I’m lucky enough to not be bored in the midst of the COVID-19 quarantine. The news, you see, doesn’t stop coming.
Now I can’t honestly remember the last time I felt real boredom. My sense of boredom appears in the form of a type of anxiety when I have so much to do and can’t decide on a place to begin, so I end up scrolling through clips of my favourite TV shows on YouTube.
In conversation with someone the other day (over the phone, obviously), I said that the biggest disruption to my routine lately has been the cancellation of future city council meetings. These are my bread and butter, and the functioning of government that I’ve basically built the entire endeavour of Guelph Politico around.
Now originally, this piece was going to be a stirring call to use the changes to the Procedural Bylaw that allow for remote council meetings as a way to return to a more regular meeting schedule, but on Thursday night it was announced that an emergency council meeting will take place on April 16.
I do note that the word “emergency” was still used in the notice of the meeting. Yes, there is an emergency situation, and yes there should be public oversight and engagement as government reaction is implemented, but what about the long-term business of council, and the City of Guelph?
Virus modelling released this week by the federal government did not paint a picture to indicate that anything resembling regular business was in our immediate future. Health officials have indicated that there’s a strong likelihood that COVID-19 cases won’t peak until later this spring, and that the first outbreak won’t likely see its end until late summer.
That’s right, the “first outbreak.” As Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said at his presser the other day, the pandemic won’t be over until there’s a vaccine, or a cure.
So the gauntlet has been thrown down, and we are now challenged to find a way to go about our regular business in just about all aspects of our lives. Kids are having to do schoolwork from home, there are no more meetings and conferences of the non-virtual variety, and we’re being asked to go without our usual pop-ins at the coffee shop of quick stop unless they deliver on Skip the Dishes.
Is it unreasonable to expect less of our local government?
Now one might think that this easier said than done, but a quick, non-thorough examination of the long-term planning at city hall shows that there’s a lot of important work in progress, and it’s going to require a proverbial [blank] tonne of public feedback in order to finish it.
First, there’s the open spaces strategy for Clair-Maltby that was passed at Committee of the Whole before the pandemic lockdown started that still awaits ratification by council so that the planning on the complete Clair-Maltby Secondary Plan can proceed.
There’s also the Parks and Recreation Master Plan, which is going to touch on so many different facets beyond who gets new and improved playground equipment. The future of leash free dog parks in the city and establishing the locations for amenities like new swimming pools are all rolled into these deliberations.
Speaking of democracy, there’s the Council Composition and Employment Status Review, which will determine how ward boundaries are drawn or redrawn, whether we’ll have full or part time city councillors, and the manner in which we will vote in 2022 be it ranked ballots, or internet voting. And FYI, we’ve got to have this all sorted out by April 2021.
The mayor had also rejoined his task force on homelessness before the quarantine in order to talk about supportive housing, and it’s hard not to see a correlation between the need for homes, and the present situation where we’re all being asked to stay put in our homes.
The Guelph Innovation District lands? That was almost a done deal, and there’s a lot of vested interest in what happens on that piece of property.
And it’s worth remembering that right before the quarantine, the next public meeting of council was going to be a workshop on multi-year budgeting, which is a long-term goal for the finances of the city. Now budgeting in any format is going to be a major headache at city hall with emergency spending, and lost revenue from all quarters having to be taken into account.
It's also worth noting that municipalities can’t take out the credit card with the near-infinite limit like the provincial and federal governments can.
Of course, none of this can happen without the oversight, scrutiny and input of the public, and it shouldn’t. And then the city added something new for this coming Thursday’s meeting: phone-in delegations.
If the phone lines are now open, and if the system works with a minimum of technical hiccups, then we can proceed as semi-usual with these important matters of public interest.
If you’re bored, you now have more time to become politically engaged than you ever thought possible, and the city should take advantage of all these thousands of people in Guelph looking for something to do.
