Delayed a day because of the Easter long weekend, Committee of the Whole sat on Wednesday and discussed progress on the development of key policy. On the one hand, there was the Municipal Accommodation Tax and the creation of a cohesive tourism strategy, and on the other there was a question of transparency and knowing who’s lobbying who at city hall and about what. Here’s the recap.
Committee of the Whole Meeting – April 3
There were April showers outside, but the skies inside city hall weren’t too sunny either as there were a lot of questions about two pieces of City policy in different stages of development.
First up was the Lobbyist Registry, the formal adoption of which will not come back to council till later this year. This interim, and informal, report prompted many questions from council about what constituted lobbying and why non-profits and charities weren’t being considered for inclusion as lobbyists that need to register. At issue was the definition of lobbying as something that the lobbyist has a pecuniary interest (read: financial stake) in achieving; if a group is advocating for bike lanes on city streets, they’re not getting a financial benefit from the City adding more bike lanes.
Many on committee made a case for increased transparency saying that lobbying, though not always a bad thing, is something that the public should be made aware of in terms of who’s doing it, who they’re doing it to, and what they’re lobbying about. Some councillors made the argument that City policy should go further than what was being presented, tying the registry to vote tracking so that members of the public might see the impact of lobbying.
Technically, that part might be difficult considering the agenda management software that Guelph council uses, but City Clerk Stephen O’Brien said that the Municipal Act gives council the latitude to be as specific as they like in defining “lobbying”. After getting repeated assurances that staff will bring back options to maximize transparency from all groups that might lobby city hall, the report was approved by council and a draft bylaw will come back to committee in July.
The other big item on the agenda was the Municipal Accommodation Tax Update and Administration Policy. Since going into effect, the MAT has collected around $1.2 million in funds and the combined efforts of the City of Guelph and the Chamber of Commerce have used some of that money to learn more about Guelph tourism, and where they need to put MAT funds in order to do more. A game plan has been set for the next year with the launch of new funding streams and the soft launch of the “Gather in Guelph” branding over the next couple of months, plus new placemaking and wayfinding plans will be in development over the next year.
There was one delegation from Helen Stoumbos and Mike Jean of The GOOD Games, and they discussed how they weren’t really feeling the love from City staff as they were building a destination sports event in Guelph for the last few years. In fact, Jean said that staff told them “not to expect much” in terms of City support for this year’s games, which is planning to draw 15,000 athletes of all ages to the Games’ venue at the University of Guelph from across North America.
The candor of the GOOD Games folks drew a lot of interest from committee and prompted Mayor Cam Guthrie to call a time out before anyone impugned the integrity of staff. Stoumbos rephrased to say that she felt it was challenging to get help from City staff to accommodate the Games’ ambitions, while Jean added that they had conversations with people that they felt were adversarial though he offered no names. It was Jean’s opinion that the friction they experienced was because the GOOD Games were originally incorporated as a for-profit organization. (They’ve since re-incorporated as a non-profit.)
When it was council’s turn to as questions, they asked staff to balance the fact that seven out of 10 trips to Guelph were about visiting friends and family, and how that doesn’t exactly necessitate any hotel stays that fund the MAT which is the end goal of all this tourism development. Manager of Tourism and Destination Development Alex Jaworiwsky explained that the City was working with the University of Guelph and local businesses about ways to attract conferences and other kinds of group travel. She also noted that when you take into account sports tournaments and festivals, Guelph *is* an events city already and it’s just a matter of leveraging that.
There were also questions about the cost breakdown of the million dollars that the MAT Is expected to bring in every year, how much money is going to administration versus actual tourism development, and where specifically efforts to attract more people to Guelph were going to be concentrated. There was also a query about increasing hotel capacity in Guelph, and it seems like there have been some small steps in that direction. As for the City hosting tourism events, don’t count on that since taking on responsibility to create events also creates a liability for 1 Carden so they’d much rather co-ordinate and help third parties plant seeds, so to speak.
The recommendations were unanimously approved.
Click here to see the complete recap of the meeting.
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