvement District needs to be more responsive to members’ concerns, more available to the public and to take a look at how some of its water use is billed for.

He doesn’t expect the voting public in Glenmore to jump into the fray.

“Public apathy on this issue is why it may continue,” Hrasko said. “But, when you look at the integrity of your election procedures and how critical and how important it is that that’s bulletproof, that to me is your whole foundation for democracy.”

What he can’t really understand is why the election was run the way it was in the first place.

“She (Williams) knew I was running,” Hrasko said. “She knew I would be watching closely. You would think they would have done extra to make sure they had a bulletproof, tight election.”

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