If there’s a city council meeting in August, then you know that it has to be a pretty big deal. Picking up almost literally where we left off at the last meeting of council a few weeks ago, councillors and senior staff took a few minutes out of their summer vacation to approve the funding for the Kindle Communities supportive housing project on Shelldale. In other words, process wins! Here’s the recap…
Special Meeting of City Council – August 16
Our unexpected August meeting had an expected result as council met virtually for 20 minutes to give Kindle Communities an answer about supporting their project to the tune of an additional $500,000.
To recap, an urgent request came to council a few days before what was supposed to be the last meeting of summer on July 25. The Home For Good campaign, a combined effort of the United Way and the Guelph Community Foundation, was over $700,000 short of its fundraising goal, and they had till August 15 to close the gap.
To fill it, they were hoping that the City of Guelph might consider a transfer of $500,000 from the Affordable Housing Reserve. Council wasn’t necessarily unopposed, but there wasn’t any time to get feedback from staff before the meeting, and that resulted in a council vote to defer the matter to this emergency meeting.
Deputy CAO of Public Services Colleen Clack-Bush explained that in the last few weeks staff have met with reps from the United Way, the Community Foundation and Kindle Communities to get a more fulsome picture of the situation. Although the original recommendation in July asked to allocate the $500,000 to Home For Good to use as matching funds, the new recommendation was worded to have that money go to Kindle directly since the organization had already completed a Request for Proposals (RFP) for previous funding to this project, and because the funds would give the project added stability.
Clack-Bush added that staff had been in communication with the Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation (CMHC), and they were able to get some wiggle room on the August 15 deadline (which is important because this meeting was scheduled for August *16*).
All parties had read the report before it went to council and they agreed with the recommendations, plus Home For Good has committed to raising the remaining $287,000 to complete the campaign. Clack-Bush also added that the decision to give the funding directly to Kindle is not meant to indicate any lost confidence in the Home For Good campaign or the people running it.
Two delegates had signed up to speak to the item, but only Susan Watson was able to take part in the meeting. She said that she’s glad that council was able to see clear to run this request through a regular process and then segued into a rant about how provincial changes to development fee collection will mean that the City of Guelph will be paying more per unit for new residential development than the $56,000 per unit that they’re now paying to support the Kindle Communities project.
Watson got the last word when it came to debate over the recommendations; council had no follow up questions and comments were limited to praise for staff and the various parties for being able to get this done on a tight deadline. Council then voted unanimously to approve, and Kindle Communities now gets an influx of $500,000. We now return to your regularly scheduled summer vacation already in progress.
Click here to see the complete recap of the meeting.
Guelph Politico 