School kids and teachers aren’t the only ones that get a summer vacation. City council, and those that cover them, also get a summer break, at least when it comes to the monthly meeting schedule. We now have a couple of weeks of meetings under our belt since August ended, but for this week’s podcast we’re going back in time to business at council before summer vacation.

We will start in May when council said goodbye to a colleague who got a new job, and then they got into the issue of placing a daytime shelter, and whether or not that should go downtown. Downtown was a pretty big area of interest in the middle three months of meetings this year, from the upcoming big dig on Upper Wyndham and St. George’s Square to the possibility of holding the Memorial Cup at the Sleeman Centre in 2027.

The biggest story though might have been that council vacancy. There were times that the even number of council representatives caused some difficulties on close votes, including on the vote to appoint a replacement for Dominique O’Rourke. The appointment process was a tremendous source of drama but so was, surprisingly, the pace of new heritage designations that have been brought to council for approval over the last several months.

This is just a taste of some of the council business that took place between May and July of this year. Some issues were more complicated than others, some issues turned out to be not issues at all. Council sat as a shareholder, and as a tribunal. They met for some special orientation meetings, and they had a planning matter come to a regular meeting through Strong Mayor Powers. It’s a lot to cover in a little over 30 minutes, but this week we will give it a try.

So let’s get into the middle part of this year at city council on this week’s Guelph Politicast!

You can see all the council meeting agenda and find videos of all the council meetings on the City of Guelph website. Or you can get all those details with the council previews, recaps and post-views on Guelph Politico. Also, subscribe to the Guelph Politico Tip Sheet on Substack and get your council recap on Thursday morning, directly in your inbox.

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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.