Remember, Remember the Fifth of November...
The Fourth of November, on the other hand, some might want to forget.
Welcome to the Guelph Politico Tip Sheet, a twice-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 Tuesdays and Fridays.
A small group of people came out on a cold and dreary Saturday to say that whatever the City is doing to battle homelessness and poverty is not enough. During the speeches, there were calls for more programs to deal with addiction and mental health, getting a more accessible shelter system going, and creating less stigma and more understanding. Read the article and watch the video here.
Mike Schreiner marked over a year as a Member of Provincial Parliament and announced a new strategy for creating more Affordable Housing in Ontario at the Green Party of Ontario convention this past weekend.
At Committee of the Whole last night, councillors announced that there will be so many town halls coming up over the next couple of weeks you won’t know what to do. The full list is below in “Save the Date.”
Also in the News…
Elizabeth May announced Monday that she has stepped down as leader of the Green Party of Canada, but she’ll be sticking around the House to help keep the new Liberal minority government honest.
The Ontario government announced that wildfire season is officially over! (Too bad California can’t say the same.)
The Elementary Teachers' Federation of Ontario (ETFO) announced Monday that they’ve filed a “no-board” report in their negotiations with the Ontario government, which starts a 17-day countdown to job action like a strike. The news comes on the same day that the Province’s new cell phone ban in classrooms goes into effect.
In old education strike news, 79 per cent of the CUPE membership ratified the 11th hour deal they reached with the Province last month.
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A surprising article that combined the resources of 10 media organization, including the Associated Press, discovered that 11 cities across Canada tested positive for lead amounts in tap water higher than the national safety guideline of 5 parts per billion, 33 per cent of the time. That’s higher than some of the lead levels found in Flint, MI, during their drinking water crisis there in 2015. The study ran 12,000 tests in the 11 cities, including Montreal and Regina, since 2014.
An article on Policy Options notes that while it’s true that female politicians at the local level are making gains, we’re still no where near gender parity around the city councils of the nation. Analysis shows that only 19.4 per cent of Canada’s 3,525 mayors are women, and that the municipalities with the highest proportion of female mayors typically have between 10,000 and 50,000 residents. Looks like there’s still a lot of work to do…
The Ontario Provincial Police are looking for information about a video posted on @6ixbuzztv depicting a car doing “donuts” in the middle of Highway 409 in the area of Carlingview Drive, near Pearson Airport. It’s unknown when the video was made, but the driver could face a number of charges including dangerous driving and mischief.
November 4 – Committee of the Whole.
PS-2019-23 Allocation of New Buses – Guelph Transit GM Robin Gerus and Deputy CAO Collen Clark revealed the plan for the five new buses approved in last year’s budget, but Committee’s discussion focused on how the new routes will impact the City’s Revenue/Cost (R/C) ratio of covering between 40 and 45 per cent of Transit’s budget with revenue.
Primarily, this came in the form of an objection from Ward 1 Councillors Dan Gibson and Bob Bell about the need for a new bus route to specifically handle service to the Hanlon Creek Business Park, when they could just change the #16 Southgate route to cross the Hanlon and access the area.
Gibson, Bell and Councillor Christine Billings voted against the second recommendation on the basis that the projected ridership of the new HCBP route didn’t justify the expense even after both Clack and Gerus explained that it takes time to build ridership and that the R/C ratio must take the whole system into consideration and not just one route.
PS-2019-24 Harm Reduction Housing Update – Adrienne Crowder, the manager of the Wellington-Guelph Drug Strategy, delegated on the work that’s been done to date on the creation of new harm reduction housing. The business plan will see the creation of 10 units for $50,000 a piece, which could end up costing $600,000 in total if the units are built on City-owned land.
Councillor Rodrigo Goller tried again to pass a motion to have staff come back to the January 2020 Committee meeting with a plan for options to build the housing at 106 Beaumont. Gibson, like he did at the October 21 meeting, raised objections asking why this didn’t come to his committee, the Infrastructure, Development and Enterprise committee, and then repeated his concerns about making people think it was a done deal to build this housing at the Beaumont site.
In the midst of an increasingly rancorous debate, Mayor Cam Guthrie asked Chair June Hofland to call the vote. The motion was passed 12-1 with Gibson voting against.
CS-2019-19 Transparency and Removal of Barriers Related to Non-Council appointed Working Groups – In the Corporate Services agenda, a simple matter of changes to add transparency to working groups became a bigger debate.
Several councillors were concerned about the proviso that would allow people who are part of a working group to keep themselves, or the group they represent, anonymous. Staff said it was a matter of trying to keep the peace between neighbours if one were to advocate for a point of view that the person next door might see the opposite way, but some on Committee were concerned that keeping participants anonymous made it hard to vet the feedback for potential ulterior motives.
Piper made the point that anonymity has become a “scourge” to politics and political discourse, but Councillor Dominique O’Rourke countered that there are people with lived experience in areas like mental health or addiction that might want to offer their perspective without identifying themselves. Councillor Mike Salisbury proposed an amendment to disclose the list of participants in a working group if that advice should make it back to council as part of a staff report.
In the end, the simple two-part recommendation got split into four parts with council approving the posting of terms of reference, agendas and minutes for working groups on the City’s webpage, and that a list of working group participants be attached when group feedback comes back to council. The “anonymity option” failed 5-7.
CS-2019-78 Guelph General Hospital Capital Funding Request – While Committee enthusiastically referred the Hospital’s ask for $4.5 million over five years to the December 3 budget meeting, there was some controversy about a supplemental motion. Guthrie wanted to send letter to the Minister of Health to request a review the 90/10 funding formula for hospital capital costs, calling it “reprehensible” to download provincial responsibilities on municipalities. Gibson said that this was a move on the part of Committee that got into the realm of activism, but Hofland suggested that now might not be the best time to stir the pot when Guelph is looking for help to get important expansions at the hospital. Guthrie agreed and pulled the motion.
November 12 – Planning Meeting.
Council will revisit the decision on 1533-1557 Gordon Street and 34 Lowes Road West to see if it can break the tie in October. People will still be able to delegate on the issue, and four people already have. The other two main items are the statutory public meeting for a six-storey apartment development on College and an eight-storey apartment development with commercial use on Gordon. You can see the full Politico preview here.
If you want to delegate on any of the items at City Council, you have until 10 am on Friday November 8 to get in touch with the Clerk’s Office. Here’s how.
November 13 – Deliberations on the 2020 Capital Budget and 10-Year Forecast, and Non-tax Supported Operating Budget.
At this meeting, council will pass these two budgets. The agenda package includes a memo from staff about the cost breakdown on the Operations Campus for 2020. You can get those details in the Politico preview here.
Also coming up at City Council:
November 18 – Budget Meeting, Presentation of the Tax Supported Operating Budget.
November 20 – Budget Meeting, Presentation of Local Boards and Shared Services Budget
NOTE: The agenda for these two meetings will be released on Thursday!
November 25 – Regular Meeting of Council.
November 30 – Budget Meeting, Delegations for the Tax Supported Operating Budget.
December 2 – Committee of the Whole.
December 3 – Deliberations on the Tax Supported Operating Budget, Local Boards and Shared Services Budget.
The town hall palooza starts when Ward 6 reps Mark MacKinnon and Dominique O’Rourke hold their budget town hall at the Clair Road Emergency Centre at 7 pm on Thursday.
That will be followed by a Ward 5 town hall with Cathy Downer and Leanne Piper at Mary Phelan Catholic School at 7 pm on November 21, a town hall with Ward 2 Councillors Rodrigo Goller and James Gordon at the Evergreen Seniors Centre at 1 pm on November 23, and a Ward 4 town hall with Christine Billings and Mike Salisbury on November 26 at 7 pm at the West End Rec Centre.
There will be a number of commemorations of Remembrance Day in Guelph on Monday. Doors open at the Sleeman Centre service at 9 am, the ceremony will begin at McCrae House at 9:30, and the University of Guelph observance at War Memorial Hall begins at 10:45.
CFRU’s Nicky Dread will be celebrating 40 years of community radio broadcasting later this month with a live-to-air show at eBar. Celebrations begin at 9 pm on November 23! Ticket are $15 and all proceeds will be donated to the Guelph Black Heritage Society. More here.
Coming up this week on the GuelphPoliticast, transit blogger Sean Marshall will join us to set the table for this weekend’s Transit Summit and Town Hall by talking about his research and writing on transit, the challenges of creating more regional transit, and whether ride-share options are an acceptable substitute for transit in some area. It should be fun!
Get the latest edition of the GuelphPoliticast on Wednesday.
Also on Wednesday, tune in to CFRU at 2 pm for another episode of End Credits. This week, Tim Phillips co-hosts as a stormy wind comes blowing in ‘cross the movie screen to deliver the shocking and vexing new film The Lighthouse. We’ll discuss that, and we’ll officially bring our Best of 1999 series to a close and introduce our Best of the Decade series!
Then, Thursday at 5 pm on CFRU, it will be a new episode of Open Sources Guelph as Scotty Hertz and I will be talking about the Wexit movement, and the legacy of Elizabeth May, plus the latest on Brexit and the U.K. election, plus Doug Ford’s grand transit plan for the GTHA.
Listen to all these shows any time by subscribing to the Guelph Politicast channel on your favourite podcast app at iTunes, Stitcher, Google Play, and Spotify.
There will be live coverage of the Ward 6 town hall on Thursday night in case you can’t make it.
Elizabeth May has been to Guelph more often than every other Federal leader combined over the last 12 years. Someone should put together a recap in honour of her retirement.
I’ll be doing some kind of coverage for the Transit Action Alliance of Guelph (TAAG) first annual Transit Summit and Town Hall on November 9, but I’m not sure what it will look like. (Tickets are still available here though.)
Do you like hanging out on frozen over bodies of water and making them a venue for winter sport? The City of Guelph is looking to talk to you!
And finally, feel free to reach out to be by email at adamadonaldson [at] gmail [dot] com, or find me on Facebook, Twitter, and, of course, GuelphPolitico.ca!