Open Council

2nd Special Meeting of the Strategic Priorities and Policy Committee

Open Council

2nd Special Meeting of the Strategic Priorities and Policy Committee

November 22, 2022, at 12:00 PM

Original link

The meeting is called to order at 12:01 PM.

1.   Disclosures of Pecuniary Interest

That it BE NOTED that no pecuniary interests were disclosed.

2.   Consent

None.

3.   Scheduled Items

None.

4.   Items for Direction

4.1   Bill 23, More Homes Built Faster Act, 2022, Information Report

2022-11-22 Staff Report - Bill 23

Moved by S. Lewis

Seconded by D. Ferreira

That the recommendation, as amended, BE APPROVED; the final recommendation reads as follows:

That, on the recommendation of the Deputy City Manager, Finance Supports, Deputy City Manager, Legal Services and Deputy City Manager, Planning and Economic Development, the following actions be taken with respect to Bill 23, the More Homes Built Faster Act, 2022: 

a)    the report dated November 22, 2022, entitled “Bill 23, More Homes Built Faster Act, 2022 information report” BE RECEIVED for information;

b)    the position of calling on the Province to refer the proposed legislation to the Ontario Housing Supply Action Plan Implementation Team (HSAPIT) to allow the necessary time for a fulsome review to mitigate the potential of unintended consequences and to find solutions to improving housing affordability across the province that meet local needs, BE ENDORSED by Council; 

c)    the staff report BE FORWARDED, with a cover letter, to the Minister of Municipal Affairs and Housing, Minister of Finance, Premier of Ontario and local MPs and MPPs; and,

d)    that the Province BE FURTHER ADVISED that the Municipal Council supports the submissions on Bill 23, More Homes Built Faster Act, 2022, from the Association of Municipalities of Ontario and the Ontario Big City Mayors;

it being noted that as of November 18, 2022, Bill 23 had passed Second Reading and was being considered by the applicable Standing Committee and it being further noted that the Civic Administration will report back to Council with any further information on legislative changes arising from this Bill;

it being pointed out that the Strategic Priorities and Policy Committee heard a delegation from M. Wallace, Executive Director, London Development Institute with respect to this matter.

Motion Passed (15 to 0)

Additional Votes:

Moved by S. Lewis

Seconded by D. Ferreira

That, on the recommendation of the Deputy City Manager, Finance Supports, Deputy City Manager, Legal Services and Deputy City Manager, Planning and Economic Development, the following actions be taken with respect to Bill 23, the More Homes Built Faster Act, 2022: 

a)    the report, entitled “Bill 23, More Homes Built Faster Act, 2022 information report” BE RECEIVED for information;

b)    the position of calling on the Province to refer the proposed legislation to the Ontario Housing Supply Action Plan Implementation Team (HSAPIT) to allow the necessary time for a fulsome review to mitigate the potential of unintended consequences and to find solutions to improving housing affordability across the province that meet local needs, BE ENDORSED by Council; 

c)    the staff report BE FORWARDED, with a cover letter, to the Minister of Municipal Affairs and Housing, Minister of Finance, Premier of Ontario and local MPs and MPPs; and,

it being noted that as of November 18, 2022, Bill 23 had passed Second Reading and was being considered by the applicable Standing Committee and it being further noted that the Civic Administration will report back to Council with any further information on legislative changes arising from this Bill;

it being pointed out that the Strategic Priorities and Policy Committee heard a delegation from M. Wallace, Executive Director, London Development Institute with respect to this matter.

Moved by E. Peloza

Seconded by A. Hopkins

That the delegation request of M. Wallace, London Development Institute, BE APPROVED to be heard at this time.

Motion Passed (15 to 0)

Moved by A. Hopkins

Seconded by S. Trosow

That the recommendation BE AMENDED by adding the following new part d):

“d)    that the Province BE FURTHER ADVISED that the Municipal Council supports the submissions on Bill 23, More Homes Built Faster Act, 2022, from the Association of Municipalities of Ontario and the Ontario Big City Mayors;“

Motion Passed (15 to 0)

5.   Deferred Matters/Additional Business

None.

6.   Adjournment

Moved by C. Rahman

Seconded by P. Cuddy

That the meeting BE ADJOURNED.

Motion Passed

The meeting adjourned at 12:56 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 (1 hour, 3 minutes)

[9:08] Okay, everybody, I’m gonna call the second meeting of SPPC to order. This is a special meeting, which means we will only deal with items that are actually on the list of agenda or items related directly to it. I’m gonna start by reading and land acknowledgement. The city of London is situated on the traditional lands of the Anishinaabak, Haudenosaunee, Lenny Peiwak, and Adawandran. We honor and respect the history, languages, and culture of the diverse indigenous people who call this territory home. The city of London is currently home and many First Nations, Métis, and Inuit people today as representatives of the people of the city of London.

[9:45] We are grateful to have the opportunity to work and live in this territory. Also, I will add, the city of London is committed to making every effort to providing alternate formats and communication supports for meetings upon request. To make a specific request for this meeting, please contact SPPC at London.ca or 519-661-2489 extension-2425. Just gonna, actually, we’re gonna go through the agenda and I’m gonna make some comments when we get to items for direction.

[10:18] So first, are there any disclosures of purinary interest for the matter that’s before us today? Okay, see, none. There are no consent items, there are no scheduled items. We have one item for direction. I’ll make a few comments and I’ll just outline format of the meeting for colleagues. So I, as chair of SPPC, called the special meetings so the council will have an opportunity to receive some information from our staff and you have the report that has been sent around to you, as well as some information from AMO, the Association of Municipalities of Ontario and the Ontario big city mayors who have all been doing their own work on responses and feedback to Bill 23 at the parental level.

[10:58] Today, you will hear from three members of staff who will present some detail on the report. You’ll be able to ask questions. There’s a recommended motion before that. I know, I believe councilor Hopkins would like to make an addition to that. So we will go through the normal course of action of hearing the information from our staff, putting a motion on the floor and then we can amend and change that motion as we see fit. I will say there was also a delegation request that came into us in writing from Mr. Wallace. It is up to us on whether or not we would grant request to allow him to speak today.

[11:35] It would be appropriate for us to do that perhaps after the staff presentation and that would be in the hands of council. Normally, you would have to meet a deadline for submitting a delegation request. However, in this case, because it was a special meeting, the deadline was actually before the agenda came out. And so it’s just a function of us having to call this special meeting to order on short timeline. And final comment I’ll make is the reason why this is an urgent matter is the last opportunity for consultation or feedback for us to submit is the 24th.

[12:13] So today’s council meeting after this special meeting is the meeting at which we would ratify any sort of motion that we make today and we would have time to submit that onto the province by their deadline. So that is a, sorry for everybody who’s new. Didn’t mean to call a special meeting. It was one of the first things I’ve done as mayor, but I think this matters of importance to the municipality that it’s good for us to have the opportunity to discuss it as a group. So with that, on item 4.1, I’m gonna turn it over to our staff and I believe we will be hearing from Mr. Card, Mr. Mathers and Ms. Barbong.

[12:52] And I’ll let you guys decide who wants to go first. I think it was Mr. Card who was gonna start us off. Thank you, Your Worship. It is me. I provide a brief overview and my colleagues will be providing more details about the planning and financial impacts in particular. As the members will know, the province is responsible for delegating legislative authority to municipalities. That includes the power with respect to land use planning matters and development charges.

[13:27] And bill 23 certainly intends to make significant changes to the powers that I mentioned. And we have prepared comments that appear in the report. We’re also generally supporting the recommendations made by Amo and Marco with respect to the changes that bill 123, or sorry, 23 would bring into effect. Now recently, as of yesterday, I believe there was discussion at the legislative committee during a marathon session yesterday, the committee looked at further changes, some of which actually were proposed by the government and others by the opposition.

[14:15] But those changes include restoring the right for third party appeals. And by that, I mean that bill 23 has originally presented at first reading a limited third party appeals that left applicants and municipalities as possible the parties to appeals, but third parties like residents. And even in cases where an application had been made by a landowner, there were no appeals possible. So that has apparently been put back on the table.

[14:49] The removal of appeal rights continues to be proposed for minor variances and consents. There were a number of other changes being discussed. Many of them deal with proposed changes to legislation other than the Planning Act and the Development Charges Act. For example, with respect to rental housing protection, there were concerns expressed in many areas about the evictions that were taking place where a landlord required vacant possession for renovations and sometimes it was believed that this was displacing renters in favor of others.

[15:33] Anyway, those kinds of changes are also under consideration. But all of this to emphasize that the bill is still morphing and changing rapidly, it’s very difficult to provide a definitive picture of what it may look like at third reading. But we’ve done our best to describe the changes that we see coming and surprisingly, the government is capable of imposing these changes unilaterally and with very short notice.

[16:08] Traditionally, land use planning has been the product of consultation and as changes were being considered, there was a considerable period of time during which there were discussions about the impacts that the proposed changes might have and that gave the government an opportunity to respond and make any adjustments that it saw fit to make. But in this case, because of the compressed timeframe, we are struggling to keep up and hopefully if the report doesn’t provide answers to all the questions that members will have, we will still be able to answer them for you.

[16:47] So with that, I will turn the matter over to Mr. Mathers. Before Mr. Mather speaks, I’m just gonna let colleagues know there’s a button on a black panel in front of you. If you’re looking to actually see Mr. Card in person given he’s on the screen behind you, rather than turning around, you can actually flip your monitor to the stream that our staff are speaking on, noting that when we vote on something, you’ll have to flip back to the actual computer screen. So there’s a staff member coming around to assist you with that if you would like to see how that works.

[17:22] With that, I will turn it back over to our staff. Thank you through your worship. I will take off next and I’ll let Mr. Mathers wrap up. So from a financial implications perspective, Bill 23 proposes a number of development charges or DCs as I will refer to them, a number of exemptions, discounts, as well as defines ineligible growth costs, all of which will place pressure on the municipality to find other sources of funding to maintain the infrastructure investments which are required to provide additional new housing.

[17:56] DCs are essentially based on the principle of growth pays for growth. So through the development charge background study, the city relies on receiving the amount of DC revenues that have been calculated to fund the growth projects such as major roads, the trunk sewers, fire stations, recreation facilities, et cetera, which are all required to provide service to the growing city. So the DC rates themselves are built on cash flow models that rely on the relationship between the amount of revenue that must be generated in order to pay for the infrastructure that is needed to meet the anticipated servicing demand.

[18:32] So although a number of the details of Bill 23 proposals are still unknown, we have estimated a funding gap of approximately $97 million over the five year period if this legislation is approved. So the three key financial impacts that make this up are the DC rate phase in that is proposed, which is approximately $40 million. The exclusion of land in as an eligible growth cost, which is approximately $37 million, and the exclusion of studies, which is approximately $10 million.

[19:07] So these funding gaps can’t simply be absorbed by previously collected DCs. So the city’s DC reserves do not have sizable balances that are available to mitigate unanticipated, decreased revenues. So for example, water and wastewater in particular are currently barely able to maintain the current capital program and have taken on significant debt primarily due to the need to front end the infrastructure before the housing construction actually starts. So as a roads example, although the roads reserve fund does maintain a large balance, the balance is necessary to pay for identified projects that over the long term can be very costly.

[19:49] Somewhere in the wrong, could easily be in the realm of approximately $10 to $20 million at a given time and have financing needs that vary from year to year. Outside of the development charges as well, I will note that there are other considerable potential financial implications associated with respect to affordable housing as well as parks. These service impacts are still being examined, but we do know that they will place additional cost pressures on the city to maintain the existing service levels. So without an alternative revenue source to mitigate the loss of the development charge funding, the proposed changes will require some potential difficult choices between funding the necessary growth related infrastructure and passing additional costs onto homeowners, reducing existing service levels or delaying the infrastructure investments as a result of the reduced cash flow.

[20:42] So in summary, there are significant financial implications associated with the proposals. We do believe more time is needed to fully understand the impacts and identify what the city will be facing if the proposals are adopted. And we certainly, as more information is known, we will be providing future updates to the council. So I’ll turn it over to Mr. Mathers now. Thanks, Annalisa. So I’ll be speaking specifically about some of the implications for London as far as the Planning Act, Ontario Heritage Act and the Conservation of Tortoise Act changes.

[21:16] So you may also be aware that we’re also currently trying to deal with not only the bill 23 suggested changes, but also other changes outlined under bill 109. So those are, we’re working very hard to try to understand those and create appropriate processes for dealing with them. So I won’t go through all of the changes that we’ve noted in the report, but I’ll give you the high level of some of the ones with the largest impact on our planning from a day-to-day perspective and some of the other implications as well. So from the Planning Act side, with regard to subdivision site plan approval process, there’s significant changes to how and where site plan control can be applied by the city.

[21:56] This is a key way that we can actually have some influence on what’s being developed and this is being reduced and in some cases eliminated. These changes will limit our ability to try to influence urban design properties, which then will limit our ability to achieve several of the London Plan’s objectives. There’s also been some substantial changes to how park land dedication is calculated and this will result in a net reduction in the park land that’ll be dedicated at the time of development. Regarding the Ontario Heritage Act, there’s several significant changes, but the one that’s probably most significant for London is the change to how long properties can be listed on the cultural heritage register.

[22:40] So London currently has 2,233 listed properties on the register and the new legislation would give only 2 years for a property to be moved from that list and towards actually being fully designated, which would not be enough time for us to move even a portion of those properties towards full designation. From the Conservation Authorities Act perspective, there’s some major changes to the conservation authorities that will have impacts. With regard to London and our planning processes, it won’t have a significant impact for London, but it would have a very large impact for some of the smaller municipalities outside London that don’t have the same internal technical expertise that the city of London does.

[23:28] So before you, you’ll see a recommendation and it calls on the province to refer to the proposed legislation, to refer to the proposed legislation to the Ontario Housing Supply Action Plan implementation team. So this would then be requesting that they don’t pass legislation, that they pass it on to this team to allow them the necessary time to consider what we really see as some of the unintended consequences of this legislation and to find solutions to improving our housing affordability across the province in a way that’s meaningful and is well thought out. So with that, that’s the end of our presentation today.

[24:01] Thank you. Thank you. I’m going to endeavor to ask if Councillor Hopkins would like to say anything. She’s been working through AMO on this. I don’t, there’s a attachment from AMO and I don’t know if you have anything you want to add at this time beyond what’s in the attachment. Thank you, Your Worship, for allowing me to speak to this. For those of you who do not know, I do represent the city of London at the AMO board and I also chair the large urban caucus. And of course, this has been an ongoing conversation at AMO, I would think for the past month, definitely.

[24:38] And unfortunately, AMO was not allowed to bring forward its submission at the standing committee and that is a disappointment because AMO represents, for those of you who may not know, almost 444 municipalities, big and small, right throughout Ontario. It carries a large voice on behalf of municipalities. And one of the things I’ve learned being on this board is the importance that, you know, that municipalities are now gonna change completely on how we plan.

[25:17] Not speaking to conservation authorities, which has also been a big conversation at the AMO board. So I hope you have all had an opportunity to read the submissions from the AMO board as well. And we are having our board meeting this Thursday, the 24th, which is the deadline, as well as on the 25th and Toronto. So I’ll just make those comments for now. Thank you, your question. Sure, and I’ll add for colleagues that I also have been working on this through the Ontario Bixity Mayors.

[25:53] The Ontario Bixity Mayors is a collection of 29 municipalities representing those urban centers with over 100,000 population. The Ontario Bixity Mayors through which chair Mayor Cam Guthrie of Guelph was able to present to the standing committee, and you’ll see a number of those concerns that we illuminated outlined in the statement that’s attached to your package as well. It came a little later because they finalized their position after the original agenda was submitted, but it is actually in your E-Scribe package there today. So ours, essentially the Ontario Bixity Mayors aligns very well with what our staff have already communicated significant financial implications for municipalities, the province decided to go through a number of the housing changes through creating a Ontario Housing Supply Action Plan implementation team, which was going to be an avenue to receive feedback and thoughts from municipalities.

[26:50] It was intended to be chaired by Mayor Dilkins and Windsor co-chaired, I should say. And that committee has yet to be populated. And so none of this has flown through any sort of mechanism that was intended for feedback from municipalities from across the province. So I just wanted to provide that as a little bit of context because not only have our staff been working on this, but Councillor Hopkins and I have also been engaging with external organizations on this. I’ll say I’ve been doing this. I had one meeting where all of the mayors and mayors elect met after the election to be briefed on this by the OBCM, and then we’ve had a separate meeting just last week to confirm our position and our statement and give some feedback to Mayor Guthrie as he prepared his remarks for the Standing Committee, which has already been done.

[27:40] So Councillor Hopkins, you have something else to add? Yes, if you would allow me, you just made me think of something that at AMO, chairing the large urban caucus, which is composed of large municipalities in Ontario, we align ourselves with OBCM. We share information and see how we can strengthen our voices at the provincial table. It’s a really important relationship that we have, and I just want to thank the mayor, thank you. So at this time, if Council was willing to allow, and it would require a motion, there was just that one written delegation request that came in to us directly from Mr. Wallace.

[28:21] It’s the only one that we received. If someone’s willing to entertain that, that would be the time I see Councillor Palosa. So it’ll be a regular five minute delegation, seconded by Councillor Hopkins, any discussion on that? Okay, then we’re going to vote on that, it’ll be in the system. So if you’re on the other screen, you’ll have to flip back to your regular one. Opposing the vote, that motion is passed, 15 to zero.

[29:35] Okay, Mr. Wallace, five minutes, but I anticipate you won’t quite need that long, hopefully. We just need to turn on the microphone for it. Okay, there’s that right now. There we go. First of all, let me thank you for you and Council for allowing me to speak today. I do appreciate the opportunity to talk to you to this item, welcome everyone who got elected for the first time and those who are re-elected. Very tough topic to deal with in your first week or two of being a member.

[30:09] And just so you have a little bit of my idea of those who don’t know, my name is Mike Wallace. I’m the Executive Director of the London Development Institute. It’s an organization that’s been around in London for about 40 years, a little over 40 years. We basically, I represent 15 of the largest land developers residential. There is some commercial activity that my members have. It’s an organization that is to work with the city and at the provincial level on issues facing the development community, both locally and at the provincial level.

[30:46] Today, I just, you know, I can understand the, and I appreciate the staff’s presentation and the complexity of Bill 23. And it involves a lot of areas. We just wanted to be here today when I saw this on record that we as an industry, us as LDI are more than willing and happy to work with the city staff and with US Council on going forward, whatever gets passed through Bill 23. As was mentioned before, I got this series of amendments yesterday and, you know, there was government, non-governmental ones.

[31:26] I think the government ones all passed. We are waiting for that confirmation this afternoon when we see the bill constituted again. They’ll be posting it. So I just want to be on the record that LDI is here as a partner on this and trying to make sure that we meet the goals of the community, of our industry and of the province of the 47,000 new homes they want built here in London in the next 10 years. And so it is a difficult issue. There is some major changes that we both are applauding and have concerns with, to be frank with you, and that to make sure that infrastructure is in the ground for us to be able to proceed appropriately and timely on development to make sure we meet that goal of 47,000 that has been set out for municipalities across the province or for London.

[32:15] And the 1.5 million for the whole province. So just wanted to be on the record. Thank you for your time. And I’ll just give you like one example. And a really nice opportunity to meet with the staff leadership at the Conservation 30. They indicated a couple of things that we could support. Part of our submission is they were clear even today at their board, meaning that London has a skill set to deal with a lot of the issues that the Conservation Authority has done in the past. However, other smaller municipalities may not have that skill set.

[32:50] And in our submission, we said that one of the options should be that maybe there be an opportunity for municipalities to appeal to or ask, I shouldn’t use the word appeal, ask for permission to be granted to an municipality to work with Conservation Authority to be able to deal with the issues that they’re facing. So there are solutions. We’re happy to be part of the discussion. And thank you, and good luck with your deal, deliberations on this this afternoon. Okay, thank you, Mr. Wallace.

[33:23] At this time, we can take questions from our staff. This is committee, so we can move into questions and answers. I’m also willing to entertain a counselor if they want to put a motion on the floor. There’s a staff motion that we could have moved and seconded, obviously continuing with questions and debate and discussion on. So I’m in your hands on whether you’d like to ask some questions. Next, or put a staff recommendation on the floor, Councillor Lewis, or Deputy Mayor Lewis, sorry. Thank you, Your Worship. I’ll put the staff recommendation on the floor so that we’ve got a framework to begin the discussion. Okay, as their seconder for the staff recommendation, Councillor Ferrera.

[33:58] Okay, so that’s moving and seconded. So we’ll move into both the bait, Q and A from our staff. You’ve received a lot of information. You’ve got a lot of information before you. I will say we do have a council meeting at one. I can delay the start of that council meeting a little bit, but not too long and still be in compliance with our bylaws. So hopefully we can work through this thoroughly, but also expeditiously. Who would like to speak first? Councillor Lewis, or Deputy Mayor Lewis. I’ll get used to that, sorry. Thank you, Your Worship.

[34:30] And I’ll make sure that I don’t refer to you as Deputy Mayor, moving forward just to keep that clear. Through you to our staff, just a technical question. If we were to extend our current development charges bylaw past 2025, would that in any way allow us to avoid the phase in and the impact that’s being outlined by our treasurer around that phase in period and the loss of revenue that we’d experience from that?

[35:02] Or would this simply override an extension anyway? Ms. Barbong. Thank you through your worship. That was a question we did inquire and any change or any amendment automatically would go under the new proposed legislation that’s coming. So no, extending it would still have the same impact. Councillor very Mayor Bergen. Thank you, Mayor. But I think clearly most of us can agree that the province is right in the sense that it wants a vast new amount of housing to help with the current housing shortage and thereby help to bring down prices for all.

[35:52] So I think the goal is correct that the provincial government is trying to achieve. But by the same token, the undue consequences or unintended consequences are something that we have to be careful of. So I will be supportive of this motion, but I’d also like to ask staff, I’ve heard from a number of interested parties that the city of London takes longer for processing development approvals than a lot of the municipalities that are in southwestern Ontario.

[36:30] Are we taking steps that we ourselves can control to speed up the processing of development approvals? Is that under what? Mr. Mayor, there’s, I’m going to let you answer that, but I’m going to caution colleagues to let’s try to keep it focused to the matter before us. I certainly think that’s a very legitimate question, but also one that we could ask at planning committee as well when it’s constituted next week. But given, you know, this all fits within, I’m going to allow the question to be answered by Mr. Mayor there’s first and with just that caution but let’s keep it focused on the matter before us.

[37:08] Through the chair, I just want to address a couple items. There are one, as far as the staff and I know that our perspective is that we really see that there is a need for increased housing and our group is very much dedicated to be able to bring forward increased housing and that affordable piece as well. On the next item as far as our processes, so there’s an ongoing effort of streamlining. We actually were able to get some funding from the province to support that. And we’ve been working over the last, since this January actually and looking at process improvements.

[37:45] So we’ve reached out to the London development community and the builders and we are actively doing that at this time. And we’re now starting to see some of those benefits. The one challenge is though, if we are comparing, who would we compare ourselves to? So we of course have many smaller communities around the city of London. And they have much, it may be more able to move forward applications more quickly in those communities.

[38:16] And it’s for the most part due to that, they don’t have as many community impacts and the oversight that we have at the city of London. So we really need to be conscious of who we’re comparing ourselves to, but that doesn’t mean we can’t continue to improve and streamline our processes. So with that, I’m happy to take any other questions. Thanks. Councillor. Okay, thank you. Other speakers to this matter? I have, oh, sorry, Councillor Hopkins, I did happy on the list, my apologies. Thank you.

[38:50] And I first of all wanna thank you for calling this special meeting. It is a concern for many of us that are, have been on council and that are new to council. There’s a lot of information here for us to understand. And I wanna thank staff for the work they’ve had to really pivot here to give us the information that we need to be able to make the decisions moving forward and to understand what these unforeseen consequences are. I do have a quick question just following up on the presentation if I may to, I’m not sure to who, but it’s around the provincial policy statement.

[39:31] I’m not sure if it’s part of bill 23, but I’ve been reading so much information that I’m kind of not sure if it’s in bill 23 or if it’s in another bill, but I understand there are going to be changes in the provincial policy statement. And if we could have a further understanding where these changes are gonna take place, Mr. Midders. So at this point we haven’t seen any specific changes to the provincial policy statement, but there’s a question in our minds seeing the legislation moving forward that maybe is that giving us an idea what might come out of future updates to the provincial policy statement.

[40:16] So there seems to be a disconnect from what we see in the current statement and what’s moving forward as part of this legislation. So we would anticipate that there would be possible changes to the PB asking moving forward. Okay, thank you for that. So there’s still more to come even though we’re unsure exactly what is to come. And the provincial policy statement obviously dictates what we can do as a municipality when it comes to planning. Your worship, if you would allow me, I might as well make the amendment now that I have.

[40:52] And I do have a seconder in Councilor Tresault, but the amendment that I would like to put on the floor, I guess I’ll read it for everyone, is to add a clause D, which is to say that the province be further advised that the municipal council supports the submissions on Bill 23 more homes bill faster at 2022 from the Association of Municipalities of Ontario and the Ontario big city mayors. I know it’s clear in the recommendation really, staff have really sort of tried to align their concerns with these associations, but it doesn’t hurt to put it in that recommendation as well to say that this council does support those summaries.

[41:47] So with that, I do have a seconder in Councilor Tresault. Okay, so that’s moved. And I see Councillor Trostaz willing to second it. So we’ll ensure that that’s up on the screen so colleagues can read the language. And I would open any sort of debate or discussion on the amendment. Councillor Lewis, sorry, Deputy Mayor Lewis, we need a new sign for you. Thank you, Your Worship.

[42:20] I’m sure that your budget could provide a new sign. That said, I just want to thank Councillor Hopkins for bringing this forward and Councillor Tresault for seconding it. I think the work that the big city mayor’s caucus and AMO did around this is really, really important. And the fact that it was not brought forward at the standing committee for hearings, frankly, is disappointing. So I’m very, very happy to support this. I think it’s a great addition to the staff recommendations. So thank you for the work on that. Great, and I will have my kids design a new sign for you. You’ll love it. Any other discussion on the amendment?

[42:56] Councillor Hopkins, you want to speak to it? If there are no other speakers, I would like to summarize the reasons why this is important to municipalities. It’s not only important to municipalities, less tools and greater responsibility. It’s also important to the taxpayers of London as well as to who’s going to be paying for the growth. I also represent council at a pretense conservation authority.

[43:29] We just had a board meeting. It was all about Bill 23. And you’ll be seeing a letter coming to the city on the concerns of the CA. I’m really pleased to hear from LDI that there are probably concessions that can be made. There are one of the concerns with conservation authority of pretenses. There’s 17 municipalities. London, we’re the largest, we have the expertise here at our city, but a lot of municipalities do not at all. So they are going to be left stranded.

[44:04] And sometimes we do need to support other municipalities as we go through these changes. I do want to say there’s a few good things here. I think we can all agree and support the provinces need to build 1.5 million homes in the next 10 years. I think no one disagrees with that. That support for gentle density is also something that is needed in municipalities. And also the bill does deal with addressing the gaps of provincial services that limited growth to our schools.

[44:47] So there’s going to be a working group, I would think going forward with that. But again, I’ll just sort of summarize that we as a city are going to be taking on a larger role. It’s really unclear and I’m unsure on how this will happen. So we must consider all these impacts before legislation and the comments are due in two days. So I hope you can support the amendment and support AMO and OBCM. Thank you.

[45:20] Okay, if there’s no further speakers on the amendment, knowing that there still will be a chance to discuss the main motion, they’re none. Okay, then we’ll open the question and the vote on just the amendment. Posing the vote, the motion is passed 15 to zero.

[46:01] I’ll just ask, Councillor Ferrer, are you still willing to move and second the amended motion now? Good. Okay, so we’re back to debate on the main now motion that has a new Part D. So all of this together, I’ll go back to colleagues for comments and thoughts or any questions that you have for our staff still. Councillor Layman. Thank you. And I think the comments, sentiment expressed where I’m born with the need to increase the rate of housing available to address a severe supply crisis that we’re in right now.

[46:41] Just a couple of questions concerning the financial impact that I see Bill 23 having on our cities and will definitely relate to property taxes as we head into upcoming budget talks for 2023 and in the multi-year budget next year. I was wondering if through you, Chair, if we could just hear a little more explanation of the changes in the mandatory five-year phase in of DC rates. It’s $40 million over four years of impact.

[47:16] Is that revenue that we will lose indefinitely or is that more of a cash flow issue that those expenses or those, that revenue is being pushed down the road? So essentially the city’s carrying the costs as opposed to the developer Ms. Barbara. Thank you for the question. So through your worship, the way we understand it is that when a new amendment to the by-law is brought in and so right now we are currently working on the next development charge background study to implement in 2025 the new DC by-law.

[47:57] So the way the legislative phase in works is that at the time when that is brought forward, so in 2025, whatever that DC rate currently was anticipated to be brought in will be phased in over five years. So if the DC rate was anticipated to be a specific number, it will take five years to implement that rate. So that if you were to move to a 10-year by-law, which is also a change that has gone in, that in the sixth year you would then be recovering the amount that you had anticipated.

[48:35] So if we were to maintain the five-year and you were to have a new study, then that phase in would kick in. So that revenue is lost until such time that is phased in and dependent upon when the next study would come in. So it is a true deferral, I believe is the intent. And then when it is fully phased in, then you would recover that full amount. So it would be a delay in receiving the revenue. Thank you. So that, if I hear you correctly, is a cash flow issue, in which case the debt carried by the city if we’re not back filling that cash from property taxes or service cuts, would result in more debt being carried by the city, which would impact our bottom line by the interest costs, that’s carried on that debt, and the availability of debt on the bar market.

[49:31] My understanding is that because we have a AAA credit rating, we’re fairly successful in going to the bond markets to raise debt that would arise from this, if that’s a direction Council chose. Am I correct in thinking that, sorry. Thank you, I was trying to confirm with the question. So yes, that is absolutely correct. Your understanding is accurate. And certainly we’ve received favorable rates because of the AAA credit rating to this point in time.

[50:06] We don’t anticipate that to change, but it is absolutely cash flow issue with the timing. And obviously those, typically the funds are required to put the infrastructure up front, and that we plan to recover them over a period of time. Feel alone, let me share one more question. Farther down on other changes, municipalities must spend or allocate 60% of our reserve funds balances for water, wastewater, and road DCs. What do our reserve funds, is that our current practice, or what is our current practice of spending percent of reserve funds on average?

[50:49] So I don’t have that. Thank you for the question, Your Worship. So through Your Worship, I don’t have the specific percentage, but what I can tell you is the city’s practice is because we do the development charge study every five years, we allocate very, very much specific to the projects that we anticipate to happen. So when we collect everything they’re held in the reserve fund, but they are very much allocated to the projects that are anticipated as they come forward. So some of it will vary over time, but the capital projects that are clearly laid out in our capital plan have the discrete amount of the development charge funding allocated to those projects when the capital budget is approved and through the approval of the development charge study.

[51:37] Thank you. Other questions or comments? Councillor Frank. Have we had a similar cash flow issue in the past? And if we have what kind of was the outcome of it? And I guess what was the resolution? I’m just curious if this has happened before. Ms. Burble. So through Your Worship. So I think realistically, probably the best example that I could give from a cash flow issue would be the wastewater and storm water is where we have very significant projects that have to be funded early on and that we would recover over a period of time.

[52:20] In those cases, we would issue the debt upfront and then of course you pay back the debt over a period of time. So that, our reserve funds are fairly low and that you see the debt charges in those amounts going towards the revenue as it comes in. So I think, and just to clarify in earlier, so, you know, if there’s a gap, we can’t issue debt specifically to fund the gap. You’d have to, if you don’t have a revenue source to fund the debt that you currently have issued, you’d need to raise that through other sources or find an alternative revenue stream to be able to ensure that that debt is paid back as it was anticipated.

[53:04] Councillor, Deputy Mayor Lewis. Thank you, worshiping through you. I wanna pick up on the questions, both Councillor Layman and Councillor Frank just asked and come back to the AAA credit rating that the city has been able to maintain for so long. If we’re extending the phase in period and the amount of time that it’s gonna be required to recover our costs over the term and I know I’m asking you to crystal ball this a little bit, Ms. Barbone, but how much more difficult do you anticipate that makes it for us to maintain our credit rating?

[53:38] And particularly given that we are creatures of the province with that deferral happening right across the province, does that extended debt carrying period for all municipalities potentially have an impact on all municipal credit ratings across Ontario, Ms. Barbone. Thank you for the question. Through your worship, that’s a very challenging one to answer. All I can say is that perhaps it may have implications. I think it will entirely depend on the choices that are made by the municipalities to try to manage what those additional costs are.

[54:24] I think there’s a number of choices that it could be done, but certainly from a AAA credit rating, they’re looking at revenues to reserve funds to what the ratios are for the debt payments as well. So when things get significantly out of whack and in a given year, something’s quite, you know, starting to show the change over time to be detrimental, that’s when you may see the impact. So there may be a time lag potentially over a number where you might get a warning and it’ll start to degrade, but it really does depend on what that long-term fiscal outlook is going to be and what the choices are ultimately made to manage and what the planning would be over the long-term to address that.

[55:12] Other speakers, I’m gonna make a few comments, so I’ll turn the chair over to Deputy Mayor Lewis. And I will recognize the mayor. So I’ll be brief, I wanna thank everybody for their comments and questions. I think that was a very good and thorough discussion, knowing that there’s obviously a lot of question marks here with the impacts of legislation moving forward. I do wanna specifically thank our staff who pulled together an incredible amount of information and analysis for us to have before us today in a very short period of time.

[55:50] So I wanna thank the multiple members of the senior leadership team as well as their support staff who were able to compile this report and give us a recommendation and allow that support of this special meeting for us to take a position that hopefully will lead to more time to engage with the province on the various serious impacts that Bill 23 has on the municipality. And I know there are many, but particularly the financial impacts, which are the most concerning. Obviously, I think many of us are aligned, and you’ve heard the comments today, that we need to build more homes in the province of Ontario, and that includes more homes in the city of London.

[56:28] But being able to support those homes with the proper infrastructure and funding to make the city livable at the same time is very important. And as we have moved, we’ve really done a good job, I think, as a municipality of moving to a growth pays for growth model. And this will compromise our ability to remain in a growth pays for growth model if we don’t have the ability to recover the funds that we need to build the infrastructure that we have on the timeframe that we need it. So this is a really important discussion, and I hope that the province will take some thoughtful deliberation on the feedback that they are getting, not just from us, but very consistent feedback from all municipalities and other agencies impacted by this bill.

[57:11] And that the position of give us more time to discuss these impacts with you, help you find real and functional solutions to building more houses in the province of Ontario. I hope that that is heard, and I hope that that’s acted upon. And I thank everybody here for their support in having this discussion today with fairly short notice and fairly short timeline and turnaround. I’m certainly obviously supportive of all the motions. I think it’s a thoughtful addition by the Councillors as well to be very specific about our support for the incredible amount of work that’s gone in by AMO and OBCM. And I’m certainly really supporting the motion today.

[57:46] Thank you, Mayor Morgan. I will return the chair to you and advise you that we have Councillor Palosa on the speaker’s list next. Councillor Palosa. Thank you, Mr. Mayor. And thank you to colleagues for your conversations today and your comments and your concerns and realizing where we’re at and the impact that it could potentially have on city services and as we talk about cost to current homeowners, that’s your tax ratio. That’s your tax base. And we have already heard about people having a hard time affording the cost of living. Speaking with a budget chair lens, our AAA credit rating is, I would say integral to the debt ratio in our capital costs or like some of our borrowing costs of helping keep rates for low.

[58:31] That’s 48 years running with the city. And I have no intention of losing that AAA credit rating. Well, I’m at the helm as budget chair. Realizing with the development charges, it is what you certainly heard from staff of servicing those areas. Some of their service is also mandated of fire response times and how many fire stations we need to have and where and the equipment that all comes with that. And once this starts getting building, even though we didn’t intend it, if we’ve lost that control, it’s a safety concern as well to our community in addition to being a building concern as we talk about water capacity.

[59:10] London’s lucky that we do have enough water to service us for decades out of the city’s needs. But other municipalities aren’t so lucky to have that already in place. And for the development charges that we’re kind of covering things up front, I do have concerns there as well. Realizing not all builders are local and sometimes we do have problems with unassumed neighborhoods and things change and then they say, a state of flux for several decades. And it’s hard to navigate that with residents.

[59:43] Councilor Hoffman knows exactly what area I’m talking about as it was the longest serving one in the London area that came to my word and just having those conversations with residents when they say I’m paying my taxes and you try and explain that your developer hasn’t been assumed by the city yet because they haven’t met our quality of what that neighborhood needs to be for a layout and driveway waste and just things that residents don’t care about because they’re giving you tax money but we don’t have control always of the things that are going on in our city. And I see this as just being one more lack of control we have as we talk about site plans and what we want to see in a reduction in park lands.

[1:00:24] We’ve heard from many residents across the city how integral that is to the quality of life and what they want and how much they’ve really come to enjoy those places through the pandemic and realizing in some neighborhoods, currently the only park land space that might have is a school in their area and already realizing different neighborhoods have different aspects and access to services and things they want for their families. Reducing service levels, residents will always say just keep the tax rate at zero which actually means a reduction ‘cause there’s inflation and we talk about service level reduction. Some services we can’t reduce such as no removal.

[1:00:59] Other ones we could reduce but it’s the quality of living and realizing if we talk about some services sometimes those public services are the only space some families have to access who don’t have financial means for other things including those who use transit. So just as we go into the budget update that comes in a few weeks and then as we roll onto multi-year budget thank you for having this conversation today and realizing the impact of what this is gonna have on the council’s decisions to come and especially if we don’t have adequate time to prepare for it and mitigate any risks and it’s gonna be a challenging conversation that we’ll need to have as a group.

[1:01:34] So thank you. Okay, thank you. Any further speakers? Are we ready to vote on the amended resolution before us? Looks like we’re ready to vote so I’m gonna open that for voting in the system. Councilor Ferrer?

[1:02:38] Opposing the vote, the motion’s passed 15 to zero. Okay, given that was a special meeting we don’t have any deferments. We only have a German before I take a motion to adjourn. I’m gonna let colleagues know it’s my intent to call the council meeting to order at about one 15, not at one o’clock. I need to give the staff time to turn around two meetings. So please be back in your seats by about one 15. That’s when I’ll call the council meeting to order. With that, I’ll look for a motion to adjourn. Councilor Raman, Councilor Caddy. All those in favor by hand? Okay, we are adjourned.