Tuesday, February 19, 2008
Don’t Treat Your Waste Like Garbage
(February 19) - Never mind global warming. There are better ways to raise the temperature on a cold February day. Trash talk. It gets the blood boiling. It inflames the passions. Wherever you go in Guelph, ask about waste disposal and see what happens. Snow melts, ice dams burst and tongues go into overdrive. Everyone has an opinion and no one is shy about expressing it.
We’ll see what happens on Thursday. The city is developing a solid waste management master plan. If all goes well, it will define the future of waste management, diversion and disposal. There’s an open house coming up the day after tomorrow at the Cutten Club. You’ll need to grab an early supper, though. It starts at 5:30. That’s not the best time of day to attract the people who carry blue bags to the sidewalk. Most working families are busy watching the stove at that time of day.
Still, if you want to get your opinions out, you can always phone or e-mail your city councillors. One of the good things about the ones we have these days is that most of them actually listen. They even respond. They have a committee looking at the scope of the problem and how other cities handle theirs. The city even hired a consulting company to help the committee members stay focused. There are bag loads of opportunities to make yourself heard.
There is a lot more to waste management than asking a city worker to pick up your leavings and toss them into the back of a truck. It begins with what you buy and how much you throw away. The more there is, the more the city has to spend putting it where you won’t have to see it again. The quickest and cheapest solution to waste management is to stop wasting. Reduce your input from the Mall and you’ll reduce your output to the kerb. When you do put the trash out, don’t treat it like garbage. Wash the empty bean can. Separate the bits that don’t get along with each other: put the paper towel in one bag, the cardboard box in another, and the Styrofoam in a third. This makes it a lot easier for the city to deal with later. When the city saves money, some pressure comes off our property tax bill.
Thursday’s open house will look at the other end of the waste process. What happens after you put it out? In this brave new world of acronyms, we are adding two Ds to the already familiar three Rs. Diversion and disposal. We don’t have a landfill in Guelph any more, and we’re not likely going to get another one. So we need to divert. Whether we divert it to places that use it for something else, or we dispose it in someone else’s landfill is very much up to you. The more we sort, the more we’ll divert.
We’re at 39 per cent now. The goal is 60. This will be helped when we get the new composting facility up and running. This should be a city priority. Compost doesn’t have to smell. The technology exists to do mass composting without disrupting all the neighbourhood garden parties. Help out by getting your own backyard composter. It will turn your egg shells and apple cores into rich soil for your garden. You can’t lose.
Another option the city must look at is incineration. If we go this route, it would have to become a provincial initiative. Technological advances have made it safer than it used to be, but it is extremely expensive. Too much for any individual municipality to shoulder. Incinerators should be regional operations, if they operate at all. Most of what can be burned safely can also be reused and recycled. Incineration should be a solution of last resort. Reducing waste to ashes removes the incentive to reduce waste.
The choices ahead of us are not easy ones, and there will not be a cheap way out. Part of the difficulty is that previous city councils have avoided the problems. You can only sweep so much dirt under the carpet before you end up damaging the carpet itself. That’s where we are now, and we’ve nobody to blame but ourselves. By the same token, we also have the solution within ourselves.
Tuesday, February 5, 2008
Baker Street Civic Centre Co-Operative Has Nice Ring
(February 05) - My daughter learned something at a very early age: birthdays are far too important to confine to only one day. The best ones go on for at least a week. The library took a bit longer with its lessons, but it learned well. It is about to have a 125th birthday celebration that will last the best part of a year. It kicks off at 1:30 p.m. next Saturday in the downtown main branch.
The Friends of the Library will be there. Mayor Karen Farbridge will be there. James Gordon will be there. Stephen Lewis will be there. The Suzuki Strings will be there. You should be there too.
Lewis, a well-known local artist, will unveil a special commemorative sculpture commissioned for this occasion. Gordon, one of Canada's finest songwriters, composed a special song to celebrate his hometown library. He'll sing it for you. Farbridge, a life-long supporter of public libraries, will share her thoughts on our library's inspired journey. The Friends of the Library, still blushing after the success of last autumn's giant book sale, will encourage you to take out a membership. It's a good way to show how much you value literacy and learning. You, who are one of the 100,000 reasons our library exists, will enjoy a lively slide show taking you through 125 years of healthy growth.
And that's not all. After the speeches are spoken, the songs are sung and the sculptures are shown, the Suzuki Strings will entertain while you enjoy light refreshments. It's a lot for one afternoon, but it is the Official anniversary ceremony. That's official with a capital O, which stands for occasion, and this is going to be one.
When the time comes to celebrate the 130th anniversary, there will be a new downtown headquarters for this public treasure. We don't know what it will look like, but we do know where it will sit. It will be the anchor of a vibrant new Baker Street municipal complex. What is now a bleak cement block could become a green and healthy public space.
The city has sent out a request for proposals to developers to find out who wants to step forward and build the building. The first draft of the RFP said the Baker St. development would be built on a lease-back basis. City councillors removed that stipulation, giving us at least until July to have a public discussion about the ownership options. There are several.
In my view, the least desirable is to turn the ownership of the building over to the private sector and lease back the library space. We've owned the library building for more than a hundred years and shouldn't stop now. Leasing will get the city off the hook for an upfront capital budget expense. The savings will be illusory, though. For the rest of time the leasing costs will be paid for through the operating budget. What we save on the cabbage we'll spend on the rhubarb.
There are other ways, and the city is now committed to exploring all of them. The best is always outright ownership. The city takes $10 million out of its future bank account and pays a developer to build it for us. We come out the other end with a public asset that can only grow in value. It should be a no-brainer. The Baker Street vision is complicated a bit by the proposed mixed use. There will also be a municipal parking garage and a commercial residential component. Public-private partnerships don't work. We've been through it before, and it wasn't a happy time. No matter how much we hack and cough, we can't get the phlegm of Nustadia and Subbor out of our throats.
We shouldn't let these sorry experiences turn us against public ownership. Why not a co-operative venture? The Baker Street Civic Centre Co-operative has a nice ring tone. Failing that, what about a condominium structure? With the garage and the library, citizens of Guelph would have a controlling interest in any governance structure under either option.
There are some imaginative, civic- minded developers in Guelph. They are doing quite well for themselves without having to constantly belly up to the public trough. Will one of them step forward and become the Andrew Carnegie of Guelph's 21st century? Philanthropy used to be its own reward. Maybe it still can be.
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