Another Committee of the Whole meeting, but this one came with a little more variety if you have no special interest in downtown renewal. Bu if you do, say, have an interest in crafting a new bylaw to prevent so-called renovictions, or perhaps an issue with how much affordable housing is getting built in the city, then this recap might be of some interest to you. All that, plus a financial update and some audit results too.
Committee of the Whole Meeting – September 17, 2024
There were four topics of conversation on the agenda for this second Committee of the Whole meeting this month. Something for everyone? Maybe.
First there was the Transit Electrification Audit, which was a mostly positive report about whether EV buses are delivering value-for-money for the City of Guelph, and they are! Internal auditor Robert Jelacic said that the administration’s done a good job of maximizing the ICIP funding from the federal government that allowed for the purchase of those first EVs and the conversion of the bus barn on Watson Road.
The report came with a number of ideas about how to improve the service, including a request to reconsider the ordering of seven new EV buses every year in favour of ordering smaller buses or extending the lifespan of current diesel buses, as well as acquiring a proper telematics system to monitor the EVs, the appointment of a fleet electrification lead, and a plan for potential thermal events in the EV batteries. Committee didn’t have too many questions, and they approved receipt of the report.
Committee also didn’t have too many questions about the next topic either, which was the Second Quarter Budget Monitoring report. We learned that any future progress on the Downtown-to-Ward pedestrian bridge will be made after the environmental assessment of the Macdonell Bridge is complete, and that the federal funds for the new library announced earlier this year didn’t completely knock out the levy for the project but it did reduce the debt load for it. The budget adjustments, and the report, were both approved pretty swiftly.
That brought committee to the discussion of a possible Renoviction Bylaw. This was an information report submitted earlier this summer, but Mayor Cam Guthrie (who was appearing virtually because he clearly sounded ill) wanted to bring this to a meeting for discussion.
There was no formal presentation, but there was a list of possible recommendations and a group of delegates eager to speak in favour of the effort to take action. Daniel Kaufmann, who is one of the tenants at a Brant Avenue apartment building where residents are facing a renoviction from their new landlord, said that it would help people out a lot for people if they were made more aware of their rights in these situations. It would also help if there was a landlord registry so that tenants can get direct contact information for their landlord instead of some numbered corporation with a post office box.
Creating awareness about tenant rights was something brought up by several delegates, and then committee suggested that data collection should also be a priority. For that reason, council split off two of the recommendations from the list of seven, one to create an eviction survey for residents and the other to create a page on the City’s website to provide a guide to renters’ rights, both for immediate passage. Council approved those two directions after talking about some logistics including staff capacity and how to reach people who are not necessarily tech savvy like seniors.
As for the rest of the original seven recommendations, committee voted to defer them to a council meeting on October 8 that will be see a fulsome staff report on the subject of housing issues in Guelph.
The last item was another information report that Guthrie asked to be brought to committee, the Guelph Growth Management and Affordable Housing Monitoring report. The mayor didn’t have any direction that he wanted to pursue, but he thought this would be a good opportunity to give the community a chance to talk about the slate of “approved, but unbuilt” projects in Guelph.
Scott Hannah from the Guelph Wellington Development Association took the mayor up on his offer and said that he and his colleagues didn’t like being tagged with the 6,000 number of unbuilt housing units because there is a myriad of factors why something hasn’t been built once approved. He explained that developers should be judged on what projects are “shovel ready” because there are sometimes things like financing that are even outside the developer or the builder’s ability to control.
Staff explained that collecting data on what’s “shovel ready” or not is tricky since “shovel ready” is a general term and not a set measurement. GM of Planning Krista Walkey said that it’s possible to co-ordinate with developers before publishing the report to maybe get a clear idea about what projects are nearly ready for construction, and they can also do some specific monitoring about how well projects are working to resolve their “Holding” provisions. Walkey added that she and her staff will look at ways to give a more exact picture of progress when the report is published in 2025.
Click here to see the complete recap of the meeting.
Guelph Politico 