This week, there back-to-back council meetings, and one of them looked bigger than normal in terms of the number of people around the horseshoe, which was really more like a round table. A joint meeting of Guelph City Council and Wellington County Council was held to talk about the issues facing paramedics, while Guelph council on it’s own had to deal with a matter of funding more police downtown. Continue reading “This Week at Council: Police Money and Paramedic Needs”
Council is going to try and get smarter about paramedic matters. You can click here for the amended agenda from City Hall, and you can click here for the Politico preview. For the complete blow-by-blow of today’s council meeting, you can follow along on Twitter, or follow the tweets below. You can also watch the City’s own live-stream of the meeting here. Continue reading “LIVE BLOG: City Council Meeting for June 1, 2023”
June starts with a city council meeting, another workshop/orientation meeting, and the subject this time is a very important and timely topic indeed. You’ve probably been following the news in the last several months about the long lines of ambulances frequently seen outside Guelph General Hospital, or maybe you’ve seen them for yourself, well this meeting will outline the potential political response. Continue reading “City Council Preview – What’s on the Agenda for the June 1 Meeting?”
In a little over a week, city council will be asked to make some pretty big decisions about the 2022 and 2023 Guelph Budget. On Tuesday night, the chief administrative officer, his three deputies, and the City’s treasurer got together on stage at the River Run Centre for a live virtual town hall to answer people’s question about this difficult and multifaceted budget. So what were people interested in talking about? The recap is below. Continue reading “RECAP: City of Guelph Exec Team Answers Budget Questions in Town Hall”
Graduate and undergraduate students at the University of Guelph have voted in favour of getting back to normal in a very specific way for the next semester. The results of a mid-term referendum overwhelmingly endorsed a new contract between the Central Student Association, the Graduate Student Association, the City of Guelph and Guelph Transit to bring back the universal student bus pass (Upass) in January. Continue reading “U of G Students Approve New Deal on Student Bus Pass”
Students returning to the University of Guelph in a couple of weeks will notice several changes, and one of them will be access to their universal student bus pass, better known as a UPass. To put this bluntly, there will be no UPass this fall because the contract to provide one through Guelph Transit expired earlier this year, which added another logistical difficult for the U of G’s student government as they get ready to welcome their peers back to campus. Continue reading “U of G Students Face Big Transit Issues in the Fall”
As we start reaching the potential end of the pandemic, it seems prudent to pause and ask the question, what does the future for Guelph look like? In a few months when almost everyone is vaccinated, do we go back to the way things were, or do we embrace a new normal? The logical place to start answering those questions is to ask the three people who manage City of Guelph services, and their boss. Continue reading “GUELPH POLITICAST #282 – The Future with Guelph’s Exec Team”
On Friday, Guelph and its public health affiliated neighbours managed to avoid going into level Red-Control, the final condition before being forced to return to lockdown. But the numbers are not in our favour, and the City of Guelph announced Monday that they do not intend to be caught off-guard if its announced that we’re being moved into red. In other words, enjoy some indoor recreation and fitness facilities while you can. Continue reading “The City of Guelph is Preparing to Enter Red Level”
Guelph Transit announced Tuesday that the current service levels are going to stay exactly the same for the foreseeable future. Since the start of the pandemic, buses have been running at a reduced service level, and even though school will be re-starting again in a few weeks, the City of Guelph will be keeping those services on the Saturday schedule indefinitely, while making some difficult decisions about staffing. Continue reading “Guelph Transit Sticking with Current Schedule, and Laying Off Workers”
In a closed session at Wednesday’s council meeting on the COVID-19 response, council will hear information about the University of Guelph universal student bus pass, and the options they’ll need to consider if students don’t return to school for in-person classes in the fall. Less than eight weeks before the start of the school year, there are still a lot of unknowns about this important source of funding for Guelph’s transit system, and what happens if the City can’t collect. Continue reading “Lack of Students Will Seriously Impact Transit Funding, and Service”
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