The mayor could have saved himself some embarrassment if only he’d asked, said Marty Williams, executive director of the Downtown Guelph Business Association (DGBA).
Instead, at Mayor Cam Guthrie’s prompting, council spent time Monday evening crafting a motion directing staff to prepare a report outlining the process involved with conducting a review of the DGBA’s governance, operation and mandate, including how it could be dissolved.
“It’s a little bit embarrassing, I would think, to know that they’re asking a question for which there is already an answer,” said Williams, who supports the idea of a review. “I would have been able to explain that to him. It’s all contained in the Municipal Act that comes from the province.”
Council’s motion for a report on the review process was unanimously approved, but only after wording specific to the dissolution process was removed. Several councillors suggested it could be interpreted as presupposing the outcome of a DGBA membership survey and city staff stated it would be included in the report anyway.
The dissolution process is “fairly straightforward,” said Williams, explaining it would begin with a survey of DGBA members and, if there’s enough support for dissolution, submitting a petition to the city asking for council to take action.
In introducing the motion on Monday, officially put forward by Coun. Rodrigo Goller, Guthrie said he’s been asked many times about what dissolving the DGBA would involve and he would like a staff report to help answer those questions.
“The mayor is responding to some voices that he’s hearing and I think perhaps conflating the voices that he’s hearing with the will of the majority,” said Williams, adding he learned of the mayor’s intent hours before the council session.
“It was a bit of a surprise, a bit of an … ambush is probably too harsh of a word.”
The review motion was not on council's publicly released agenda ahead of the meeting, though another DGBA matter was – appointing a replacement for Coun. Dan Gibson's seat on the board, which went to Goller.
Staff is slated report back in time for the counci’s Dec. 6 committee of the whole meeting.
The DGBA is in the midst of a membership survey of its own seeking input on what the organization does and how it does it.
“We really want, coming out of the pandemic, to be doing what we can to best help the membership, but in the end we are restricted in that because we are a BIA,” Williams said, referring to business improvement areas, as they’re called in provincial legislation. “All our efforts are to make the area to do business in, not to take away the cost for any individual business.”