Budget fight begins
With all the deep cuts potentially on the
table in regards to the 2010 city budget, it came as no surprise that council’s
first look at the document would come with some apprehension. The major areas
that got air last Monday night were transit and downtown parking, but
considering the variety of cuts proposed, there isn’t a single area under city
management that isn’t saved from belt-tightening. The debate should get much
more interesting in the next week as public debate is opened up on the matter.
It was expected that as many as 26 delegations had requested time to speak to
council at the meeting this past Tuesday. But public forums are seeing their
share of debates as well.
The Guelph Arts Council was quick to react
to potential cuts, sending out a mass e-mail last week asking all its members
to speak out in defense of arts funding in the City of Guelph. “We are not
at the top of the list but we are on the list – in other word, we are
threatened, and we do need to make our case,” said the e-mail. The GAC further
asked its members to send letters and e-mails to Guelph city
councillors and local media as part of a co-ordinated effort to make it known
that the arts matter in the Royal City.
Meanwhile, University of Guelph students
are rallying to save the universal bus pass, after it was suggested in the
budget proposal that it be eliminated and replaced with a cost per month plan
like the one high school students have to pay for. Comparatively, the U of G
universal bus pass costs roughly the same per semester what it costs for a high
school student to get one student pass for a month. The city feels that that
there’s a pretty big gap there where a few extra dollars can be made. “It’s sad
that a program that Guelph Transit has won awards for, for innovative ways of
getting people out of cars and into buses, is being dismissed without any
discussion,” said Brenda Whiteside, the university’s associate vice-president
(students affairs) to the Guelph Tribune. The universal bus pass has been part
of the student experience at the U of G since 1994, and it won’t go quietly. As
of Sunday, the “Save the Bus Pass” Facebook group has over 6,400 members.
For up-to-date blow-by-blows go to my blog
at http://guelphpolitico.blogspot.com/
McKitrick feels “vindicated”
The recent “Climategate” mess where
thousands of e-mails and documents from the Climatic Research Unit of the University of East Anglia in
Norwich, England were hacked and then leaked has cultivated a Guelph connection.
No, no one from Guelph was involved in either being hacked or doing the hacking, but a University of Guelph
professor has gotten a shot of renewed notoriety out of the fallout. “My phone’s been absolutely ringing off the hook,” economics
prof Ross McKitrick told the Guelph Mercury last week. McKitrick has for a long
time been a climate change skeptic (or denier depending upon your slant), believing
that all the talk about end of the world consequences from global warming was
much ado about nothing. “There’s a sense of vindication there,” he added in
response to the allegations that the e-mails prove climate change scientists
were cooking the books to make the problem seem much worse than it is. But perhaps
the real conspiracy here is that all this came out just days before the UN
Climate Change conference began in Copenhagen.
Another hurdle for HCBP quietly
leapt
Posted quietly on the City of Guelph website
Friday was news that funding assistance from Industry Canada
for the watermain and utility highway crossing construction for the Hanlon Creek Business Park project
had been approved. The city submitted an Environmental Assessment to the
Canadian Environmental Assessment Agency, and from that report and the
“implementation of appropriate mitigation measures,” the Feds decided to grant
the request for funding. According to the city press release, appropriate
implementations of mitigation measures included in the Environmental Assessment
include: fauna at risk; human health and safety; structure, site or thing of
historic, archaeological, paleontological or architectural significance; air
quality; noise levels; soil quality; vegetation; and water quality. "We
are pleased that this project has cleared this level of environmental review
with the Canadian Environmental Assessment Agency," said Peter Cartwright,
General Manager for Economic Development and Tourism.
