Putting together the City of Guelph budget was a process that more or less started right after the last budget was passed, and involved every City department basically rebuilding their budget from scratch every year. It wasn’t easy, it was short-sighted, and it created a lot of extra work for staff. There had to be a better way, and that better way might be the move to multi-year budgeting. Continue reading “GUELPH POLITICAST #246 – Explaining the Multi-Year Budget”
The last time that Dr. Nicola Mercer appeared on this podcast it was July, and things seemed to be going pretty good. Much of the province had been under a Stage 2 re-opening for weeks, and we were on the cusp of Stage 3. The virus wasn’t gone, but the number of new and active cases was on the right trajectory, but there were at the time rumblings about what would happen in the fall. Continue reading “GUELPH POLITICAST #245 – Still COVID [Fall Edition] with Dr. Mercer”
In 1982, John Cassavetes appeared in a schlocky Canadian-made horror movie called The Incubus, and a not so small portion of The Incubus was shot in Guelph. Just in time for Halloween, we’re going to talk about that time in the 80s where an Academy Award nominated actor and director came to the Royal City to hunt monsters in an unforgettably forgettable horror movie. Continue reading “GUELPH POLITICAST #244 – Guelph: Home of ‘The Incubus’”
The Guelph Public Library Board of Directors met Tuesday night, and among their agenda items was the next steps for the new main library plan. For many people in Guelph, these are great signs of progress for a project that’s been gestating since the mid-90s, but there might be even more pressure for the board to now turn those plans into reality. Continue reading “GUELPH POLITICAST #243 – The Library Victory Lap”
We know that small businesses everywhere are struggling, but every business is struggling in its own way. Halloween is Christmas for those businesses that sell costumes, make-up, and party supplies, but there’s definitely not going to be any parties this year, and even the possibility of Trick or Treating is in doubt. So what will Halloween look like, and where does that leave the people for whom Halloween is big business? Continue reading “GUELPH POLITICAST #242 – This is Halloween”
There was a gathering of people in Riverside Park in late August, and even though they said that they didn’t identify with QAnon, they still knew all the buzzwords like “save the children”. And then, one of the counter protestors said something interesting: “Why don’t these people, if they’re so concerned about child welfare, volunteer with a local organization that does just that?” Good idea! Continue reading “GUELPH POLITICAST #241 – The Real Work of Helping Children and Families”
We’ve heard a lot of talk about this being a moment, and June 6 was indeed a memorable moment in the history of Guelph with over 5,000 people in Market Square to march for Black Lives Matter. It amplified of a lot of voices who don’t always get heard in our community despite best intentions, but moments pass and that one was almost four months ago. How have things been going lately? Continue reading “GUELPH POLITICAST #240 – Catching Up with Kween”
Eliminating poverty has been made more difficult because of the COVID-19 pandemic due to the increased number of people who have found themselves jobless, and the difficulty in delivering services to people when physical distancing being a priority. But no matter how complicated you think your life is now because of the pandemic, it’s made the life and routine of people living in poverty in Guelph almost twice as hard. Continue reading “GUELPH POLITICAST #239 – On COVID-19 and Local Poverty”
At the August 24 city council meeting, money from the affordable housing reserve was given to the St. Joseph’s Housing Corporation to help complete a project to provide 65 affordable units to seniors. As a delegate at that meeting, the executive director of the Drop In Centre announced that her non-profit was working on a deal of its own for supportive housing, and that became the story. Continue reading “GUELPH POLITICAST #238 – The Future of Parkview”
What if we told you that vaccine hesitancy didn’t start with Jenny McCarthy? In 1722, not long after the first successful vaccination efforts were started in the west, there was an English preacher who argued that diseases were God’s punishment for sin, and any attempt to stop them with a vaccine was going against His will. That may sound crazy, but so do the modern world’s reasons for not getting your kids vaccinated. Continue reading “GUELPH POLITICAST #237 – It’s Vaccine Hesitancy, and It’s Not New”
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