February 9, 2022, at 12:00 PM

The meeting is called to order at 12:00 PM; it being noted that the following were in remote attendance: Councillors M. van Holst, J. Helmer, M. Cassidy, M. Hamou, S. Turner, J. Fyfe-Millar; and L. Higgs.

1. Call to Order

1.1 Disclosures of Pecuniary Interest

That it BE NOTED that no pecuniary interests were disclosed.

1.2 Election of Vice Chair for the term ending November 14, 2022

That Councillor Helmer BE APPOINTED as Vice Chair for the term ending November 14, 2022.

2. Consent

None.

3. Scheduled Items

3.1 Introduction of MNP - Deepak Jaswal, Senior Manager, Enterprise Risk Services, MNP

That it BE NOTED that a verbal presentation from D. Jaswal, Senior Manager, Enterprise Risk Services, MNP, G. Rodrigues, Partner, National Leader, Internal Audit, MNP, J. Barbour, Partner, MNP, and P. Racco, Partner, MNP, with respect to an introduction to Internal Audit Services for the City of London, was received.

4. Items for Direction

4.1 Audit Planning Report for the Year Ending December 31, 2021

2022-02-09 Submission - Audit Planning Report-KPMG

That the KPMG LLP Audit Planning Report, for the year ending December 31, 2021, BE APPROVED.

4.2 London Downtown Closed Circuit Television Program for the Year Ending December 31, 2021

2022-02-09 Submission - London Downtown Closed Circuit Television Program-KPMG

That the KPMG Report on Specified Auditing Procedures for the London Downtown Closed Circuit Television Program, for the year ending December 31, 2021, BE RECEIVED.

4.3 Internal Audit Dashboard as at January 31, 2022

2022-02-09 Submission - Internal Audit Dashboard - January 31 2022

That the communication from Deloitte, regarding the internal audit dashboard as of January 31, 2022, BE RECEIVED.

4.4 Internal Audit Summary Update

2022-02-09 Submission - Internal Audit Summary Update

That the communication dated January 31, 2022, from Deloitte, with respect to the internal audit summary update, BE RECEIVED.

4.5 Observation Summary as at October 22, 2021

2022-02-09 Submission - Observation Summary

That the Observation Summary from Deloitte, as of October 22, 2021, BE RECEIVED.

4.6 Advanced Traffic Management System (ATMS) Project Review

2022-02-09 Submission - Advanced Traffic Management System

That the Internal Audit Report from Deloitte with respect to Advanced Traffic Management System (ATMS) Project Review performed December 2021, issued January 28, 2022, BE RECEIVED.

4.7 Fire Process Assessment

2022-02-09 Submission - Fire Process Assessment

That the Internal Audit Report from Deloitte with respect to Fire Process Assessment performed November 2021 to January 2022, issued January 28, 2022, BE RECEIVED.

4.8 Fleet Allocation and Utilization Management Assessment

2022-02-09 Submission - Fleet Process Review

That the Internal Audit Report from Deloitte with respect to Fleet Allocation and utilization Management Assessment performed November 2021 to January 2022, issued January 28, 2022, BE RECEIVED.

5. Deferred Matters/Additional Business

None.

6. Adjournment

That the meeting BE ADJOURNED.

The meeting adjourned at 1:25 PM.

Full Transcript

View full transcript (1 hour, 32 minutes)

I’m just gonna ask members of the committee to flip their cameras on so I can ensure a quorum, and then I’ll call the meeting to order. Excellent, it looks like we have everybody, but Councilor Homer, so that means I’m going to call the meeting to order. Oh, there everybody is here, the full committee’s present. So this is the audit committee.

The city of London is committed to making every effort to provide alternate formats and communication supports for council standing or advisory committee meetings and information on request. To make a request for any city service, please contact accessibility at London.ca or 519-661-2489, extension 2425. Colleagues, I’m just going to give you a heads up on my plan for the meeting so you can follow along. We’ll have the call to order items.

Then we will deal with the scheduled item, which will be an introduction of our new auditors. With the items for direction, KPMG will walk us through item 4.1 and 4.2, which we will have separate votes on. Then I will have Mr. Price walk us through the rest of the agenda, but I’m going to do the first three items, 4.3, 4 and 5, all together just as a receive.

The individual audit reports, 4.6, 4.7 and 4.8, will deal with separately. That way the staff teams associated with those reports can go when they’re done. And you can certainly ask them any questions. We’ve got lots of people here to support any questions committee members may have for those audit reports.

So with that, I’ll look for any disclosures of the community interest from committee members. Okay, seeing none, then the next item is election of vice chair for the term ending November 14th, 2022. I’ll look to committee members for any nominations for vice chair of the committee. Ms.

Hakes. I’d like to nominate Councillor Halmer. So, Councillor Halmer, that was nominated, seconded and thirded, would you accept the nomination? I feel like I have not much other option.

I’m happy to do it again, although I will say, it’s quite a fun job. And with these kind of amazing opportunities, sometimes other people want to take advantage of them and serve in the role for a while and see what it’s like. And I would just open it up to everyone if you’re interested, great, great role, no? Okay, I’ll do it.

All right, so then we’ll do a motion to appoint Councillor Halmer as the vice chair for the term ending November 14th, 2022. Ms. Hakes, you’re willing to move that. Councillor Manholz, you’re willing to second.

Okay, any discussion? All right, all those in favor by hand? Motion carries. All right, congratulations.

On to consent, there are no consent items. On to scheduled items, and this will be an introduction session where I will turn it over in a moment to MNP and our new auditors, the successful proponents of the RFP process. They’re here to introduce themselves, get to know the committee members, as you know, it’s important to have the auditors to have that direct relationship with the audit committee. And so I’ll turn it over to Mr.

Deepak Jazwell who will introduce his team and start the introductions. And certainly, committee members can engage with the team with a few questions if you like after we get that introduction. So, turn it over to you. Thank you.

Thank you. And they’re actually gonna pass it over to Jeff Rodriguez who’s the lead on the engagement and our national partner. So I’ll let him do the introduction first and then take over from there. No problem, I was gonna make a joke and say he’s punting it to me already.

(laughs) But good morning everybody, and it’s my pleasure to be here along with our core leadership team that we’ll be working with the City of London. My name is Jeff Rodriguez. As Deepak mentioned, I will be the lead engagement partner for the internal audit function for the City of London. Just by way of background, I’ve been in public practice for over 20 years now.

Been working across North America, both spending time in the US as well as in Canada, for the most part in Canada. Started out my career as a CPA or as they called it a CA back then. Initially working for the first part of my career working on the external audit side. So fact statement audits was my go-to thing for the regulated sectors, which included public sector entities.

But I’d say over the last 15 years, I’ve been focusing on the internal audit and risk management and advisory side of the business. So since early 2000s, I’ve been working with clients in the public sector, all three levels of government. With respect to either co-sourced or outsourced internal audit functions, with regards to my experience within the space. Over the last six years, I’ve been the outsourced auditor general for the City of Markham.

Dealing quite heavily with the commissioners and general committee of council there. I’ve also worked with the City of Brampton, City of Vaughan, City of Toronto, Mississauga, as well as the York region and Niagara region. Those are just a few other municipalities I’ve worked with, but they’re certainly as a list of others. So very good experience within the space, as well as federally.

And also with provincial agency sports and commissions. That really is kind of my primary responsibility with MMP. So with respect to my role with MMP, I joined MMP in 2008 from another leading international firm. Since then, I’ve been a partner with MMP on the risk advisory side of the business, really leading the internal audit function.

Up until about a year ago, I was leading the internal audit function nationally for the firm. Since then, I’ve now been leading internal audit regionally, which really is all of Eastern Canada, which includes Ontario, Quebec and Atlantic Canada. Primarily the reason being that we’ve just experienced such heavy growth in Eastern Canada over the last few years that it turned out I was spending most of my time in this region anyways. So I’m really focused on that part of the business.

And I’m also the regional enterprise services leader for GTA. But I have a number of individuals that work with me on the leadership side, which I’ll now introduce to you. Jim Barber is our quality assurance partner for the Stave London account. I’ll let them kind of give more details around their particular backgrounds.

But Jim’s role on top of being the QA partner is he is our regional enterprise services leader for South Central and Southwest to Ontario. So Stave London would essentially fall within his geographic domain. So that’s where we thought it would be good to have Jim as the create partner on the engagement alongside with Deepak Jazwal, who is the senior manager that will be really the client account manager for Stave London, a very big background in public sector, which I’ll let him share with you as well. And then Phil Racco, another one of our leadership team members.

He’s a senior manager and subject matter expert in enterprise risk management. So we’ve got him as part of the core team because I think what you’ll find throughout the discussions that we have today as well as going forward. When you talk about integrated risk management, it really is that alignment of the second line and third line functions being enterprise risk management and internal audit. So whenever we develop any kind of risk-based audit planning and execution of audits, we always take a risk-based lens to it, which really focus on looking at the enterprise risk management program within the municipality, as well as how that kind of interplays and aligns with the internal audit function from an advisory and insurance perspective.

So with that, I’ll turn over to Jim and then I’ll let the rest of you introduce yourselves. Thank you, Jeff. It’s a pleasure to be with council today at the audit committee. Again, my name is Jim Barber, and I do work frequently across London, helping our office and our clients there meet their enterprise risk services needs.

So in other words, manage the risks of what can go wrong and help them identify ways to achieve the objectives of the organization. I’ll be looking forward to working with you. Obviously, there’s a big learning curve, London, there’s a leading municipality and the internal audit plan that we’ve seen so far. That’s been an information shared with us from the city managers and deputy city managers that we’ve met indicate that there’s a robust need for risk management and internal audit activities.

So like Jeff, about 20 years of experience across working across Canada with public sector organizations, as well as financial services and private enterprises. So I’ve assisted Jeff with all of the entities and organizations, municipalities, he mentioned. Additionally, I’ve done a lot of work with federal and provincial ground corporations while they not necessarily are not in the municipalities are certainly familiar with many of the similar aspects around the governance and the caretaking of taxpayer assets and resources. So it’ll be my pleasure to serve as the quality assurance partner and help to make sure that we bring the right team to both meet our standards and meet our qualifications under the engagement.

So Phil, perhaps over to you. And then we’ll let Deepak ended up since he started. Awesome, thank you, Jim. Good afternoon, everyone.

Just by way of quick introduction, my name is Phil Racco, as Jeff alluded to, going to be part of the core engagement team throughout the tenure for the city. By way of background, I am not an internal auditor by trade. My main role with this is as Jeff alluded to, is really to kind of bring that enterprise risk lens to yourselves and to hopefully the value that we bring you over this tenure that we’ll be working with you. So again, Deepak and I have already begun to begin some of the internal audit planning and as Jeff alluded to, the main reason that we like to see this partnership exist between the risk function and the internal audit function is that they really can be mutually beneficial functions that help to lead to better outcomes for our clients.

We’ve seen it work in all different spaces and particularly within the municipal space. Very, very quick summary of myself. About 10 years now, I’ve been working with the firm. Main focus has been on overall organizational resilience, continuity of continuity of services and more operational resilience planning, as well as just a broader take on understanding and analyzing risk, trying to quantify it to help people make better decisions.

Quite a bit of work in both the public and private sector across all three levels of government and particularly with agencies and delegated administrative authorities within Ontario. So I’ll just pass it over to Deepak to round us out. But again, pleasure to meet you all and thank you for the time today. Thanks Phil and good afternoon everybody.

So I’m Deepak Drassel. I’m a senior manager here at M&P and I’ll be acting as the client account manager for the city. In terms of experience, I’ve been working in enterprise risk management, internal audit and management consulting for over 10 years now. Prior to joining M&P, and I apologize, I’m losing my voice.

So prior to joining M&P, I was with PWC in London. So you can hear that accent, hopefully coming through a little bit. And then I moved over, I’ve been with M&P for the past four years, primarily focusing on public sector internal audit. Similar as mentioned by all the gentlemen here, I’ve been working with all three levels of government, so federal, provincial and the municipal level.

I’m the client account manager for pretty much all the accounts Jeff mentioned, primarily focusing on internal audit, value for money, process improvement, as well as IT and corporate governance. In terms of exposure to date, we’ve had a fantastic opportunity to meet many members of management. It’s been very interesting to learn more about the city and we look forward to working with everyone closely over the coming short term. So with that, maybe I’ll throw it back to Jeff or open it up if there are any questions or comments on the introductions.

Yeah, thanks everyone. And yeah, I would just echo what Deepak said. It’s obviously a pleasure to meet all of you. We look forward to this journey that we’re embarking upon with you.

Obviously in our role as internal audit, we will have a direct reporting line to the audit committee. And so we very much value that relationship that we do develop with the committee and its members. And so I always operate on a spirit of full transparency and collaboration. So to that, in that vein, we are accessible available to you at whatever point in time you would need us.

We do endeavor to have frequent and periodic conversations and collaboration with yourselves. And our main objective is not only to provide assurance to the committee and to the city, that as Jim mentioned, that taxpayers dollars are being handled and dealt with accordingly, but it’s also to help improve the operations, feel talked about organizational resilience and continuity of operations. So to the extent that we can bring those value added insights in terms of how to innovate, improve and better the city, we will soon bring that to bear. And just wanna be part of the team, working forward with yourselves and the members of the city of London to make this an overall positive experience for everybody.

With that, obviously, we’re happy to take any questions at this time and do look forward to interacting with all of you as we move forward. Well, let me say thank you for taking the time to introduce yourselves and provide a little bit of background. I will go to committee members now for any initial questions they might have. And in fact, given this is a partnership, it might be appropriate to go around and have the committee members just introduce themselves so that you can put the names to the faces of who is on the committee.

From time to time, we have other colleagues on council who will drop by the audit committee, not often, but from time to time, I believe there’s at least one other colleague on the call as well. That way you’ll be familiar with who is the members of the audit committee. So my name is Josh Morgan, I’m the deputy mayor, counselor for Ward 7 and chair of the audit committee. And it’s great to see you.

And I will turn it over to our newly elected vice chair who is also our old vice chair, counselor Halmer who can introduce himself. Thanks, I’m Jesse Halmer on the counselor for Ward 4. I’ve been on the audit committee for my fourth year, the first two as chair and now as vice chair. I look forward to working with you guys.

I’ll go to Ms. Higgs next. Hi, my name is Lori Higgs. I am the only community member representing, I guess, London as a whole, as part of this.

And my background is I’m a CPA. I work with St. Joseph’s healthcare here in London, have been here for 15 years and hold the position of VP of clinical support and chief financial officer. So I’ve also been on this committee.

This is my fourth year. Nice to meet all of you. Councilor Turner. Thanks, Mr.

Chair. Thank you for your introductions. It’s really nice to meet you. Looking forward to working with you.

My name is Steve Turner. I’m the counselor for Ward 11. I’ve been on the committee. This is my eighth year now.

And in terms of background, I work in the municipal sector. I’m a paramedic chief for Hampton County. And I’m currently doing an MBA in healthcare and life sciences. So I enjoy the audit stuff and learning a little bit more about the numbers and all that fun stuff.

So thanks looking forward to everything. Councilor Turner has figured out a way to have a 37 hour day to do all that too. So Councilor Vanholst, you’re muted, Councilor. I’m Councilor Vanholst and I found out that the mute button allows me to be a man of few words.

The award that I look over is Ward 1, which is the east end of the city. That is my eighth year on the audit committee like Councilor Turner. I think I was once voted the person most likely to use a metaphor. And so in keeping with that, I would say that you’ve got some big shoes to fill, but I also think you’ve got some big feet listening to your introductions.

So it’s great to have you on board. And I look forward to working with you, thank you. And that comprises the audit committee. I also see that we have Councilor Hymou, who is listening in Councilor Hymou.

If you want, you can introduce yourself. I hate to put you on the spot, giving you’re not on the committee, but feel free to jump in if you like. If not, I’ll just mention that you were here too. Yeah, give me a sec.

I just, ‘cause you caught me off guard, but there we go. Councilor, hi, everyone, I’m Councilor Hymou. I was newly appointed in November, and I currently sit for Ward 6. And you can see Councilor Hymou is okay with me putting her on the spot, which I probably shouldn’t have done.

So my apologies for that Councilor Hymou, and we appreciate you listening into the audit committee. That’s all good, Deputy Mayor. Does anybody have any questions? I know we did introductions, but anybody have any questions for our auditors, Ms.

Higgs, go ahead. Thank you. Through the chair to Jeff, perhaps a question for you, when we met earlier in October, there were also a few other engagement partners that presented, I think we met Ashley as well as Veronica, and they were positioned, I believe, in the roles of engagement partner and our local relationship manager. I’m just wondering, noticing they’re not here today, do they have an ongoing role with this particular engagement or who would we be expecting to see and hear from on an ongoing basis into the future?

Thank you, and through the chair, great question, Ms. Higgs. So basically to answer that question, so Ashley did on, which is an assurance partner in our London practice. She is still involved with the accountant, will be part of the core leadership team.

She actually works quite frequently with Jim. So Jim is our risk service leader for the London region, and so they were hand-in-hand, so we figured, instead of having both of them here today, we would have Jim, but Ashley will certainly be involved in the account to the extent necessary. With respect to Veronica, and this was already shared with the staff at City of London, Veronica actually is currently on a partner sabbatical. So it was just coming out of the holidays and early into January.

She had requested from the firm that she take a short-term sabbatical from the partnership and just a couple months off to deal with some personal matters. So in her absence, I stepped in. So Veronica works as part of my team. I’m the leader for the hydraulic practice, and she’s one of the partners that reports up to me.

And so I stepped in in that regard and said, at the time I was involved from a QA role anyways. So I said, well, you’re on your sabbatical. I will certainly step in and act as the engagement partner. And I would say for, at least for now, it’s, I would say, it will continue on that basis unless you feel otherwise or anybody that still feels otherwise.

But I’m happy to serve as your engagement partner on behalf of Veronica while she’s away. Great, thank you for the clarification. Councilor Van Woldst. Thank you, and Mr.

Chair, for you too, our annual internal honors. You’ve had a chance to meet our staff and learn a little bit more about London. Just wondering what city have you dealt with in the past that you think has made me closely on power to our own? Through the chair, that’s a great question.

You always get those kinds of questions. How do we stack up or what municipalities would you say are very similar in nature? And yes, you’re right. We’ve worked with a number of municipalities.

I’ve worked, obviously, with all of them, the one I’ve worked most closely with is Markham. Just given my role as the auditor general for Markham. And I would say each municipality in itself has its own specific characteristics and nuances or manner in how they operate or are structured. There are some similarities, but there’s also some differences.

But in getting to know, I mean, it’s still early days and we’re just getting to know your staff. But I would say there’s a lot of similarity in how we’ve been operating with the city of Markham and the love of collaboration and just the culture that we had noticed there. So they’re very big on innovation and moving forward and I can tell already from discussions with city staff of London that that’s also kind of your point of view or your kind of mantra. So it’s a lot of similarities there.

What I would also like to do is maybe a D-pack, you’ll have some thoughts on that. You’ve spent more time with the city staff at London up until now and you’ve also been involved in the Markham account. So I don’t know if you would agree or if there’s other municipalities that you would say are maybe more similar in nature. No, definitely.

I think Markham’s a great comparison just with our initial meetings with the city staff. Everyone seems very pragmatic and very welcoming to internal audit seeing it more as a collaborative partnership where we can definitely support. I think what we’re finding right now is every municipality has the same issues, obviously budget, resourcing, capacity constraints. So we’re kind of working our way through to see and prioritise obviously the risk facing the city.

But I would say today, all our interactions have been extremely positive. And as we progress through these meetings, we’ll also be looking to meet with the respective members of the committee as well to get your insights on the organisation too. But I would say so far it’s been very interesting and very much in line with what we see across other municipalities. Great, thank you.

Any other questions? Okay, if not, let me say thank you again for taking the time to come and provide those introductions. I’m excited about the relationship ahead and I know not everybody says they get excited about audit, but I think you will find you’ve got a committee who’s very interested in the topic here, very knowledgeable and very willing to both contribute and learn in the process too. And I think it’ll be a great partnership and thank you for taking the time today to introduce yourselves.

So with that, we will let you go until the next time we see you and proceed on with our audit agenda. So thank you. Thank you, Mr. Chair.

And just one closing comment, obviously, as I mentioned, we want this to be a true partnership with the committee and because of our direct reporting line to yourselves, I open it up to the Chair and to the Vice Chair. You now have my coordinates, so please feel free to reach out to us at any point in time. I do want this to be not just a collaboration that we have in these formal meetings, but obviously, outside of the meetings, we’re always happy to help and support your mandate. Great, thank you.

Thank you. All right. Have a great day everyone. Yeah, thank you.

Okay, colleagues, so that was just introductions. There’s no need to pass the motion related to that. We are on to item four, which is our items for direction. I’m gonna deal with 4.1 and 4.2 separately, both our KPMG items.

The first at 4.1 is our audit planning report for the year end of December 31st, 2021. And I will go over to Ms. Denbach, who will have a short presentation walking us through this report. Great, thank you very much, Mr.

Chair. And good afternoon, everyone. Thank you for having us here. As you can see, we’ve put together our audit plan, similar to what this committee will have seen in prior years.

And I have with me, Melissa Redden, who is the senior manager on the city’s audit. And we’ll just walk you through the highlights of this report and happy to answer any questions that you may have. So just starting on page one, which is the executive summary. Really, this report summarizes the materiality that we intend to use in the audit, the scope of the work, as well as our risk analysis and planned areas of focus.

So all of that really is to assist you in your governance role over the external audit process. And in this report, we really have included anything that we are required to communicate to you under Canadian auditing standards, as well as anything that we feel you should be aware of in your roles on the committee. And I’ll hand it to Melissa just to walk through in a little bit of detail, some of those materiality and risk assessment areas that I mentioned. So looking at page three, we’ve laid out our materiality to be used for the year.

This has been set at 18 million, which is one and a half percent of prior years total consolidated expenses. And that’s consistent with the benchmark that we’ve and the percentage that we’ve used in the past. What this means is that any misstatements that we identified during the audit greater than 900,000, we will bring to the attention of the committee and the threshold for reclassification misstatements has been set at four and a half million. Moving on to page four, this shows some information on the group audit.

So it provides some information on the components that make up the consolidated city financial statements. Moving to the next page is some additional information. The city of London on an unconsolidated basis, we perform an audit over that because it is individually financially significant. And then we also perform separate statutory audits over the boards and commissions.

These aren’t considered to be significant components for purposes of the group. However, those separate finished statements are required. Moving on to page six, we have some discussion around some significant risk areas. Consistent with prior year, there are certain risks that we have to consider.

One of those is the risk of fraud. We have rebutted that risk as we do not consider it to be applicable to the city. The other risk that we’ve noted relates to management override of controls. This is a risk that we have to consider for all organizations.

And there are some procedures that we are required to perform. We’ve noted those here. So expect to be able to perform those, but no additional risks noted for that kind of presumed risk. On page seven, we have some key accounts that we in areas that we focus on.

So capital projects and acquisitions are an area of focus because tangible capital assets are a large balance on the financial statements and there is continuous spending on capital projects. There’s also some judgment involved in determining useful lives of capital for payroll and employee future benefits. This city had a liability in the prior year for 182 million and there is some complexity associated with the estimate as well. So we highlight these areas.

We’ve laid out our audit approach, which is consistent with what we would have performed in prior years. Moving on to page eight, some other areas of focus include taxation user charges and transfer payment revenue. So the revenue streams make up more than 1.26 billion. So are quite significant.

So one of our key focus areas during fiscal 2021, the city also anticipated to receive between 50 to 60 million of COVID funding. So we’ve noted in our procedures, the procedures that we typically perform year over year as well as some additional, and additional procedure relating to that COVID funding as well. For debt issuances, there was a new debt issued of 23 million. So we would be looking to see supporting documentation for that as well.

Moving on to page nine, we have included some key milestones. On January 7th, we met with management to have a planning meeting with them. We also performed some planning for the year and engagement in January and February. We’re here with you today to talk about our present, our audit plan.

And then the actual field work for the audit will begin in April and continue into June. And then we will have our audit findings discussion with you on June 15th. Page 10 provides some information on our team, some information on Katie and myself, as well as Diane who assists with any tax related matters as necessary, as well as Diane and Bonnie who helps out as the manager on many of the boards and commissions. This next slide includes information on our proposed fees.

For the current year, we negotiated a one year extension with the city and the fees are in accordance with that agreement. I’ll turn it back to Katie to go over the information and the appendices. Perfect, thanks. So the remainder of our report are the appendices and what we’ve included here for the committee is just some information that we thought would be useful to you.

So in appendix one, this outlines the communications that we are required to make with you under Canadian auditing standards and where you can find them during the course of our engagement. Most of them do come at the completion of the audit. I will not touch on appendix two. I think that’s pretty self-explanatory, but in appendix three, we have included some detail for you on current developments.

As you probably recall from previous reports, there are some changes coming to public sector accounting standards which will impact the city for its fiscal 2023 year end. And some like the asset retirement obligation standards are expected to require some work to implement and potentially will have some impact on the financial reporting for the city. So I wanted to make sure that the committee was well aware of those. And we’ve been in conversations with management already around the plan to calculate and implement that standard and will continue to be so as the implementation date gets closer.

In appendix four, we have included, like we have for the past several years, some benchmarking for you. And really this is to help you assess and evaluate the city’s sustainability, flexibility and vulnerability compared to a group of comparator municipalities. So we’ve included five years worth of data here for you. The comparators that we’ve used are the same that have been used in previous years as are the individual indicators that we’re looking at.

So that’s really just for your information. And then the last appendix five just includes some live links for the committee on some topics of interest issues that we are seeing discussed around audit committee tables more broadly that we thought might be of interest to you. So that’s again just for your information. So happy to take any questions that the committee may have.

Okay, questions from committee members, Ms. Higgs. I thank you through the chair. Thank you for the presentation.

I do have one question and it relates to the significant risk. So it’s on page 10 of your report and I appreciate there’s no change from the prior year but the professional requirement that states there’s a presumption of the risk of fraud involving improper revenue recognition. You noted that as a firm like for this particular audit you have rebutted that risk. Can you give us some of the rationale that is required from the professional standards perspective to meet that bar to refute that it’s actually a risk for the city?

Yeah, definitely. So the first step is sort of consideration of what reasons someone might have for fraudulent revenue recognition and what we find is generally that risk comes into play in a for profit organization where there are bonuses or remuneration that are being made based on financial results. It’s very common practice in the public and not for profit sector for that risk to be rebutted unless there are specific sort of, I would say incentives or opportunities to commit that risk. So as part of our audit planning we do sort of a fraud brainstorming session to say where might there be incentives or opportunities to commit fraud and are there any that would cause us to not want to rebut this risk?

But that’s the biggest one Laurie I would say is where you don’t have anyone that is really focusing on that revenue number or stance to gain from that revenue number then that sort of allows us to rebut that risk. Thank you. Councilor Turner. Thanks Mr.

Chair and thanks for the presentation. My eye gets drawn to the financial indicators and I might have a couple of questions one for you and then perhaps such a misread bone as well. One of the interesting parts is just seeing where things hit the books in other municipalities like the capital editions where Ottawa’s likely that LRT in 2019 and we would expect to see something similar in future years as we embarked with BRT or to imagine. More with the ratio is the there’s two of them the financial assets to liabilities and reserves to reserve funds for households.

On both of those we’re showing fairly significant growth throwing more assets into the column as compared to our liabilities and most of our peers aren’t doing that. They tend to be flat lining on those. I guess I’d look to you for some general comments and perhaps to misread bone about what we should be doing for those I mean obviously having some assets in our holdings is a good thing but at some point that has impact on taxation. Thank you for the question Councilor Turner.

I would say in general we do get asked this question and pray frequently as municipalities look to determine what’s an appropriate number to have in these reserve funds and I would say in general we do find that municipalities are looking to increase those funds and so seeing those balances go up certainly helps you be better prepared for potential expenditures in the future. I know there are municipalities that are having studies done specifically to help sort of quantify what appropriate numbers would be in that area. I can’t necessarily speak to why the other municipalities are flat lining but in general we do look at it as a positive thing to see those reserve fund balances grow. Thank you and it’s for you to Mr.

Chair to Mr. Bon. Just wondering I mean are we looking to accrue to an anticipation of draws so we’re building up reserves and then anticipating to draw it down or is something else happening with these? That again the concern being if I think it’s really important that we have healthy reserves and we have a healthy ratio of assets to liabilities but if we over contribute then we’re over taxing at a certain point.

Through the Chair so thank you for the question. So really what you’re seeing is there’s a couple of components to this but they are all very closely tied to the city’s strategic financial plan and the policies that we link back to. So if you know that we have done a great deal of work on looking at our capital asset management plan and looking at the amount of the ratio and setting targets for what those reserve funds would be in the context of what our infrastructure gap is and in the context of the upcoming capital plan. So certainly that’s a very, very significant component that we have been working towards trying to increase those funds to support that long-term strategy.

In addition a lot of it ties into our debt cap that has been internally imposed through our financial policies and approved ultimately through council as we look at how we find our capital plan going forward and limit potential tax increases into the future. So those are the two big ones that I would say. Also a large portion of our reserve fund contributions. When you look at the component of what those kinds of ridder funds are, tie specifically to development charges and the obligatory reserve fund that we need to have as well in setting up to support the 20-year development charge study that is there.

So many, many components that are there. And when you do see the financial statements a lot of that has broken down in the detail and through the financial highlights but very much predicated on the long-term financial planning that we bring forward through all of the, how they all fit together to support the budget ultimately in our long-term planning. Thank you. So I guess to summarize that there is a purposeful intent of being able to build those reserves against the capital asset management plan specifically and perhaps some other areas to make sure that they’re right sized.

I’d imagine once we’ve accomplished that then we would start to see it plateau and carry on year on year once we’ve reached what our objective is. Great, thank you very much. Councilor Van Wollst. Thank you, Mr.

Chair. And perhaps through you to our CFO. I’m looking at page 16 and this financial indicator is the capital grants as a percentage of total capital expenditures and we seem to have the lowest figure there. And I wonder if Ms.

Barnbone could comment on that particular item. Thank you through the chair. So without having the exact details in front of me to refer to certainly this reflects the amount of federal provincial funding as a component of our capital plan. This will be certainly something that we are seeing grow in the future years of our capital plan.

As a percentage, it has not been significant to date because our capital plan is primarily lifecycle maintenance. We’ve seen a lot of growth funding as a result, but certainly as we look at some of the larger projects that are scheduled to occur in the next number of years up until 2027, I think you will start to see that percentage increase. As the number of grant applications, we’ve been successful in a number of grant applications and very significant projects that the federal provincial government have put forward, particularly more recently that have been, we’ve been successful in. So I do believe you will see that grow as we’ve been very fortunate and successful in taking advantage of some programs, but certainly I believe those are in the future.

So you won’t see those reflected as of yet and likely see those indicators will grow as a result in the upcoming years. Okay, thank you. That does make sense. I was wondering, Preston, we’re doing quite well in terms of gaining grants, but this would only be in the year that they are received, I guess.

And I can see that there are spikes in the other cities where most years are low and then there’s a year where there’s quite a bit. And if I look at the one net value of tenable capital assets as a percentage of historical cost of capital net assets, I think that’s a very age-related. It’s just the more a city with more newer assets that would be, they would have higher numbers would they not? Some page, I’m sort of 14 with that.

Okay, the chair, if he’s looking for me to answer, certainly this is based on the net book value. So it doesn’t relate to the replacement cost or the ongoing cost of the capital budget would fund in the future. Okay, but it’s fairly age-related to the items, the catering. Certainly age would have an impact on the net book value as the assets decline most certainly.

Okay, thank you. And maybe one other question, just something caught my eye. I would ask of our auditors, Mr. Chair.

And on page 18, some new PSAV approved proposal was recognizing intangible purchases through an exchange transaction. And I’m wondering if that’s something significant for our municipality was purchased in tangible. So it was the top of the page 18 of their report. Yeah, let’s get you an answer, Councillor.

Okay, my apologies, I’m wrestling with my mute button here. I don’t foresee that having a significant impact on the municipality. So we’ve sort of included in here everything that is coming down the pipeline. This is not one I’m hearing significant chatter about as being a, difficult to implement or be significant in terms of the expected impact on municipalities.

Thank you. Okay, if there are any other questions, I don’t see any. All right, then this audit planning report is for approval. I’ll look for a mover to approve.

Ms. Higgs, seconded by Councillor Turner. Any discussion on approval? Okay, seeing none, then all those in favor?

Motion carries. All right, thank you. Ms. Denbach, I’ll hand over the next item to you.

This is the report on the downtown closed circuit television program. I think it’s a very short report. I’m not sure if you need to say much about it, but I’ll hand it over to you and then we’ll see if there are any questions. Thank you, Mr.

Chair. You’re correct, this is a short report. Not a lot of exciting stuff in here, but, and it has been finalized. So I believe it’s going to the committee for information and for the opportunity to ask questions, should you have any, but no, you’re correct, not anything else that I wanted to point out to the committee.

Yeah, so this is a four receive item colleagues, but if you have questions, now would be the time to ask them. Okay, I don’t see any, then motion to receive this item. Councillor Turner, seconded by Councillor Helmer. All those in favor?

That motion carries. All right, thank you to our KPMG friends for your contributions today, and I’m sure we’ll see you next time. On to Mr. Price.

And so that, I’m gonna ask Mr. Price to walk us through the next few items together. My plan is to deal with 4.3, 4.4, and 4.5. We can certainly go through them one at a time and check for questions, Mr.

Price. But I do wanna deal with the, the auto reports in 4.6, 4.7, and 4.8 separately, so that our staff can be released as we complete those items. But if you wanna go through the overview reports and make any comments that you’d like to make on those, then we can certainly have our committee colleagues ask any questions. So I will turn it over to you, Mr.

Price. Okay, thank you, and that makes sense. So there’s three items there would be the memo, which really just summarizes the three items that are in the package, and the, so mainly the dashboard. So maybe we’ll start with that dashboard as of January 31st, 2022.

What you’ll see in the dashboard is that we’ve completed the audits that were planned for the year, except there’s one audit, the recruitment process assessment that we’ve, we’re not able to complete, and the decision was made that it made sense to just include that in the planning for the upcoming year as you’re transitioning to the new internal auditor. And then the, the activities in the future, we just have the transition to the internal audit team. And my understanding is that we’ll be sharing some documents with them, but certainly if they have any questions, we’ll work with them to transition the internal audit. It wouldn’t the next little while.

The next section of the memo is talks to the observation summary and the observations that are currently outstanding with the city. What you’ll see in there is that there was one, one outstanding for the Assumption and Securities Review, which has now been closed, and that review would now be marked as completed. And then the outstanding ones that we’re still tracking and have not changed as far as the status are around the deerness home assessment and the SaaS application review, which we actually just completed in 2021. So those have not changed, and we did confirm that with management.

The new items are the, there’s 10 additional comments that were added for 2021. And of those, they relate to the three new reports that we’ve just issued. And we’ll look to talk to those in the next agenda item. So that is really the summary of the top summary documents.

If there’s any questions on that, maybe I could take them now. Yeah, any questions on the summary documents, realizing that we will go through the audit finding reports after this. Okay, then maybe we can just knock off the receipt of these reports if colleagues are okay with that. So I’d look for a motion to receive items 4.33, 4.4 and 4.5.

Councillor van der Waals, seconded by Ms. Higgs, all those in favor of that receipt of those? Okay. Got motion carries.

Okay, so on to 4.6, which is the advanced traffic management system project review. Mr. Price, I’ll hand it over to you on that one. Okay, thank you.

And as in past, what my approach will be just to give a high level overview and cover the the medium comments, assuming that the council of the members had a chance to review the reports before the meeting. So this review is, as you said, the advanced traffic management system. The focus was on the project management aspects of this project. And we have done these sorts of reviews for other projects in the city when there’s a new system being implemented.

So there’s four comments, but I would say that there is a theme within these that it’s more just a formality and documentation around the process that was followed from a project management perspective. And I think we’ve commented on that and thematically as round a lack of a consistently implemented project management approach in when across the city functions and that sort of thing. So the four comments that we had were the first one is a lack of controls around cost management and reporting an actuals against forecast. I think in this, we did not, by the way, find any overages.

It’s just a matter of the reporting around that is that there was an assumption to be on track and not a formal report as far as the tracking of budget versus actual estimate to complete and that sort of thing. The second point was around the lack of program oversight, including interdependency management and informal status reporting. Again, it’s more a formality around that. I believe it was made documented somewhat as part of the plan.

And then it’s more the ongoing reporting of that as the project continues and also just adding formality around that reporting. The item number three was around the project risk log and although there’s risk monitoring activities, there’s not a formally documented risk log and owners assigned each of the risks, which can be important as you’re implementing a project because you want to ensure that the risks have been addressed as you move to implementation and that sort of thing. And then the final medium priority point was that there’s currently no formal documented process or documentation of the benefits realized in the project, which can be important as you spend certain amount of money in a project and often when the projects are approved, there’s a cost benefit assumptions made to help approve that project. It’s important to go back and look to see where those benefits actually realized.

And I do realize that the traffic management system given COVID is a challenging one because probably you didn’t realize a lot of those benefits, just given the traffic reductions that happen with COVID and that sort of thing. But I’m sure there are benefits that should be measured and that sort of thing. And then looking forward, there would be other benefits. So that’s the summary of the medium priority comments.

And we do have some other low priority comments that you can consider. Is there any questions on that or is that level of depth appropriate? Yeah, I see nods, but let’s see if there’s any questions on this. I don’t see any.

So- Oh, I’m sorry. Go ahead, Councillor Reynolds. Yes, if I can, maybe through you to our staff, just regarding the, I believe it’s the first one here, was said there was no official reporting versus overages, but it was also said there were no overages. So I’m wondering to staff, what would have happened if we did have some overage, how would that have been dealt with?

Just a shame of car through the chair. If there were overages, we would be reporting that back to the steering committee. The budget was monitored throughout the process, but just the not reported back to the steering committee. Taking this report into account, we have implemented that and in our January meeting, we did report to the steering committee, the status of the budget where everything is sitting.

Thank you. Okay, so this report is for receipt. There are no other questions. I can entertain a motion to receive Councillor Vanholst seconded by Councillor Turner, any further questions?

Okay, all those in favor of receipt of this motion carries. All right, the next one is the fire process assessment. I’ll go back to you, Mr. Price.

Thank you. So the fire process assessment, when we plan this, what we did is we worked with the city to understand where the most value was, as far as looking at the processes around the fire. And one area that seemed to be of importance and something that the fire department actually was looking for feedback on was just how they managed their fleet and the considerations around that. This project, we did include a subject matter expert that deals in this area with other municipalities.

So, you know, my view is that was helpful to help give some more, you know, specific fire and municipal experience in this review of the fleet operations for the fire department. And I think the findings, they weren’t a surprise to the fire department. Again, it was something they highlighted and we’re looking for more insights. And that’s hopefully what we provided here.

The first comment was around the fact that there’s no existing KPIs in place to monitor the fire fleet performance. And in the details, we’ve indicated some of the ones that we might expect to see in that area. And my understanding is that the fire department is going to work to look at what those KPIs are and try to incorporate those into their, not just their ongoing operations, but also in the budgeting and forecasting in the sense that they’ll set goals for KPIs as they move forward and measure those as they move forward. And it’ll take some time to put that in place.

The next one is around the condition-based vehicle assessments currently they do have a tracking of the vehicles and they track it based on expected life and expected retirement date and that sort of thing, but that there isn’t currently a formal process of assessing what the current condition of the vehicle is. Presumably they are doing some ad hoc process where they know what the condition of their vehicles are, but having a more rigid approach to that to ensure that they’re not just a retiring vehicles just because they’ve hit the retirement date, but then also potentially needing to replace them earlier because they are not actually tracking that retirement date and may not live out their expected useful life. So having some tracking and projection of that as well. And then the third comment is around preventative maintenance and inventory requirements.

And there’s a few comments within that, but really looking at having a more robust preventative maintenance program and system for tracking the work orders and the work that’s been done on the vehicles. And then also a system for tracking parts inventory and what requirements are needed for maintenance of the vehicles so they can keep the vehicle’s road ready as much as possible. So those are the three main comments. The last one value added around telematics is something that we did raise is something that could actually have paid back for the city.

So something to consider, but more of a value add comment than something that we saw as a risk per se. Councillor Terris. Thanks, this one’s fun. So let’s start backwards and move forwards, the telematics.

You identified that as a best practice, but it could create a fair amount of installation from liability, right? My entire ambulance fleet is connected by telematics. I know exactly how fast a vehicle was going. If there was a collision, I’d know whether breaks had been applied, whether the warning systems were on, those kind of things, and could easily prove or disprove, whether there was liability associated with the operator at the time.

The telematics suite can be rather large too, right? It can take a look at the operating parameters of the vehicle, it can connect to the ECU to be able to tell you whether the fuel efficiency is off or whether the cornering is too hard or those kinds of things. And there’s quite a variety of different telematics suites that are available, but based on just best practice, I see this as more of a medium risk identification and I’d like to know a little bit more about what you’re seeing other places and what your thoughts are to put it into this category. Yeah, and by the way, not the expert on telematics, but we did have one involved.

But just through the discussions, I know that they didn’t indicate that it’s something that we are seeing more so in fire departments. It’s not maybe as common as maybe ambulances, that’s sort of service, but it’s something that is increasing. And the points you raised are valid and I think we actually raised part of that in the next report, which we’ll talk about in a minute, but that you can improve safety as well. So there’s a risk management from a, if there is a collision or an incident, you can look at that and maybe provide training to adjust behaviors and that sort of thing to help reduce the risk and also look at the situation itself and see if there’s something that from an insurance claim or legal perspective to have information.

So I think all valid points and I think that’s when you look at the cost benefit of this is that there’s also just the dollars and cents of tracking efficiency and use of the vehicles and is there better fuel economy if it’s driven a certain way and then training from a cost savings perspective as well? So I think that’s something to, there’s a number of areas that could be improved there, but we didn’t see it as a risk per se, like as far as the categorization as being leading practice versus a medium or high priority, we didn’t see it as being, like it doesn’t seem that there’s a lot of incidents that would cause this to be a risk right now. Thanks, yeah, the telematics have quite a breadth too and can provide real-time driver feedback, right? So they can shake the wheel a little bit if you’re exceeding the speed limit or if you’ve cornered too hard it can create direct reports to supervisors if nobody was backing up the vehicle and I like to making sure that the area was safe as they were doing that stuff.

Anyway, so it’s important. My other questions are around the regulatory requirements associated with maintenance logs. On my fleet, for example, I need to be able to prove to the ministry that my agencies for maintenance and preventative maintenance were done on a very specific schedule. And if I can’t prove that, then I’m out of compliance with my license.

Is, are there any OFM or municipal standard requirements in terms of, you said they were behind in making sure that they met those schedules, but do we have any exposure on a legislative standpoint? I’m not aware of anything and our comment was more about deficiency that because I think a lot of them are manual at this point, but I think that question might be more appropriate to the city staff if there’s someone available that might build answer that. Thanks, I’ll put that to Ms. Smith.

Through the chair, Mr. Price is correct. This is something that we’ve done manually and this is something that we’re looking as we roll out the final implementation in 2022 of our ecosystem, but I’ll turn it over to Richard to inform you of how we currently follow all the standards right now with respect to maintenance. Yeah, thank you very much and through the chair, just to answer, we are a licensed MTO certification garage.

So we do keep records in accordance with the ministry. As Cheryl has indicated, they are done paper-based at the moment. So to do research on those, to provide proper preventative maintenance programs, things that’s very challenging to pull it from paper, very heavy administrative burden. So moving to an electronic system is certainly our, is certainly our goal through this process.

That’s for you, Mr. Chair and Mr. Hayes. Do we have a regulatory requirement in any way to meet in terms of the preventative and scheduled maintenance for the fire vehicles?

I’d imagine they’re all registered commercial vehicle operator registries. So I don’t know if the CVOR permits have a requirement for the PMs. And if we’re not meeting those standards, are we at risk of losing those permits? We don’t do CVOR permits.

We are MTO, like they are done. The annual certification is done for your MTO vehicles as a larger capacity vehicle. And on the fireside, we have to do, for the engines, we have to do pump tests and certify those pumps to a standard. And that has an impact on insurance rates throughout the city.

And so maintaining those certifications is important as well. So those are time to do well. And perhaps I’ll ask one more time. Do we have any legislative requirements or standards that by not meeting them?

We’ve got the insurance piece, but beyond that, are we non-compliance with something that we’ve been mandated to comply with? No, that is not. No, we’re fully in compliance with anything that is legislated. And perhaps through you, Mr.

Chair, you’ll indulge me in one last question. I see a number of pieces in here that talk about the additional resources requested to the 2022 annual budget process. Is that for the 2023? I don’t remember seeing software associated with tracking either on vehicle movement to the telematics or in terms of our tracking of maintenance.

Through the chair, so with respect to telematics, that would be a future ask if that’s the direction we go for the next multi-year budget process, if required. Currently, we feel that potentially to implement the recommendations in the first three with respect to our current ITO that we have budget to support this. Perhaps it’s just a final comment that recommended really strongly. I know when I was on the police board, we had a very similar conversation.

And we had a conversation last term when we talked about the frequency of fire vehicle collisions, which was very high. It’s like alarmingly high. The need for telematics is really, I can’t emphasize it enough. It’s important to help incite us from liability, but it’s also important from a culture perspective.

We made the purchase of a simulator, a driving simulator, was based on the frequency of fire vehicle collisions, since my understanding that the simulator hasn’t been used very often, or at all. And so I have a lot of concerns in that regard. So I really would impress upon the importance of that to be done forth with the statement in here that it would take five years to do. I don’t accept that either.

The fleet could be outfitted within the year. It doesn’t take long to do. And the fleet is not significantly large at that it would take five years to complete and accomplish. Other questions?

I have one, if the committee will indulge me. On the first three items, Ms. Smith, you indicated that you had sufficient budget to deal with them. What is the process for closing the loop with the audit committee?

Given we’ve received these findings, sounds like you are proceeding with working on them. What is the process for updating us on that work being completed, given the items were identified in an audit report? For the chair, thank you for the question. This audit report aligns nicely and will help inform our recommendations going forward in the Fire Master Plan, particularly with respect to our KPIs that are tied to this and also our replacement timing for fire vehicles.

So you will see the Fire Master Plan and incorporation of some of the recommendations coming into the Fire Master Plan in April 2022, I believe. And then some of these key implementation of these recommendations, along with others in the Fire Master Plan, will be part of our implementation plan that will follow annually every year after that. Okay, thank you. Any other questions from colleagues?

Councillor Van Walst, you’re muted, Councillor. Thank you. I wanted to follow up on the telematics as well. So our staff suggested that a fully telematics enabled fleet, but that’s something that yet we determined.

And Councillor Turner talked about a number of suites that were available of just different complexities. So I’m just wondering if there’s some, what’s the low-hanging fruit that would be available to us through telematics in terms of a benefit? I think everybody’s pausing to wait to see who will answer, but I don’t know, Ms. Smith, if you wanna direct the answer somewhere for me.

Thank you, I’m sure the chair, maybe Deputy Chief Hayes can speak to it. A number of the, it certainly can. And thank you for the question. I think some of the low-hanging fruit is looking at things like fuel.

So we have the ability to measure how much fuel a vehicle is using by them pulling up to the pumps, inputting their mileage, inputting their fuel consumption, and moving on from there. So right now that has not been implemented, and it is something that we’re looking to implement. We do have the ability on some of the newer apparatus to actually pull some of the data from the modules within the vehicle, as Councillor Turner already alluded to there, but that’s not in all of our vehicles. So as we move forward with replacements, that certainly is something that we’re looking at doing.

So that would occur on occasion when incidents occur, such as accidents or things like that. It’s also the ability to pull data from our traffic management system, red light cameras and things like that that we are doing currently. And our goal, our hope is in the future, it’s about to tie all of these together so we can get a full state of the vehicles, even in real time, would be really nice to see. But that’s an ongoing process, and that’s why you see the design of the time that’s within this report is it ties into so many other areas that it becomes very challenging to navigate those waters.

And everybody, other areas certainly have their busyness as well that we have to get in line and have them help us implement a lot of these things as well. Okay, thank you very much. So there’s a lot of, in terms of gathering data, it’s very interesting, there’s lots of nice to haves. Of course, the must haves are putting out the fires.

Thank you. Okay, if there’s no further questions on this particular report, I’ll look for a mover and a seconder for receipt. Councillor Halmer and Councillor Vanholst. Councillor Halmer.

Thank you, yeah, I have a question about the condition assessment of the vehicles specifically. So I actually remember reading this in the corporate asset management plan a few years ago, where it said something like, you know, the vehicles are basically assessed. It’s in how long we think they’re gonna last and how old they are and not much more detail than that. And reading the audit report seems to be the case still.

So I think we’re talking about something like 30 or 32 vehicles or something like that. When are we going to start having more detailed assessments about the condition of the vehicles? All together, they’re quite a significant group of assets, obviously critical that they’re available and ready to be deployed. And I think having a good sense of how they’re holding up over time in terms of our asset management, generally across the organization is important.

So perhaps there’s a question more for management, but in terms of the specific condition assessments of the vehicles, when are we gonna see changes on that front? It doesn’t seem to me like the kind of thing needs to wait for software. True, the chair. And then thank you for the question, Councillor Halmer.

We have brought to you a number of reports in 2021 regarding and starting to kind of prime the pump for the condition of some of our older and aging vehicles. And currently right now on Deputy Chief Hazel connect, correct me if I’m wrong, but we have a 20-year replacement cycle. So based on 17 years in action and in three years as a backup. So you will see in our Firemaster plan that some of this work that’s done through this audit and looking at best and promising practices and other municipalities, but also the work that we’ve been doing on looking at our vehicle, we will be coming with a recommended replacement on our fire apparatus that is no longer 20 years, probably.

And we’re just finalizing now, looking at the data, it will be more of a 15-year replacement value, noting that the wear and tear on our vehicles now and the impact that that has. I appreciate that. I just wanted to clarify. I’m asking specifically about how we assess the condition of the vehicles.

So what shape are they in right now? How quickly they’re being replaced is obviously a function of how they’re used and what happens to them over time and how we maintain them. So that’s not really what I’m asking about. It’s just sort of like, how are we checking what kind of shape they’re in now?

It’s one thing to pass all the minimum inspections and all that kind of stuff. But understanding what the condition of the vehicle is overall, I think it’s one more I’m trying to get out there. Thank you for the clarification. Deputy Chief Hayes, do you want to talk a bit about this?

I certainly can, and thank you for the opportunity. In essence, if you look at the KPIs, that’s in within this report, that allows us to then to report on the total cost of ownership of the vehicle. So what that means is that we look at the measurement of the expense that occurs over the time of the vehicle and align that to the depreciated value of the vehicle, where those two start to intersect, that starts to drive us to look at a recommendation to replace that vehicle. So by having the ability to look at the health of the vehicle, by looking at all these data points that are listed out in our KPI, we’ll be able to quantitatively report on the health of any vehicle at any point in time.

So that’s our goal and our desire. That would then form into the corporate asset management program and become a more fuller report into there as well. So right now, it’s more qualitative reporting as opposed to quantitative reporting. Councilor Van Wollst.

Thank you. I’d like to ask what generally happens to a used fire vehicle? Do we sell them to some other municipality? Or are they, do we drive them to Zoobix?

And that’s what I’m interested in. I can answer that and thank you for your question. I think it depends on the type of vehicle and what condition it’s in when we get rid of it. Sometimes it’s good just to dig a hole and push it in.

But in the end of the day, we would, the worst office that we would get scrap value for it. But most of our corporate assets like that are then put on to go up deals and sold through auction. Sorry, Councilor, did I see your hand up too? Yeah, thanks.

Just given some of the answers, I have a few more concerns, but perhaps I could just ask one question and through you to perhaps the chief or to Ms. Smith. What, we’re seeing some challenges with record keeping here and being able to use those metrics to be able to drive change are also to drive needed behaviors. If this is within the maintenance department, what would, how would you characterize the state of affairs in terms of record keeping across the service in other areas?

Whether that’s in response is in metrics, patient care, other things like that that might be a fire inspections. Are we looking at like across the board antiquated systems or are we just looking at this small area of the fire service where this is a challenge? I can speak to that one through the chair. I think across fire, what we’re seeing is we did have extremely antiquated systems over the last few years.

We’ve tried to improve that with ICO, with regards to our fire prevention reports, our emergency response reports. And Richard can probably speak a little bit better to the apparatus piece, but the apparatus division is kind of the last area that we’re starting to focus on. They have a lot of data. Unfortunately, a lot of it right now is in paper, as Richard mentioned, and that’s a huge administrative burden if we want to pull anything.

So we’re really looking forward to this new system that we’re implementing ICO to be able to have the data there. And then even if we can get the data in it, moving forward, we can then look to what kind of dashboards we want to see or what kind of data we want to pull. But right now, our main focus is getting that data into a system that we have access to and we’re able to pull what we need. I’m not sure if you want to add anything to that, Richard.

I would just add that, you know, where it comes to fire prevention incident reporting, medical reporting, all of those legislative requirements. And so we have and will continue to meet those obligations. Okay, are there any further questions? Okay, it is moved and seconded.

So I’m going to call a vote for all those in favor. Motion carries. Okay, and the final report is 4.8 fleet allocation and utilization management assessment. I’ll move back to Mr.

Price for an overview. Thank you. So this is the fleet for the main city. So in the different public works department and different departments within the city and different than fire.

And the report, we have two medium priority findings and three low priority findings and one leading practice. And again, the similar comments to the fire you’ll see in here as well, but the first comment is around confirming the delegated authority. Right now, it’s not clearly documented what delegated authority is in place for fleet vehicle replacement. And we recommend that should be developed and implemented.

And part of that is just ensuring that things aren’t just replaced because they were there before. And if there is changes or changes in the fleet size and that sort of thing, that there’s some discussion around that within the city and there’s a formal process for getting that approved. The next comment is around improving productivity and reducing costs. And again, there’s a few items in here, but really talking to the automation of the work order system.

Managing maintenance productivity as far as the amount of time and effort and cost on maintenance. And then as well assessing the feasibility of asset pooling, so potentially having vehicles that are used across different departments and that sort of thing. Especially in areas where they maybe aren’t utilized sufficiently and that sort of thing. Now, the city does have some programs in place to look for vehicles that are low mileage and low use, but having more formality around a pooling sort of program.

And I think these comments are things that are not, again, not surprises necessarily to the city and it’s something they were looking at implementing, but they are now looking at more formal plans to address some of these comments. I won’t go through all the low priority and leading practice items, but if there’s any questions on those as well, I’m happy to talk to those. So any questions at this point? Questions, how about a mover and a seconder for receipt of this report then?

Moved by Councilor Turner, seconded by Councilor Van Holst. Questions, no? Okay, all those in favor? Motion carries.

Okay, well, thank you very much, Mr. Price. And I know also we’re approaching the end of your time with us and so I did want to take the opportunity to thank you and your team for all the work that they have done over the years for the city of London and your engagements with our committee on a number of items. We certainly appreciate all of the work that’s been done and we appreciate your time and thoughtful assessment of the projects that you’ve been working on that you presented today as well.

And I just wanted to make sure that I said that formally on behalf of the committee that we certainly appreciate you and your team and all the work that you’ve done over the years. Okay, thank you so much and it’s been a pleasure to serve the city and very proud to have served the city and we’ll be working on transition and helping in any way if there’s any questions from the committee as you move forward that require my time just let me know and you know how to contact me. So really appreciate it, thank you. Yep, thank you.

Colleagues with that, it ends the items for direction. I do not have any deferred matters or additional business unless you do. I don’t see any. Then all we have left is a motion to adjourn.

Moved by councilor Turner, seconded by councilor Van Holst. All those in favor? Motion carries. All right, we are adjourned.

Thanks for your time today everyone.

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