Matt Saunders
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OPINION: Guelph Transit is a failure; we need a real transit option.
GuelphToday
43Can we please get some real transit and some real bike routes so that Guelph actually provides viable alternatives? Nobody is using what we have now because it is so badly broken, but every time you mention that, a very vocal minority just gets angry about the mere idea that we might want to buy something other than roads for cars.We need to build a viable alternative. This obsession with cars is not working.
15- Matt Saunders
U of G expecting record 7,000 first-year students this fall
GuelphToday 25The quickest way for the provincial government to impact the housing crisis? Build university residences.But Doug Ford's Conservative government is firmly in the pockets of the landlords, who are thrilled to rent to students at inflated rates, driving up housing prices for the rest of us. And now it's going to get even worse.
7- Matt Saunders
U of G looks to demolish historic conservatory; city wants to save it
GuelphToday 22What a loss to the campus if they destroy this unique building. One of the few places in the area you can go and be around green plants even in the middle of winter.
8- Matt Saunders
Sadly, Puslinch family's banned chickens have got to go
GuelphToday 25Other cities in the area (with much higher density) have permitted backyard chickens and the sky has failed to fall. The answer here is for Ms. Peake and other concerned residents of Puslinch to engage in a bit of citizen advocacy, and if the demand for backyard chickens is there, the council will set limits and make backyard chickens legal in some non-agricultural zones. This article is a good start. Hopefully the people reading it will take a few minutes today and send a quick email to their local councillors and push this forward.
4- Matt Saunders
City to write province regarding premier's 'Toronto-centric' bike lane plans
GuelphToday 17Bike lanes should not be on roads, period. For safety's sake we need them to be separated, otherwise nobody's going to use them. How many people on bikes need to be mowed down by drivers before we learn?
10- Matt Saunders
City of Guelph's sunshine list grows by 83, excluding police
GuelphToday 19In 1995 $100k went a long way. In 2025, $100k is a reasonable salary for a low to mid level professional. With two incomes at that level you'd be lucky to buy a starter home. This list was a bad idea when it was invented and is less and less relevant every year. But it's great at riling up the base!
7- Matt Saunders
BREAKING: Trump wants to destroy Canada’s economy, annex us: Trudeau and Ford
15Looking forward to that fat carbon cheque hitting my account. If you don't like paying carbon tax burn less fuel. You've had eight years to figure this out.
11- Matt Saunders
U of G announces new 1,500-bed student housing project
GuelphToday 24Excellent news. If the university could commit to housing all its students, the city's housing crises would ease substantially.
- Matt Saunders
Council looks to pause potential use of parks for affordable housing
GuelphToday 20Thanks to Coun. Caron for putting forward this motion and council for supporting it. Over and over again in the past ten years we've watched our city's assets slowly getting whittled away by shortsighted planning decisions. Facilities shuttered, programs unstaffed, parks eroded. City services are now objectively worse than they've ever been in the thirty five years I've lived here.I can't help but notice that Sleeman Park is right across the street from a very densely populated neighbourhood, one of the poorest in Guelph. Maybe let's not destroy the only nice thing in that neighbourhood. There are so many better ways to make targeted investments to encourage developers to actually build on the already-approved sites. Let's do that instead of further eroding our already diminshed city.
2- Matt Saunders
Council appointment or byelection? City council now has to replace O’Rourke
GuelphToday 17With so much time left in the term, the only reasonable answer is to give the voters of Ward 6 a chance to select who represents them. While the council can appoint any eligible elector to the role, any option aside from a by-election simply looks illegitimate. Once the seat is officially vacant, I expect we'll see an election date set soon after.
3- Matt Saunders
Guelph business calling on city to reinstall temporary Victoria Road traffic lights
GuelphToday 16This entire stretch of Victoria from York to the river has outgrown its configuration. All four east side entrances are dangerous. But if PDI wants the city to tackle the cost alone, they'll need to bring something to the table, and so will the owners of the shopping plaza next door. If they want to show that they're good faith community members, they need to come forward with a plan fixes ALL the issues with this stretch. It will probably mean giving up some of their parking lot and extending Florence Lane east to give new access to the shopping plaza. It will probably mean moving their river's-edge fence so we can extend our riverside trail system. It will certainly mean making room for a multi-use path so the Victoria Road bike lane doesn't just abruptly end in the middle of a lawn.If PDI is willing to do all of these things for community safety, then we can in good faith believe that they do in fact have our safety as their primary concern.
3- Matt Saunders
Parts of north end 'user-generated' trail shut down by the city
GuelphToday 11Guelph has been sitting on an unfulfilled cycling master plan since 2012 and there's still not even a single safe bike route to get you from one side of the city to the other. I've been biking with my five year old son a lot this summer and it's insane how often we need to go on the sidewalk just to get from trail to trail. The plan itself is not even a good plan (no five year old should be riding on a bike lane with painted lines) but most of the city doesn't even have that. Maybe the City needs to worry more about building the trails they've promised to build and worry less about people who are taking matters into their own hands.
5- Matt Saunders
St. George's Square redesign calls for moving fountain and self-cleaning washroom
GuelphToday 5What a disappointment and a missed opportunity. Keeping this as a car route is a throwback to 20th century thinking and no longer has any place here. Cities that have removed cars from their downtown squares have invariably seen those spaces become more vibrant and more successful, but we have apparently chosen instead to lock ourselves into an outdated design for decades. What are we even trying to do here?
10- Matt Saunders
Local shoppers unimpressed by federal rebate and temporary tax break
GuelphToday 6Can't believe how many people are so entitled that they think they deserve to pollute for free. You want to pollute? Pay for it. Even with the fee your pollution is still deeply subsidized. You're still only paying less than a fifth of the true cost of your mess, and yet you want more.
7- Matt Saunders
Shutdowns coming to College Avenue, intersection with Edinburgh
GuelphToday 9Yup. That's generally how bike upgrades have always worked in Guelph. Add it when rebuilding.I haven't seen this plan but hopefully they have the bikes separate from the cars and protected by more than just paint.
2- Matt Saunders
Construction begins soon on Guelph’s new multi-use trail
GuelphToday 11Great news! Another piece of Guelph's patchwork trail network getting filled in. But why is there no connection to Bailey Park? A hundred meters of path over to Bailey Ave would connect a whole neighbourhood directly to the trail system. Or will we be opening up and upgrading the current dirt road / dirt track that leads out to Nicklin? We need our trails to not just go through neighbourhoods, but to connect them.
- Matt Saunders
City, developer settle differences over Gordon Street apartment plans
GuelphToday 6With this project we will officially close the last possible remaining wildlife crossing corridor between the Hanlon Creek and the Torrance Creek wetlands. Deer used to be able to run across Gordon Street here; after this project is built and the connection is severed, it's unlikely that either wetland complex will be able to support a deer population on its own.
4- Matt Saunders
Black parents group continues to clash with school board
GuelphToday 6If a group of twelve people come out to your public meeting, the least you can do is find out why. I'd love to know what's so hard about raising either a motion to amend the agenda, or a motion to offer speaking rights to a delegation? On the other hand, was the delegation expected? Did anyone on the board know they were coming? Has this group been offered a chance to speak to a properly-announced agenda item at the next meeting?
3- Matt Saunders
Family and politics mix under council's new parental leave policy
GuelphToday 3Council's unanimous support of this parental leave policy is a clear signal that the remaining twelve members of council are willing to shoulder the slight extra burden of additional constituent support, to in turn support their colleagues through parenthood.Future members of council should also expect there may be times where their load is slightly increased, and the residents of the city should expect that there may be times they have to reach out to somebody different. That's the cost of allowing diverse voices a meaningful seat at the table of power, and it's not a significant cost to bear.
6- Matt Saunders
Online voting set for likely return in 2026 city election
GuelphToday 7Online voting seems fine but doesn't work. There's no way to meet the security standards our elections require so that voters can actually trust that the results are fair, accurate, and secret. We all want more accessible elections, but online voting is a mistake.
2- Matt Saunders
