It was a busy week for city council business with two big meetings. Nay! Make that huge meetings!! At the regular meeting, council decided (again) to pursue a renoviction bylaw and a vacant home tax with immediate effect. The real money matters though was the budget decision meeting (although technically the budget was already decided and this was just adding amendments) and there was definitely some friction to talk about there. Let’s get into the recap…
Regular Meeting of City Council – November 25, 2025
Council business was fairly straightforward on Tuesday night with the only major action being two fairly settled matters from Committee of the Whole. Yes, there would be a renoviction bylaw, and a vacant home tax, but how and when were the questions. After one returning delegation, council immediately agreed to pass the first recommendation about continued advocacy to upper levels of government.
Then they started amending the motions they approved earlier this month starting with a direction to get a draft of both a renoviction bylaw and an accompanying rental replacement bylaw by June 30 thanks to $640,000 in funding from the Affordable Housing Reserve. In a memo to council, staff had said that this would delay the work on the Green Development Framework and Standards, which was causing grief for Councillor Leanne Caron who said both pieces of work are important.
Mayor Cam Guthrie interjected to note that (among other things) the recent Bill 60 disallowed any green development standards, or the development of new standards. CAO Tara Baker added that there was a way that staff could preserve some of the work they were doing on Green Standards and use it in some other way, so in any event staff could use the pause to figure out what to do next and how to do it. The direction was unanimously approved.
Then there was a bit of confusion about the third recommendation around the vacant home tax. The motion put on the floor included over $400,000 from both the Affordable Housing Reserve and the Housing Accelerator Fund, and the reason for that was the fact that staff didn’t expect revenue from the vacant home tax next year to cover the cost. Why? The assumption was that council wanted to do the usual full public engagement process.
At Committee of the Whole, council was insistent that all this should get started as soon as possible so the approved recommendation #3 from committee was moved instead. Council still wanted some kind of public engagement done for public education purposes, even if it’s just a page on the Have Your Say site and staff said that they would come up with a plan to at least get community feedback about the most impactful pieces. Recommendation #3 was also approved.
Council also approved a slate of motions protesting recent provincial legislation and asking for more public consultation about the changes. Councillor Dan Gibson said that there’s a reason why some people on council didn’t get involved in provincial politics and would much rather council use their energy for stuff inside their control and yet joined his colleagues in supporting the motions anyway.
On the second matter, Advancing Affordable Housing, there was one delegate whose son lives on Normandy Drive next to the proposed site of one of the projects. He said that when his son bought his home five years ago, they were assured by staff that there would be nothing built at 5 Normandy and that there were no plans in the works to do anything with it. He was concerned because there seemed to be no notice from City staff that this was coming.
Still, it was reinforced that the usual planning processes still have be followed. One of the reasons this site was chosen is because it’s presently zoned as low density residential, so any planning changes needed can be handled through Committee of Adjustment, which is itself a separate public process. Council approved the recommendation from committee.
Finally, Linda Busuttil was reappointed the chair/vice-chair of the Joint Social Services and Land Ambulance Committee. And that’s all the council business until…
Click here to see the complete recap of the meeting.
Budget Meeting of City Council – November 26, 2025
A most contentious budget season came to its inevitable conclusion this week. Repeated warnings from Mayor Cam Guthrie about flying too close to the 7 or 8 per cent mark would be put to the test over the course of five plus hours and so were the procedural rules of council itself.
In terms of opening moves, Councillor Erin Caton put a couple of motions to restore funding for two I.T. positions on the floor, which were swiftly overruled by a majority of council. More successful was the addition of $47,000 for the bicentennial planning that got unanimous support.
But soon the controversy started. There was some grumbling about adding $500,000 to the 100RE reserve fund so that there’s money available in case opportunity knocks for green energy initiatives, but Councillor Leanne Caron said it was disingenuous to ask the community to invest in climate action in the recently approved Call to Action and not put skin in the game. The motion was passed 8-5, but that was not the last we heard of it.
Next, Councillor Carly Klassen tried to put money for council training back into the budget despite the positive variance that keeps coming back every year for that line item. Councillor Phil Allt called it “common sense budgeting” to not knowingly put more money into the budget than what will be spent, and Klassen took exception to that characterization. That led to a tiff between Guthrie and Allt about when a councillor can offer a point of personal privilege, but the motion itself failed 6-7.
The biggest and most controversial piece was the $650,000 to restore snow removal to on-street bike lanes. Councillor Rodrigo Goller, who brought the motion, said that he looked at ways to save money or identify the busiest streets, but it’s an all or nothing proposition. Council seemed pretty evenly split between the ones who believed that they had a commitment to maintain that snow plowing and the ones that were okay not spending the money in the name of affordability and/or safety. There was also some discussion about the seasonal nature of bike lane use, and how some people in Guelph are not big fans of them even in the summertime (depending on the part of town), but with no way to even just plow the spine of Gordon and Woolwich, council ended up voting against the motion by a slim 6-7.
The next votes went down easier. Council voted to proceed with the planning of Sloan Hill Park in 2026, and to roll over unspent funding for the bicentennial from this year. They also approved cutting the hospital levy in half and spreading it over two years instead of paying all $750,000 of the final installment next year. Mayor Guthrie was interested in collecting the levy beyond 2027 to save for the eventual new hospital in the city, but only three councillors joined him in that kind of forward thinking. Councillor Ken Yee Chew tried to make some symbolic cuts in the Community Benefit Agreements and replacement tree planting downtown but didn’t find much support.
That left two big pieces of business.
First council looked at adding $642,000 to support the expansion of the new #98 Speedvale route starting next November to add more frequency including weekend service. The price tag made some councillors balk, and there were concerns about whether road work on Speedvale East would be a problem, but ultimately there was agreement that expanding transit service is necessary, and especially good for this route which services Conestoga College and the northwest industrial area of the city.
Having said that, cracks were starting to show. Despite the benefits, Guthrie said he would be more likely to support this if council hadn’t already approved $500,000 for the 100RE reserve. The expansion was passed with another marginal 7-6 vote.
Then council went into a closed session that lasted nearly 90 minutes, and then they decided to take lunch before discussing the subject of that in-camera meeting in the open: daytime shelter services.
When council got started again, a motion was put on the floor to fund the provision of daytime shelter space to the tune of $850,000 based on weighted criteria including demonstrative experience, model of service, housing first principles, the location of services, and project understanding. The motion also asked for the County of Wellington to kick in 10 per cent, but if you recall from the report presented with the initial budget documents, this amount is half of what the project has called for. The motions were approved 12-1 with Allt saying that he only supported the idea in principle while most of his colleagues believed that something is better than nothing.
It looked like the budget was over, with Allt getting an endorsement for his request to (again) raise the alarm about the fiscal picture of all Ontario municipalities at Queen’s Park and approving other supporting motions supporting the budget. Before closing the budget process, Mayor Guthrie pondered exercising his veto. The 100RE funding seemed to have hit a sore spot especially, but it also sounded like he might have had a list of other possible vetoes.
Before getting too far along into those thoughts, Goller offered a motion of reconsideration to cut the 100RE reserve allocation in half, which prompted more procedural confusion. Since this is a reconsideration in the same meeting, council didn’t need a super majority to proceed, so a $250,000 allocation was put on the floor. At this point, Councillor Caron was the lone supporter for the full $500,000 and then tried for $350,000 but the die was cast and the new $250,000 amount was approved 7-6.
The tally at this point: A 3.36 per cent levy increase over 2025 plus 0.11 per cent for the levy portion for a total of 3.47 per cent. With the local boards and shared services currently expected to bring a 4.6 per cent increase in their budgets in February, that puts the total levy increase at just over 8 per cent. Guthrie asked for a moment to consult the clerk and the exec team still pondering a veto, but after the break he said he wouldn’t use it after all.
After saying that he would never use Strong Mayor Powers in an anti-democratic way, and that he would own the extra $1.09 per month for the 100RE and the #98 expansion, Guthrie thanked staff and council for all the hard work and brought this portion of the budget process to a close.
Click here to see the complete recap of the meeting.
Guelph Politico 