If you thought last week at Guelph City Council was busy you won’t believe how straightforward everything was this week! At the regular council meeting for September there were some new committee appointments, and there was some appreciation for Guelphites doing great things, but the biggest item had to do with salt, the variety that you use on the road in winter. For all the details, check out the recap below.
Regular Meeting of Council – September 16, 2025
It was a straightforward night at city council after last week’s back-to-back blockbusters.
As it usually does, the meeting started with a closed session, out of which there were two different recommendations. One was simple, new appointments to the Transportation Advisory Committee as well as the Economic Development and Tourism Committee, and the other concerned a review of compensation for non-union municipal employees.
The second motion directed staff to update the list of comparator municipalities for future compensation exercises and that staff be directed to conduct a market survey of competitiveness and to review total compensation instead of just salary every four years as scheduled. For some reason, Councillor Dan Gibson voted against the first part of that, while the rest of the motion sailed through with unanimity.
Council then approved most of the consent agenda from Committee of the Whole and appointed Ward 6 Councillor Katherine Hauser to fill two committee roles left vacant by her predecessor, Dominique O’Roukre. It had to be done, but Mayor Cam Guthrie accelerated the votes because he had forgotten the pages with his remarks for the community recognitions. Deputy CAO Colleen Clack-Bush went to his office to grab them while the meeting continued.
With notes in hand, Guthrie honoured the special guests including martial arts champs Navika Renganathan and Nathan Skoufis, chess master Hal Bond, and the championship U14 T1 Guelph Royals.
Back to council business, Councillor Erin Caton asked to pull the Multi-Residential Property Tax Subclass Discounts for Affordable Housing report from committee again to add some additional motions. These were requests for engagement with the Minister of Municipal Affairs and Housing and the provincial government to get property tax relief for people receiving Ontario Works and ODSP, to set up a grant allowing municipalities to fund these discounts, and to match the discount to regular property taxes with ones for Education Property Taxes. The additional motions were approved too.
Lastly, Councillor Rodrigo Goller brought forward a report issued in July about Road Network Maintenance as a vehicle to put four motions on the agenda concerning the use, or rather the overuse, of road salt.
The recommendations asked the Ontario government to develop limited liability legislation, a single set of province-wide standards for snow and ice management, and to create a stakeholder advisory committee to decide on the best actions for freshwater protection. There were also recommendations to encourage the City of Guelph to minimize salt use and to find alternatives. One delegate, Karen Rathwell from Water Watchers, endorsed the motions saying that there’s presently no provincial policy governing salt distribution, and there’s a policy void that’s left municipalities unable to deal with salt pollution effectively. She added that we’ve come to normalize the impacts from roads salt, and that includes those beyond water pollution
In council’s court, Clack-Bush clarified that the recommendations about limited liability would only apply to private contractors doing work on private property; contractors not wanting to be sued if someone should slip and fall will overuse salt because there are no standards. Guelph’s GM of Operations Doug Godfrey said that the City has its own standards for limiting the amount of salt they use, and they have worked with partners to experiment with alternatives like beet juice.
Guthrie agreed from his experience in a past life as an insurance broker that the liability for private companies that do snow removal *is* exorbitant, so this is a smart move. Council approved Goller’s motions.
Click here to see the complete recap of the meeting.
Guelph Politico 