Council Recap: Off the Rail Trails
G2G activists took over the standard shareholder meeting
In this Thursday edition of the Guelph Politico Tip Sheet, we go in-depth with the debates and decisions about this week’s city council meeting or meetings. Your regularly scheduled Tip Sheet will be in your inbox first thing Friday morning!
Shareholder Meeting of City Council – June 24, 2025
It was a trilogy of meetings on Tuesday starting with the June tradition of the two shareholder meetings, one for Guelph Municipal Holdings Inc. and one for Guelph Junction Railway.
The one for GMHI was pretty straightforward and focused on the increased investment into Alectra Utilities resulting from Guelph Hydro’s merger into the company in 2019, but among the good financial news was some information about Alectra’s need to invest in its future through capital improvements, a decade-long plan that will come with a price tag of more than $100 billion. Jane Armstrong, who represents Guelph on the Alectra board, said that it’s the hope that funding this infrastructure won’t all be on the back of the ratepayer, but it would be incorrect to say that there won’t be any impact all.
One of the things that Armstrong mentioned in her presentation was Alectra’s application for rate rebasing through the Ontario Energy Board, an application that will be submitted sometime later this year. What does that mean? A rate increase. One that could come into effect as early as January 1, 2027.
When asked about affordability concerns, Armstrong said that the Energy Board will take that into account when deciding on the new rate, but she noted that a survey of customers showed that they generally support the capital goals of Alectra, which includes accommodating new growth and the shift to new clean energy tech. Another possibility is that Alectra may offer shares to investors outside of the municipalities that presently make up the shareholders, but the downside there is that the value of the shares held by Guelph and others would be diluted.
The main event though was the shareholder meeting of Guelph Junction Railway. There was nothing controversial in the annual report, or the financial disclosures, but nearly a dozen community members signed up to delegate about GJR’s role in developing trail access in the city, especially when it comes to the Guelph portion of the Guelph-to-Goderick (G2G) Trail.
The various delegates made the business case that the G2G supports tourism and economic development, and that the present route to the trail up SIlvercreek Parkway North is radically unsafe for riders of all ages and skills. Many had motions that they wanted the shareholder to approve including a declaration to prioritize the G2G Trail, a commitment to work with community groups to make it happen, and to transfer the lands needed to complete the G2G with immediate effect.
Jayne Holes, one of Guelph’s DCAOs and the CEO of Guelph Junction Railway, said that despite the passion of the delegates, trail creation is not the priority of GJR, but rail safety and the movement of goods was. She also said that there are private landowners that need to be part of the discussion and took exception to the idea that there was any hold up to the project on GJR’s end saying that there’s no design for the trail right now, and no accounting of costs or the budget needed.
On the part of the shareholder, which is to say council, there were some follow-up questions around delegates concerns about how some unofficial trails are no longer accessible. City manager James Goodram, now the Chief Operations Officer of GJR, said that this was because of the appointment of a safety officer who noted some issues in places, and in an overly litigious society you can’t be too cautious. There was also some follow-up about the delegation from the one person who was not there to talk about the G2G, a man named Gregg Allan who had issue with the trains that go past his home on GJR tracks in Puslinch. As council probed all these issues, Mayor Cam Guthrie tried to crack the whip because the regular council meeting was supposed to start at 5:30.
Eventually, the shareholder did approve the annual report, and the slate of accompanying governance changes without offering any further assurances or compromises about the future of the G2G or other rail trail priorities.
Click here to see the complete recap of the meeting.
Regular Meeting of City Council – June 24, 2025
This meeting started about an hour later than it was supposed to and Mayor Cam Guthrie postponed the closed session to get right to the special guest. Like every June, Matt Betik from KMPG appeared to give council the lowdown on the audited financial statements, and the verdict was that this was a clean audit. Betik said that there were no corrections or uncorrected amounts, so council can be assured that staff are giving them good numbers throughout the rest of the year.
Teisha Colley-Balgrove, Senior Corporate Analyst, offered some commentary from the staff side noting that the City is in a net positive financial position, but there are some potential instabilities when it comes to contributions from the upper levels of government, and there was also an increase in arrears last year though much of that was due to the postal strike in the last quarter, plus Guelph has epically low levels of arrears in the first place. Still, there’s strong resiliency in Guelph’s financial structures, and council approved the completed audits.
Next, council needed to fill some vacancies left behind by Dominique O’Rourke’s ascension to Ottawa. Councillor Carly Klassen was elevated to the Infrastructure, Development and Environment Services chair of Committee of the Whole, which then required someone else to be appointed vice-chair, and Councillor Ken Yee Chew was nominated. Council opted to defer the other two appointments – one to the Board of Trustees of The Elliott, and one to the Well Interference Committee – until after the new councillor for Ward 6 is appointed next month.
Council then finally had that closed session to appoint three new members of The Elliott’s board.
Click here to see the complete recap of the meeting.
The next meeting of city council will be the Committee of the Whole meeting on Tuesday July 8 at 2 pm. The agenda should be posted to the City’s website later today.
For more information on Guelph City Council meetings, from agendas to live-tweets to recaps, you can visit that page on Guelph Politico here.
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