This block is hot. And I’m not just talking about the temperature.
I, personally, was already broiling when I got to Monday’s council meeting. A three-car accident at the intersection of Imperial and Willow delayed my bus for about 45 minutes as ambulances, police cars and tow trucks cleared the scene.
Fortunately, no one was killed, and the only effect was some inconvenience, but still, who hates being late?
In any event, the initial atmosphere in the council chambers was cool, and I don’t just mean the fact that thermostat in the chambers is usually set to “frigid” no matter the time of year.
The presentation of the final report of the Solid Waste Service Review, which had a contentious meeting around the interim report last fall, was positively a carnival of gratitude and appreciation. The mayor took a deserved victory lap for getting council onto the same page for service reviews and all seemed right with the universe.
Well, almost.
The first real sign of potential trouble in paradise was during a motion to restore full service on the #3 Westmont bus route, where the mover, Councillor June Hofland, expressed her hope that her council colleagues who voted against it in committee might see their way to giving more buses the green light.
Councillor Dan Gibson said he appreciated the sentiment of the motion but added that for his first few years of council he would propose efficiencies and be told to hold on to them and wait for the budget process. How was this situation different?
It was a little bit after that when Mayor Cam Guthrie noted a procedural bylaw that limited councillors to five minutes of talk time on a given subject. In order to rein in some of these long meeting times, Guthrie said he was going to try and enforce those limits.
When it was his turn to speak on the matter, Guthrie said that the issue around the #3 bus was being framed as a case of good versus evil, and he didn’t like the idea of cherry-picking individual problems with the transit system, nor spending an extra $350,000 on the fly five months before an election.
When someone in the gallery pointed to their watch in frustration, Guthrie threatened to throw them out for breaking decorum.
This was getting heated.
It was then Gibson’s turn for a motion, wanting to add a line to a recommendation on making the city-wide conversion to 100 per cent renewable energy by 2050. Gibson wanted to add a caveat about aligning the City’s efforts to whatever new provincial energy plan the next government puts in place.
There was some disagreement on this.
Councillor Phil Allt said that Guelph has been a leader on many issues, and it was ingenuine to say that the Royal City must rely on the province, which sometimes makes vision-less decisions out of ideological concerns.
Guthrie did not like that word “ingenuine”, and while Allt retracted the word, it felt like we were dangerously close to someone performing Al Pacino’s famous monologue from …And Justice for All.
Round two of Allt and Gibson was when the Ward 1 Councillor talked about the potential economic impact of renewable energy, and his research into the phenomenon of “energy poverty.” Allt demanded a point of order to know what “energy poverty” has to do with the City going 100 per cent renewable, but Guthrie said that he believed Gibson was going somewhere and ruled the comments in order.
Where’s Pacino when you need him?
Oh, and despite all that in-fighting, the unedited motion was passed unanimously.
By the time we get to the Downtown Parking Master Plan Update, and the debate about how changing the word “in” to “within” might affect the work, and whether it even matters, it was clear that the heat was making us crazy. There was really no other explanation.
I unilaterally retract all my damning condemnations of the City Hall staff who have previously kept the council chambers so cool, it was like the City’s fate was being decided in Mr. Freeze’s lair.
The science on this isn’t settled, but there are some strong indications that the hotter it is, the angrier and more irritable people are likely to get. I think we might have proved than Monday night.
Thankfully, it looks like the present heatwave is going to break before the weekend. I would hate to think we might go into another marathon Committee of the Whole meeting starting at the point when the day is hottest, mid-afternoon.
Fortunately, last Monday’s meeting ended with a moment of genuine enjoyment of the fact that the two general managers of the teams in the Stanley Cup are from Guelph. Sure, this could be hometown pride, but I would also like to think that the mention of a game played on ice gave people just enough of a chill they could lower their blood pressure on.
In other words, cooler heads prevailed. But damn, this block is hot!
