Wait, aren’t we in the middle of summer vacation?! For the third time in four years, Guelph City Council will be gathered for a last-minute midsummer meeting, this time due to the bad timing of the Ontario government who have yet another scheme to get housing development going in the province. Get ready to talk about the Development Charge Reduction Program as local governance interrupts your August plans!
NOTE #1: Delegates will be able to appear at this meeting in-person or via tele-presense but you do have to register with the clerks office before 10 am on Monday August 10. You can also submit written delegations and correspondences for agenda items.
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 will start at the special time of 2 pm.
Development Charge Reduction Program – On June 1, the federal and provincial governments announced $8.8 billion in new funding for municipal infrastructure in exchange for those municipalities agreement to reduce development charges for all residential types by 30 to 50 per cent or greater and then maintain those reductions for at least three years. Guelph submitted an application on June 19, finishing it in just two weeks, but as of the writing of the report had not yet hear whether it was successful.
For Guelph, there’s $73.6 million on the table that would go to three different water and wastewater-related projects; $39.6 million for growth expansion at the Water Resource Recovery Centre, $7.7 million for the Verney Booster Pumping Station to replace the Robertson station and improve water capacity and pressure in the north end, and $26.3 million to restore capacity at the Clythe Water Treatment Plant, Booster Pumping Station and Storage Facility. To get that money, Guelph will reduce through a grant the equivalent to 30 per cent of the applicable residential DCs, automatically applied when an eligible building permit is issued, and thus theoretically get some of the 5,600 units in the development pipeline built.
Staff are framing this as a good thing because the DC reserves are in deficit and refilling them has been difficult with the lack of new construction. In fact, staff are currently looking at deferring approximately $30 million in capital projects in 2027 and another $133 million between 2028 and 2031 to keep the capital plan balanced.
The real issue though is time. This meeting is on August 12, the Ontario government wants agreements to be finalized on August 15 and the restricted period for council decisions begins on August 21 when the nomination period for the provincial election closes. Staff have prepared a confidential report that will allow council to establish negotiating parameters, assuming that the application is successful. If it is a success, then staff would implement the 30 per cent residential DC grant, adjust the capital budgets, monitor the program quarterly and preserve the associated funding until the City’s obligations are confirmed to have been met.
CLOSED MEETING:
Development Charge Reduction Program Negotiation Parameters – As mentioned above, if council approves the grant and the plan, they will need to give parameters to staff about how to negotiate on the City’s behalf. Since this is regarding a “position, plan, procedure, criteria or instruction to be applied to any negotiations carried on or to be carried on by or on behalf of the municipality or local board,” it has to be discussed in closed under section 239(2)(k) of the Municipal Act.
Grant Agreement – We can’t sure if this has to do with the grant being discussed at this meeting, or whether it’s about the grant agreement that was on the agenda at last month’s meeting, but it is a matter regarding “information explicitly supplied in confidence to the municipality or local board by Canada, a province or territory or a Crown agency of any of them and a position, plan, procedure, criteria or instruction to be applied to any negotiations carried on or to be carried on by or on behalf of the municipality or local board” so it will be discussed in-camera under section 239(2)(h) and (k) of the Municipal Act.
Guelph Politico 