Victoria and Saanich council have agreed on the wording of a question on amalgamation for the fall’s municipal ballot in a meeting Tuesday evening.

The question will read like this:

“Are you in favour of spending [an amount to be determined] for establishing a Citizens’ Assembly to explore the costs, benefits and disadvantages of the amalgamation between the District of Saanich and the City of Victoria?”

“It’s to ask our residents to establish a citizens assembly to explore the cost benefits and disadvantages of amalgamation with some understanding of the cost,” said Saanich Mayor Richard Atwell. “Given that we’ve been talking about this for a hundred years and we haven’t had a referendum question since 1962, it’s about time we address it once more.”

Victoria’s mayor Lisa Helps said the next steps will be for staff to come up with a budget for the assembly and for both councils to approve the question in separate council meetings.

The question follows after a similar amalgamation was shot down between Duncan and North Cowichan on Saturday, June 24.

Preliminary results showed 68 per cent of Duncan voters were against the idea of amalgamating the two municipalities. North Cowichan had a 59 per cent pro-amalgamation vote.