GUELPH POLITICAST #406 – The Rest of 2023 at Council

Just because it's February, it doesn't mean that it's too late to think about last year, at least in the realm of council business. We've only had a couple of meetings under our belts so far in 2024, and a lot of what's been on the council agenda actually started in the latter part of last year, from the announcement of the housing symposium, to the 2024-2027 budget process, to Mayor Cam Guthrie's announcement that he was looking to regulate encampments.

So let us flashback to August. Yes, there was a council meeting in August, which was a very unusual circumstance, but it plays into the issue of the day. The Home for Good campaign needed an emergency boost, and city council wanted to give it to them to ensure that the Kindle Community supportive housing project stays on track. Housing was a major point of concern for the rest of the year.

There were two whole, long meetings on the subject of housing, and out of that came the housing symposium that took place just a few weeks ago. (We still don't know what actually came out that though.) There was also some debate about the new Downtown Parking Master Plan including the introduction of the Payment-in-Lieu of parking policy, which was just introduced at Committee of the Whole last week.

And of course there was the budget. It was an interesting process this year with the first full multi-year budget, and the first budget produced under the spectre of Strong Mayor Powers (you might have heard something about that in the last week). There was also some more back and forth with changes prompted by the provincial government, there were a lot of new planning projects approved, and there was a whole controversy about an old bell. Just another fall in the council chambers!

So let's gt back into council business on this week's edition of the Guelph Politicast!

There's so much going on at city council this February. Stay tuned to Guelph Politico for all the latest developments!

The host for the Guelph Politicast is Podbean. Find more episodes of the Politicast here, or download them on your favourite podcast app at Apple, Google, TuneIn and Spotify.

Also, when you subscribe to the Guelph Politicast channel and you will also get an episode of Open Sources Guelph every Monday, and an episode of End Credits every Friday.