The regular council meeting for February has environmental concerns front and centre, as city council considers joining a club of global lenvironmental leaders, and considers feedback to the Greenbelt expansion.
CLOSED MEETING: IATSE Bargaining Mandate; Guelph Professional Firefighters Association Bargaining Mandate; Solid Waste Contract Update; CAO-2018-03 Agreements with Guelph Soccer Inc. and Guelph Community Sports
CAO-2018-02 Participation in the Global Covenant of Mayors for Climate & Energy - The City cares about the environment, and they recently accepted an invitation to join the Global Covenant of Mayors for Climate & Energy, or GCoM. This is a program that promotes City-initiated energy and environmental projects, while exchanging information with other cities about their own initiatives and how they might be adapted here. According to the GCoM website, Guelph would become the 27th Canadian city to join the pact joining neighbours Kitchener, Halton Hills, London, Oakville, St Catherines, and Toronto in working towards a low-carbon economy, and to meet the goals established in the 2015 Paris Agreement. The good news is that the City of Guelph is already ahead of the game with a lot of GCoM's goals and traditions being accomplished as part of the Community Energy Initiative, or it's in the process of being completed through partners like the Federation of Canadian Municipalities. The financial impacts of GCoM membership are minimal according to the staff report.
IDE-2018.20 Protecting Water for Future Generations, Growing the Greenbelt in the Outer Ring, Public Consultation Document - As you may know, the Province of Ontario has been gathering feedback on this matter from regular, average Guelphites and other citizens province-wide, but there's also a need to collect feedback from stakeholders in an official capacity, and Guelph is one of those stakeholders. Staff will present their recommendations to council on the report, which will suggest that some of the background research done by the Province did not considering local water source information, existing mapping, or the characterization of threats to aquifers in their data gathering. Also, staff suggests that the report needs a better understanding and analysis about the risk to water resource systems due to growth pressure, and that the Province needs to prioritize water resource protection initiatives in the Ongoing Growth Plan. The deadline for comments with the Ministry of Municipal Affairs is March 7.
Consent Items from the Committee-of-the-Whole meeting on February 5:
- CS-2018.04 Delegation of Authority – Property Assessment and Taxation
- CS-2018-05 2018 Tax Bill Layout
- PS-2018.02 The Elliott Community – Consent to Obtain External Financing
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