May 18, 2021, at 4:00 PM

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1.   Disclosures of Pecuniary Interest

That it BE NOTED that no pecuniary interests were disclosed.

2.   Consent

2.1   Comprehensive Report on Core Area Initiatives

2021-05-18 Staff Report - Comprehensive Report on Core Area Initiatives

That, on the recommendation of the Deputy City Manager, Environment and Infrastructure, the Deputy City Manager, Planning and Economic Development, and the Deputy City Manager, Social and Health Development, the following actions be taken:

a)      the staff report dated May 18, 2021 entitled “Comprehensive Report on Core Area Initiatives” BE RECEIVED;

b)      the changes to target dates for action items under the Core Area Action Plan described in the above-noted report and summarized in Appendix B: Core Area Action Plan Implementation Status Update, May 2021 BE APPROVED and used as the new basis for future progress reporting;

c)      the Civic Administration BE DIRECTED to revise the Core Area Action Plan Item #9 (Install kindness meters to directly support Core Area social service agencies) from a City-administered program to a program that provides access for community groups to meters that have been removed from active use; it being noted that Civic Administration continue to explore digital options for a City kindness meter program;

d)      the Civic Administration BE DIRECTED to report back to a Strategic Priorities and Policy Committee meeting to be held in the 2nd Quarter of 2022 on the status of the geographic distribution of parking demand, parking revenue and any recommended modifications or alternatives to the Core Area Action Plan #11; it being noted that future structure parking opportunities will also be explored;

e)      the Core Area Ambassador Pilot Program BE APPROVED as described in the above-noted report;

f)       the Dundas Place Animation and Activation 2021 plan BE RECEIVED;

g)      Project Clean Slate BE APPROVED as a pilot in 2021 and that the reallocation of $37,500 in one-time funding resulting from COVID-19 impacts on other Core Area Action Plan efforts BE APPROVED to fund it;

h)      the Civic Administration BE AUTHORIZED to reallocate the remaining $100,000 in one-time funding that cannot be spent in 2021 due to COVID-19 impacts to other emergent opportunities aligned with the Core Area Action Plan in 2021;

i)      the Civic Administration BE DIRECTED to work with Business Improvement Areas and other stakeholders to develop a comprehensive engagement strategy to work with other levels of government to ensure supports are in place for mental health and addictions, homelessness and housing, business supports and law enforcement; it being noted government relations work is already underway on many of these issues;

j)      the Civic Administration BE DIRECTED to develop an “Eyes on the Street” program for City operations and engage with other agencies and organizations that routinely work in the Core about integrating such a program into their operations; and,

k)      the Civic Administration BE DIRECTED to develop a performance measurement plan to assess the outcomes and impacts of various Core Area initiatives and report back to Committee and Council at year-end with an update on the information contained in the report.

Motion Passed

Voting Record

Moved by J. Morgan

Seconded by P. Van Meerbergen

That part d) be amended to read as follows:

d)         the Civic Administration BE DIRECTED to report back to a Strategic Priorities and Policy Committee meeting to be held in the 2nd Quarter of 2022 on the status of the geographic distribution of parking demand, parking revenue and any recommended modifications or alternatives to the Core Area Action Plan #11; it being noted that future structure parking opportunities will also be explored;

Motion Passed (15 to 0)

Moved by S. Turner

Seconded by M. Cassidy

Motion to approve part e), as follows:

e)      the Core Area Ambassador Pilot Program BE APPROVED as described in the above-noted report;

Motion Passed (14 to 1)

Moved by S. Turner

Seconded by M. Cassidy

Motion to approve part h) as follows:

h)      the Civic Administration BE AUTHORIZED to reallocate the remaining $100,000 in one-time funding that cannot be spent in 2021 due to COVID-19 impacts to other emergent opportunities aligned with the Core Area Action Plan in 2021;

Motion Passed (10 to 5)

Moved by S. Turner

Seconded by M. Cassidy

Motion to approve the staff recommendation, excluding parts d), e) and h)

That, on the recommendation of the Deputy City Manager, Environment and Infrastructure, the Deputy City Manager, Planning and Economic Development, and the Deputy City Manager, Social and Health Development, the following actions be taken:

a)      the staff report dated May 18, 2021 entitled “Comprehensive Report on Core Area Initiatives” BE RECEIVED;

b)      the changes to target dates for action items under the Core Area Action Plan described in the above-note report and summarized in Appendix B: Core Area Action Plan Implementation Status Update, May 2021 BE APPROVED and used as the new basis for future progress reporting;

c)      the Civic Administration BE DIRECTED to revise the Core Area Action Plan Item #9 (Install kindness meters to directly support Core Area social service agencies) from a City-administered program to a program that provides access for community groups to meters that have been removed from active use; it being noted that Civic Administration continue to explore digital options for a City kindness meter program;

f)      the Dundas Place Animation and Activation 2021 plan BE RECEIVED;

g)     Project Clean Slate BE APPROVED as a pilot in 2021 and that the reallocation of $37,500 in one-time funding resulting from COVID-19 impacts on other Core Area Action Plan efforts BE APPROVED to fund it;

i)      the Civic Administration BE DIRECTED to work with Business Improvement Areas and other stakeholders to develop a comprehensive engagement strategy to work with other levels of government to ensure supports are in place for mental health and addictions, homelessness and housing, business supports and law enforcement; it being noted government relations work is already underway on many of these issues;

j)      the Civic Administration BE DIRECTED to develop an “Eyes on the Street” program for City operations and engage with other agencies and organizations that routinely work in the Core about integrating such a program into their operations; and,

k)     the Civic Administration BE DIRECTED to develop a performance measurement plan to assess the outcomes and impacts of various Core Area initiatives and report back to Committee and Council at year-end with an update on the information contained in the report.

Motion Passed (15 to 0)

2.2   2025 Development Charge Study Initiation Report

2021-05-18 Staff Report - 2025 DC Study Initiation

Moved by E. Peloza

Seconded by M. van Holst

That, on the recommendation of the Deputy City Manager, Finance Supports, the following actions be taken with respect to the 2025 Development Charge Study:

a)      the draft Committee / Council Timetable as appended as Appendix “A” to the staff report dated May 18, 2021 BE ENDORSED;

b)      the following policy matters BE ENDORSED for review as part of the 2025 Development Charge Study:

i) consideration for area-specific development charges (i.e. area rating);

     ii) Additional services for potential development charge recovery:

          A. Housing Services

          B. Emergency Preparedness

          C. Water Supply

     iii) Service standards and future capital needs for Parkland Development;

     iv) Growth / non-growth methodologies for development charge recoverable services;

     v) Local service policies that establish cost responsibilities related to construction and engineered growth infrastructure;

     vi) Municipal Servicing & Financing Agreements Council Policy;

     vii) Development Charge planning horizon for ‘soft’ services;

     viii) Development Charge rate model technical adjustments;

it being noted that the policy items above will be subject to consultation with the Development Charge External Stakeholder Committee prior to recommendations being advanced to Council.

Motion Passed (15 to 0)

2.3   Area Rating Policy Review

2021-05-18 Staff Report - Area Rating Policy

Moved by J. Helmer

Seconded by A. Hopkins

That, on the recommendation of the Deputy City Manager, Finance Supports, the following actions be taken with respect to area rating to inform the upcoming 2025 Development Charges Background Study:

a)      the staff report dated May 18, 2020 and memo from Hemson Consulting on area rating BE RECEIVED for information; and,

b)      the Civic Administration BE DIRECTED to proceed with an area rating policy review that focuses on the Development Charge services for Wastewater, Stormwater and Water Distribution.

Motion Passed (15 to 0)

3.   Scheduled Items

3.1   Public Participation Meeting - Not to be heard before 4:00 PM - 2022 Growth Management Implementation Strategy (GMIS) Update

2021-05-18 Staff Report - 2022 GMIS

Moved by J. Helmer

Seconded by A. Hopkins

That, on the recommendation of the Deputy City Manager, Planning and Economic Development regarding the implementation of the London Plan growth management policies applicable to the financing of growth-related infrastructure works, the following actions be taken:

a)      the 2022 Growth Management Implementation Strategy Update BE APPROVED as appended to the staff report dated May 18, 2022 as Appendix “B”; it being noted that:

     i) Sunningdale SWM 8 will be rescheduled from 2022 to 2023;

     ii) Kilally Water Phase 2 will be rescheduled from 2022 to 2023;

     iii) Pincombe SWM P4 - West will be rescheduled from 2022 to 2026;

     iv) North Lambeth SWM P2 – North will be rescheduled from 2025 to 2023;

     v) North Lambeth SWM P2 – South will be rescheduled from 2023 to 2025; and

     vi) project design work for Kilally Road – Webster to Clarke will commence in 2021;

b)      the Capital Budget BE ADJUSTED to reflect the timing changes associated with the projects noted in clause (a) above;

it being noted that the Strategic Priorities and Policy Committee received a communication dated May 16, 2021 from R. Biddle with respect to this matter;

it being pointed out that at the public participation meeting associated with this matter, the following individual made an oral submission regarding this matter:

Mike Wallace, Executive Director, London Development Institute (LDI) - expressing support for the report, and recommendations and indicating a need for a three-year supply of building lots in order to respond to housing needs.

Motion Passed (15 to 0)

Additional Votes:

Moved by E. Peloza

Seconded by S. Turner

Motion to open the public participation meeting.

Motion Passed (15 to 0)

Moved by A. Hopkins

Seconded by E. Peloza

Motion to close the public participation meeting.

Motion Passed (15 to 0)

4.   Items for Direction

4.1   London Community Recovery Network – Community Led Ideas – Business Cases

2021-05-18 Staff Report - LCRN

Moved by M. van Holst

Seconded by S. Lehman

That the following actions be taken with respect to the London Community Recover Network, Community-Led Ideas:

a)      the staff report dated May 18, 2021, entitled “London Community Recovery Network – Community Led Ideas – Business Cases” BE RECEIVED; and,

b)      the following Business Cases BE APPROVED:

i. Business Case #1: City Wide ‘Support Local’ Promotional Campaign in the amount of $760,000, Tourism London community lead;

ii. Business Case #2: Circular Economy Work and Training Platforms in the amount of $249,000, Goodwill Industries community lead;

iii. Business Case #3: The Good Foods Project in the amount of $9,800, Reimagine Institute for Community Sustainability community lead;

iv. Business Case #4: Investment in Ventures with Innovative Solutions in the amount of $180,000, TechAlliance community lead;

v. Business Case #5: Pandemic Recovery Resources and Training to Enhance Employment for Londoners in the amount of $135,000, Employment Sector Council community lead.

Motion Passed (15 to 0)

4.2   Request for a Shareholder’s Meeting - Housing Development Corporation, London

2021-05-18 Submission - Shareholder

Moved by M. van Holst

Seconded by M. Cassidy

That the following actions be taken with respect to the 2020 Annual General Meeting of the Shareholder for the Housing Development Corporation, London:

a)      the 2020 Annual General Meeting of the Shareholder for the Housing Development Corporation, London BE HELD at a meeting of the Strategic Priorities and Policy Committee on June 23, 2021, for the purpose of receiving the report from the Board of Directors of the Housing Development Corporation, London in accordance with the Shareholder Declaration and the Business Corporations Act, R.S.O. 1990, c. B.16; and,

b)      the City Clerk BE DIRECTED to provide notice of the 2020 Annual Meeting to the Board of Directors for the Housing Development Corporation, London and to invite the Chair of the Board and the Executive Director of the Housing Development Corporation, London to attend at the Annual Meeting and present the report of the Board in accordance with the Shareholder Declaration;

it being noted that the Strategic Priorities and Policy Committee received a communication dated April 21, 2021 from S. Giustizia, President & CEO, Housing Development Corporation, London with respect to this matter.

Motion Passed (15 to 0)

4.3   Request for a Shareholder’s Meeting - London Hydro Inc.

2021-05-18 Submission - Shareholder

Moved by P. Van Meerbergen

Seconded by S. Lehman

That the following actions be taken with respect to the 2020 Annual General Meeting of the Shareholder for London Hydro Inc.:

a)      the 2020 Annual General Meeting of the Shareholder for London Hydro Inc. BE HELD at a meeting of the Strategic Priorities and Policy Committee on June 23, 2021, for the purpose of receiving the report from the Board of Directors of London Hydro Inc. in accordance with the Shareholder Declaration and the Business Corporations Act, R.S.O. 1990, c. B.16; and,

b)      the City Clerk BE DIRECTED to provide notice of the 2020 Annual Meeting to the Board of Directors for London Hydro Inc. and to invite the Chair of the Board and the Chief Executive Officer of London Hydro Inc. to attend at the Annual Meeting and present the report of the Board in accordance with the Shareholder Declaration;

it being noted that the Strategic Priorities and Policy Committee received a communication dated April 28, 2021, from G. Valente, Chair, Board of Directors, London Hydro Inc., with respect to this matter.

Motion Passed (15 to 0)

4.4   Request for a Shareholder’s Meeting - London & Middlesex Community Housing

2021-05-18 Submission - Shareholder

Moved by M. van Holst

Seconded by A. Hopkins

That the following actions be taken with respect to the 2020 Annual General Meeting of the Shareholder for the London & Middlesex Community Housing:

a)      the 2020 Annual General Meeting of the Shareholder for the London & Middlesex Community Housing BE HELD at a meeting of the Strategic Priorities and Policy Committee on June 23, 2021, for the purpose of receiving the report from the Board of Directors of the London & Middlesex Community Housing in accordance with the Shareholder Declaration and the Business Corporations Act, R.S.O. 1990, c. B.16; and,

b)      the City Clerk BE DIRECTED to provide notice of the 2020 Annual Meeting to the Board of Directors for the London & Middlesex Community Housing and to invite the Chair of the Board and the Executive Director of the London & Middlesex Community Housing to attend at the Annual Meeting and present the report of the Board in accordance with the Shareholder Declaration;

it being noted that the Strategic Priorities and Policy Committee received a communication dated April 26, 2021, from A. Mackenzie, Interim CEO, London & Middlesex Community Housing, with respect to this matter.

Motion Passed (15 to 0)

4.5   2nd Report of the Governance Working Group

2021-05-18 GWG Report

Moved by J. Morgan

Seconded by S. Lehman

That the following actions be taken with respect to the 2nd Report of the Governance Working Committee from its meeting held on May 2, 2021:

a)     the following actions be taken with respect to Standing Committee and Council Meetings and Councillor Members’ Expense Accounts and supports:

     i) the Civic Administration BE DIRECTED to circulate a questionnaire to current Members of Council seeking their input on the following matters:

          A. the potential scheduling of Standing Committee and Council Meetings during day-time hours and other recommendations that they may have with respect to the scheduling and the holding of Meetings; and,

          B. enhanced or alternative supports for Councillors, including, but not limited to budgetary and staffing and support; and,

     ii) the Civic Administration BE DIRECTED report back to the Governance Working Group on how comparable municipalities schedule Standing Committee and Council Meetings and budgetary and staffing supports provided to Councillors;

it being noted that the Governance Working Group (GWG) received the Council Resolution dated April 14, 2021 and the communication dated April 13, 2021 from William H. Brock with respect to this matter;

b)      clauses 1.1 and 3.2 BE RECEIVED for information.

Motion Passed (15 to 0)

5.   Deferred Matters/Additional Business

None.

6.   Adjournment

Moved by S. Lewis

Seconded by P. Van Meerbergen

That the meeting BE ADJOURNED.

Motion Passed

The meeting adjourned at 6:17 PM.

Full Transcript

Transcript provided by Lillian Skinner’s London Council Archive. Note: This is an automated speech-to-text transcript and may contain errors. Speaker names are not identified.

View full transcript (2 hours, 34 minutes)

Could you, to do log him in as a Zoom participant? You gotta log this in as a Zoom participant. As a meeting details, yeah. As a Zoom participant.

Yeah, Michael. Yep. The one beside the mirror, we can’t bring up the participants. Is that a setting on your end?

Here’s what I’ve done. I’ve just changed it to a panelist. Now you should have that ability. Thank you.

And Chris, if you could just flip the YouTube display to that or in camera or whatever setting it is. Yeah, I’ll just start it up now. Thank you. I’ve just clicked on the streaming now, so it’s live.

Michael, I need you to move the other displays in as panelists so that I can put the full view up of the Zoom. Done. Doing that now. Let me do it for some reason.

I don’t think that’s an option for the attendees now that I think of it. So that’s something I’ll have to make note of. I’ve pushed all the buttons you see in it now. I’m just waiting for the delay.

There’s about a 30 to 60 second delay for the YouTube stream. Okay, let me know, please. Thank you. We’ll do.

Chris, it’s just showing the typical council chambers display. But given the time, I think that’s fine. We just have to be aware that it is live right now. That was good.

So where’s that though, right? Yes, it appears to be streaming just fine. Colleagues may ask for screens on, please. Colleagues, we have, so I would like to welcome everyone to the ninth meeting of the strategic priorities and policy committee.

It’s a virtual meeting that we’re holding during the COVID-19 emergency. We would invite watchers to check the city website for current details of COVID-19 service impact. Meetings can be viewed via live streaming on YouTube and the city’s website. Let me say that the city of London is committed to making a reference to provide alternate formats and communication supports for council, standing committee meetings and information upon request.

To make a request for any city service, please contact accessibility@london.ca or 519-661-2489 extension 2425. To make a request specific to this meeting, please contact SPPC@london.ca. Colleagues, I’ll look for any disclosures of pecaniary interest. Councillor Turner.

I worship, I’m not declaring a conflict, but just identifying in one of the reports, at least 2.2, the development charge study initiation report. It mentions a consideration of inclusion of the health unit into the calculations. It does not make any recommendations to that effect. So there’s no pecaniary interest, but I did want to identify it as we went through the discussion as I am an employee of the Middlesex on announcement.

Thanks very much, any other declarations? Dean none, thank you. Colleagues, I’ll turn your attention to the consent agenda. We have three items on consent.

If you wish to speak to any one of these three, we do not need to pull it, because we will look for any comments that you have, unless you would like to have these voted on separately. If you would like them pulled for separate voting, please indicate your intention now, if you would, please. Councillor Squire. So 2.1 and 2.3 to be voted on separately, which means that we will deal with all three of the consent agenda items individually.

The first is 2.1, the conference, excuse me, I’m going to be dealing with them separately. Does anyone want to, since we’re dealing with them separately, is there any other discussion on that? So with that, the first item is 2.1, the comprehensive report on core area initiatives. Let’s put this on the floor so that we have something discussed as some prepared to move the recommendation.

Councillor Turner is seconded by Councillor Cassidy. Any comments or questions? Councillor Squire. This is a matter that I’m becoming increasingly interested in and concerned about, and I just anecdotally, I’ve worked downtown for 40 years as in my law practice, and finally, I’m leaving downtown, moving outside of downtown for a lot of different reasons.

And I have to say that I don’t think, and COVID is, of course, partly responsible, but I’ve never seen downtown, which is the area that I identify and I want to talk about as the Dundas Richmond and as a surrounding area. When I look at the area, Carling Street North on Richmond, which is also identified downtown, that’s not the area I’m talking about. And what I’m trying to point out is that in the 40 years I’ve worked downtown, and in fact, for a number of years, I have witnessed a steady, continual decline in that area of downtown, in terms of tendencies, occupations, street activity, and we continue as a council to throw things at the problem, to solve the problem or make the problem better. And I don’t think yet that we’ve identified things that are successful in reversing the trend that we’re seeing downtown.

And there’s a couple of things about this motion that I think are important. The first thing that I think is important is that clause K is a direction to staff to come back with performance measurements. And I think those performance measurements, when they come back, should be social. We obviously appreciate those difficulties downtown, but they also need to be economic and they need to be our people moving back downtown.

How many people are moving downtown? Are we seeing a renewal in the tendencies downtown? All of those things have to be looked at. And I think what I’m concerned about is that we continue to approach a problem and throw solutions at it that are not providing a solution to downtown.

When I go downtown and I drive my car twice this winter, my parking spot had a couple of people, very nice people who were sleeping in my parking spot. And I spent some time talking to them about downtown and what it was like. And it was interesting to hear their perspective and to hear what they were looking for in downtown. And I can assure you it was a great conversation and interesting, but also somewhat tragic in terms of where they found themselves.

So I think we all appreciate that. But I think we also have to appreciate that eventually we’re gonna have to impose solutions on downtown that makes sense. And I’m just going to suggest that the key solution for downtown, the key thing to move downtown forward, and I think we are moving in that direction, is to get more residents downtown. And we can see with the development we’re having that we are in fact succeeding in that area.

So I’m not gonna oppose this report. I’m not gonna vote in favor of number H. I just don’t agree with taking money that to reallocate money that was put in this without council having more information about it. But I don’t think as a councilor, I’m going to be supportive in the future of a continuation of solutions.

I was here in the first term when we heard about live work and play. The downtown BIA came to us with something called live work and play. Wisely in my opinion, we agreed not to fund that. I don’t know what happened to it.

I mean, I was told that the BIA was gonna fund it themselves. I’m not sure if they did. But what I’m looking for is meaningful solutions to the downtown situation. And I’m looking forward to seeing what those metrics are in the fall that will help us do that.

So I’m just asking for item H to be pulled separately from the other items so I can vote on that. So noted, thank you, Councilor Morgan. Thank you, Chair. I’ll make some just general comments on the report.

And then I actually would like to amend one of the items. First off, I wanna recognize that the key components of the core area action plan have not come into effect yet. So, you know, we’ve passed a plan. The pandemic, as we know through some of the reports we’ve received about service status has delayed a number of the initiatives or needed them to be modified.

And so I think it is difficult to judge the success of some components of the plan at this point. And I think the measures that staff are proposing in most of these clauses are appropriate. The clause that I was interested in was clause D which is the cancellation of the RFP on Queen Street. I see staff’s comments on it and on the way that COVID has changed, parking the way that it may change office utilization downtown.

And I certainly agree that now would not be the time to proceed with an RFP. But I still think it can be an option on the table at the appropriate time in the future. And so what I would like to do is amend D, basically making it into a deferral to this, pending more information on the state of parking and parking revenues downtown. And so I put some language together who basically says that I would like to amend D to say the following, that civic administration be directed to report back to the strategic priorities and policy committee meeting to be held in the second quarter of 2022 on the status of the geographic distribution of parking demand, parking revenue, and any recommended modifications or alternatives to core area action plan number 11.

And then I use the same it being noted that future structured parking opportunities will also be explored. That is the motion that I would like to bring, which is a modification from outright canceling it to getting some more information and having staff include this in one of the possible alternatives for the future. So I guess I need a seconder on that. Deputy Mayor, do you have a seconder?

I see a seconder from Councilor Van Merberg, and thank you. Let’s go with the discussion if there is any on the amendment to defer D, Councilor Lewis. Thank you, Your Worship. And I’m gonna fully support this.

Colleagues, at the last planning and environment committee meeting, we had a discussion around renewal of temporary surface parking lots. And the committee recommended we go ahead and Councilor Hopkins, I believe correctly noted that this is now 20 years of renewal of these temporary surface parking lots. And I will say that until we actually take some meaningful action to address the need for parking through parking structures and whether that’s through the approval of developments on private lots, or whether that’s taking a lead and doing some of that ourselves as well. You know, at the end of the day, I’m gonna continue to support renewing the surface parking lots because we have to replace some of those spaces in geographically appropriate locations before we can start saying no, we’re not gonna renew the on the surface parking any longer.

It’s not needed because right now it is still needed. Noting that the demand is lower right now because of COVID, but as vaccination rates continue as people start to return to offices in some capacity, those numbers are gonna change. So giving this time to get better numbers and to come back with some options or opportunities next year, I’m very happy to support that. I will say that I think when we’re looking at this municipal surface parking lot, we should be looking at the opportunity to build up not just with structured parking, but with mixed use on that lot, you know, residential above parking.

We wanna continue to build up the residential density in the downtown. I think that’s a great place to do it. We wanna fill those heritage buildings on Dundas Place. Well, again, for, as I said at planning and environment committee, if we truly want those buildings to be filled, then we’re gonna need places for tenants to park.

And as much as there is transit service and other options to get around the downtown, the car is not going away tomorrow and those spots need to be available for people to park. So I think this is a really good deferral at this point in time. We’ll let things play out a little bit further with the pandemic recovery and see where things are before making a decision, whether to delete it, go ahead with it or do something, do a third option. So I appreciate the council bringing this forward.

Thank you. Councillor Lamy, did you wish to speak to the amendment proposal that’s on the floor? Yes, I do. Good, thank you.

Yeah, so, you know, I hear the frustration of Councillor Square and I share that as do I think that many folks in London do as well. This is shared across cities across North America. However, I think, you know, London was on the right path in starting to address the core. And we, at the beginning of our term, we came up with a number of initiatives that unfortunately has been stalled to some extent by COVID.

And now we’re at this point now, as we anticipate coming out of COVID, what’s the best way to get the momentum back? He touched on the cranes in the sky and it’s terrific to see the high rise development going on and getting the population to live down here ‘cause I’ve always believed that the key to a successful core is to have people living in the core. Councillor, I’m going to keep you on the amendment component, please. And which has to do with the Queen’s Avenue parking lot issue being deferred, you can speak generally on the balance situation.

Thank you, that leads me to this specific amendment. You know, I was frustrated a bit by this suggestion by staff because I thought it was ambiguous with what we’re trying to do tonight with a lot of initiatives that assume or encourage revitalization in people coming down to the core. So to cancel a project because COVID presents an unsuiting, uncertain demand, I think runs across purposes of what we’re trying to do. However, I do understand concerns about parking revenue, which was, from my understanding, it’s going to be used in part to fund this.

So I want to keep this for sure, front and center. A successful Dundas Street will not reach that point just based on the population downtown. It needs to have people coming in from the suburbs to visit our downtown and we need to have a place for them to park, that’s the number one issue I hear and we’ve heard for many years about the parking concerns. I want Dundas Street to succeed and I believe it has a really good shot to do that.

So I would prefer to see this project not being deferred. However, I understand the concerns that we wait and we see what the true demand is and maybe involved in a more specific geographic study for parking needs. So yeah, I’ll support this amendment. Thank you, I had others on the speakers list, but that was relating to the main motion.

Does anyone wish to speak to the amendment councilor Turner? Just really quickly, I think this one popped up to me as well, it seemed like an interesting thing to recommend cancellation and I understand why that is. It was a key strategic piece of our downtown work and I believe it’s referenced in maybe not this site in particular, but in our move forward as one of the downtown master plan components. I mean, one of the concerns that I was against the idea of providing the free parking and I think it probably would have been helpful at that time to know that for going the revenues in the parking also had an impact on this project.

And I think as we reevaluate whether that we continue and elongate the free parking program that we recognize that there’s an opportunity of costs that’s associated with that and that is the revenues that might go in to part of this construction. I think the private sector partner component of this is really important as well, where we have a developable parcel and the opportunity to have not just a parking structure but a development that includes a parking structure. If it’s standalone parking structure, it doesn’t have my support, it’s a non-starter for me. But if it’s a redevelopment of Queen’s app and making sure that we’re getting rid of surface parking lots which are killers to downtown.

Absolutely killers to downtown. So I won’t support them going forward. This initiative and I think Councilor Morgan’s motion or Mayor Morgan’s motion is probably appropriate. I’ll look at the wording again, I just heard it read but I think we need to be really live to how each action that we take in the Corps has a lot of interact and interrelatedness with each other and the core dependencies.

So anyway, I’m interested to hear the continued discussion. I’ll take a look at the motion. I think it’s supportable. I hate to just walk away from it at this point and I hope we can continue to look for good opportunities for development and not just in its own right of that single parcel, but there are a number of blank and empty parcels that are just parking lots on Queen’s app that need to be developed.

And that’s what the rapid transit line as it goes through there is supposed to help encourage. We don’t do that by letting these lots of statements is just surface parking. Thank you. I think as you referenced the mover of this amendment, I think you meant to say Deputy Mayor Morgan, not Mayor Morgan, that’s a little ambitious but hey, one never knows, but one never knows.

Thank you for that. I’ve got two other speakers to this amendment. Councillor Cassidy. Thank you, Your Worship.

I have a question for staff. So a Councillor Turner touched on it. It was my understanding that this was a mixed use development. It wasn’t just a standalone parking garage.

And so in the report, it says it’s coming to the end of the RFQ process where we wanted to identify qualified and interested parties that could build what had been envisioned on this spot. So I’m wondering if staff can give us an idea of how many interested builders came forward during the RFQ process? That might well be Mr. Kotsos.

Actually, it’d be Ms. Barbone. I can answer that question. So the city had put forward through the chair, the request for a qualification.

So because the process was stopped at that part, all I can disclose at this point was that there were three components that came forward to submit qualifications for that process. It did not go beyond that process in the RFQ. Councillor Cassidy. Thank you.

And so given that it was, the way it had been presented from what I remember was the city had a vision of what we wanted. It would have been a high rise. It would have included mixed use. It would have had residential commercial and parking.

And we had a level of parking that we wanted to achieve there. I don’t remember that the city was going to fund any part of this. I thought it was going to involve the land itself. The city owned the land and some sort of agreement with the builder there around that.

I didn’t know we were going to be funding any part of the development, but my memory might be failing me. That sounds good. That sounds good could be a question, Ms. Barbone, to what extent are you able to respond to that?

Yes, thank you through the chair. So the way the RP was outlined to be written, it was that the city was seeking proposals for a mixed use development to support. Primarily the objective was to create and maximize the provision of parking on that subject site, noting the additional two to 300 parking spaces that were needed at that time. There was no financial impact identified in the report.

When this went forward to committee at the time, it did note that there would be a request included as part of the MYB. And as part of the MYB, there was a business case that did go forward and was included in the base budget for a very, very small amount of money to start to build over time. So there is actually no available contribution other than what went in in 2020 as a result of the parking revenues that have declined. So there was not any clarity on where and what the relationship of the city of London would be as part of that RFP, only that we would be a partner and it was going to be dependent on what proposals came forward to identify what that would be.

Any further questions, Councillor Cressy? Yeah, so I’ve spoken to some developers about this particular site and there was some concern about what we were, the size of the project that we were hoping for and the realistic or feasibility of that particular site to do the kind of development we were hoping for. That’s neither here nor there. What I would hope with Councillor Deputy Mayor Morgan’s amendment here is that it’s flexible enough that as Councillor Turner points out, we could look at the many, many surface parking lots that the city owns and come up with a sort of a broader strategy and not just this particular site.

And in fact, I think it would be better for Queen’s Ave to see this developed with residential and commercial units on the site and for gold parking altogether, as long as it could be made up somewhere else. So that’s, I’m hoping that this gives staff some flexibility to look at all the different options that might be available not just at this site but in other city owned properties downtown. Right now, regardless of what anybody is predicting, we don’t know what’s going to happen with the need for parking in downtown in the near or medium term. We don’t know if people are going to be returning to the offices downtown at the same level and capacity that they were working there prior to COVID.

So I am happy to support the staff direction to wait and see because we don’t know what recovery is going to look like. And I would prefer to see development take place on asphalt that’s currently a blight on our downtown really. And I think as everybody has pointed out, getting more feet on the street, getting more people living downtown and more people coming and visiting downtown is what will help more than anything else. Thank you, Councillor Hopkins.

Yeah, thank you Your Worship and Councillor Cassidy said a lot of what I was going to say as well about the importance of getting some kind of development. And I’m not sure if Councillor Morgan’s motion is really going to look at the parking strategy. We already have a parking strategy. Parking structures are what is needed in the downtown court without a doubt.

I think surface parking, we have way too much surface parking. One of the things I’m constantly told from visitors is how much parking surface areas are available in the downtown area. And we don’t know what COVID looks like. So getting back to the deferral, if the Councillor can expand on what he hopes to bring back when it comes to city owned property and opportunities for parking structures, as well as looking at our parking strategy, there was a conversation at Planning Committee on the areas that aren’t really looked at just certain areas without parking strategies.

So I’d like to know a little bit more of the deferral going back from the Councillor but interested in supporting some kind of parking structure and taking advantage of opportunities. And in particular, this isn’t just city led. This is partnerships with the development community. I think that is a really important aspect of our parking structure that I don’t wanna see go sideways.

I think we’ve got the emotion that’s clearly up in E-Scribe. Now, I did note that Councillor Morgan did have his hand raised for a moment there. So perhaps, well, it won’t be the Councillor bringing it back to Council for consideration. Deputy Mayor, did you wanna add anything to that?

Yeah, yes, I wanted to respond to both Councillor Cassidy and Councillor Hopkins, the intent of my motion is to provide staff with the flexibility to do the types of things that you’re looking at. That’s why I said recommended modifications or alternatives. I recall the debate, I agree with Councillor Turner. My recollection was that we’re looking for a partner.

We’re looking for residential and parking. We want to try to solve multiple things at the same time. And so my intent here was to not just end this but give it some time for staff to do the work they need to do to understand the parking situation. The reason why I included geographic distribution is because our previous parking studies in downtown, studies looked at parking on a geographic basis because there are different demands and different parts of downtown.

And then they may precipitate different approaches to the land that we own. But my intent is to be broad here. And if that’s not the way staff interprets it, I would certainly defer to them. But my understanding is that it is broad and either Miss Livingston or Miss Barbong could comment on whether it’s broad enough to achieve the types of things I’ve mentioned or not.

Miss Barbong, did you wish to respond to that? Through the chair, I believe the motion gives us ample flexibility to be able to proceed at that time and identify with further information how best to refine any future RFP. Thank you, is that it for you, Deputy Mayor? Thank you.

I don’t want to cut off Councillor Hopkins if you had any other comments or questions. Thank you. Great, thank you. Councillor Vanholst on the amendment.

Thank you, Your Worship. I think Councillors Herma and Kaya Baga were before me. You see, that’s, I appreciate that. Let’s go with Councillor Kaya Baga then, please.

Thank you, Mr. Mayor. I was going to ask to read the motion but made it up now and I can actually see it. And I, a lot of the comments I wanted to make have already been made by my colleagues, Councillor Cassidy and Councillor Hopkins.

I did want to know exactly or specifically where the mover was trying to go. And if he was allowing staff to be more flexible and to work on a plan that also includes the stakeholders in the community in which I’ve already received that answer. I guess the only question I have now is how much time would staff need to be able to bring back a report to Council? As one of the concerns that we have had recently is that when we talk about multi-level spaces for parking, it’s actually important that we begin to include that in the plan of going forward post COVID because it’s an issue that we’re experiencing right now and it would really eliminate the huge surface lots that we have in the city and we have people who are moving in the core who also don’t have access to grocery spaces and have to have a car if they want to do groceries to get out of the core and go out and get their groceries.

So they often have, you know, cars and need spaces to park them and they’ve been talking about the multi-level parking space and I just wanted to know if how long this would take and if this also could be included in the post-pandemic planning. Ms. Barbone, can you respond to that? Thank you, Mr.

Chair. I’m not sure exactly I understand what the specific question was. Was it related to can a grocery store be included or was it broader than that? It was about timing.

Sorry, with respect to timing, the timing is absolutely fine from our perspective. Councillor, anything else? I actually asked how long you would take staff to bring this back. I’m not sure if that was— The Councillor Kavaga, the timing is actually in the motion itself in terms of when it’s going to be brought back to council and I think Ms.

Barbone’s indicated that that timing could be accommodated. Is there any other clarity that you’re looking for, please? Is that in the amendments? ‘Cause I guess I’m not able to see it.

I just wonder, the clerk’s just otherwise occupied. Deputy Mayor, can you just reference back the timing that was indicated in the amendment? Yes, I spoke to staff about this to get the timing that worked for them. And the motion specifically mentions the second quarter of 2022, which ideally will give enough time for parking situation to recover.

And if not, that’s a point where they can report back to on the current status. All right, so there’s our time, second quarter 2022. Anything else? Councillor Kavaga, please.

No, thank you. Thank you. I have Councillor Hummer next, please. Thank you.

All my questions have been asked and answered. I would say the sooner this land is not a service parking lot and it’s a building instead, the better. So I’m glad to see us still keeping it open. I don’t actually know that anything is really needed to happen right now.

We already can have a direction to do this. We canceled the RFQ last time, but Councillor Morgan, Deputy Mayor Morgan’s motion seems to be putting a timeframe on it and I think it’s helpful. So I’ll support it. Thank you, Councillor Panjals.

Thank you, Your Worship. So I’ll present just a slightly different perspective on downtown parking. If you’re a city that’s hoping to build a film industry and you have something that resembles a metropolitan center like our downtown, then the surface parking is as gold. And so I hope that now we’re rolling out that film strategy will be able to see how that can be an asset for London.

Realizing that if a bunch of parking is taken up by filming and we don’t have complaints from our residents about that because there’s a sufficiency of parking that could be an advantage to us. So however, I’m not gonna vote against the amendment because developments downtown are exciting too. I don’t actually know how things are gonna turn out. So there’s certainly time for us to see what the film industry might do and also to see how parking may have changed.

So I’m happy supporting the motion as it is. Thank you. Thank you very much. Councilor Hillier.

Yes, thank you. Just a question regarding the amendment. Is geographic distribution of parking demand the same as time of use? Because downtown parking demands shift during the daytime that is downtown on Dundas but closer to the evening, it starts shifting down Richmond Road unless there’s an event at the bud.

So is there something in the amendment that is covering that? I might go to staff and ask if they’re comfortable that the amendment that is being considered would give them a certain sufficient latitude to deal with the issues that you’ve heard described today. Ms. Barbara.

Thank you. I wish back to you, I think this one is me. So certainly there’s enough latitude in the motion that’s provided that we will take a look at temporal and geographic distribution. Thanks very much, Ms.

Share. Councilor Hillier, anything else? I don’t see anyone else on the speakers list to the amendment. It’s been moved and seconded.

Let’s call the question. I’m closing the vote and the motion carries 15 to zero. Thank you, colleagues, knowing that two votes, at least at this point, one on the amended motion but also on item H. I wonder if there are any other discussions.

At one point on the main, we had a couple of speakers who then spoke to the amendment. I wonder if there are any, is there anyone that wishes to speak to any other items on this agenda? Councilor Hillier, go ahead. Thank you.

Yes, I agree with many of my counselors that we do need more residents downtown. But as I’m reading from this report, I’m looking at the ambassador program. If someone I know is moving downtown, I might advise not to go out after 11 right now. I, until we solve the problem that we have people having to be shuffled off from doorways in the morning and cleaning up the defecations, we have not solved our core problem.

And that is the biggest issue we have to solve here. Now, I know we’re not going to solve that right now, but I just want to recognize the fact that the ambassador program runs from 7 a.m. to 11 p.m. So after that, the businesses is open season.

So this makes me a little nervous. Now, as I looked through this, it also says that there’s a 38% decrease in faster motor vehicles. Well, there’s half as many cars down there. So I think that would help.

And my last question is on behalf of the downtown businesses. We’ve had five years of construction. Is there any construction plan for next year? That’s a pretty clear question.

Let’s go to Ms. Schur for that. Thank you, Your Worship. Yes, the construction on the downtown loop will continue next year.

We’re working on King this year. We’ve worked to do on Ride Out Wellington and Queen’s Avenue to complete that project. Councillor Hill, are there any other questions? Go ahead.

No, okay, I saw your hands still up. Any other comments or questions? I see Councillor Lewis. Thank you, Your Worship.

And through you, I’ll start by echoing Councilor Squire’s concern on item H. It always makes me a little uncomfortable when we’re just taking reallocations of savings and without a direction on where to spend them, that we’re just going to move them around. I recognize that sometimes there’s some emergent items that need to be dealt with fairly quickly, but I still think that there’s a process to come forward with those requirements when they emerge. So I may actually join Councillor Squire in voting against that one, but I wanted to speak to the ambassador program as well.

And colleagues will recall that I was not in favor of this during the multi-year budget process. I’m of a different mind tonight, and I’m of a different mind with considerable thanks to our staff for the work that has been done in fleshing out exactly what this program is going to look like. This is a far cry from what we saw during the multi-year budget when, you know, with all due respect, there really wasn’t a job description attached to the budget ask. Now we have one.

And while I hope that our downtown is in a position in four years that we don’t have to even consider extending the pilot program, I think that right now what we’re seeing in this report tonight and how these individuals will be utilized is a value that’s needed in the downtown and in the core area right now, Richmond Dundas Place, Old East Village. So I’m going to be supporting this, and I know that having talked to some of the businesses that there is some interest on their part in seeing this happen as well. And this is not, you know, I just want to emphasize that for me, this is a pilot project and I’m willing to give it a go and see how it turns out. And I’m actually very encouraged by the changes that we’ve seen to this since its first iteration came before us.

So I just want to, I know a whole lot of the senior leadership team was involved in this. I know Ms. Share and Mr. Kostafis and others have been leading this.

I know the BIA’s have been involved in it as well. And so I want to thank them for all their work on this so far. I’m going to be supporting that piece moving forward. And I hope that it delivers on some of the things that we’re hoping it’s going to make a difference on.

Thank you. I have Councillor Veenemere. Thank you, Mayor. I too do not support this during the multi-year budget process in terms of the ambassador program.

And even now I look at this and I’m still really not sure what exactly is their scope of work. It’s so broad and so greatly spread out, covering such issues as addressing social and health, cleanliness, safety and security, economic development, communications and coordination. I mean, what exactly does all this mean? What are these potential employees going to actually be doing?

I mean, it’s everything from de facto security to street cleaning, it is not painting a defined job description here. And so perhaps maybe I could ask staff through you, Chair, exactly what will they be doing? I’ll send that back to staff with that being Ms. Sharer who would be like to take a crack at that.

Thank you, Your Worship. We have Jim Yanchula and George Kotsubus here and they are very familiar with the working for the program. So we’ve got the dynamic duo, one of which are both will respond to that. Mr.

Yanchula, did you wish to respond or Mr. Kotsubus? Mr. Yanchula, I’m prepared to respond through the chair.

The, those are broad categories of activities that the query ambassadors would fulfill some specific examples that may help flesh it out for you or such things as in terms of activation and innovation being present to provide support during these activities of events. Maybe informing people who arrive at one part of the query area where a specific thing is happening in another part of the query area, they wouldn’t duplicate anything in terms of cleanliness. They may be called upon to help wipe high touch areas such as tables and chairs that are put out for animation. In terms of customer service, they might help somebody who’s trying to figure out how to or if to, they have to pay for parking, what the process is for that using the hon cap, something like that.

In terms of communication coordination, they essentially helped to be a extra pair of roving eyes and ears to the query area. What can, they can spot something that’s happening and inform the appropriate people who have training to deal with something that is either unsightly or perhaps unsafe. In terms of the kind of category called economic development, they would be informed of what kinds of services and activities are in the course. So that if we had a big event downtown or in all these village, they would be able to say, you know, where the nearest place to get a drink is or by TE or parking or something like that.

Basically they’re ambassadors who help people familiarize themselves with their unfamiliar surroundings. Councillor and member. Thanks very much. I appreciate that.

If we could have, I’m not sure if Councillor Hoey or asked for this to be called, but if we could have E called separately, I’d appreciate that, thank you. So noted, thank you very much. I now have next Councillor Vanholst. Thank you, Mr.

Mayor. So my first question to you for staff, just for clarity, if H is voted down, then what happens to the $100,000? Your wish if I believe that one would be mine. The recent staff have asked for some discretion here.

So we’ve had a number of requests for small participatory pilots. So for example, we’ve had a request to do a pop-up space in a lane way that’s half public and half private. An evaluation of doing that work is about $5,000, but it’s not in an existing budget. We had a request to do a small bike promotion and shopping event at about $2,500.

So we would have two options. If we could get a report back to Council and still have the event proceed, we would bring a report forward. If not, we would be, we would turn down any of those small ones and bring back a bigger spend or a larger request if there were one. And worst case scenario, I guess that $100,000 would likely go unspent.

We were only looking for a small bit of discretion around some of these ideas that are coming up that require a fairly timely response in order to support a pilot who generally have come from the business community or the BIA. If that’s not something Council is comfortable with, then we would be looking for approval to move money out of the existing budget, which was security operations that cannot be spent this year. And we’d have to do that through the cycle to report profit. Councilor Unhost.

Thank you very much. I really appreciate the answer. And I like the use that staff is proposing with this. We’ve got a Dundas place.

We don’t really know how to use it yet. And so there’s gonna be opportunities to experiment here and there with this observation. And so if that money’s available, I’m really happy to find out what the ideas that business has or staff has, how those things work. And so I think this will be an efficient thing for us.

So that’s good enough for me. That was a great answer. I’ll support this. I do have a question.

It was regarding we’re gonna have it. We have a monthly newsletter. And I wondered if that was purely digital or print. As well?

Is that Mr. Angela? Who would deal with that? Your worship, that one for me as well.

The monthly newsletter at this time is fully electronic. And it does highlight our projects and the work that’s going on in the core. We’re also going to be expanding that to include some stories around great public art and public places in the core, as well as people who live, work and play in the core of this community as well. So right now, fully virtual, there’s a dot at this point, an intent to be printing.

We didn’t put a budget together for that at this time. So it’s been being distributed by the GBAs and then through our own website and contact. Okay, thank you very much. I do see some opportunity for some printed ones.

Often, like you see literature in a business or a dentist’s office, for instance. So if we had something that was telling people what’s going on downtown and they were able to grab a copy of that when they visited downtown, people who might not otherwise subscribe to the, the core area BIA’s that might help a little bit. So thank you for that answer. Thank you.

I think that’s my questions, Your Worship. Thank you, Councilor Hopkins. Yeah, thank you, Your Worship. And I just have a quick comment about the recommendation and I am very supportive.

I think there’s a lot of great news that is going on in the core action plan. The ambassador program is something that I wasn’t quite sure about, but as I have learned, it is starting to become quite diverse, working with different partners in the community. It is not duplicating anything. It will, even though this is a pilot project, we’ll be able to take the matrix and take that and use it to make further decisions as to where we are going to go with the downtown area.

I won’t go into all the great stuff that’s going on. I do want to make a quick comment and I thank you to staff. The communication plan, I would like to encourage staff to keep on producing the webinars, keep on reaching out to not only counsel, but to all of Londoners to see and show what is going on downtown. That is so important because we need people going downtown and by communicating what we are doing is a great start.

The more we understand of these programs, the better will be informed and understand the importance of bringing out downtown alive again. So, I want to, just a quick shout out to all the staff with the work that they’ve been doing on this renewal for downtown. So, thank you. Thank you, Councillor Karyll about that.

Thank you. Through you, I just want to echo Councillor Hawkins’ comments on thanking staff from all the work that they’re doing and the different collaborations that are going on right now within the different stakeholders in the core and downtown London for all the great work that they’re doing as well. I’ve been a champion of the ambassador program from the beginning and I’m very happy to see that. It’s starting to make sense to everyone and people are supporting it.

I did have a question for staff though on item J, which is the eyes on the street. I just wanted to know what was the difference between that and the ambassador program just because I thought that those two things were going to be going together and how much resources is going to be going into that and what kind of different training that would be needed versus the ambassador’s program? Well, since we’ve gone to Misha the last several times, are you the right person, Misha? I certainly am your worship.

It’s Wilcox may want to add a few things. The fundamental difference between the ambassador program and the eyes on the street is the eyes on the street is incidental. So what we want to do, given that we have a whole bunch of city market vehicles with city staff, with city phones and access to dispatch, working throughout the core area is give them better tools in terms of bystander training and the ability to recognize situations that might require escalation to mental health service providers, to our core and form response team, to police services, to their colleagues who are doing cleanup. We just want to make sure that the folks who are out and about in city trucks are keeping an eye on the interests of the community and become essentially really great neighbors in the places they’re working in.

The ambassadors have very specific functions interacting with folks and providing specific services. These staff are there delivering other city services. We just would like to use them to help us enhance how we monitor and take care of the core of the city. Councillor.

Thank you, that makes sense. And so thank you, Mrs. Chair, for sharing that. And I just want to say that this is great work.

Every single item on here that supports the core area action plan will be a great, will be great items that will support businesses. So going forward as a city, as a community, we’re going to start having the bigger conversation of what really is the issues in the downtown, which are mostly social issues pertaining to mental health issues and housing issues and addiction issues. And those are the things that once we put in the infrastructure and the supports for businesses and for our businesses to get back to their normal, their regular, we’re going to have to have the deeper discussions around housing, around mental health issues and around the real social issues that are plaguing our community right now and especially housing and mental health supports for everyone. But thank you, staff, for bringing this forward.

And I commend you for all the work that you’re doing and the collaborations that are happening within the different sectors in the downtown. Thank you, Councillor Cassidy. Thank you, Your Worship. I also want to thank staff.

This is a really thorough report. I want to thank staff as well for the webinars that they hosted last week. I attended one, the core area webinar and I actually sent the link or the registration information out to my constituent list because I thought it was important information and I get emails and questions and comments a lot from my residents about the downtown area. So this was a really, really good webinar and it was kind of like this report but in verbal and presentation format and it was really comprehensive and very informative.

Our downtown’s at a crossroads. We already had the challenges that we’ve all talked about. We’ve already put things in place to address those challenges but I’m not sure if people understand exactly how much worse it has become because of COVID-19. So we have people that are vulnerable that are experiencing lack of housing or in unstable housing.

We also have issues with people coming to our community. And the other boards that I sit on, I get updates on a lot of different things. I know that Elgin Middlesex Tension Center, for example, with COVID outbreaks and with overcrowding and things like that, a concern people are released and don’t necessarily have a place to go. And a lot of people like in that situation are ending up in our downtown.

I know people released from other detention centers in other areas of the province, if they have a connection of some kind to London, they’re given an ability or ticket in some form, some way of getting to London and they are provided that opportunity to come to London. Knowing that London has support to services that they might not have in another community. So this has caused an already difficult situation to become that much worse. And so to see staff very proactively and in such a collaborative way.

And again, we set the core area action plan in motion before COVID, but to see the response and to see it in Europe, working with agencies, working with London Police Service, city staff, the businesses, the business communities and all of the things that they are doing together. I’m extremely supportive of item H, I believe it is. I’m supportive of giving staff that kind of flexibility and discretion to respond in real time to what is happening right now in the core area. As I said, we’re at a turning point and I think we can continue going down a path that will be harder and harder to come back from.

We can really aggressively address all of these issues and situations head on right now and keep our downtown moving in the direction where we want it to go. Again, I’m supportive of all parts of this report. I’m happy to see it go forward. I also think ambassadors are gonna play a crucial role in this first part where we’re coming out of COVID.

As ongoing construction takes place, they’re gonna help people navigate the downtown. And as we start to open up again, we’ll do it slowly, we’ll do it gradually. Perhaps there will be smaller scale festivals and I see the ambassadors playing a key role in there to ensure that there is adequate physical distancing that still needs to take place, that people are masking in situations where it’s necessary to show them the ways to patios that are open again, things like that. So I really see the ambassadors playing a crucial role in this first part of coming out of COVID in the gradual way we expect to.

Thank you. Councilor Helmer. Thank you. First, I just wanted to check with you, Mayor.

We’re talking about the entire recommendation, including H and E, we’re not gonna go back to it. We are only going to be just for the benefit of colleagues. I’ve been asked to pull E and H for separate voting, but everything that’s in the recommendation is on the floor for discussion now. Save and accept D, which has been approved.

Okay, so I’ll just make all my comments at the same time. So just on item H, I think empowering and trusting civic administration to make those decisions quickly, I think is really important as we’re still working our way through the response. I think, unfortunately, coming to council committee and council just itself is too slow in a lot of situations. We have to move much quicker than that.

And we’ve delegated some authority that usually would keep at the council decision throughout the pandemic response. And I think that’s been really important in driving the response and making it be responsive to what’s actually going on in the community. So I think it’s a relatively small amount of money. It’s a good thing to spread it out over a bunch of different projects and not have to spend all the time to come through the council as you’re making process that would be normal.

So I support that. I’m glad to see the ambassador program has been adapted because I know as it was initially envisioned, that was not really appropriate to the situation that we were in immediately upon approval, basically. And I think holding off and not hiring everybody and starting that program was the right thing to do. And I think it’s really good that it’s starting to come forward now.

And that at a point when the business be in the core, it was going to really appreciate having that support. This is going to be a really difficult time for people even coming into recovery. I want to be really clear. I know many colleagues on council really understand this very well.

Businesses in the core area of the city retailers, restauranters, like they’re holding on by a thread. And it is extremely difficult to do business. And so I think we’ve got to throw basically everything we’ve got at supporting the recovery in the core. And I think that the ambassador program is one of many things that’s going to help as people start coming back downtown.

And I want to say, obviously, we have very significant social issues that are very visible in the core. Councillor Kailaga talked about them. Many other colleagues have mentioned them. The latter part of the recommendation that’s talking about government relations is probably the most important part of the whole thing, which is to say, you know, the city’s going to do some things to respond to a number of these issues.

We’re going to initiate new programs. We’re going to spend some money to try and solve some of these problems. But we’re not going to be able to do it on our own. And the province, for sure, especially when it comes to health care and mental health housing, the federal government, on many of the same issues.

We all have to be working together on this, like this is a very significant problem. And it’s going to require all the levels of government to be working together to really substantially move the ball forward. The mayor has done a wonderful job of advocating when it comes to things like the supervised consumption service, for example. The province, I think, has come a long way in recognizing what actually works and what is needed.

And we need to get those services up and running. The stabilization space, you know, I think that one is really critical and it’s stuck right now because we need to get the operating funding from the Ministry of Health to really drive that forward. And, you know, I think that as a service, you know, the city is not going to deliver that service. We’re not going to start paying for the operations or the health service like that.

It’s really the province that needs to step up and fill that gap. And we need to be able to work with them to make those things happen because they’re critically important in driving the overall recovery downtown and really addressing the underlying problems that are there because, you know, picking up garbage is not solving the problem, right? That’s a coping mechanism. And the second thing I want to say is that, you know, we have some problems, yes.

And we have to be clear-eyed about those problems. But we also have tremendous, I mean, amazing people working downtown, driving the business community downtown, doing really great things before COVID and during the pandemic. And we need to show up and support them as much as we possibly can. I know many colleagues that have been doing that, you know, going out and supporting businesses, ordering delivery.

But we also need to call in the community to come downtown, come into the core. The best thing that people can do is be customers show up, come back to those businesses once it’s safe to do that. And we’re starting to reopen the economy. Make sure you show up for all the businesses in the city, but the core ones have been really hammered.

Construction, you know, all the issues they’re dealing with on the street, you know, some of the increases in crime that have been going on. It’s been really difficult in the core. And I hope people will do that. Finally, I want to say to the- 30 seconds, constant.

Yeah, to the police, especially Inspector Dwayne Price, his team, a deputy chief, Drish McIntyre. You know, they’ve run a number of projects over the last few months to try and target some of the things that have been flagged by business owners and residents in the core as issues that have sort of developed during the pandemic become much worse. Obviously, not everything is solved, but they have seen pretty good success through some of those projects. And I want to recognize them for, you know, acknowledging the problem, taking a look at it, doing the analysis and then changing things and doing things differently to make it better.

And, you know, we got a ways to go, but they’ve done great work on that front. Thank you. I have no other speakers, so colleagues, just a reminder, what we’re going to be doing is we’re going to first vote on the two items that have been requested to be pulled, which are items E and H for voting purposes, and then as a consequence of that vote on the amended motion. So with that, I am going to put item E, the core area ambassador pilot program, and for the benefit of those who are watching, that it be approved and described in this report as the recommendation.

This is what we’re voting on right now. We’ll turn our attention to the screens and vote. Opposing the vote in the motion carries 14 to one. Colleagues, we’re now benefiting the viewers.

The recommendation was that staff be authorized to reallocate the remaining $100,000 of one-time funding that cannot be spent in 2021 due to COVID-19 impacts, to other emerging opportunities aligned with the core area action plan in 2021. Turn your attention to the screen as we vote. Councillor Hillier. Opposing the vote in the motion carries 10 to five.

Thank you, and now Colleagues, we’ll deal with item 2.1 as amended. I will turn your attention to the screen as we vote. Opposing the vote in the motion carries 15 to zero. Thank you.

The second item is the 2025 development charge study initiation report. I’d like to put that on the floor with a motion. Do I have someone to move that? I suppose the seconded by.

Councillor van Hoel, thanks for much. Any comments or questions, Colleagues? Councillor Turner. Thanks, Your Worship.

Thanks to staff for preparing this report. And this is an incredibly important report and an incredibly important phase of launching into something that is really critical to how the city is financed, especially around those new growth opportunities. And this and the companion report, the area ratings discussion, I’ll get into that one in a second after we get through this one. The one thing that jumped out as I was reading through this was I think the methodology to take a look at new areas for inclusion was an appropriate methodology.

I think it made sense. But the one thing that kind of stood out to me was the, at the end of the day, the exclusion of ambulance services. There’s an explanation that we’re not the operator of the ambulance service. And so as a result, there’s a lot of reasons why we might not end up looking for some cost recoveries through development charges.

However, a lot of the drive, the costs associated with ambulance service delivery, both on the capital costs in establishing new services and in the ongoing expenses, those are very growth related. And we’ve gone down this road a couple of times where we’ve had discussions about how call volume growth is increasing even faster than the city’s growth, the call volume growth, around nine to 10% at the city’s growth rate is around 2% on the generous side. And however, whenever we take a look at any new subdivision, draft plans of subdivision agreements, opportunities there, one of the things that gets done as a review of, is there a need for any of these emergency services specifically in that area? Do we need a new fire hall?

Do we need expansion of police services? Do we need an ambulance station in this area? And as we push out further and further away from the core, we’re going to need to be able to provide fixed site services such as ambulance stations. I posed the question to Mr.

Yeoman and he broke back with a thorough response and it was very helpful. But I’m perhaps an opportunity now to just ask so that we can have this discussion. Why, at the end of the day, weren’t ambulance services identified for cost recovery? And then I’ll have a couple of questions after that.

Mr. Barboon? Yes, thank you through the chair. So at the end of the day, when we look at the, what new services can even be included into the TC study, we look at the ability to how we can support all of the growth studies that need to be done.

So historically, we’ve only examined two to three services for potential inclusion at a given time to even consider them. So when we look at the work that needs to be done, when you look at the services that we have suggested would be valid to take the work, we’re much further along in terms of being able to support that information. So in order to look at the studies to work through, the information needs to start with a very growth-based capital needs assessment that we currently don’t even have for the paramedic services. And we don’t have any preliminary budget information to be used to help inform such an assessment at this time.

We know that it’s been very challenging for the service to actually forecast their near to mid-term needs. And doing a 10 to 12, 20 year master plan would actually be a considerable undertaking that we don’t have budget dollars for and there has been no staffing identified to be able to support. So certainly the amount of expertise and the establishment for the standards would need to be worked through in terms of how that works. And unfortunately, given that the city of London doesn’t have control over the ambulance services, there’s quite a bit of workload that we need to be identified in terms of the plan to be able to even set the groundwork to identify the preliminary information for such a study.

So what we’re looking at is trying to look further at the 20, 20, 20, 90s study. We’re confident that we can do the work for housing and emergency management and water supply at this time. But we’re less confident to be able to add on additional services that might not actually be included in study and be able to pull the information together in time to have a fulsome analysis that would support Council’s decision and be subject to a possible appeal process that all DC studies are eligible for. That’s for sure.

Yeah, thank you. For your worship. Thanks Ms. Bergone, that’s helpful.

And as I said, the response that came back was very thorough and included all of these points. One of the things that was identified in here, I was thinking, when we build or when there’s a requirement for a build of a new station, it happens either in the city or it’s not. And the call volume associated with that station can be rather readily attributed to within the city or not just by the data that can be extracted. It’s an opportunity to provide some funding, take things off of levy funding for especially those capital builds and avoid getting into some of those lease back costs where the facilities are leased by the service from the county and then build back to us as the city at rates that we don’t really have much control over.

It was identified in Mr. Yeoman’s letter that the lease costs were actually recoverable through the DCs as well. The big question that came after I got the response and Ms. Barbones correct, there’s a significant amount of work that’s needed in order to provide that data.

And it comes from a master plan. The ambulance service is undertaking and about to begin the master plan process for its service. Now this year or next, the DC study process takes several years to be able to get through the information that gets gleaned from that master plan process. At this point, we could perhaps identify that those were important components to be included in the ambulance service master plan.

My concern is in 2029, they probably won’t undertake another master plan and the assumptions from the master plan that they do now will be stale data and completely invalid. So we will lose that opportunity, the window of opportunity to find that data might actually be in this set. 30 seconds, council. That’s my question through your worship is, given that the service is planning to undertake a master plan, is there an opportunity for an alignment with that?

Or even for a small sector components such as lease cost recovers? There’s a problem. Thank you through the chair, I’ll start. And perhaps Mr.

Yeoman will want to go into a little bit more of the detail and the nuances, but essentially that would certainly be helpful, but I think in terms of trying to meet the timelines for this study, I’m not sure that all that work can be done in time and be identified through that master planning process. The work for the growth studies is a little bit more significantly enhanced in terms of the looking at the volumes and some of the call volumes and the true identification of how much of that is actually growth related versus the amount that is actually truly operational because there’s funding splits that need to be identified. The other resource is actually the Ministry of Funding and the funding splits and who actually builds the properties versus leases or other service level agreements that currently we don’t have any of that work done and that kind of work would not be done through the DC study that would need to be done through the inter municipal agreements to be able to look at other options for that. But the Ministry of Funding does add a very difficult challenge in terms of a different layer of complexity to look at how best to treat and be able to look at how that could be applied in the context of a DC study, noting particularly that Middlesex County does not look at DCs for their side.

So we’d only be doing a very small portion overall and how the cost sharing occurs and how the Ministry of Funding ultimately does support the program is a layer of complexity that we don’t have the expertise and have not yet dealt with that at a municipal level before. I’m not sure if Mr. Doman would have more with respect to other municipalities that might have already looked in that avenue before. Anything to add, Mr.

Doman? Thank you, yes, through your worship. One of the advantages that Bill 108 provided is that we now have a full scope of the parameters of what services can be recovered for DCs before it was a little bit more nebulous and a little bit more challenging for us to sort of understand the scope of what we might be looking at. The report that’s before you identifies the services that are now eligible for DC Recovery Per the Act and what we’re going to be doing in the future is even though we’re only recommending that we look at three at this point, we’re gonna be working with our partners in those other areas to try to future proof for the future to ensure that we’re getting some information that’s gonna help us work towards future analysis with other DC studies.

We don’t think we can have the capacity or the represent information to do a calculation for anyone services for this DC study, but we’ll definitely be working towards consideration for the next. Any final questions, Mr. Turner? Councillor?

Thank you, Your Worship. That’s helpful. It’s disappointing. It’s a source of friction in the relationship between the county and the city and finding those opportunities to de-levy some of the service capital costs associated with the ambulance service delivery seem like a good opportunity, especially with those clarifications associated with the 108.

I’m glad we got to bring this out separately. And without the thorough response from staff, I probably would have asked that we, they include this as part of the DC study. I can appreciate the knowledge and expertise and wisdom of our staff colleagues in not wanting to pursue this at this point, but I think it will be really important for us to continue to keep an eye on this. One last question, if I might, through Your Worship, if the ambulance service was operated independently by the municipality and for the boundaries of the municipality, would that make it a cleaner discussion?

Let’s get a staff response. Ms. Barbone, do you want to start? Sure, thank you through the chair.

It would certainly decrease the level of complexity because then I would have some ability to look specifically within the studies in the city of London and certainly within the city’s capital budget to be able to clearly identify our plan and have that within our control fully. Thank you. I have no other speakers on the list. So with that, we will call the question.

Mr. Kaabaga, Mr. Kaabaga posing the vote. Yes.

Then just find a vote. It’s going really slow. We did receive your vote. Thank you, closing the vote and then carries 15 to— Thank you and thank your staff.

Colleagues, the next item on the agenda is 2.3, the area reading policy review. I’d like to have that put on the table for discussion, so look for a motion to put on the table. Councillor Halmer, seconded by Councillor Hopkins. Thank you.

Comments or questions? Councillor Turner, you’re up. I love TCs. Thank you, Your Worship.

So this one is great too. And I’m really excited about this one. In order for us to be able to move forward with any of our growth management strategies, especially those articulated in the London plan, I really see area ratings as a key component of that. And they help for a really basic example of how this influences this.

If you build a house in downtown in Old South, an area that already has roads and water services and all the infrastructure and servicing already in place, your development charge is the same if you built that same house in a greenfield lot on the edge of town. And that doesn’t recognize the ability to do infill and intensification to the way that we need to do it. Area ratings allow us to be able to start to focus development where we need it to occur and incentivize even further. And I think this is a really important component.

It incentivizes development in areas where those development charges would be lower rather than areas where the development charges would be higher. So it’s important that we have the conversation with stakeholders to understand the nuances and to understand any of those challenges and implementation. At the end of the day, I can see a lot of those stakeholders not being very happy with this. And I hope that this comes down to a council decision rather than a consensus decision at the stakeholder table because I think if we’re going to actually actualize the London plan and its gross management policies that are within it, this is going to be a key component of it.

When we talked about the last DC study, I was really hoping that we would have been able to do a lot more on that front, but it’s a ton of work as noted in the report here. So getting started on that is key right now. I do have one quick question with respect to libraries. In the consultant’s report, it identifies that library services, the increasing availability of digital material supports a municipal wide approach.

We are pausing for station identification for the benefit of viewers. Go ahead, Councillor Turner. There were some expletives going on upstairs. So I didn’t want those broadcast over the live wire here in my apologies.

Anyway, it talks about the exclusion of DC, the area rating of libraries from the area rating discussion because libraries end up being a city wide resource rather than an area specific resource. However, I’m not sure I really agree with the consultant’s assessment on this. I’m saying that increasing availability of online digital material supports a municipal wide approach, but really libraries are community hubs. And they’re really essential services in the neighborhoods where they get built.

When we take a look and say, is there a need for a library there? It’s not just to have access to circulation materials, it’s to have access to a space that can be rented for community work and community gatherings and outreach. And so I’m a little bit perplexed by that. And so I guess I would look to staff for some comment on that component if I might through your worship.

Thank you, would that be Mr. Chairman or Ms. Barbong? Through your worship, that may be.

So that is an excellent question. It’s a good point the Councillor is raising with the evolving nature of libraries and their function of communities. The consultants have generally looked at other communities and the treatment there. And the general professional approach is that libraries are network services in which their core mandates related to the provision of knowledge and information is a network service for all the various branches that support the core branch and they’re all networked together as well.

It is something we could take a look at the hack or take back to look at a little bit further, but I do caution that it’s probably going to return at the same conclusion about looking at excluding that as a service. And to that point, when we look at what we’re actually recovering for with libraries in the DC study, it is for the facilities and the collection not necessarily so sort of the program per se. Councillor. Yeah, thank you, Mr.

Chairman. Yeah, exactly that. I mean, it is specifically to the facility which might be area specific rather than the programming in the broader sense. So I recognize the intent of this is to make sure that the work is scoped.

And I think that’s important because there’s a ton of work associated with this. I think it becomes something like libraries is a little less complicated than something like the sewer network where you have to be really specific about the way that the sewer network has been laid out and to say that this service is this component which might be different than the water servicing network and might be different than the electrical grid or might be different than the transit network. Those end up being incredibly complicated. But perhaps I’m oversimplifying, so I digress.

The other two questions I have, one in the consultants cover, it talks about administrative burden should be minimized, minimized. And I agree with that. But I think to the extent that returns are diminished, where there are significant returns associated with the administrative work, I think we shouldn’t shy away from that. I think we should be able to put the resources in if it allows us to provide the city in a more stable financial footing as a result of being able to recover on an area rating basis, then those are costs well spent on the administrative side.

30 seconds, council. My last question would just be, back to my original point, is consensus at that table and the stakeholder table going to be required for us to be able to move forward or is this end up coming with a recommendation? And it’s plus the pros and cons when it comes back to council. Mr.

Chairman. Through your worship. So the external stakeholder committee is constituted to provide advice to the city treasurer for recommendations that we’re bringing forward. So we have some really great conversations with the stakeholders that you saw identified in the previous report.

There are going to be differences of opinion. We try to work to address concerns and comments that people have where we think they’re reasonable and where we think they’re appropriate as well to inform that recommendation, but we will not shy about bringing forward a recommendation that’s contrary to the wishes of the stakeholders, but we will definitely present the arguments that are being provided and we’ll definitely be encouraged those stakeholders to reach out to council through the appropriate form as well. Thank you, councilor. I have next councilor Venthold.

Thank you, worship and appreciate the comments of my colleague. I can see how some area rating would certainly help out with the renewal of some four area places that are built out and that would be, for instance, the Hamilton Road site would be one of those. So it’s interesting the idea of this. Now, in the conclusion, it seems to say that everyone seems to be quite happy with what we’ve got now, however.

And if we, what would happen if we didn’t go forward with this study, does that mean that the DC study would begin that much sooner? What’s the impacts of not pursuing this? Mr. Chairman, through your worship, so according to the DC Act, council doesn’t actually have to make a determination on whether or not they want to consider error rating, but they don’t necessarily need to do it.

So well, if council didn’t want to proceed with the direction that’s recommended to you tonight, we would then seek to return with another recommendation related to likely maintaining the existing framework that we have or it’s an average cost approach throughout the city going forward. Essentially though, the decision point tonight is just to actually conduct the review to go through the analysis to provide you with a wholesome explanation on the various options with supporting information so that you can make an informed choice on what you’d like to do. Councilor. Okay, thank you.

And so my next question is if we didn’t do this study and just went ahead as is, when would be the first time that we could actually implement an area rating? Mr. Chairman. Thank you, Your Worship.

So that’s an excellent question, Councilor, I appreciate you asking. The area rating decision is a key decision path item, ‘cause once council makes a determination on whether or not they want to area rate and what that might look like, we build all of our needs assessments and our rate model calculations based on that as well. So it’s really important. That’s why we’re here tonight that this decision be made within the relative near future to set up for the DC study and all of the requirements associated with that so we can come to you with the calculated rates based on that determination.

Councilor. Okay, thank you. And again, so if we go through this through with the study and decide that it’s promising, then area rates would be implemented in 2025. And then if not, the earliest they could be implemented would be 2030, is that correct or close?

Mr. Chairman. Through you, Your Worship. So the recommendation would relate to the new DC bylaw that would come into force and effect January 1st, 2025.

So it wouldn’t affect what’s in place currently that would continue to work with the existing model but if council chose to change their approach with area rating, then it would impact the rates that are coming into effect at that time. Councilor. - Okay. Thank you.

We’re good. Thanks very much. I see no other speakers on the docket. So with that, we will call the question.

Bozing the vote in the motion carries 15 to zero. Thank you, colleagues, scheduled items. We have one, which is a public participation meeting regarding the 2022 growth management implementation strategy update. So open this up, colleagues all look for a motion to open the public participation meeting.

Council blows the seconded by Councilor Turner. Thanks very much, we’ll call the question. Bozing the vote in the motion carries 15 to zero. Thanks very much.

I know at least one person looking to make a presentation, I would note for your reference that we do have an added item from our bill for your reference colleagues. But I do not know whether at this point whether staff would like to make any brief comments with respect to this issue. Mr. Cosfis, are there any comments that would be appropriate to be made at this time?

Through you, your worship, no, I don’t have anything at this moment to offer other than what’s before you. Thanks very much, I’ll turn to the clerk. Just to confirm we have someone standing by then for the public participation meeting. Yes, your worship, Mr.

Wallace. So we have Mr. Wallace from LDI, go ahead please. You have five minutes and it starts now.

Thank you, Mr. Mayor and thank you, Councillors, for don’t drink me today at this public meeting. The first of all, we just want to be brief. We appreciate the effort that staff make on the GMIS report and the process that goes in to do this.

There is a committee that meets and then it deals with these issues and then staff meets individually with the developers in town and what their plans are. So a real special thank you to Kevin Edwards and his team for the work that they do on this. As you can see from the charts, it’s relatively detailed. It’s important infrastructure planning, both for the city and for development industry here in London.

The only point we’d like to make is when you’re looking at the charts, close eye to those red bars about how tight the supply is in the coming years. As you saw, maybe in the paper this week from a report from the Scotia bank on the tightness of supply across Canada, that’s not just somewhere else, that’s also in London and we’re of the view that you need at least three years of good supply of potential lots for the health of the marketplace. As you know, cost of housing is expanding rapidly here in London and we don’t foresee that getting any better unless we have the more ability to provide more housing through supply. So affordability is an issue, supplies an issue.

We appreciate the work that staff does and the ability for us to communicate on what projects are going forward and infrastructure that the city needs to be involved in to make that happen. It’s an excellent process. I have put out to our team at LDI that if there are any improvements to the actual process to let me know so we can let Kevin and his team know what we can do to always continuously improve, but the methods that we’ve been using have been working and the communication has been excellent and we just want to be on the record supporting the report tonight. Thank you very much.

Thanks very much, Mr. Wallace. Clerk, do we have any other individuals for our public participation meeting would like to make a presentation? No, Your Worship.

Then I’ll look for a motion to close the public participation meeting moved by Councillor Hopkins, seconded by Councillor Palazzo, we’ll call the vote. Oh, yes. Thank you. Opposing the vote and the motion carries 15 to zero.

Call you said like to ask for a motion to be put on the floor taking consideration the staff recommendation, which would include the added communication from our bill, though I have someone who’ll put that on the floor. Councillor Helmer, seconded by Councillor Hopkins. Thanks very much. Comments or questions?

Councillor Turner. I’ll just run the table today, thanks. Sure, Your Worship. I always appreciate the GM minus discussions.

The graph that shows the forecast versus the actualize to build, especially in the single family category on page, whatever page it is. Figure two, the low density residential growth. It shows even like right up to current here, we haven’t really actualized the difference between the forecast and what the actuals were. So there’s been a gap in each year all the way along.

We’ve had a fairly significant activity in building, which has been great. Every time we take a look at the build reports, we see really high numbers. But the concern is that the financial modeling for GMIS and for a lot of our development funded strategy is based on our forecasts. And if those forecasts aren’t accurate, then we may find ourselves short-funded or overfunded depending on what side of the ledger you are.

Do we have any concerns right now and recognize this as an update? And the reallocation of projects is a really key part of this and thanks to Mr. Wallace for going to speak to this because I think it’s helpful to have a sense of what the industry’s view is. And it’s helpful to know that collaborative approach between industry and the city continues to be fostered.

So my question is, where are we at in terms of the forecast versus the actuals and what impact that might have on the sustainability of the fund? I’ll turn to staff for that answer, please. Yes, it’s Kevin Edwards. I just wanted to say, when we look at the revenues, we’re looking at it holistically.

So when you’re doing the development charge, there’s pieces that’s low density, medium density, high density, commercial. There’s basically six different charges and some are low and some are high. And you’re right, low was trending lower. It has definitely increased.

It’s basically meeting its projections now. The medium is the same. High as really high density apartments are really off the chart. And that’s been tempered by lower commercial, as we’ve really seen.

It’s been trending that way over the past three years. So on a whole, we’ve met our revenues. It’s balanced out, so we’re able to maintain our development, our timing plan, which is, I think, really important. But that is, those are the pieces we are watching.

I think, and a lot of it is in flux right now. Like, where is the low density market gonna go when there’s a lot of different perspectives on that? Definitely, we’ve seen high density. It’s been trending well higher than our forecast.

And I think when we get into the next round of forecast, we’re really gonna have to look at those pieces, as well as the commercial component. How is that gonna play out over time? So there’s a lot of things I think we’re really monitoring now. We’re in a bit of a new reality and sort of seeing where those things go, but yeah, it’s absolutely something we’re getting onto.

And as part of, I think a lot of it will come out as part of the next census data, too. So once we get beyond 2021 and have a handle on how things have evolved, we’ll have a better perspective on where the forecast is looking forward. Gotcha. Through you, Your Worship.

Thank you, Mr. Edwards. It’s helpful. So we’re generally satisfied that not withstanding some of the variances in the different categories of forecasting will be generally whole and solvent through this forecast horizon.

And then as we move to the next DC program, we’ll take a look at the modeling and make sure that the assumptions are valid. Do we have any concern that we’re way off track on the net balance of things and that way we might be in a bit of trouble within this horizon? Mr. Edwards.

Through the chair, I would say we are definitely meeting our revenue forecasts. And while some are down, some are high over this period, we are actually recovering what we anticipated is just in different pots than we anticipated. So I think that’s what we go through the five year process and then as part of the 2025 DC study, we’re gonna review those things and update it and real line it based on what we historically anticipated, but also where we see the future maybe taking us. Councillor Warner.

Thank you. Thank you. Any other comments for questions? Councillor Almer.

Thank you. Two questions. One is about the request to accelerate the Calali Road project quite substantially. I wonder if you could just speak to that.

I know that it’s not being recommended as requested, but it’s not often that we see things move quite that much in the timeline. That’s why I wanted to speak to that. And then I have a separate question about costing and continuously planning. Let’s start with clearly, Mr.

Edwards. Hey, through the chair, this is an interesting area. So there’s really two projects that are in play here. And the first is a water project that’s required to open up the area.

So it’s basically, before growth can occur, the water main has to be put in place. And then there’s a second project which runs in the same piece. It’s a road upgrade, which is time for 2030. And we’ve identified it and we’re recovering for it because in 2030, because the growth doesn’t actually trigger its need, and it’s upgrade until the development occurs.

So you’ve got one piece of infrastructure that has to go in advance, and then one that comes in at the tail end. So I think on a broad brush with the request was just move it all forward. And when you run it through the financial model and the analysis, and you look at advance and the project worth $11 million forward 10 years, what we were looking at is it went away from pay as you go to debt financing, which didn’t make sense. So what the recommendation is, is let’s advance the road design work so that we can understand when we put in the water main in a couple of years, it’s actually gonna go in the right place, the right location, the right depth.

So then we come in with the road project at the end, everything’s sort of in place. So that was the request was to advance it all the way. I think we found an alternate solution, which accomplishes the same thing without advancing $11 million worth of work. Gotcha.

Thank you, I appreciate that. I know part of the GMIS review, you’re looking at the estimates for costs, and you know, there’s already identified pressures and a couple of the reserve funds. And how are things looking to think overall from, this is what we thought these projects would cost, and this is what we think they’re gonna cost as we get closer to them. I know that the construction industry has been going gangbusters across a bunch of different areas and prices are not exactly going down.

So I wanted to check in about how you’re feeling about the contingency, so that are set aside and the estimates that are there. Mr. Edwards. Actually, your worship’s three years since the yeoman.

So that’s a great question, counselor. And it’s something that we are regularly monitoring. We are starting to see quite a bit of cost pressure, in particular related to storm water and sanitary to a lesser degree roads, but that is increasing as well. The reserve funds that we’ve targeted and identified in here that we are carefully monitoring are sanitary and storm water.

Sanitary in particular is at a point where we’re needing to really maintain the capital plan going forward, the wiggle room is really reduced, considerably in that area. And so we also don’t have a lot of flexibility with the number of projects that we have to make some changes to try to mitigate some of the impacts. So that’s one that we will be continuing to report to you on. Storm water through the changes that are proposed, there’s some deferrals that are helping to mitigate potential impacts on the storm water reserve fund as well.

But that one continues to be one that we’re gonna be monitoring closely as we go forward. Yes, sir. Thank you, and I know we have a separate report that comes with the DC rates and monitoring. And certainly, if adjustment mid cycle needs to be made to rates to cover off the pressures we’re seeing on the cost side, I wanna say at least that I’m interested in that.

I wanna make sure we don’t delay things that are necessary to support growth. It may end up costing us more in the long run. We deal with the cash flow problem in the reserve fund, but the real solution is increase the rates, pay for it now, don’t put it off to what it costs us by 10% more later, maybe just the benefit by leaving the rates as they were. So there’s different ways of handling that problem.

And I know we deal with some of it in a different forum, but GMIS is a good time to check in on some of those things. I really appreciate the report. I’m glad to hear that from the stakeholder perspective it seems to still be working well on the individual concerns of the various property owners and the stakeholder groups as a whole. Thanks very much.

I do not have any other speakers on the docket. So we’ll call the question. Closing the vote in the motion carries 15 to zero. Thanks, colleagues.

Let me say thank you Wallace for his comments today. They were helpful into Mr. Edwards, Mr. Owens, for their contributions to that section as well.

Colleagues, I’m now going to turn your attention to the items for a direction of which we have five. The first is 4.1, the London Community Recovery Network Community-led Ideas. And what I’d like to do is put this on the floor and I’ll look for a motion to do this. I’ll spend a whole seconder by Councillor Layman.

Comments or questions with the five business cases as presented by Mr. Thompson or any other comments. People wish to make a Councillor Squire. Thank you very much, Mr.

Chair. And I’ve had a chance to go through all of these business cases. I’ve seen how much work’s been put into them. I’ve seen how they’ve been related to the city as a whole.

And I think this is very supportable from my point of view. And I think it’s nice to see that the community and groups in the community are addressing their ideas towards things that’ll help the entire city, things that are scalable, things that can be built on, things that benefit the city regardless of COVID. And they’re not limited to COVID. And if there’s any benefit I suppose it comes out of COVID is it’s the ability to identify gaps that existed in the city and that have just been exacerbated by the arrival of COVID.

So I appreciate the ideas that have been brought forward. I am happy to support them. I didn’t see any good reason, quite frankly, when I spoke to some of the people supporting them, putting them forward as to why they wouldn’t be supportable. So I’m pleased to do so.

Thanks very much. Any other comments or questions? I see Councillor Lehman. It’s follow up on Councillor Squire’s comments.

I’d like to speak to business case number two. You know, I think this is a great example of the times, you know, creating, you know, good partnerships, I’ve long supported, you know, what organizations like Goodwill and YOU and others that do that are founded on the concept of, you know, the old hand up versus hand out. The Goodwill has had an excellent track record of successfully getting people oriented back into the workplace. And I think this, you know, they’re also solving another issue that we have, like over a number of years, fast fashion or disposable fashion, has created a huge recycling burden.

I’m hoping that the Gen Z folks are seeing this and I think they’re reacting to it. The impact that that has had in our environment. Goodwill has been forefront for innovative recycling ideas. I’m pleased to see them partnering with Fanshawe on this to provide a good job creation strategy at this particular point to bring new skill sets to those looking to re-enter the workforce.

So I think, you know, we’re looking at, you know, post-secondary institution, partnering with nonprofit, partnering with government to provide a really innovative solution here that I congratulate the management of, you know, Goodwill and Fanshawe at coming up with this terrific concept. So I support this as I do with the other business cases in front of us. Thank you, Councillor Lewis. Thank you, Your Worship.

And I am gonna be supportive of all five of these projects. One of the things I really like about this group of projects coming out of the LCRN is that they are really focused on jobs, helping businesses get their doors reopened and getting customers back into those businesses and providing an opportunity for some innovative solutions to come forward as well on some of the problems that COVID has really highlighted. So there are five really good business cases here, I think, you know, we’ve heard from employers about the value of the recovery and resource training to enhance employment opportunities. Certainly, I will say that on business case number three, the Good Foods Project, at first I was a little unsure of whether or not we needed to get into the business of funding a piece of software development for restaurants.

But as I had the opportunity to talk to some of those restaurants who’ve expressed support for this, you know, whether you’re talking about Jerry at the Marion Bad or Angela at Grace or any of the other restaurants who’ve said we would be participants in this, these are very much mom and pop operations. These are family run businesses who are really, as Councilor Helm are alluded to earlier, hanging on by the thinnest of threads. And so that’s a small request and one that I think opens up the door to some interesting opportunities for the local economy. And I’m really, really excited about business case number one.

The support local promotional campaign that’s being spearheaded by Tourism London, but it also involves all five BIA’s. It’s not just one area of the city. And it also recognizes in it that there are areas without BIA’s and that it will include those areas as well. And when we can put through a promotional program, an opportunity to put visa cards in people’s hands that are geotargeted specifically to London, that you can spend only in London businesses, that’s an opportunity to get both Londoners themselves as they maybe take a little staycation, but also people in the immediate area that very localized tourism focus to come into London and maybe spend a couple of days and support our local businesses by doing that.

So I think that this is an excellent development coming off of the stay a little longer campaign that ran last fall. That was incredibly successful and used all of the funding that was available and helped support the hotels. Now we’re gonna expand that support to all the businesses that attract visitors to London through this local support promotion campaign. And I know that the staff at Tourism London put a great deal of work into this.

They’re building on 13 ideas from the LCNRN and combining them into one comprehensive business case, which is really tackling a great number of the targets all at once. I know that they highlighted that to the board at Tourism London two meetings ago. I know Councillor Kayabeg and I both had an opportunity to learn a little bit more about the work there. And I think this is gonna be a really good boost to our small business sector in particular as we start to hopefully see some reopening in the warmer weather or summer months and get people out and supporting those local businesses again.

So all of these are good, their job and business support programs. And that was actually it, your worship. They’re good business support programs. So 30 seconds and done.

Thanks very much. Stay a little longer program sometimes seems like council meetings, but that’s all good. So I now have Deputy Mayor Morgan on the docket. Well, great.

Great lead into my long-winded comments as usual. I wanna say I’m supportive of these business cases as well and there’s a couple of reasons. One, I think they’re good examples of the community partners doing what they do best and city hall not having to lead every aspect of recovery initiatives. And this is what is envisioned through the LRCN is not just initiatives that the city is going to take on and do, but community generated projects where they need a little bit of financial assistance from the city through the funds we’ve set aside and then really can manage and take off and make some impacts.

The, what I’m also interested in is the existing work of the LCRN and how this will integrate into it. So I’m very supportive of these ideas. I think they’re gonna be impactful in the short term, but I also know that the group is working towards a shared vision and a shared metrics. And these business cases have measurables and metrics in them.

And at some point they, I assume they would integrate into whatever comes out of that shared vision. And so we can get going on this, but eventually I would expect that this, the initiatives and the impacts of these and the measurables would be reported into whatever process comes out of the larger work that the LCRN is doing. And maybe I can just ask Miss Livingston if she has any details on how that would happen ‘cause I do think it’s important to get these projects going. But I also know we’re working towards that shared vision and the metrics that by which we would all be measuring our success around.

So if she could articulate a little bit around or she could delegate to whoever’s most appropriate, how we envision that working with the approval of these projects. Miss Livingston. Yes, thank you, Your Worship. I think these business cases like the ones that the city is implementing can form the foundation of the metrics that the LCRN can consider as they go forward.

The whole purpose of having shared metrics is that every community partner, whether it’s the city, non-for-profit businesses align our efforts together against that shared vision. And so the metrics help us do that. So we have with these business cases a foundation for that as the other ones that were approved earlier for the city, it gives the LCRN a place to start as we all work towards aligning our efforts along that shared vision with common measure. So this gives us that beginning step forward as we do that work together in the community.

Deputy Mayor, that’s all I had. I appreciate the response and I look forward to voting for these items. Thank you, Councillor Vanholst. Thank you, Your Worship.

I’m also in support of these items. I think it’ll be interesting to see how the BIA’s use their opportunity because they can all take a different approach. And I think because of that, we’ll learn some interesting things. The business case too, I’m fine with this one.

When I look at other higher levels of government involved in programs where they provide money for equipment, I see that sometimes the companies don’t make it and that equipment ends up in the hands of creditors or they simply move south of the border and taxpayers don’t get the benefit of that. So if we were to do more things like this, I might suggest that instead we retain ownership and then lease it a very nominal dollar a year fee so that if one of those things happened, then a London would still keep those assets and then could lease it to another company. However, I just don’t see that as a risk here. I think the goodwill’s gonna do a great job and I’m really looking forward to seeing the results.

Number three, I think is great. We’re trying to become independent here by having our own technology because as we know, technology is sometimes injected into the city and it provides, yes, convenience, but a lot of funds are sucked out of the city and this is a way to prevent that happening and keeping the money that we’re spending here. So those are my comments on this. I think we owe it to the people that have spent so much time and effort coming up with these ideas and flushing them out and turning them into business cases to approve them and we need to do whatever we can to recover from the measures that have been so damaging to our economy.

Thank you. Thank you, Councillor Turner. Thanks, Your Worship. Just really quickly, when I first read through these, I was kind of a little sticker shocked by the amount going towards tourism.

I haven’t really given my feelings about the level of funding that is directed towards tourism. I think they’re sufficiently funded, but I think this does speak to how the partnership between the city and entities like tourism London can be leveraged and used really well. So the opportunity to use tourism London to be able to get these funds into the community and activate businesses is clever. And so I take full acknowledgement to that.

So I’m thankful for the ideas that came forward. It takes a bunch of different approaches in all of these proposals to try and address different impacts within different sectors. So overall, I’m supportive of these. And I’m intrigued to see, I hope, perhaps this might be my question through Your Worship, is what metrics would we be taking a look at to see what these impacts are as a result of this spending?

I’m not sure if we direct that to Mr. Thompson or Ms. Livingston. Well, I’m happy to take a stab, but I’ll just note that we have representation of tourism London here tonight to answer questions about their business case.

And I think maybe it may be more appropriate to turn to Ms. Finn and Ms. Wakabayashi. Before we do that, I thought, Councillor Turner, you’ll clarify, please.

I thought you were asking as a broader question, but please go ahead and clarify your question first. Thank You Your Worship for the clarification. Yeah, specifically, I’m wondering as this money is coming from the municipality, what efforts will we be taking to evaluate the effectiveness of this distribution of cash from your municipal coffers into these initiatives? Mr.

Thompson. Thank you, Through You Your Worship. It’s a great question. So as Ms.

Livingston said earlier, we are looking for the greatest degree of alignment we can. So we are in the process now with the LCRN to look at community-wide measures. That work will continue and we’ll be coming back in the fall is the plan. We will be evaluating, like we do any initiatives, we will be looking to see how the outcomes that are generated from these initiatives overlap with those measures we have endorsed within the STRAP plan and also within sort of the outcomes of what the LCRN is telling us.

Councillor. That answered that. Thank you, Through You Your Worship, Mr. Thompson.

Thank you. So then I’d imagine that gets reported back to council upon the conclusion of these projects or the material distribution of these funds. Mr. Thompson.

I’m sorry, I’m having a little bit of technical challenge. I missed the gist of that question. I’m sorry, Councillor Turner. Go ahead.

Also might be my voice, it’s a little raspy today. Through Your Worship, the question is, I’d imagine then there’s a report that comes back to council on the successfulness of these initiatives to let us know how in each of these projects the funds were spent and whether it accomplished those goals that were set up. Is that better, Mr. Thompson, you heard that?

Yes, yes, thank you. So apologies for that. Yes, we will be reporting on all the major milestones within the LCRN work. We’ve committed in the past to integrate the theme of recovery, both social and economic, as widely as we can.

And I think you’ve heard that through the comments from Ms. Livingston and the previous item on the core area action plan as well. So yes, we’ll be reporting back on all the items that came through from the LCRN as they come available. Councillor.

Thank you. It’ll be important for us to really pay attention to what the results are and make sure that the evaluation process is as thorough as we can. We’re experimenting and that’s important because we’re in a rather new situation where we have to try and provide stimulus wherever we can. It creates a bit of a laboratory for us to be able to see what’s effective and what’s not.

So that if we ever find sector pressures again, that the municipality needs to take action to be able to help those sectors, that we can take a look back and say, what did we do during the pandemic? That was effective. And what did we do that wasn’t? And but if we don’t do that post-evaluation, then we’re gonna lose the lessons and we’re gonna lose our ability to be able to target our activities, to be able to support businesses and activities.

Should we see any other economic pressures that we might see in the future? Thank you, Councillor Hopkins. Yeah, thank you, Your Worship. And thank you to Councillor Turner for asking the questions that I had that are I think really important when we are spending money, taking a chance, working with the community, all those things we need to do, but I think it’s vital that we understand about the programs and how what the results are.

So Mr. Thompson, I’m looking forward to seeing some of the outcomes coming back to council. So we can understand what is working and what is not very supportive of these cases moving forward. I would just like to make another comment which is, I think for any of these programs to work, we need Londoners out supporting them as well.

I think that is so important. It is community, it’s great to have the city and the stakeholders and those partnerships, but it’s also important that Londoners get excited about what we’re trying to do with these partnerships and to also support these plans as well. So again, looking forward to the outcomes coming back to us. And thank you very much to staff, to all the work that’s gone into this as well.

Thanks very much, colleagues. I have no one else on the speaker’s schedule, just to make it clear, we’re receiving the report due to May 18th regarding the London Community Recovery Network, community led ideas, and in addition to that approving the five cases that are presented in the executive summary. But before we do that, apparently we have another speaker, Councillor Cassidy. Thank you, your worship.

I just want to just add my two cents in here. What I’m liking in the business cases is that it is very much a local response. And by that, I mean, not just focusing locally here on London, but also focusing on working together a number of the business cases are definitely involving a lot of collaboration. And as we come out of COVID, as we start to see what we’re able to do, and it definitely won’t be throwing the doors wide open and everybody getting in a plane or something like that, it will be a gradual, slow reopening, and so the tourism one really speaks to that.

The Good Foods Project really works on that. I agree with what Councillor Van Holst was saying when some of those other applications, you’re seeing money that people are paying locally, being actually taken out of our economy, it’s going somewhere else towards Uber or some other big corporation that’s not based in London. So I like the made in London approach and I like the working together, all hands on deck, everybody helping everybody else to get out of this and make a really good recovery. So I’m supportive of the business cases.

Thank you. Thank you. And with that, you’ll call the vote. Closing the vote in the motion carries, 15 to zero.

Thank you colleagues. Before we move to the next particular shadow to Mr. Thompson, not only the author of the report, but a great collaborator with all of the various parties involved in the London Community Recovery Network. Well done.

And I know I think the 15 to zero vote is an obvious comment on the quality of the work. So again, Mr. Thompson, we sincerely appreciate your work on this. Colleagues, I’ll turn your attention out at a 4.2, the request for a shareholders meeting from the Housing Development Corporation.

And we are looking to make an arrangement to hold the shareholders meeting on June the 23rd at our next SP, sorry, at that SPPC meeting. So with that, I’d look for a motion to proceed. Councillor whole seconded by Councillor Cassidy. Any comments?

Let’s vote on that. Closing the vote in the motion carries, 15 to zero. Thank you. Item 4.3 is request for a shareholders meeting of London High Enrangement to hold the shareholders meeting on the June 23rd SPPC meeting.

Can I look for a motion to put that on the floor, move by Councillor Van Mirberg and seconded by Councillor Lehman. Comments or questions? Councillor and host. Thank you, worship.

So the London Hydro also suggested they’d be happy to come on, I believe it was the 8th of June as well. And so I’m just wondering through my question to the staff, how busy do we think these particular meetings are gonna be? Do we need, should we, are we better off splitting them up or putting them all together on the same date of the 23rd? Well, let’s ask that question to the clerk.

Your worship, it’s better to have them all on the same day. That’s right, host. Okay, well, I’m in support of having them all on the same day. I’ll note, by the way, that London Hydro did indicate in its letter of communication that it was neither or an indicated that June the 23rd was equally appropriate.

So with that and seeing no other questions or comments, let’s call the question. Closing the vote in the motion carries 15 to zero. Thank you, colleagues. Item 4.4 is the request from the six community housing.

Again, we’re looking to host that meeting at on the June 23rd, 23rd, 23rd, excuse me, SPPC meeting. Is there, so don’t put that on the floor? Councilor Van Hoel, seconded by Councilor Hopkins, comments or questions? Seeing none, we’ll call the vote.

Councilor Halmer, thank you. Closing the vote in the motion carries 15 to zero. Thank you. Now I’ll turn your attention on a four point working group.

And to put on that on the floor, I’ll look for a move and a seconder. Please move by, Deputy Mayor Morgan, seconded by Councillor Lehman, thank you. Comments or questions to receive the report? Councilor Morgan, go ahead Deputy Mayor.

Yes, so as colleagues know, I chair the governance working group and I wanted to draw your attention to the resolutions that we passed and the report. As you know, you’ve tasked the working group with a number of very interesting items to give you a recommendation on. And one of the things we’re gonna need back from Council, recognizing that everybody does the job of Councilor differently is your feedback. And so you’ll see we’re going to be asking the clerk to survey members of Council on a number of items to get your thoughts, which will allow us to be in a position to make a recommendation back to SPPC for consideration that is reflective of a wider view of Council than maybe just the people who sit on the governance working group.

And of course, any member of Council’s welcome to show up and provide their feedback then, but we wanted to make sure we gave everybody the opportunity to share some thoughts as we start to discuss these items. So upon approval by Council, you’ll certainly see the clerk sending you a message getting your thoughts on some of these items. Thank you for that outline, Deputy Mayor. Any other final comments or questions on this?

Seeing none, we’ll call the question. Sir Halmer posing the vote in the motion carries 15 to zero. Colleagues, we have a note of additional business. And before I look for a motion to adjourn, a couple of things I’d like to do, I don’t normally do this except at a recognition in Council, but I’d like to do a shout out if I can to Councillor Turner.

During the pandemic, we’ve had a number of challenges that we’ve asked this community to deal with. But one of the great things that, and this is a return engagement for Councilor Turner in his capacity from the Health Unit standpoint and provided tremendous leadership with the interfaith community in our recent call about COVID. And Councillor Turner, it really did matter. I received a lot of positive comments afterwards and the technical and thoughtful information you provided is sincerely appreciated.

So thank you from all of us. The second thing I’d like to do is thank staff. You heard a number of things that, I don’t know what they do in their spare time, but I can tell you during this COVID pandemic, we’ve never seen a group busier than this. And when I look at the variety of items in our SPPC median, the work that’s been done, Ms.

Livingston, we’d ask that you pass it on to both all of our staff as we deal in interesting times. And since you’re thanks for all of us at Council, with that, I look for a motion to adjourn. Councillor Lewis, seconded by Councillor Van Merebergen. Let’s show hands and screen on just so we can say properly, good night, yeah.

Motion carries. Thanks very much, median adjourned. Thank you all.