This week, our summer vacation from council business was interrupted for a special meeting. Annoying? Yeah, a little, but this was the third time in four years there’s been a last-minute August council meeting, so perhaps it’s not worth complaining about.

What is worth complaining about though is the substance of the meeting.

In June, the federal and provincial governments announced a new plan to spur housing development in Ontario. In exchange for money to build housing-enabling infrastructure, participating municipalities must cut their development charges between 30 and 50 per cent for three years. Guelph’s plan is to cut DCs by 30 per cent and ask for nearly $74 million to fund three big water and wastewater projects.

Kudos to City of Guelph staff for exercising level-headed pragmatism, and for putting together an application in two weeks between the release of the guidelines and the deadline set by the provincial government. As Jodie Sales, GM of strategic initiatives and intergovernmental services, explained, this was about eight to 10 months of work completed in a fortnight, and despite it all, they’ve been left hanging waiting for a response from Queen’s Park.