It's been a while since we've had an Open Sources Guelph Beat, but with all the the local discussion about what's going on at City Hall, it felt timely to add the thoughts of the local radio pundits into the mix. With discord at the council table, and discord at the local transit stops, now seems like a good time for some calm, clear-headed discussion. But instead, you get the two guys from Open Sources Guelph.
For this first edition of Open Sources Guelph Beat, Scotty Hertz and I address the following topics:
Closed Encounters of the Heard Kind. Dysfunction at city council was laid out for all to see Monday at Guelph’s City Hall, as the integrity commissioner came back with a report based on a complaint about leaked information from a closed session of council in January. The reported opened the floor to what even some members of council called an airing of their dirty laundry, as a packed house, there to talk about more pressing concerns, watched in [likely] horror. Could this have been avoided though? Is city council having too many closed meetings for comfort? And why did the supposedly epic debate over the Community Energy Initiative fizzle?
Bus-ted? Last December, city council approved a series of budget rollbacks to Guelph Transit service including one-hour service on stat holidays, but the cancellation of peak service for the summer has taken things up a notch. People are noting an uptick in missed transfers, and idling by drivers. Transit management says they told council that this would be the result, but some have speculated that the situation is being exacerbated by the the transit union, who are protesting cut hours. Why can’t Guelph make its Transit system work? We’ll also talk about the latest personality conflict amongst councillors.
You can download more podcasts off the Guelph Politicast channel on Podbean, including episodes of the Guelph Politicast, and full episodes of Open Sources Guelph.
You can listen to Open Sources Guelph live on CFRU every Thursday at 5 pm on 93.3 fm or cfru.ca.
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1 comment:
So a bus driver told the customers at the West End Rec center that they would miss their transfers because the city wants to save on mileage? And you don't understand? I can understand why you don't understand, it really does not make sense the way the driver said it. That driver may have blurted out words that don't make sense out of frustration in the way the city is trying to save on mileage. See, the driver surely reported many times to the supervisors that he could not make it back in time to the GCS for his customers to make their transfers. He surely asked if it was possible to have an extra bus covering the route 5 minutes in front of him to spread the load and have ALL the customers come in the GCS early enough for them to make their transfers. That's the way it has to be done for this 30 minute service to work on some of the routes, at certain times in the day. Sadly this bus driver, and all others who asked for extras, was told by the supervisors that the city will not permit the addition of extra buses on the road ''to save on mileage''. Why does the city want to save on mileage? Ask the councilors who voted to cut the service, they must have the answer. So I'm sorry that the driver did not explain to you and the other customers in more detail so that you could understand, maybe you could have asked the driver for more details about his announcement, and then get answers from Councilors on the matter so that you could post a podcast with more informative content.
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