Roughly 25 people will gather at Guelph City Hall Thursday morning to try and come up with some solutions to south end issues highlighted by last month’s Homecoming debacle.
Mayor Cam Guthrie is hosting the meeting that will include representatives of the University of Guelph, Guelph Police Services, other emergency services, Guelph General Hospital, councillors that represent neighbourhoods in south Guelph, members of the U of G’s Central Student’s Association and others.
“We’ve talked too much about this, now action needs to be taken and we need everyone involved,” said Mayor Cam Guthrie, who facilitated the meeting.
“This is the first step in what I believe will be many in a response to controlling these types of issues.”
Guthrie said that after Thursday’s 90-minute meeting there would be a news release issued about what came out of the meeting and what the next steps are.
Guthrie took to Twitter on Sept. 24, the day after Homecoming celebrations in the south end of Guelph left piles of garbage and overwhelmed city police and by-law enforcement resources.
Highlighting the Saturday events was a party on Chancellor’s Way that attracted an estimated 4,000 people.
“I promised in that video response that there would be a debriefing meeting and this is it,” he said.
He said Guelph doesn’t have to “reinvent the wheel” because there is information that can be garnered from other communities that have dealt with similar issues.
But he did say that enforcement alone wasn’t the issue, that changing behaviour is also part of the solution.
Guthrie once again stressed that he was not painting all U of G students with the same brush and that many students were as disappointed with what happened as he was.
“The vast majority of students do and are living very respectfully in our city,” he said.
