The city of Estevan is looking at a petition that could bring forward a referendum on the Downtown Revitalization Project.

That petition was delivered to the council during the council meeting on Monday, with Concerned Citizens Estevan laying out their problems with the project.

One of those was a lack of information, which Mayor Roy Ludwig says the city has taken to heart.

"As we have talked about so much in the past, we have these open houses, two people show up, you know, and then I know you guys do a good job on the radio and the paper of covering with this project. But unfortunately, and we heard it tonight, quite a few people just simply do not use those mediums, which I guess me being an old guy, I'm starting to realize that maybe we have to and we discussed that tonight going with the water bills, putting it in there as a way to try to get in touch with our citizenry."

The referendum would potentially interfere with contracts with the companies working on the project.

"We will have to talk to our legal, because we've been working on this project for 2 1/2 years and as was mentioned last fall in the budget, we were waiting patiently for the federal money. Now that this federal money finally came," said Ludwig, "Now everything is falling into place and as you know, we've already taken the trees down."

"We are already contractually connected with ASL Paving and also with our engineering group, Associated Engineering. So you know these contracts are in place, so there's certain liabilities of course in trying to break these contracts and that will be a council decision after talking to legal."

That process will include looking at the petition to see if a referendum will happen.

"First off, we have to have a look at the petition when it comes forward. Then we have to check it out for validity. Then we have to go through the council and our legal and make some decisions. Because right now we're on the hook contractually with the paving, with the engineering group. These are all very serious issues because we have been working on this project for over 2 years."

Ludwig says those groups would also use local contractors for their work, potentially causing more issues locally. He noted that waiting until after a referendum may not be an option as the city is working on a tight timeline.

"It's going to have to be done between now and fall, so we simply cannot dilly dally and we have to do the trees when we did the trees because if we have birds nesting then we cannot do the trees till the following year. Then the whole project would have been kicked out because come next spring, the grant money would have been pulled."

Ludwig says that the council will be taking a full look at the petition and making a decision in the future.

"We're going to have a look at this petition when it comes, we have 30 days to check it out. We'll do due diligence once again, with our legal, and then at the end of the day, council will have a decision to make and I fully respect the fact, that whatever that decision is, we will move forward on that basis."

Ludwig says that work will still continue on the project with ASL Paving and Associated Engineering.