It was the last city council meeting… before summer break! There will be a couple of more meetings in September before the October 26 election, but will there be anything as controversial as the unscheduled return of the Public Space Use Bylaw? That one was put on the revised agenda, along with a matter of development changes being applied to a non-profit’s renovation project. We’ll get that, and the update about the City’s Strategic Plan in this last recap of the summer!
Shareholder of GMHI and Regular Meetings of Council – July 21, 2026
There was a lot of waiting at Tuesday night’s two meetings, starting with the shareholder meeting for Guelph Municipal Holdings Inc. For the second time in two months, council met about their ownership stake in Alectra Utilities, this time to get more information about rate restructuring and its plans to invest hundreds of millions of dollars in improving infrastructure across the system.
The shareholder met in closed for over an hour and when they emerged Mayor Cam Guthrie said that they just received information from City of Guelph staff and Alectra representatives. They approved the consent report and then wrapped up the meeting.
Next came the regular meeting, which technically started late though the open session started on time thanks to an extremely short closed session about a grant agreement.
After that, council turned into an awards show briefly giving out the Access Recognition Awards from the Guelph Barrier Free Committee, recognizing Nathan Skoufis’ recording breaking 13th Canadian Open Martial Arts Championship, and saluting Noah Mason-Wetherill for winning the prestigious Gold Duke of Edinburgh Award. Carrying on with the political business of the meeting, council approved the consent agenda and then started digging to the first of two new items added Friday.
First was a request to assist Royal City Musical Productions Inc. The group has secured extra space in 100 Crimea Street, the same building that’s home to the Guelph Food Bank, and they’re trying to undertake renovations that will allow them to store years and years worth of props and costumes in a new permanent home. The rub? A requirement to pay $30,000 in development charges that cannot be waved. In order to get the building permit, RCMPI has to pay the fees, but that’s going to be tough with the group’s present financial position, especially paying double the rent for their current storage space and the new one.
In order to allow the renovations to proceed, Mayor Guthrie and staff proposed an arrangement where RCMPI could pay the DCs over 15 years starting in 2027. This maneuver would give RCMPI the breathing room it needs to allow them to proceed with the renovations, but it also prompted concerns about the rigidness of the Development Charges Bylaw. So along with the direction to staff to execute the financing agreement, council posed a motion to direct staff to explore exceptions and/or grants for non-residential DCs as part of the next review. Council approved the recommendations unanimously.
Next, was a proposed update to the Public Space Use Bylaw, but prior to a discussion in the open, council recessed for their third in-camera debate of the evening. After nearly an hour in closed getting solicitor advice, Mayor Guthrie announced that the 10 recommendations he had added to the amended agenda the Friday before were being tossed for something else.
Before rolling that out, Guthrie took a moment to say that he was not going to apologize for bringing things forward that were of “grave concern” to the community, and that he wanted to provoke a conversation among council and staff about those concerns. He also said that he took exception to any accusation that he didn’t follow procedure saying that the way he put this topic on the agenda was “by the book.”
With the assistance of Councillor Cathy Downer, the first six-part recommendation was put on the floor, essentially asking for staff to review the Public Space Bylaw, which was just passed in 2024, for setbacks from property lives, the placement of unauthorized structures near supportive or transitional housing, playgrounds, water-based rec facilities, and other possible revisions. The goal was to get this complete by Q1 of 2027, but a subsequent motion reset the timeline to Q2 given the amount of work involved tp orient the new council and approve the 2027 budget confirmation early in the new year.
A couple of councillors expressed concern about the timeline, but there was mostly just relief that they weren’t expanding the bylaw there and then. Guthrie himself added that with so many legal proceedings going on around encampments a delay might make more sense anyway, though he did reiterate that he’s hearing from people all over the city about encampments right up against property lines, stealing power, and making noise all night. He also said there’s a problem with encampments near supportive housing, and how they’re having a negative effect on people trying to stay sober and turn their lives around.
The six recommendations were near unanimously approved 12-1.
The second slate of motions were essentially recommendations 7 through 10 in the ones originally included in the amended agenda. They asked staff to pilot a response team for the next seven months to deal with the growing number of encampments, evaluate its progress in advance of the 2027 budget, request a meeting of the Joint Social Services and Land Ambulance Committee to examine the issue there, and a direction to increase advocacy efforts to the upper levels of government.
Council followed up with questions about the practicality of having that response team ready for the beginning of August and DCAO of Public Services Colleen Clack-Bush said it was doable if the City leverages current staff and community partnerships so they can backfill with resources as the work commences. There was also a desire for assurance that the team was not just going to be about enforcement and removal, and Clack-Bush said that they will also be focusing on clean-up and compliance too. Councillor Linda Busuttil asked to expand the recommendation to all unauthorized structures in natural heritage areas like treehouses and firepits, but her amendment failed by a slim 6-7.
The four other recommendations were approved unanimously, and Guthrie thanked his council colleagues for a good conversation.
Click here to see the complete recap of the meeting.
Special Meeting of Council – July 22, 2026
The last meeting before summer break was all about the annual update on the Strategic Plan initiatives. This one marked the end of the second full year of the plan, and the GM of Strategic Initiatives and Intergovernmental Services Jodie Sales said that work has already begun planning the refresh under the new council in the next few years. (Look for more details on that and the next multiyear budget in an information report to council this Friday.)
The report itself was pretty straightforward with the City making some impressive gains in some of their key performance indicators (or KPIs) and leaving some room for improvement in others. You can see the progress by topic area here. After the City presented, six of the seven local boards and shared services presented the results of their own strategic initiatives; only Wellington County Social Services didn’t send a representative.
Among those highlights, the Downtown Guelph Business Association talked about their success building their online profile, The Elliott Community discussed their leadership in treating dementia with the Butterfly Approach and how it’s lead to a decrease in the use of antipsychotics, and Wellington-Dufferin-Guelph Public Health showed how they’re setting the curve in getting young people to take their HPV vaccines. Guelph Public Library CEO Dan Atkins and Guelph Police Chief Gord Cobey shared information from previously released annual reports, while the Grand River Conservation Authority mentioned their deal to sell portions of the Niska land to the City for parkland.
There weren’t a lot of follow-up questions from the presentations, which was at least surprising in the case of the GRCA with the meeting this coming Monday about the controversial disposition of those eight hectares of agricultural land and their amalgamation into Eastern Lake Erie Regional Conservation Authority with three other CAs early next year.
Council voted to receive the City report, and Guthrie wished everyone a nice summer break although he teased the possibility of an August meeting. Was he serious? I guess we’ll find out.
Click here to see the complete recap of the meeting.
Guelph Politico 