59 Carden St.

"We're aware of them"

Posted by Magda
Every year that I've been here, the start of winter has brought out people upset about the city's snow-clearing. I spoke a couple of years ago to a woman who gets around in a wheelchair, and rarely shops downtown in the winter because of the piles of snow that accumulate between the parking lane and the sidewalk. Unless she can find a fully cleared spot, her husband has to lift her, and then her wheelchair, out of the car.

The city wants her, and you, to know it's paying attention to those concerns. But it just doesn't have the cash to deal with them -- yet.

"We want the community to know we’re aware of them," Derek McCaughan, director of operations, told a council committee earlier this month.

Staff had proposed shovelling away the so-called windrows that gather at the curb, starting with 200 spots. That would've cost $111,000. But it's one of the many proposals that wasn't recommended this year, because there just isn't enough cash.

I'm working on a story about how the city decides what to spend money on. (I'm getting some good-natured teasing around here -- I promise it won't be too dry of a read!) I'll take a look at why some things like windrow shovelling aren't approved, while others like an extra curbside advisor to make sure people are sorting their garbage properly are.

Read all about it on Saturday.

Correction: the windrows staff proposed to do away with are the ones that gather at the end of driveways of disabled people after a plow goes by. I've posted further explanation as a comment on this thread.

By the numbers

Posted by Magda
A couple of interesting, but extremely random, facts I came across today.

• Amount of sidewalk in Guelph: 700 km. (Staff are recommending against an inventory of the all that sidewalk next year, due to lack of funds. The inventory would've cost $25,000, or about $35 a kilometre.)
• Number of people who work for the city, in so-called full-time equivalents: 1,180. (Staff recommend increasing that to 1,199 next year.)

Welcome to Scotland

Posted by Magda
There was some talk earlier this month when the result of the city's $44,000 rebranding search came out.

For that price, the consultant came up with the slogan "Making a difference" and two squiggly blue lines symbolizing the city's two rivers.

It'll cost another $30,000 to $50,000 to buy new signs and replace decals on city vehicles.

But I say this is nothing compared to the 125,000 pounds (in Canadian, that's $247,000) Scotland spent on its new slogan. The result? Wait for it..... "Welcome to Scotland." Read more here.

2007 mystery tour

Posted by Magda
I hope some of you saw my story Saturday about the big mysteries of 2007.

The mysteries are:

• What happened for former finance director David Kennedy?
• Why did former CAO Larry Kotseff resign? What did he get on his way out the door?
• Why did the Federation of Canadian Municipalities boot its president, Guelph Councillor Gloria Kovach?
• Why did the Conservative Party dump Brent Barr as candidate?
• Why did Change Now close? What happened to the shelter that was to replace it?
• What does local actor Stephen McHattie really look like?
• What motivated a letter bomber to send a bomb to a Guelph man?
• Why did the Guelph Storm not trade Ryan Parent?
• Why did Geosign lay off about a third of its staff this year, soon after getting a huge infusion of investment cash?

I hestitated a little in the writing. What does this giant list of unanswerables mean?

Are we at the Mercury bad at digging around? But dig we did, a whole lot.

Did Guelphies just suddenly become really good at keeping secrets? That seems unlikely -- the keepers of these secrets come from different parts of the community, and unless they all went to the same secret-keeping workshop, it seems implausible they developed this skill over the last year.

I can't explain it. But actually, I'm fine with that. All I really want is to solve even just a couple of them.

At least we're not Hamilton

Posted by Magda
As our council committed to cap next year's tax hike at 4.5%, Hamilton is talking about a hike of anywhere between 6% and 8.3%. Ouch.

That's largely for service expansions. Maintaining current service would lead to an increase of just 2.5%. (That's different from Guelph, where council decided to allow a 3.5% increase to maintain current service, and 1% to allow for service expansions.)

Even so, Hamilton is saying it'd be hard to commit to a smaller increase, with expansions including things like road maintenance, snow removal and paramedics.

Mississauga, meanwhile, is talking about a 10% increase. Seems we're lucky not to be facing that kind of crunch.

Happy holidays

Posted by Magda
I've gone west for the holidays -- a whole 30 km west on highway 7 -- so expect 59 Carden St. to be quiet for the next week or so.

But here are some things you can expect in the next little while:

• Council could approve a new site for a mosque at the year's first council meeting. The Muslim community has long struggled with a space that's too small, and most recently was turned down for rezoning to build a mosque on agricultural land in Guelph-Eramosa.
• We'll find out council's priorities -- is 20-minute bus service more important than sidewalk plowing? A new compost plant than the library? -- in late January after a formal priority-setting session.
• We'll also find out what new services we'll be getting after the budget is passed in February.
• A compost technology will be recommended by a committee in the new year, and the future of waste management here will be sketched out when the master planning committee finishes its research.

Also, watch for our male and female newsmakers of the year -- coming Saturday and Monday -- plus a roundup of the year's best-kept secrets on Saturday.

In the meantime, wishing you all a great holiday.

Digging into the past

Posted by Magda
Did you know councillors and the mayor sat for one-year terms until 1965? And an A.J. Frank was an "Alderman" from 1928 until 1964 -- 36 years -- with only a couple of breaks.

I was looking for perspective in the historical society's history of Guelph, and came across a rather telling list of council's makeup going back 90 years. Elva Lowell was one of the first, if not the first, woman on council -- it's a bit hard to tell, because many of the councillors are listed with initials rather than their first names. Lowell was first elected in 1957 and served for a decade. I also hadn't realized that Ken Hammill, now prominent for his role with Friends of Guelph, is a former councillor, going back to 1963.

Things didn't seem to change much back then -- many councillors served for dozens of years, often in a row.

Interesting to note how things have changed, especially the last time around.

Keep your shovels on standby

Posted by Magda
Is it time for Guelph to stop plowing residents' sidewalks?

Councillor Leanne Piper has been hearing mostly yeses. Guelph is one of few cities that plows all sidewalks -- in many cities it's limited to sidewalks on busy streets. And with the apparent budget crunch coming -- councillors seem enamoured of at least two big-ticket items that didn't make the preliminary budget, buses
that run every 20 minutes and more frequent yard waste pickup -- it makes sense to have this discussion.

Operations director Derek McCaughan told a committee of council that a previous proposal to drop the plowing didn't go over very well. But maybe the time has come.

(Piper writes about an interesting program in Hamilton to connect volunteer shovellers with seniors who need help clearing their walks.)

40 minutes or the pizza's free

Posted by Magda
Ottawa councillors are considering offering free pizza to transit riders if they can't get downtown within 40 minutes.

"We need a rapid commuter service into the downtown core," said Councillor  Steve Desroches. "We aren't going to attract riders with a lumbering bus service."

It seems like a crazy idea -- but maybe it's just the kind we need to make transit work.

"Why I voted no"

Posted by Magda
Councillor Mike Salisbury explains on his blog that he voted against the glass recycling system recommended by staff at Monday's council meeting because he's worried the process didn't bring forward enough choices. (In essence, the city got two bids, and staff disqualified one of them, so the only choice for councillors was to accept that option or keep sending glass to landfill.) Salisbury was the only councillor to vote against the system.