59 Carden St.

Civic League "going dark" for summer to "recharge"

Advocacy group Guelph Civic League has announced its blog will shut down for the summer months "to reboot and recharge."

The organization says it will relaunch in September with a news magazine style forum for community debate. The Civic League will continue to send out messages via its mailing list through the summer.

When the organization relaunches it will be under new(ish) leadership.

President Dave Sills has stepped down due to "a work-related relocation," according to the GCL blog. Former VP Andy Best is the new president, with former member-at-large Kevin Bowman moving up to be the new vice-president.

Judy Martin, Jeff Biegus and Derek Alton remain in executive positions.

Message, subtle or otherwise, in a retweet?

At Monday night's OTES committee meeting, I tweeted (@scottjtracey) that there had been a lot of talk until that point about low "employee engagement" -- i.e. satisfaction -- across the organization.

That was retweeted within less than 30 minutes by recently-departed realty services manager Jim Stokes.

I found that interesting. Draw your own conclusions.

Annual reports night at Guelph OTES committee meeting

It's annual report night at this evening's meeting of the Operations, Transit and Emergency Services committee.

Fire chief Shawn Armstrong is to present the Emergency Services annual report, while Guelph Transit general manager Michael Anders will give committee members a look back at 2012 in his department.

Rod Keller, general manager of public works, will present his department's annual report, while Doug Godfrey, manager of bylaw compliance and security, will recap his department's year.

I'll be tweeting from the meeting @scottjtracey and @guelphmercury

(Tonight would normally be city council's monthly planning meeting, but it has been moved to tomorrow night so it does not overlap with the annual Federation of Canadian Municipalities conference, which wraps up today in Vancouver.)

Budget scheduling the hot topic at council tonight?

You wouldn't think scheduling the 2014 Guelph budget process would be the hot topic at council, but at this point it appears that's what the majority of discussion will be about.

Since the initial agenda was released, four people have registered as delegations to address the matter.

I'm curious what they have to say. The staff report, presented recently to the Corporate Administration, Finance and Enterprise Services committee, simply lays out the timing for the various steps in the budget process.

As always, I'll tweet the meeting @scottjtracey and @guelphmercury

City wants to know why voter participation dropping

The city will get some outside help as it tries to figure out why fewer and fewer people have been participating in municipal elections.

Beginning Monday, Toronto-based Oraclepoll Research Ltd. will administer a telephone survey, asking 600 randomly-selected questions about their participation in municipal elections.

"Voter participation has more or less declined since the 2000 election," city clerk Blair Labelle said in a media release, "and there is very limited municipal data available to shed light on this trend to support our planning efforts."

The survey results and related staff recommendations will be presented in July to the city's governance committee.

Guelph Transit provides a record number of rides for passengers in 2012

Posted by Phil Andrews

The 2012 annual report for Guelph Transit has just been released to the city's Operations, Transit & Emergency Services Committee.

Here are verbatim key findings it offers:

* Ridership on both conventional and mobility services increased in 2012. For the first time in its history, Guelph Transit had more than 7 million boardings in a year;

* Customer complaints increased drastically in 2012 due to the implementation of the Transit Growth Strategy. The magnitude of the changes to the transit system was very significant and many riders could not understand or assimilate the changes;

* Guelph Transit was approximately 6 per cent over budget which was a combination of both lower revenues and higher expenses than forecast. Financial performance is expected to improve as experience is gained with the new routes and service model;

* Schedule adherence was below expected levels. Again, as further experience is (gained) with the new system and the necessary service adjustments are put into effect, performance should improve.

GRCA to participate in Niska Road bridge study

Posted by Phil Andrews

The Grand River Conservation Authority has advised the City of Guelph it wishes to participate in the Environmental Assessment process related to the municipality's controversial proposal to replace the Niska Road bridge with a new, two-lane structure.

According to the agenda of the next GRCA meeting, the conservation authority is interested in the proposal as the span would cross the Speed River and see development in a zone noted as a local watershed flood plain.

Here is the GRCA report: Download Agenda Package - media

 

Common sense around lightning

Posted by Phil Andrews

The City of Guelph seems to have added a line to its Sportsfield Status link on its website.

The link offers input to users on whether city-controlled sports fields are immediately available for user groups.

A line about how to react in the event of lightning appears to have been added.

It must be influenced by legal advice. Perhaps asserting that people need to use common sense surrounding lightning around the fields is the most prudent position to take from a risk management point of view.

Guelph Transit hiring

Posted by Phil Andrews

Guelph Transit is seeking to hire a manager. It's a senior job but not the top gig with the utility -- though the salary tops out in the Sunshine List range.

The successful candidate will feel some heat in the role. Guelph Transit is fairly or unfairly a huge target for criticism in this community.

 

Downtown parking, capital budgets on Guelph committee agenda

Downtown parking will likely be the key topic of conversation at this evening's meeting of the city's corporate administration, finance and enterprise committee.

Committee members will hear a staff update on a downtown parking master plan currently underway.

One other agenda item which could prove interesting concerns a capital budget monitoring report. This could be interesting given a couple of councillors' very public concerns about how capital budget dollars are allocated once the overall budget is approved by council.

The meeting gets underway at 5:30 p.m. I'll post some updates via the Twitter machine @scottjtracey and @guelphmercury