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.
Planning Meeting of City Council – September 13
The meeting started with a bit of good news not related to planning. Mayor Cam Guthrie reported that the City is close to a new deal with the employees of Guelph Transit who are part of ATU Local 1189. Staff are now in the process of finalizing the agreement and coming up with an execution plan.
After a quick vote on the consent agenda, council got down to hearing the first of three bylaw amendment proposals, all of them about townhouses.
On the first file, a plan for 96 townhouses and a new Beer Store on Woolwich, there wasn’t much controversy. Some on council expressed some concern about common amenity space and watching the treeline on the side of the property next to the cemetery. Opening up the property for more pedestrian access was also a consideration, as well as the flow for waste disposal trucks and other large vehicles. The report was received unanimously.
The second project was for 44 townhouses of varying size on a lot at the corner of Victoria and Cassino. One of the delegates expressed support for the project, but two others were concerned about increased traffic in the area, and increased street parking on Cassino. Council was also concerned about the lack of parking but received the report unanimously.
The third and final proposal had the virtue of being the most controversial, a plan to build a row of five townhouses on a Bristol Street property. A dozen delegates spoke out against the project, and their grievances were many. Some objected to the character and design of the development, others said it was too much density on the property, others were concerned about the potential toxicity of the land, and some were concerned about the fact this area is technically a flood plain. (A few also didn’t take kindly to the developer having 27 trees cut down before they filed their paperwork.)
There were many on council who took umbrage with the tree issue too, and though the developer didn’t technically do anything wrong, they wondered if this was a case of using the letter of the law to defeat the spirit of the law. Many on council also reached the conclusion that the project was probably too tall, too dense, and was unlikely to offer any real affordable housing options as promised. In his last word, Guthrie said that the developer has a problem with this one and should look to work with staff to make something more palatable before it comes back to council for a decision. The report was received unanimously.
The next meeting of city council is next Wednesday’s special meeting of city council about the draft Clair-Maltby plan. You can see the Politico preview here, and you have until this Friday at 10 am to register with the clerks office as a delegate or to send a correspondence.
For more information on Guelph City Council meetings, from agendas to live-tweets to recaps, you can visit that page on Guelph Politico here.
People’s Party candidates Josh Leier and Syl Carle greeted a crowd that tested the limits of COVID restrictions on the border between Guelph and Wellington-Halton Hills on Sunday.
Jodie Wilson-Raybould’s new book about her time in politics is likely to give Justin Trudeau some headaches, but it’s unlikely to turn any swing votes in what’s become a tight two-way race in the last week of the campaign.
REMINDER for tomorrow night:
Tickets have been issued and investigations are being conducted in relation to a "large, unofficial gathering" on the University of Guelph campus on the weekend. (Guelph Today reported that the party had between 500 and 750 students attending.)
Just one week into the school year, there have been 14 cases of COVID diagnosed in schools in Guelph and Wellington County across 11 different schools.
Although no changes to the budget are anticipated, and the project will be put out for tender soon, the City of Guelph is saying that it might be 2025 now before the South End Community Centre is complete.
A brief reprieve in the overall local COVID-19 trends is over. The 7-day moving rate of confirmed cases is back up five points to 34 per 100,000, while the test positivity rate has dipped slightly to 3.4 per cent. There were a whopping 72 new cases of the virus on over the weekend, which has sent the total number of active cases back up to 125 from 104 on Friday.
In terms of vaccine distribution, 85.6 per cent of people eligible people in the region have received one dose of a COVID vaccine, and 80.3 per cent are fully vaccinated. In Guelph, 91.3 per cent of eligible people now have one shot, and 85.8 per cent have gotten both.
It’s hard to divine the state of the pandemic in Ontario, but after flirting with 900 new daily cases over several days in the last few weeks, we were down to 784 on Sunday, and 600 on Monday. Nearly four out of five of those cases, 79 per cent, were in individuals who are not fully vaccinated or have an unknown vaccination status. As of Monday, 78 per cent of Ontarians have been fully vaccinated.
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In a move that shouldn’t surprise anyone, except maybe Mayor Cam Guthrie, the infrastructure installed along Gordon Street to keep the bike lane separate and protected from drive-thru traffic isn’t working.
At least four students at Western University were sexually assaulted last week in residence, and it’s forcing the university to take a very serious look to see if they’re doing everything they can to fight gender-based violence.
A series of protests by the vaccine hesitant and COVID conspiracy theorists took place outside Canadian hospitals on Monday. (Scuttlebutt says that Guelph and area hospitals were notably protest free.)
A gift from an anonymous donor worth $100,000 is going to make the Brent Barnes Memorial Skatepark in Arthur a reality.
Congrats to Helen Fishburn, the CEO of the Canadian Mental Health Waterloo Wellington, because she’s the recipient of the 2021 Champions of Mental Health: Community Individual Award!
Coming up this week on the Guelph Politicast, we will be joined by Alex Vander Vlugt from Ward One Studios. Vander Vlugt is in the process of completing a documentary about Guelph and area businesses, how they’ve managed to weather the pandemic and, in some cases, thrive. The film bows next week at a Chamber of Commerce event, and Vander Vlugt will take a break from post-production to talk about it.
Get the latest edition of the Guelph Politicast on Wednesday.
Also on Wednesday, tune in to CFRU at 3 pm for another episode of End Credits. This week, Peter Salmon co-hosts as we follow Nicolas Cage from the forests of Oregon to the trendy restaurants of Portland as he searches for his prize, Pig. We will talk about that movie, and we will talk about great movies about elections in honour of our real political drama next Monday.
Listen to all these shows any time by subscribing to the Guelph Politicast channel on your favourite podcast app at Apple Podcasts, Stitcher, Google Podcasts, and Spotify.
It was a day.
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!