Budget seasons is finally here! Now’s your chance to warm up those calculators and start formatting the spreadsheets because at this meeting we’re going to start crunching the numbers for the confirmation of the 2026 Guelph budget (the City of Guelph edition)! This promises to be another tough budget with affordability front of mind with the city staff continually try to find new efficiencies, but for now, here’s the opening proposal…
NOTE #1: There will be no delegations at this meeting, but there will be a special council meeting dedicated to delegations on the 2026 budget on Tuesday November 18 at 6 pm.
NOTE #2: In addition to meeting in-person, this meeting will also be live-streamed on the City of Guelph’s website here.
NOTE #3: This meeting begins at 9 am.
CLOSED MEETING:
Mayor’s Draft 2026 Budget Update – Before digging into the budget publicly, council will discuss a budget memo in closed for “personal matters about an identifiable individual, including municipal or local board employees and labour relations or employee negotiations.” Likely this has to do with employment contracts with City staff members.
Organizational Structure Review: A Phased Approach – It appears that reorganization of the City of Guelph is in the offing, but what that might look like is presently unknown because this is covered under section 239(2)(b) and (d) of the Municipal Act for “personal matters about an identifiable individual, including municipal or local board employees and labour relations or employee negotiations.”
Mayor’s Draft 2026 Budget Update – As mandated by Ontario legislature, the municipal budget is the mayor’s alone to approve, so work with staff Mayor Cam Guthrie has produced this revised version of the 2026 budget, which will see a net levy increase of 3.17 per cent or just over $11.1 million. Now it’s notable that this is just the City of Guelph portion and doesn’t include shared services like Guelph Police, Social Services or WDG Public Health, but this is a reduction from 4.51 per cent as approved in the multiyear budget in 2023. The base budget will increase by just over $8 million, and nearly half of that is from the operating impact in capital investments. There are nearly $5 million in capital financing transfers, plus nearly $1 million in enhancements and requests from the mayor and council, plus there’s just over $3.3 million in service reduction and assessment growth has been pegged at $2.7 million.
Update on the Daytime Drop-In Space Request for Proposals – As you may recall, council directed staff in May to proceed with a competitive procurement process for daytime drop-in services. When that process was concluded in September, there was one applicant, but this staff memo reports that the combined proposal from Stepping Stone and Royal City Mission “demonstrated a solid understanding of the approach, need, and experience required to meet the request for a 12-hour per day, seven days a week drop-in space.” The cost? The budget breakdown identifies $1.5 million annually for operations, staffing, and administrative costs and $200,000 annually for the provision of food services.
2026 Draft Budget Update Companion Report – In addition to the “mayor’s budget”, there are things that are budget related that still require the approval of the whole council including the municipal rates and fees, adjustments to capital spending, decisions on borrowing, and making transfers to and from reserves. Some of the changes that council will need to consider are a change in funding source for the FM Wood Station upgrade, fixing the shortfall in Building Code services, and review the downtown parking operating model. Also, staff would like council to look at the bolstering again the tax-supported contingency reserves, which are no below target, and approve the new debt strategy.
Guelph Politico 