Getting a jump start on Back to School, Guelph’s Member of Parliament Lloyd Longfield is putting out the call: two town halls this fall about important and pressing issues before the House of Commons. Continue reading “Upcoming Townhalls With MP Longfield Announced”
Of course Guelph is renowned for being a fairly environmentally friendly place, so in that tradition today we mark how the City of Guelph won an award for planting some flowers, and is planning a celebration next month for all things vegetable. Continue reading “Flowers and Veggies Make the News in Guelph”
In an announcement that should chill out voices of concern about the City of Guelph’s financial outlook, Standards and Poor’s (S&P) Global Ratings agency has given our fair city a AA+ rating with a stable outlook for the fourth year in a row. Continue reading “S&P Gives Guelph AA+ for the Fourth Year in a Row”
The subtitle for this week’s episode might well be “How does city council work?” Or at least, how does something transform from being an idea or suggestion into a new by-law or policy. Change is always inevitable, and there’s a fairly significant change coming to the way council is conducted next month, the switch over from a standing committee model to a Committee-of-the-Whole one. So I thought, “Why not combine the ideas?” Continue reading “GUELPH POLITICAST #47 – Stephen O’Brien, City Clerk”
Twice-monthly, Guelph Politico posts the latest inspection results from the Wellington-Dufferin-Guelph Public Health Unit inspection of local restaurants, hotels, cafes, grocery stores and other businesses that handle food. We call it “Mangez!”, and this column highlights the latest inspections done by WDGPH, and the results they’ve posted. Continue reading “MANGEZ! Dine Safe Guide for August 1-15, 2016”
Following up on last week’s Guelph Politicast podcast, I sought out the perspective of someone that represents one of the most important members of the Nightlife Task Force, the Guelph Police Service. Garry Male, an inspector with the Guelph Police Service, has been a part of the Nightlife Task Force off and on for five years, and he thinks that as compared to how things used to be handled downtown on bar nights, there’s been a big improvement over the last several years.
“I think it’s an evolution,” Male explained. “Originally, we tried different things to deal with the crowds, and some things worked like the way we patrolled the downtown with supplemental staffing. What happened was all these community stakeholders got together, and it was at that point this wasn’t just viewed as a policing problem.”
The Nightlife Task Force is made up of the bar owners, the Downtown Guelph Business Association, Guelph Transit, the University of Guelph, the Central Student Association, the City of Guelph, and city council. With upwards of 7,000 seats open for revelry on a nightly basis, that’s a lot of people and problems to manage, and Male said that the task force discovered that they each had a hand in created solutions. “Everybody go together and tackled the issues one by one to see what could be done about them,” he said pointing to the deployment of port-a-potties and negotiating late night buses as two of the improvements made.
“From a policing perspective, our patrolling has changed in that we now deploy pretty much 90 per cent of our people on foot,” added Male. “With that we looked at street closures, and that allowed everyone to move around freely in more space with less jostling, but it also opened up clear lines of sight so our officers could identify problems very quickly, and intervene very early.”
Intervening early is key because the police watch how and where their time is allocated; if they can stop a fight or an accident early it means less time taking people into custody, or worse, taking them to the hospital. All that data is collected by the police to further amend and refine the annual plans for Safe Semester. “We do keep statistics on things such as intoxication arrests, liquor enforcement, by-law enforcement, also things like impaired driving, assaults and what-not,” Male said. “Statistically, we’ve been doing better and better each year in those categories. We’ve gotten to the point where it’s working very well.”
Also working well, said Male, is the police coverage of the whole city. Of course the busiest areas are in the core, but there are other licensed establishments spread out around town, and, of course, private parties to consider. “We change the hours of work for some our staffing,” explained Male. “We have an afternoon shift that would normally be split into early afternoon and late afternoon, but during Safe Semester they’re all late afternoon, and we deploy them in the downtown core.Then our night shift, our regular patrol, is still patrolling the rest of the city. We also utilize our tactics and rescue unit downtown to patrol downtown as well.”
Response though is just part of the Safe Semester philosophy. While September is the busiest month for traffic in the Downtown Entertainment District, Male said it’s also making sure both returning and new students know what’s acceptable and what’s unacceptable. “It’s also setting the tone,” he said. “There are thousands of first year students that come in, and it sort of gives them the lay of the land and what the expectations are as well.”
As for the Safe Semester prep for the coming year, Male said that they’ve pretty much down to a science. “As far as the overall plan with transit, portable washrooms, and the taxi stands, everything’s going to be the same this year as it was last year,” he said. “We’re really not tweaking too much at all.”
“What we have tweaked, for example, is in previous years we’ve use street closures for Thursday, Friday and Saturday nights, and last year, we narrowed that down to just Friday and Saturday nights,” he added. “We’re sticking with that this year, and we’re going to do four weekends in a row.”
It’s coming! Or rather, They’re coming! Back to School time will soon be upon us, and along with heading back to the books, the classes, the seminars, the study sessions, and the seemingly never-ending stream of projects, essays, and reports, the students of the University of Guelph will soon be coming back… to party! That may be an over-generalization, but it’s also true that Downtown Guelph is going to get very busy again on Thursday, Friday and Saturday nights. This is where the Nightlife Task Force comes into play. Continue reading “GUELPH POLITICAST #46 – Nightlife Task Force”
In the kind of academic/corporate partnership that should give most people pause, the University of Guelph announced today that it has been given a $460,000 donation by Nestle Waters Canada to “conduct leading-edge groundwater research in Wellington County.” Continue reading “Nestle Gives $460K to UofG to Study the Groundwater it Wants to Take”
It was a month ago today, that the City of Guelph took the water use level down to Level 2 Red. Indeed emphasis of water use during the Summer of 2016 is “less is more,” as an unusually dry winter has lead into an unusually dry spring and summer. Given the preciousness of water, and the unusual scarcity of it this year, would it not be advisable to think about just how we spend those resources?
That’s always been the message of Wellington Water Watchers, and in the midst of a long dry summer their issues are coming into even more stark relief. On top of that, local environmentalists are really feeling the pinch because we seem to be surrounded by Nestle planting its flag in various wells around our region, first in Aberfoyle, then in Hillsburgh, and now in Elora and Middlebook. On top of that, the always contentious water-taking contract for Nestle at Aberfoyle expired this past Sunday, but as of today they’re still filling those bottles. So what’s going on?
Given all that, I reached out to Wellington Water Watchers for some potential explanations. Arlene Slocombe and Robert Case are both members of the Watchers, who, while getting some traction in fighting back against Nestle in Hillsburgh, are still trying to get bottled water-fillers out of Aberfoyle after almost a decade. Founded in 2007, the mission of Wellington Water Watchers is being “committed to the protection of local water and to educating the public about threats to the watershed.” If anything, their job has gotten harder in the last nine years, not easier.
So in the midst of a hot, dry summer, and the looming spectre that Nestle may be getting another lucrative 10-year deal to take millions more litres of water from the local aquafer, I got together with the two local water conservation activists to talk about that elixir of life, which is both fragile and plentiful, at least for people in this area, and why it seems like we’re taking it all for granted.
So let’s head down to the river, or rather at a conveniently situated coffee shop nearby, to talk about Water with the Wellington Watchers.
Addendum: Lindsay Davidson of the Ministry of the Environment and Climate Change offered me a comment about the status of Nestle’s contract, and how they can still be pulling water from the well when their deal has expired:
Nestlé submitted an application to renew its existing permit for the Aberfoyle well. We are currently reviewing the application and supporting documentation.
Under the Ontario Water Resources Act, if an application for renewal of an existing permit is made at least 90 days before its expiry, the permit remains in force until the ministry makes a decision on the permit renewal application.
The ministry evaluates each proposed water permit application to determine if it meets the principles of the Permit to Take Water program including, protecting the natural functions of the ecosystem, preventing unacceptable interference with other water users, and fair sharing and conservation of water.
This application will be posted on the Environmental Registry for public review. All comments received during the comment period will be considered before a decision is made.
To learn more about water issues in Guelph and area, you can go to the website for Wellington Water Watchers, or interact with them through social media on Facebook and Twitter. You can also go to the website, SaveOurWater.ca.
The theme music for the Guelph Politicast is from the KPM Klassics collection by Syd Dale.
The host for the Guelph Politicast is Podbean. Find more episodes of the Politicast here.
Remember that the Politicast Podbean channel is also the host for podcast versions of Open Sources Guelph. The previous Thursday’s episode of Open Sources will be posted on Mondays.
Stay tuned for future editions of the Guelph Politicast!
Reminder Guelphites: You can do more with your phone than collecting Pokemon. The fifth annual guelPhonography contest has begun, inviting all phone-wielding photogs to submit their pics of “the people, places, history, heritage, sports and spirit that make Guelph beautiful.” Continue reading “5th Annual guelPhonography Exhibit Looking for guelPhonographers”
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