This week council took a couple of tough meetings. On Tuesday, there was a question about homelessness downtown, but the controversial motion proposed by Mayor Cam Guthrie had been pulled. Still, there’s was a matter of funding for Royal City Mission and their daytime shelter services, council had to decided how and if they were going to fund that further. And on Wednesday, it was the big one: The passage of the 2024-2027 multiyear budget!
Regular Meeting of City Council – November 28
Before the meeting had even started, there was controversy in the air, but with Mayor Cam Guthrie’s proposed motion to have staff explore a bylaw to remove downtown encampments itself removed from the agenda we got a largely straightforward regular council meeting. The new appointments to the Elliott and the Committee of Adjustment were passed rather smoothly, and some community awards were handed out.
The first issue came with the ratification of the “Redesigning Advisory Committees of Council – A Governance Framework” with Councillor Dominique O’Rourke following up on a note at Committee of the Whole to adjust the wording on the second commitment to say that the ACOCs should *help* shape the City’s strategic goals. Councillor Leanne Caron raised a matter about making a motion around a working group of community members for Guelph’s bicentennial festivities, but it was agreed that this was a discussion best left to post-budget discussion on Wednesday (see below).
That brought us to the Daytime Drop-In Services Update report. Staff had recommended that any new funding, or the development of new daytime shelter programming, be paused until the housing symposium in the new year so that there could be a complete evaluation of needs and options. Still, the current daytime shelter program at the Royal City Mission is busier than ever, and it was clear from the delegations that the need is too big to simply stop funding.
Kevin Coghill and Mark Anderson were both on hand to answer questions from council and petition for continued support, at least to get through winter. Coghill admitted that the Mission was a stop gap till more solutions can be found, and it’s an important stop gap with 203 daily visitors on average, 1,800 unique individuals served this year, and 75,000 meals handed out since January. He also explained that they’ve been doing 12 hours of service per day thanks to the generosity of donors because, technically, the funding from the City for the last year was only enough to guarantee about four hours of service per day.
In terms of those donations, Anderson says that their fundraising efforts are stagnant; they haven’t lost funds, but the funding’s not going up either, which is tricky because the staff at the Mission are getting burnt out and they don’t have the ability to offer raises or increased benefits as incentive. Also, general costs are increasing too. Anderson added that the current levels of City funding can guarantee four-to-six hours of service per day, but for a full year at 12 hours per day that’s more like $1 million in guaranteed funding that they need. The Mission was not built for amount of use that they’re encountering, and in the aftermath of the pandemic, they’re pretty much the only ones downtown consistently offering services.
Two other delegates also spoke to the ongoing need for Royal City Mission and its services.
Council then went into closed session for the better part of an hour to talk about how best to proceed (it was a matter about contracts, negotiations, and people hence the move to go in-camera). When council emerged, they had a proposed motion to fund the Royal City Mission six days a week to the tune of $21,332 per month from the Tax Rate Operating Contingency Reserve for January, February and March. The motion was passed unanimously.
Next was Councillor O’Rourke’s 11-part motion on Intimate Partner Violence. She explained that the motion was important because it outlines tangible actions that the City, the Police and the community can take on the issue of IPV, which is an invisible epidemic that touches so many people as well as their families, friends and workplaces. O’Rourke noted that she had received many calls and emails from people supporting the motions and sharing their stories.
There was one delegate for the motions, and it was Guelph-Wellington Women in Crisis public educator Cindy McMann who said that her office supported 998 clients last year, and that this is the tip of the iceberg because most victims of IPV do not immediately pick up the phone and call the police or the women’s shelter. She added that this is not an intimate matter between couples, but a matter of public health and in the absence of provincial action, it was important for Guelph to add its voice to the growing chorus of municipalities raising the alarm.
It turned out council didn’t need that much convincing, all of O’Rourke’s motions passed swiftly and smoothly.
Click here to see the complete recap of the meeting.
Budget Meeting of City Council – November 29
So the budget day started with an 80-minute long session in-camera to talk about “10C/Farmers Market Contractual Obligations”. You may recall that 10C presented a request at budget delegation night for $500,000 from the City to cover the cost of capital improvements to the Farmers’ Market building, plus an additional $460,000 that would be in the form of a loan that 10C would pay back.
On this topic, Mayor Cam Guthrie said that they received information and gave direction to staff, but the topic of 10C and the Farmers’ Market did not come up again in the main meeting. Perhaps that’s okay because there was no shortage of things to chew on.
First, there was some administrative business. Council passed a motion to suspend the procedural bylaw to allow comments and emails about the budget received by November 24 to be included on the public record, and then they amended to the budget motion to reflect a $1.05 million reduction in the request from Wellington County’s Social Services department, and a $236,706 reduction thanks to assessment growth. The budget increase discussions started at 9.9 per cent for 2024.
The first motion from councillors though was an addition to the budget, a request to add $43,335 in 2024 and 2025 to fund the City’s portion of the physician recruitment strategy through the local Ontario Health Team and Chamber of Commerce. The motion was approved, but instead of the funds coming from the tax levy it was amended to come from the Tax Operating Contingency Reserve instead.
Next, Councillor Rodrigo Goller proposed a motion to add $1 million to the allocation to the Affordable Housing Reserve on top of the typical $500,000 that’s put aside. Goller explained that there’s increases to the police budget, and the social services budget, but no increase to address the direct cause of those things, which is a lack of affordable housing. Despite his impassioned efforts, Goller’s motion failed 3-10.
Council did approve $50,000 for the development of terms of reference to do at least two value-for-money reviews each year. That money comes from the efficiency, innovation and opportunity reserve.
There was also a motion to provide $100,000 in funding from the operating contingency reserve for health and safety support as Wellington County and Wellington-Duffrin-Guelph Public Health begin leading wellness checks on encampments in Guelph. Deputy CAO Colleen Clack-Bush explained that the first meeting of stakeholders on this mission, which was a recommendation by council at their October 17 housing meeting, is on Tuesday. There’s been no co-ordinated approach for this kind work before, and the funds will give the group a place to start. The budget allocation was approved unanimously.
After that, council started looking at some of the subtractions. Councillor Dan Gibson proposed two motions to phase in new hires over the next four years, one for City employees and one for the Library. It was the first of many instances that Gibson was heard to say that nothing being done in regard to the budget was personal, but merely an effort by council to balance affordability and the maintenance of services. Both of the staffing recommendations were approved unanimously.
Councillor Dominique O’Rourke then tabled a motion that would roll back spending on Guelph Transit’s digital sign project; spending on the first 50 signs for major hubs and important stops will proceed, but the next 100 would be cancelled by this motion saving just over $3 million. It was not exactly clear initially if this was a deferral of the full project, but it’s a cancellation after the fist signs are installed in 2025, or a “nice to have” as Mayor Guthrie framed it. The motion passed 8-5.
There was some haggling over the next motion. Councillor Christine Billings wanted to entirely cut the increase to the council training budget, but eventually settled for cutting it by half. Billings also proposed covering the cost of this year’s $750,000 hospital levy out of the contingency reserve, but council only went that way after a discussion about pushing it off for a year. Goller said that through his investigations, the hospital was “comfortable” delaying the 2024 payment, but that didn’t sound like a ringing endorsement of the idea to many of his colleagues, so they approved doing it Billings’ way 10-3.
It was around here that a question was asked about the health of the reserves, and GM of Finance Tara Baker said that her previous words about being cautious with the use of the reserves hadn’t changed. Guthrie asked about the likelihood of a year-end variance, and Baker said that right now they’re looking at between $3.5 and $4 million but council had already spent about $2 million of that with reserve spending.
Then there was further haggling. O’Rourke proposed a motion to reduce the transfer to the Affordable Housing Reserve to just $100,000 saying that staff had proposed eliminating the reserve altogether in last year’s budget and with Bill 23, and its incentives, the City’s budget is already doing a lot to support affordable housing. Some councillors tried to make the point that Guelph only apportions a small amount to that account already, and others noted that maybe it’s not the best idea to just put money away without having a plan on how to use it. This motion was ultimately the tightest of the day, but it succeeded 7-6.
After lunch, the meeting continued with a read out about the budget impact so far. Through the morning’s work, council had managed to get the levy increase for 2024 down to 8.52 per cent. With only a few more motions left to consider that was about where the total impact for next year was going to stay.
Goller proposed a motion to cut the three-year budget for bicentennial planning to just $250,000. Some members of council felt like that was premature when there’s not yet any idea about what the bicentennial is going to look like in terms of formal programming. They also didn’t like the phrasing that the bicentennial was only about party planning because it’s also about leveraging possible economic development and tourism opportunities too. When that motion failed, Goller tried cutting half instead but that also failed.
Then there was a multi-part motion from O’Rourke looking to make more transit cuts, the deferral of about $12.5 million in capital and operating spending from the 10-year route review beyond the next four years. O’Rourke said that she didn’t enjoy doing this, but the fact of the matter is that the speed in which the City is trying to expand and electrify transit at the same time was having a significant impact.
But through debate it was determined that the prosed cuts had a significant impact too. Laura Catalano-Bragues, Supervisor of Scheduling and Service Planning, explained that this would turn the 10-year route and schedule plan into a 17-year plan, and it would cancel the number one priority of most transit users, which is expanding Sunday service. Also, there’s additional impacts to City goals like climate action, reduced need for parking, and encouraging people to make the modal shift.
Councillor Cathy Downer made the point that she was experiencing a sense of déjà vu, council makes plans for transit and then the proverbial wheels come off the bus at budget time. In 17 years, if the plan is pushed out that far, Guelph is an entirely different community, she added, plus this is an affordability issue in the community. If Guelph is to build twice as many homes in the next 10 years that means also building transit to service those routes. Eventually, O’Rourke relented and agreed that maybe she was taking things too far and pulled the motion.
And that was it for the proposed motions for budget impacts. There were still some supplemental motions around the budget that were approved including a request to hear options for streetscaping downtown before 2025, forming a community working group to begin organizing the bicentennial, and to begin discussions with a coalition of trail users about a community-led effort to finish the Guelph portion of G2G Trail.
In terms of wrap-up comments, O’Rourke said that council was really focused on knocking down the budget impact for 2024 and that they’re going to have work just as hard next year to file down the proposed levy impact for 2025, 2026 and 2027. Gibson said that he intends to follow up on the idea of tying the rate of growth in City operations to the rate of Guelph’s actual growth in future budgets.
Wrapping up, Guthrie noted that council brought down the City portion of the increase to 3.17 per cent for 2024, which is more or less in line with the rate of inflation. Combined with the 1.98 increase from local boards and 3.7 for the PILL (provincial impact, local levy) we arrived at 8.52 per cent for 2024. Guthrie then pledged that he would not use his veto power as prescribed in the Province’s Strong Mayor Powers.
Click here to see the complete recap of the meeting.
Guelph Politico 