Committee of the Whole Preview - What's on the Agenda for the September 5 Meeting?

It's time to get back to school work, with the first Committee-of-the-Whole session since July, and money matters seem to matter most in this first gathering of city council for fall 2017.

Longfield to Hold 2 Town Halls, and Debate an NDP Leader Candidate

Guelph MP Lloyd Longfield is going to have a busy couple of weeks with three big events, two informational, and one to engage in civil discourse with a colleague from across the aisle. If you like discussing the federal budget, electoral reform and/or mental health, then these are going to be good times ahead for you.

Community Energy Manager Let Go as Part of "Minor Changes" to IDE

Saying goodbye is never easy, but the City of Guelph makes it look that way. Buried in a press release today about "minor changes" being made to Infrastructure, Development and Enterprise services is news that Rob Kerr, Manager of Community Energy, is no longer employed by the City.

Loss of Ridership, Revenue During Summer Means No Free Rides for Storm Fans

The Guelph Storm celebrated their home opener this past Friday, and fans are hoping for a better season of hockey than they got last year. Some fans were also probably hoping to take advantage of Free Ride Fridays, a promotion by Guelph Transit to give free rides on game nights to ticket holders, but those fans likely got a rude surprise because Transit is no longer taking hockey tickets as currency when the Storm are in town.

OHL Storm Re-Up in Guelph for the Next Decade

At City Hall this morning, in the heat of midsummer, the City of Guelph announced that Guelph Storm hockey will be sticking around in the Royal City for the next decade. That's good news since the Storm is the anchor tenant for the Sleeman Centre, but it still leaves a substantial hole in the City's bottom line.

City Council Preview - What's on the Agenda for the May 24 Meeting?

Hope everyone on council enjoyed the long weekend, because it looks like tonight's council meeting might be a long one. A lot of items are up for discussion, but none more promising or potentially contentious as the launching of the Guelph Energy Efficiency Retrofit Strategy (GEERS). There will be a number of delegations to there to discuss that particular topic, but there's so much to talk about this week as various committee work comes to council for approval and feedback.

City Council Preview - What's on the Agenda for April 25's Meeting?

This looks like it's going to be a late one. At least three contentious issues are on the docket for Monday's city council meeting including an Integrity Commissioner report, the end of the standing committee structure, and the renewal of the Community Energy Initiative. And that's only the beginning of the fun...

RECAP: Bob Bell and Dan Gibson Hosted Ward 1 Townhall

Wednesday night, Ward 1 Councillors Dan Gibson and Bob Bell hosted the first townhall of the year. The room at the Italian Canadian Club was full, the townhall went about half-an-hour overtime, and a wide variety of issues were covered from beginning till end. If you weren't able to attend, or want to relive the experience, the live tweets from the forum are all arranged below for your transparent delight.

GO Transit Set for All-Day Service

I guess the Tri-Cities (sorry, I meant Canada’s Innovation Supercluster consortium) has gotten a taste for GO trains and likes it. Either that, or Premier Kathleen Wynne is looking to secure votes in this area for "Schrödinger's Election" (since the provincial election is both happening and not happening). But then again, maybe it's a case of both, a win-win if you will. Regardless, full-day GO Train service will be coming to the Kitchener-Guelph corridor in 2016, and the funding (what ever it is) will be covered with the full extent of the service extension in the upcoming provincial budget.

Editorial: Farewell Flaherty

In one of those surprise/not-surprising announcements yesterday afternoon, Jim Flaherty resigned as the federal finance minister. Citing ongoing health issues, and a desire to make bigger bank in the private sector, Flaherty will stand as MP for Whitby-Oshawa until the 2015 election. Natural Resources Minister Joe Oliver is expected to segue into the finance portfolio in an announcement later today, but Flaherty will cast a long shadow as the government looks to enter a black phase in the budget and re-election mode next year.

Highlights from the 2014 Federal Budget

Booooooooooring. It's called the "Boring Budget," but the 2014 Federal Budget has a great many interesting implications for the nation was he head into an election year in 2015.  

Press Release - Tax Increase to be One Per Cent Less

As the budget process heads into the home stretch, it seems that the city has found some extra change in the couch cushions, at least enough to knock down the expected tax burden by about one per cent. As it stands now, the tax increase for 2014 is expected to be 2.37 per cent as opposed to the previously reported 3.36 per cent. 

The cut comes courtesy of new figures from the Municipal Property Assessment Corporation (MPAC) and the County of Wellington, and despite the fact that the total operating budget is now $400,000 more than the initial estimate released on November 5th. That's good news for city hall deficit hawks, and good news for the average tax payer, but will all parties be satisfied with an increase that's still more than a full point more than the cost of inflation?

Overtime Overboard?

The latest money-related controversy shaking City Hall involves overtime. Actually, make that excessive overtime. The city's new internal auditor, Loretta Alonzo, told city council last night that overtime costs could clock in at $5 million by the end of 2013. That's a lot of overtime, you may joke. That's a scandal, deficit hawks may say lividly. That $5 million figure is across all city services, but the focus of much of the discussion is around the one service that takes up one-fifth - or $1 million - of that cost, Guelph Transit. According to the city, there's a 25 per cent rate of daily absenteeism among transit employees, with some employees taking as many as 50 sick days per year. If the average number of days worked a year, accounting for weekends and two weeks vacation, is 250, that means that some employees are off sick one-fifth of the year.

Let this Be Your Last Rob Ford Article

It's getting so that keeping up with the goings on of embattled Toronto Mayor Rob Ford is a full-time job, In fact, I think the Toronto Star has 3 or 4 people on it. But just as today's debate in city hall, which at times seemed like a trial with 43 prosecutors, looked like it was coming in for a landing, a judge decided to throw napalm on the out-of-control fire that's burning in Ford Nation by un-redacting more of those police documents from the investigation into Ford's alliances, and the picture it paints ain't pretty. As Ford emphatically stated again and again that he was not an addict on the council floor, police documents recounted one night where the Mayor finished a 40 oz bottle of vodka, took Oxy, snorted coke, and consorted with a woman believed to be a sex worker while sexually harassing one staffer, and calling a taxi driver a "Paki." And you thought you partied hard.

City Budget Process Gets Started with Capital Investment

It's the most wonderful time of the year, city budget consultation time. The process begins on October 1st this year with the presentation of Guelph's Capital Investment Strategy, and city hall's looking for your feedback on what Guelph should spend money on in order to improve the roads, and parks, and other infrastructure that make the Royal City home.

Slow News Day

This is the problem with a long weekend, it feels like you have twice as much work to deal with once you get back to the office after the weekend's over. 

City Budget Available to Parse For Yourself Online

Every year, the creation of the city budget is a contentious and difficult process, but after it's all said and done and voted on, it seems it's just kind of forgotten about till the debate over the next year's budget begins, or some sort of malfeasance regarding something in the budget being misspent comes to light. 

Perhaps the city's trying to change that by letting by letting people access the budget anytime, anywhere (so long as you have internet access and/or are in one of the city's public libraries). The city announced yesterday that they've posted the 2013 budget online, and if currently awaits budget hawks of all stripes in 10 easy and convenient to download pdfs on the City of Guelph website.

Highlights from 2013 Federal Budget

Everybody was expecting the worst. This was going to be an austerity budget: no handouts, no tax breaks and no sugar coating. But instead it seems that there was room for some sugar, or at least the government had the ability to make the budget a little sweet for some.

Press Release - City Wants Tourism Input

Last year's decision by city council to essentially privatize tourism services was bold, yet not necessarily well thought out in terms of the implications. Well, I guess it's time to get down to the implications. 

RIP: The Penny

Today's the fateful day. After hundreds of years of faithful service, the penny is being sent into forcible retirement. Or killed off, if you like.

The move was announced in last year's budget as a - ahem - penny-pinching measure by the Federal government to help bring Canada's fiscal picture into balance. No more pennies means an annual savings of $11 million to the treasury, considering that it cost 1.6 cents for every one cent piece minted. Still, what we will save in pennies is about to cost us in headaches.