Welcome to the Guelph Politico Tip Sheet, a thrice-a-week newsletter meant to “tip” you off about some of the important stuff going on in the Royal City. It arrives directly in your inbox on Tuesday, Thursday, and Saturday mornings.
A report in the Guelph Mercury Tribune reveals that 1-in-5 residential properties bought in 2020 are not being occupied by the person that bought it. The properties were flipped for rentals, are being used as second homes, or are sitting unoccupied.
Guelph MPP Mike Schreiner continued his push to challenge the Provincial government on sprawl and the housing crisis, and he was backed up by two councillors from Halton Region.
The Guelph General Hospital declared its second COVID-19 outbreak in less than a week on Tuesday.
A three-judge panel has ruled that the City of Guelph was “unreasonable” when it pulled three Guelph & Area Right for Life advertisements in 2019 and 2020 over accuracy issues.
On Tuesday afternoon, a pedestrian was killed while crossing the street at Clair Road East and Beaver Meadow Drive, and another pedestrian was injured.
Let’s preface these updates with a general word that the official numbers released do not represent the true number of COVID-19 cases, which are likely higher due to limited testing.
The new case count in our region on Wednesday was 92, and the number of recovered cases was 138. The confirmed number of active cases around the entire region is now just 770, but the long-term trends still tell a different story. The 7-day moving rate of confirmed cases is pretty high at 222.8 per 100,000 and the test positivity is 21.5 per cent. There was also an additional COVID fatality in the region on Tuesday, bringing the number of COVID deaths since the start of the pandemic up to 136.
So how are vaccines looking? As of Wednesday, now 89.3 per cent of people in Wellington, Dufferin, and Guelph aged 5 and over have received one shot of a COVID-19 vaccine, 84.3 per cent have gotten two shots, and 46.9 per cent have received the full three-dose course. In Guelph alone, 86.4 per cent of people aged 5 and over have gotten two shots, while 59.1 per cent of people 18+ have gotten boosters.
Across Ontario on Wednesday there were 5,368 new COVID-19 cases, which is up from just under 3,500 new cases on Tuesday. While those numbers resemble good news, there were another 89 deaths from the virus on Wednesday, which brings the number of COVID deaths in Ontario up to 11,160. The number of COVID cases in hospitals is now just over 4,000, which is down by 100 cases from yesterday, but that’s also a higher number of people in hospitals than there were a couple of days ago.
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The future is here: The flying car is airworthy!
Latest update on school absences: Only Ottawa Crescent and Ross in Guelph were above the 30 per cent absentee rate threshold on Wednesday.
No charges were filed by the Special Investigations Unit against a Guelph Police officer in connection to a 2017 incident where a woman claimed that she received a concussion while in custody.
An open letter is making the rounds on social media suggesting that Monday is too soon to re-open the University of Guelph for in-person learning.
The City of Guelph is getting $1.75 million from the Government of Ontario’s $45 million Streamline Development Approval Fund to find efficiencies in the planning processes that was announced last week.
Guelph-Wellington Women in Crisis was among the recipients of provincial funding to support frontline agencies in rural areas assisting the survivors of human trafficking and sexual violence.
Speaking of which, the Upper Grand School Board heard about the implementation of anti-trafficking training for students and teachers at Monday’s meeting.
Ryan Kahro has been acclaimed as the Green Party of Ontario candidate for Wellington-Halton Hills.
As many as 93 graves may have been found near site of the old St. Joseph's Mission Residential School which was previously made infamous as the school that took away Phyllis Webstad’s favourite orange shirt that now represents the movement for Indigenous rights.
Culture Wars Day #10,654: A Tennessee school board has banned Art Spiegelman's Pulitzer Prize winning graphic novel Maus, which casts the Holocaust as literally a game of cat and mouse, because it has a couple of swears and mouse nudity.
This week on Open Sources Guelph, Scotty Hertz and I will talk about the growing international tensions around Russia’s provocation on the Ukrainian border, and the growing humanitarian crisis in Afghanistan. For the interview this week, we will look close to home and talk to Ward 2 city councillor Rodrigo Goller about this past month at city council, and what’s coming up the rest of the year.
Tune in to Open Sources Guelph later today at 5 pm on CFRU 93.3 fm!
Listen to Open Sources Guelph, as well as the Guelph Politicast and End Credits, any time by subscribing to the Guelph Politicast channel on your favourite podcast app at Apple, Stitcher, Google, and Spotify.
REMINDER #1: You have until this Friday at 10 am to register with the clerks office as a delegate or to send a correspondence for Monday’s regular meeting of city council. You can see the Politico preview here.
REMINDER #2: The City of Guelph is collecting feedback for the York Road and Elizabeth Street neighbourhood urban design concept plans until February 4.
Applications are now open for this year’s in-person, 20th anniversary Art on the Street event.
Speaking of art, PIN is running an art contest! The theme is community, and the winning art will be used for PIN’s 2022 Volunteer Awards.
It was a good year for Guelph Wellington Crime Stopppers with 13 solved cases, which is up from eight in 2020. The achievement was unlocked even though the total number of tips was down 15 per cent year-over-year.
The City of Guelph is looking to hire some spare (substitute) crossing guards.
In terms of new road construction, a portion of Imperial Road North near Woodlawn is closed until at least of the end week as Enbridge Gas upgrades their infrastructure. Starting on Monday January 31, there will be short term lane reductions on several streets in the south end for one week as crews flush and inspect wastewater and stormwater mains.
#NoInterviews
And finally, feel free to reach out to me by email at adamadonaldson [at] gmail [dot] com, or find me on Facebook, Twitter, and, of course, GuelphPolitico.ca!