Horsham Rural Ratepayers and Residents created the petition which is addressed to Horsham Rural City Council chief executive Sunil Bhalla and all councillors.

"We, the undersigned community members of Horsham and Wimmera Southern Mallee, call on you to suspend all Transforming Horsham plans, effective immediately, until the acceptable level of community engagement, inclusion and transparency of processes in these and future plans by the council, has been resolved," the petition reads.

"Final drafts for all the Transforming Horsham plans must be provided to the community for further review and comment prior to any consideration by the council."

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The Transforming Horsham plans include the City to River masterplan, the Horsham Urban Transport Plan, the Open Space Strategy and the Horsham South Structure Plan.

The council received 740 public submissions to the draft City to River masterplan, which proposes changes to Horsham City Oval, the Wimmera River precinct and Horsham Showgrounds.

The group says it has "serious concerns about the possible impact of the Transforming Horsham potential projects in the city". These concerns are outlined in the petition as follows:

Horsham Rural Ratepayers and Residents president Di Bell said she expected the petition would receive a lot of support from residents.

"The passion in the community about what's going on will speak for itself and I think we'll be surprised about how many people will sign. We've had people in the community contact us and ask whether we would start a petition," she said.

"It's all about the unacceptable community engagement from the council which goes against its own engagement strategy. Their strategy says that council must engage with the community when required and when the community expects to be engaged."

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The group will hold a meeting with Horsham CBD business owners at Horsham's White Hart Hotel on Tuesday from 6pm.

"The meeting will be to inform the businesses of what we're doing and for them to express their concerns about how the plans will affect them," Mrs Bell said.

"It will be up to businesses to decide whether they want to have the petition at their business for people to sign. The business owners I've spoken to already have been very passionate."

The group is also considering creating community working groups for different sections of Horsham.

The petition will run for three weeks. It will be sent to Mr Bhalla and all Horsham councillors, and will also be sent to Ratepayers Victoria.

A petition against closing McBryde Street, Horsham gained more than 500 signatures last month.

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