What a year! A lot can happen in 12 months, and 2019 was no exception. Along with the usual business of city council, there were two different budget processes this year, plus all kinds of special meetings on issues like the strategic plan, the main library, and a City operations campus on Dunlop Road. That was just the tip of the iceberg, and the podcast.

On this week’s podcast, we’re joined by Bill Hulet of the Guelph Back-grounder website. Hulet is the willing participant in this 2019 version of the Guelph Stuff end of year round up, as we take stock of where we’ve been, where we are, and hopefully where we’re going. In other words, we get into some general discussion about the biggest issues of the year, and potential debates coming up in the new year.

For instance, in 2019 we had the big debate about calling a climate emergency that happened in the spring. That didn’t turn out how people thought it would, but the climate strikes continued throughout the year, and Upper Grand District School Board did end up taking the plunge. Climate change was also a big Federal Election issue, with the local Green Party landing a solid second place finish.

Speaking of other levels of government, there was a lot of new found pressure from the Province. Queen’s Park passed budget cuts and then reinstated them, or changed regulations and quickly changed them back, or made grand sweeping changes to the way that services are delivered and then offered no follow up information to ease the burden. Running a City is hard enough, but the efforts to find efficiencies were markedly inefficient.

In other words, there’s a lot to dig into; so many issues and so little time to cover them (though we’ll make some extra time over the next couple of weeks). For now, we’re going to take a look at the election, infrastructure, cyber security, the climate emergency, the local fight against homelessness, and some of our best guesses about what might be coming in the year to come.

So let’s look at the year in review on this week’s Guelph Politicast!

You can check out Bill Hulet’s work at the Guelph Back-grounder, and you can find him on Twitter here. Stay tuned to Guelph Politico for some end of the year lists and other pieces over the next couple of weeks.

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Also, when you subscribe to the Guelph Politicast channel and you will also get an episode of Open Sources Guelph every Monday, and an episode of End Credits every Friday.