What’s the point of establishing a work plan if you’re not going to give yourself a report card? Every year, city council hears from staff about how things are progressing with the Strategic Plan goals that they’ve set for themselves, and once again the time has come to see if City Hall gets an A, B, C, D, or F for their various efforts across the pre-set categories. So how did the City of Guelph do this year?
NOTE #1: Since this is a workshop/orientation meeting, there are no delegations.
NOTE #2: In addition to meeting in-person, this meeting will also be live-streamed on the City of Guelph’s website here.
Annual Strategic Plan Performance Reporting – Every year, council gets a full report about the accomplishments and challenges of achieving the goals of Guelph’s Strategic Plan. A who’s who of City officials will lay out how it all went down in 2023, the last year for the previous version of the Strategic Plan (the new one was approved last summer), and this year they will be joined by separate reports and presentations from local boards and shared services. Here’s a quick breakdown by the five goals of the 2019-2023 plan:
Powering our Future – The economic development and tourism strategy is complete, the new Municipal Accommodation Tax has been implemented, and the Smart Cities office finished up their operations and produced their final report.
Sustaining our Future – The Guelph Climate Adaptation Plan was completed in 2023, and the City developed a Greenhouse Gas (GHG) Emissions Inventory to account for all emissions inside the City limits, which have actually decreased by 7.4 per cent since the baseline was established in 2018.
Navigating our Future – The City proceeded with implementing the Transportation Master Plan including the Complete Street Design and Multi-Modal Level of Service Guidelines, and the designing of protected bike facilities throughout the city. Also, now nine per cent of the City’s fleet vehicles uses clean tech, the Community Road Safety Strategy has been implemented, and the Vision Zero Collision Dashboard has been launched.
Working Together for our Future – The City maintained its AAA credit rating from Standards & Poors, they remained one of the Waterloo area’s top employers and a new communications and engagement strategy was launched.
Building our Future – Construction began on the South End Community Centre, and the Baker District Redevelopment, which includes the new main library (nine per cent of the total project was complete by last year’s end). Also, there was an improvement in paramedic response times from 63 per cent in 2022 to 71 per cent in 2023.
Guelph Politico 