After a long winter’s break, Guelph city council got back to business with two meetings this past week, one was entirely closed to the public but deeply impactful and the other was Committee of the Whole where some administrative stuff happened. Not irrelevant, that “stuff” included a co-ordinated plan to petition upper levels of government about the issues that matter to Guelph. But for now, what matters is this recap…
Committee of the Whole Meeting – January 14, 2025
Council starting 2025 with technically two meetings, including a special meeting of council before Committee of the Whole.
The subject of that meeting was the Ontario Land Tribunal hearing for a development at 384 Crawley Road, the potential site of a cold storage warehouse. City staff said that the application from NewCold was incomplete, but NewCold disagreed, and the OLT sided with them. After meeting in closed for an hour, council emerged and passed a motion authorizing the GM of Planning and Building Services to approve a conditional site plan and authorize tree removal as part of that conditional approval.
A couple of hours later, a City of Guelph press release offered more details: trees on the 88-acre plot will be removed as the first step towards supporting future development on the site and in exchange there will be 17,000 trees and 4,000 shrubs planted on-site within one year of the removals.
“By ensuring this land is development-ready, we are saying yes to new jobs and economic growth for our city,” Mayor Cam Guthrie said in a statement. “Allowing development to happen quickly will attract business investment and create a valuable new tax base, helping to reduce the tax burden on residents and support essential City programs, services and infrastructure.”
Committee of the Whole also started with a closed session, this one about the 2025 performance objectives review of the CAO, which was reviewed in-camera and then reviewed again in the open session. Tara Baker outlined affordability, housing, customer service and building relationships as her four overall goals for the year, which obviously covers a lot of ground, but there weren’t any questions, at least in the open presentation. Mayor Guthrie thanked Baker and wished her luck on the job ahead.
The other items on the agenda went down almost as smoothly: The approval of bylaw changes to solid waste management due to the blue box transition, and some changes to the city council expense policy.
The only other presentation had to do with “Future in Focus: Guelph’s Advocacy Plan”, which laid out how the intergovernmental office will co-ordinate advocacy efforts going forward whether that’s with community partners or upper levels of government. With both provincial and federal elections in the offing this year, staff explained that they’re working on promotional materials laying out city issues and potential solutions that they’d like to see discussed.
Committee had some questions about timelines, how the list of issues was developed, and the issues that might have been left off the list. Among those items were the development of more long-term care beds, which the City can only do as the owner of one long-term care home, and the advocacy for two-way, all-day GO service on the Kitchener Line, where staff say they’ve hit a wall for the time being.
Mayor Guthrie noted that while it’s the politicians that do the talking, it’s the staff that do all the grunt work that leads to success, and the City has enjoyed a lot of success with their advocacy last year. Going at “full capacity”, they responded to 26 consultations, went to 27 intergovernmental meetings, and collected $200 million in funding, but with two elections and at least one change in government coming, there’s a tough road ahead to keep up with that kind of success. Council approved plan and then adjourned.
Click here to see the complete recap of the meeting.
Guelph Politico 