The city has formed a new committee to explore how Guelph should move forward with its energy assets.
The Strategies and Options Committee will explore various possibilities moving forward, consult stakeholders, gather citizen input and eventually make recommendations to council on how to move forward.
The new committee was announced Monday night at the same meeting that Guelph City Council decided to shelve Guelph Municipal Holdings Inc., the independent company it previously established to operate its energy assets, including Guelph Hydro and district energy.
City council now has full oversight over its energy assets.
The city also set up a new web site – www.hydro.guelph.ca – to explain the changes to the public and keep them up to date on the committee’s work. The web site will also accept comment on ideas on what people want to see happen in the future.
The new Strategies and Options Committee is made up of city CAO Derrick Thomson, Sardana, Bob Bell (not the Ward 1 councilor) the president of Applied Precision Inc., Mark Goldbert the founder of PlantForm and citizen Richard Puccini, managing partner at Dillon Consulting.
The committee will initially be involved with consulting stakeholders, investigating options and approaches and reporting back to council on options for moving forward.
Possible moves going forward that will be explored by the committee include maintaining the status quo or making a change, which could include sale, mergers, acquisitions and other opportunities.
The Committee’s work will occur in phases, with each phase depending on the results of the previous phase and City Council approval. The Committee is currently in Phase 1, which includes:
- consulting with stakeholders;
- investigating transaction options and approach; and
- reporting to Council on recommended options and seeking Council direction on next steps.
The Committee will report back to council with preliminary recommendations early in 2017.
