So it was a short city council meeting this week. Really short. Good thing then that we have some unfinished business from last week’s council business, the Local Boards and Shared Services budget for 2025. The actual business of passing the budget was, itself, brief, but there was a lot explaining about what the budget is paying for, especially in the case of social services, the library, and the police. So let’s dig into two meetings for the price of one.
Budget Meeting of City Council – January 22, 2025
Just when you thought it was safe to stop thinking about the budget…
Council had a special meeting about the local boards and shared services budget, which accounts for one-third of the City of Guelph’s total budget levy for the year. These groups are Guelph Police Service, Guelph Public Library, County of Wellington Social Services, The Elliott Community, Wellington-Dufferin-Guelph Public Health, Grand River Conservation Authority and the Downtown Guelph Business Association. Funding for all this comes from the tax rate except for the GRCA, which comes from the water rate fees.
Essentially, council took the presentation of these budgets one at a time.
The DGBA was asking for a three per cent increase, or $721,000, over 2024.
The GRCA budget had no changes and is still technically a draft because it won’t be approved by their board until the February GRCA meeting.
The big news from The Elliott was the opening of 29 new beds last fall, and The Elliott’s chief of finance said that they currently exceed four hours of direct care per resident per day as required by the Ministry of Long-Term Care. In terms of the financials, Theresa Moisan said that they’ve reduced the cost per bed per year by about 25 per cent, while they’ve also been able to leverage grants from the upper levels of government.
Next, Guelph Public Library CEO Dan Atkins presented and note a 6.5 per cent reduction in the originally approved 2024 budget thanks, essentially, to creative accounting, but the budget will still go up 15.2 per cent in the 2026 budget as the library continues to staff up for their new main building. Questions from council pertained to the future of capital spending once the new main library is open and maintenance costs at the current building.
The Social Services department at Wellington County did a thorough review of their work including the expansion of childcare and the increase in federal funding, their concern about the limit assistance of Ontario Works payouts, and all the extra funding going to the emergency response to homelessness. The total social services budget for 2025 is nearly $183 million, or 30.5 per cent more than 2024, and while much of that is childcare funding covered by the feds, Guelph owes $2.5 million more for housing in 2025, with housing driving 15.4 per cent of the overall increase.
Council explored several different topics with County staff including future planning for social housing in Guelph, whether or not there’s enough shelter beds for the local unhoused population, and the impact of HART Hub funding on the current stock of social housing in the system. (Yes, some units in the County system will now technically be supportive units with that new funding.) There were also some questions about creating new social housing, especially for survivors of intimate partner violence, which is a project the County says they’re looking at that with partner groups in the community like Guelph-Wellington Women in Crisis.
Last, but not least, was the Guelph Police Services budget. Chief Gord Cobey brought a line-up of police staff to talk about their planned effort to focus much of this year’s budget increase to staff up in the areas of human trafficking, IPV, and cyber crime that targets vulnerable populations like seniors. Cobey and his staff noted that there’s a lot of crossover between trafficking and IPV, and, in fact, 34 per cent of trafficking victims are trafficked by an intimate partner. As for the exploitation of children, Cobey said that right now GPS only has the capacity to investigate a third of the calls they get, and last year they got 92 tips from national agencies.
On the tab, Cobey said that they are aware of affordability concerns which is why they’re phasing in the increase spending recommended by KPMG over four years, and he pointed to the success of extra policing downtown to demonstrate how those investments end up paying the community back. Council also had some questions about co-ordinating with other polices services, while Councillor Leanne Caron noted that all this talk about gender-based violence and human trafficking without advanced warning in a budget meeting was perhaps a little insensitive.
In the end, council approved the LBSS budget rather swiftly after the three hours of presentations. The total tax levy increase for 2025 is 6.78 per cent, and Guthrie noted that 2025 was originally going to be 9.5 per cent but with the extra board spending it would have gone up to 10.51 per cent. Guthrie thanked staff, inside and out, for co-ordinating all that.
Click here to see the complete recap of the meeting.
Regular Meeting of City Council – January 28, 2025
Aside from the closed session, this meeting was six minutes and five seconds long.
Council went into closed at 5:30, came out at about 6:45. Mayor Guthrie started the meeting, announced that staff were given direction about the in-camera topic, “Proposed Employment Land Acquisition”, passed the consent agenda from Committee of the Whole, passed the bylaws of the week, and adjourned the meeting. The feeling of being on autopilot was accentuated by the fact that only three out of 13 members of council decided to show up in-person.
Click here to see the complete recap of the meeting.
Guelph Politico 