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Are we unable to see the forest for the grass at city hall?

This week on Market Squared, we're going to talk about how the big issues seem to be getting in the way of the little ones.
20160421 POLICE HEADQUARTERS 3 ts
Dignitaries from the city, council, police service and construction company turn the ceremonial sod to launch the Guelph Police Service headquarters renovations in this April, 2016 file photo. Tony Saxon/GuelphToday

This column, and my work these last five years on Guelph Politico, has been partially driven by the idea of breaking down barriers between people and their local government. As a mission, it’s has been easier said than done.

It struck me this week as we entered hour three of a debate about the Community Road Safety Strategy that we hadn’t really heard, in layman’s terms, how the strategy will result in safer streets, or how people will be able to quantify whether or not their own streets have been made safer.

On the surface it all seems so simple with more signage and red light cameras, but how is that different from what we have now? How do we get from where we are, with streets that sometimes make Guelph look like Fury Road, to a place that’s more generally friendly to all road users? I’m not especially sure what conclusion we reached except, “follow the process.”

What I did walk away from the meeting with is a sense that city staff was not as open and available as it could have/should have been about one very small aspect of the plan: traffic calming. Staff affirmed that they did as much community input as they could have given the technical subject matter, but there was one delegate, and some members of council, who disagreed.

While we can all agree that more community engagement is always preferable to less, I’m forced to wonder how many people out there would consider setting aside their precious time to get into the vagaries of traffic calming. Do people have strong thoughts about speed bumps over raised intersections, or do they just want people to slow the 'eff down?

And frankly, none of this gets to the root of the problem, which is that people in this town drive far too recklessly and shake off any direction — no matter how benign — that slows them down. Remember “signalgate” when people threw a city-wide fit that all crosswalk signals in Guelph were automated to bring the walk signal up without pushing the button?

So instead of that, we got bogged down into a process question about one small aspect of an overall strategy because one person didn’t like how that one part of the strategy was developed. Combine that with a series of questions that seemed designed for councillors to prove that they did the homework rather than shed light on how this strategy will affect their constituents, and its easy to see why the majority of people gloss over what happens in the council chambers, virtual or not.

So let’s attack something that a lot of people care about: the renovation of Guelph Police Headquarters.

Late last week, it was announced that a new contractor has been selected to finish the work that is more than a year overdue. The City of Guelph issued a press release that was “Just the facts, ma’am,” saying that the new contractor had been through the site, and that there will be an update to council soon about the new schedule to completion and any cost overruns.

How about this idea, why not now?

It’s been almost a month since it was announced that Jasper Construction was removed (not fired!) as the contractor on the [olice headquarters project, but there’s been no public vetting of what happened, what’s happening, and where the project went wrong.

Perhaps there are now some other questions we should be asking about the new contractor, Perini Management.

It should become a pattern of behaviour on all big municipal construction projects to talk about its progress, in the public venue of the council chamber, as they are happening, and not just before approval and after things go wrong.

None of this is to say that we should focus less on the wonkish stuff like traffic calming policy, but it seems that we’re too focused on the underbrush sometimes to not notice an issue with the trees. Are those the trees coming down? Who knows? We’ve got mushrooms growing here!


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Adam A. Donaldson

About the Author: Adam A. Donaldson

In addition to writing his weekly political column for GuelphToday, Adam A. Donaldson writes and manages Guelph Politico, frequently writes for Nerd Bastards and sometimes has to do less cool things for a paycheque.
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