Charging the University of Guelph to continue holding Homecoming celebrations is one of the options the city has as partying continues to grow year over year, says Mayor Cam Guthrie.
Guthrie says there was an increased police and bylaw presence out for this year's event on Saturday and charges, tickets, and fines are "way up."
Guthrie estimates Homecoming costs the city between $80,000 to $100,000 a year, with the big question being who should be paying for this?
“There’s going to have to be another solution because I do not believe the taxpayers should be the ones fronting the costs associated with Homecoming,” said Guthrie.
He said between now and next year he will be looking at ways to mitigate those costs.
“There has been cases of other universities in Ontario that paid $100,000 a year to the city. That will be something I will be exploring with the university,” said Guthrie.
“I want to acknowledge that the U of G did pay for some of the operational transit routes and other things that they put toward homecoming to try to maintain it on campus and offset some of the costs.”
Police chief Jeff DeRuyter told GuelphToday about $70,000 was spent in overtime costs for the approximately 60 additional officers brought in to cover Homecoming.
DeRuyter said he is proud of the response by the department and other stakeholders to this year’s Homecoming, after they were overwhelmed by partying last year.
“I think our officers could not have done a better job in their response and our staffing allowed us to deal with activities in day and evening and into the night,” said DeRuyter.
He estimates the Chancellors Way party grew about 20 per cent over last year, with up to 5,000 people eventually spilling into the street before the party was broken up.
Final statistics are being tabulated, but on Saturday afternoon Guelph Police tweeted that over 80 liquor/by-law tickets were issued by officers.
A high percentage of people charged were not students of U of G and did not live in Guelph, said DeRuyter.
“When I look at the comparison between this year and last year, there were a large number of individuals who come into our community to party because it’s Homecoming,” said DeRuyter.
Guthrie said many people he met while out on Saturday were not from Guelph.
“It’s becoming a circuit of partying now. The trend of increased crowds is concerning,” said Guthrie.
“Not just in Guelph, they're happening in all the university towns. I talked to mayors across Ontario that are struggling with homecoming issues."
Guthrie says he drove around the south end of Guelph the morning after the event to check out the clean up and says it is a lot better than last year.
This is after last year's homecoming left areas covered in trash, prompting the mayor to release a video calling on those involved to apologize.
Ward 5 councillor Cathy Downer said the additional officers had an effect on the response to the partying.
“I think they had much more capacity to do the work than last year (when) they were completely taken off guard by the Chancellors Way party,” said Downer. “It seems the police were really on top of it and working to break things up as they got out of hand.”
Downer is looking forward to a debriefing next week at a meeting of the Homecoming Working Group, which includes stakeholders including the university, city police and concerned citizens.
“You want students to be able to celebrate, we just want to make sure people are safe and respectful,” said Downer.
Guthrie says many students started cleaning up on Saturday night, with one group collecting empty bottles and cans in support of the United Way.
In an emailed statement, Carrie Chassels, U of G vice-provost of student affairs, said the university worked closely with the city of Guelph and its emergency services over the past year to plan for Homecoming 2018 and that the safety of students, neighbours and community partners has been their number one priority.
"This weekend, the majority of our students displayed respectful, amenable behaviour," said Chassels. "We want to build on the successes of the past weekend, and the University will continue to work with our City and neighbourhood partners to address concerns and issues as we begin planning for Homecoming 2019.
