With new funding believed to be coming from the city, planning for the future of Guelph Tool Library (GTL) began with a change in location and preparations to ramp up programming aimed at helping keep household items out of the landfill.
Then city officials took out the proverbial axe while drafting the updated 2025 city budget and removed plans to sign a community benefit agreement (CBA) valued at $80,000 for the group in each of the next three years.
“This is going to put us at quite a lot of stress for operations,” said Saba Saneinejad, GTL co-founder and secretary. “The lending library is going to continue operation, but without the CBA agreement and the grant, we're going to have a hard time with the additional programs that we were planning to offer.”
GTL is an incorporated not-for-profit organization that makes tools available to members, operating similarly to loaned items from a library, with the goal of helping keep the cost of projects down, promote resource sharing and reduce the need for individual ownership.
It also coordinates a series of repair cafes throughout the year which see people bring in their non-working household items so volunteers with knowledge about repairs can try to get them working again, free of charge.
“They're a really good organization. I think we have a really good partnership with them, so I would hate to lose that,” said deputy CAO Jayne Holmes.
“We can't afford everything that we want to do, so it's not a reflection that this is not good work or it's not important.”
As Saneinejad explained, GTL applied for CBA funding in 2023. At that point, she said, funding was agreed upon but the group was told it would have to wait until the 2024 budget.
When that, too, was deferred, city staff “gave us quite a lot of confidence that the CBA is going to be in place starting 2025” for three years.
“So we worked closely with the city to build programming and things that it was part of. It's part of the waste reduction plan into our programs, and we made decisions to basically move to a new space, coordinated programming and so on, so that we could meet that plan and expectation,” Saneinejad said. “Unfortunately, that's what we heard that due to budget cuts, now that's delayed again to 2027.
“Without the CBA agreement and the grant, we're going to have a hard time with the additional programs that we were planning to offer.”
The plan for this year, which includes some city funding, is to host at least seven repair cafes in different areas of the city.
“If the expectation is that the city take on that work, because it's good work, and we want it to be done to be able to meet our solid waste master plan goals, then we'd need more resources to do that,” explained Nectar Tampacopoulos, the city’s general manager of infrastructure, development and environment.
Other GTL initiatives include a laptop computer refurbishment program, which sees the donated devices provided to people in need, as well as Guelph Seed Library, a clothing and textiles program and more.=
“What we were planning to do was to really help the city reach their waste reduction goal. That's something that will benefit everyone,” said Saneinejad, noting GTL intends to ask city council on Nov. 19 – that’s community delegation night for the city budget – to move forward with the agreement.
“But of course, at this point, we're working (no new funding, so) we're rethinking our strategy for the next year.”
