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Dean Wyman, Manager of Solid Waste Services for the City of Guelph, announced some fantastic news today!
When Council awarded the design-build contract to Maple Reinders to construct and operate the new Organic Waste Processing Facility, Council asked “with 20,000 tonnes of excess capacity will staff be able to source that much tonnage?”.
Today, Mr. Wyman wrote:
“I’m pleased to inform Council that City staff in partnership with AIM Environmental and the City of Hamilton have been awarded a contract to process up to 20,000 tonnes per year of source separated organics (SSO) from the Region of Waterloo. The term of the contract starts in October of 2009 and ends October 2013. Until Guelph’s new OWPF is operational the material will be processed at Hamilton’s Central Composting Facility (CCF).
This means that once the new Guelph OWPF is operating in 2011 that it will be operating at very close to full capacity.”
This is great news for Guelph, as the revenue will help offset the operational costs for the facility and will also allow the Region of Waterloo to process its organic waste close to home. Congratulations to Solid Waste services for making this happen!
Leanne
Another first for Guelph — an integrated fire station, police station and land ambulance station — the first in Ontario! The ground breaking ceremony for this new facility was attended by local, provincial and federal representatives this morning, October 2nd, at the site of the new station. The facility is expected to be completed in the fall of 2010. The residents of the southern part of Guelph have been waiting a long time for this new site to come to fruition. The ceremony was attended today by Todd and Lynda Dennis, representing the Clairfields Neighbourhood Group.
Photo: (l-r) Liz Sandals, MPP; Dave Levac, Ministry of Community Saftey and Corrections; Mayor Karen Farbridge, Chief Shawn Armstrong, Ward 6 councillors Christine Billings and Karl Wettstein.
From Hans Loewig, CAO
I’m pleased to be in touch with good news this morning about the completion of City Hall and our move-in schedule.
Resulting from a thorough inventory of work that remained after Urbacon’s termination, the City’s general contractor estimates that City Hall will be substantially complete by the end of March 2009. Departmental move-ins are being scheduled to take place even earlier in mid-March.
A report containing these details will be presented to Council next Monday night.
From Norm McLeod, Chief Librarian
Dear Council Members:
Numbers often tell a compelling story. For 125 years Guelph has enjoyed the services of a highly successful public library. In recent years demand for all of the GPL’s expanding services has grown exponentially. As Rob O’Flanagan reported in a recent article in the Guelph Mercury (Feb11, 2008), the age of the Internet has not killed libraries, it has invigorated them.
Circulation of library materials has increased by 49% since 2000, more than four times the rate of Guelph’s population growth. Demand for library materials has more than doubled in the past twenty-five years, with over 1.73 million items borrowed in 2008.
Numbers also tell a compelling story about the space needs for the new central library. The figures highlighted in the attached PowerPoint presentation do just that. Originally presented to the library board at their December meeting, “Right-sizing the Guelph Public Library” supports the need for a new central branch of at least 90,000 square feet.
This presentation will be shared with a number of community organizations and will be made available to the general public via the library’s website. However we first wanted to share our findings with the mayor, members of city council and the senior management team.
We have also included a condensed web-friendly version:
Download document:
right_sizing_gpl4
Increased public transit or residential sidewalk clearing? More frequent yard waste pick up or sidewalk ploughs? These are some of the trade-offs being examined by Council in the upcoming budget.
Guelph is one of the last communities in the province to clear residential sidewalks. Is it an effective use of tax dollars? I have heard a range of comments this winter:
- the ploughs destroy my lawn and garden
- the sidewalks are left with compacted snow and are more slippery than shoveled walks
- it’s a waste of money for residential streets, but we still need the ploughs for arterial roads and bus stop clearing
- we have to shovel our driveways anyway, the sidewalk isn’t a whole lot more
- motorized ploughs are bad for the environment
Most of the comments seem to indicate that the money spent on residential sidewalk clearing could be better allocated elsewhere. There is an argument to be made that it is a service valued by our seniors. Perhaps we can try an approach that is working in Hamilton -
see http://www.volunteerhamilton.on.ca/svc_snowangels.php.
In addition, many seniors have neighbours or hired help to assist with grass cutting and winter driveway clearing already in place.
It’s timely to ask the question – should City Hall eliminate residential street sidewalk clearing?
