February 28, 2023, at 3:00 PM

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The meeting is called to order at 3:03 PM, it being noted that Councillors S. Hillier and P. Van Meerbergen were in remote attendance; it being further noted that Councillor E. Peloza was in remote attendance after 6:24 PM.

1.   Disclosures of Pecuniary Interest

That it BE NOTED that no pecuniary interests were disclosed.

2.   Consent

2.1   2023 Assessment Growth Funding Allocation

2023-02-28 Staff Report - 2023 Assessment Growth Funding

Moved by S. Stevenson

Seconded by P. Cuddy

That, on the recommendation of the Deputy City Manager, Finance Supports, the report dated February 28, 2023, regarding the 2023 Assessment Growth Funding Allocation BE RECEIVED for information;

it being noted that the Strategic Priorities and Policy Committee heard a delegation from M. Wallace, London Development Institute (LDI) and received a communication dated February 26, 2023 from C. Butler with respect to this matter.

Motion Passed (15 to 0)

ADDITIONAL VOTES:

Moved by S. Lehman

Seconded by S. Hillier

That the delegation request from Mr. M. Wallace, London Development Institute (LDI), BE APPROVED to be heard at this time.

Motion Passed (14 to 0)

Moved by S. Stevenson

Seconded by P. Cuddy

That, on the recommendation of the Deputy City Manager, Finance Supports, the report dated February 28, 2023, regarding the 2023 Assessment Growth Funding Allocation BE RECEIVED for information, excluding Business Case #11 Police Services: Increase Complement.

Motion Passed (14 to 0)

At 3:50 PM, His Worship Mayor J. Morgan, places Councillor E. Peloza in the Chair.

At 3:54 PM, His Worship Mayor J. Morgan resumes the Chair.

Moved by S. Stevenson

Seconded by S. Lehman

That Business Case #11 Police Services: Increase Complement BE RECEIVED.

Motion Passed (13 to 1)

3.   Scheduled Items

None.

4.   Items for Direction

4.1   Health and Homelessness Summits - Proposed Whole of Community System Response

2023-02-28 Staff Report - Health and Homelessness

At 4:12 PM, His Worship Mayor J. Morgan, places Deputy Mayor S. Lewis in the Chair.

At 4:55 PM, His Worship Mayor J. Morgan resumes the Chair.

Moved by J. Morgan

Seconded by S. Lehman

That, the following actions be taken with respect to the Proposed Whole of Community System Response:

a) on the recommendation of the Deputy City Manager, Social and Health Development and with the concurrence of the City Manager, the report dated February 28, 2023, regarding the Health and Homelessness Summits – Proposed Whole of Community System Response Report BE RECEIVED for information;

b) the Health and Homelessness Whole of Community System Response co-developed through the Health and Homelessness Summits as appended to the staff report dated February 28, 2023 as Appendix “A”, BE ENDORSED;

c) the Civic Administration BE DIRECTED to allocate the remaining fund of $2,884,186 from the London Community Recovery Network funds towards the implementation of the system it being noted that Civic Administration will return to Council with a business case detailing the proposed use of the funds;

d) the Civic Administration BE DIRECTED to proceed with supporting the implementation of the Health and Homelessness Whole of Community System Response; and

e) the Civic Administration BE DIRECTED to report back monthly to future standing committees on progress updates;

it being noted that the Strategic Priorities and Policy Committee received the follow communications with respect to this matter.

  • M. Wallace, Executive Director, London Development Institute

  • J. DeActis, Executive Director, Salvation Army - Centre of Hope

  • J. Seeler, Co-Chair, London Homeless Coalition

  • B. Mitchell, Co-CEO and L. Sibley, Co-CEO, Canadian Mental Health Association Thames Valley Addiction and Mental Health Services

  • M. Oates, Executive Director and S. Ashkanase, Chair, Board of Directors, St. Leonard’s Community Services London and Region

  • S. Williams, Chief of Police, London Police Service

  • K. Scott, Chair, Board of Directors and M. McMahon, Executive Director, Thames Valley Family Health Team

  • A. Lockie, CEO, YMCA of Southwestern Ontario

  • N. Memo, Executive Director, Family Service Thames Valley

  • S. Courtice, Executive Director, London InterCommunity Health Centre

  • K. Ziegner, President and CEO, United Way Elgin Middlesex

  • J. Schleifer Taylor, President and CEO, London Health Sciences Centre

  • N. Roberts, Chief, Middlesex-London Paramedic Service

  • E. Ayala Ronson, Executive Director, Mission Services of London

  • T. Smuck, Executive Director, Changing Ways (London) Inc.

  • A. Armstrong, Executive Director, London Cares Homeless Response Services

  • R. Butler, President and Chief Executive Officer, St. Joseph’s Health Care London

  • B. Legate, Legate Injury Lawyers

  • M. Anderson

  • Sister M. Ritchie, Congregational Leader and all the Sisters of St. Joseph

  • B. Maly, Downtown London Executive Director and S. Collyer, LDBA Board Chair, Downtown London

  • M. Davis, Supervisor - Community Support Program - Extreme Cleaning and Hoarding Support (London), VHA Home HealthCare

  • R. Corneil, CEO, St. Joseph’s Health Care Society

  • Mayor J. Morgan

  • S. Jani, Manager, Client Care and Operations, Community Support Programs, VHA Home HealthCare

  • L. Crossley-Hauch, Co-Chair and M. McMahon, CoChair, Middlesex London Ontario Health Team

  • School of Social Work, King’s University College

  • C. Nolan, Managing Director, Street Level Women at Risk

  • C. Rodrigues

  • B. Baginski

Motion Passed (14 to 0)

ADDITIONAL VOTES:

Moved by S. Stevenson

Seconded by C. Rahman

That the following amendment to the motion, BE APPROVED:

c) by adding “it being noted that Civic Administration will return to Council with a business case detailing the proposed use of the funds;“

Motion Passed (14 to 0)

Moved by S. Stevenson

Seconded by C. Rahman

That the following amendment to the motion, BE APPROVED:

e) to read as follows “the Civic Administration BE DIRECTED to report back monthly to future standing committees on progress updates;“

Motion Passed (12 to 2)

Moved by J. Morgan

Seconded by A. Hopkins

That the Committee recess at this time.

Motion Passed

The Committee recesses at 4:55 PM and reconvenes at 5:07 PM

4.2   Developing Council’s 2023-2027 Strategic Plan: Draft Strategies and Order of Magnitude Costing

2023-02-28 Staff Report - Strat Plan Order of Magnitude Costing

Moved by C. Rahman

Seconded by P. Cuddy

That, the following actions be taken with respect to developing the 2023-2027 Strategic Plan:

a) on the recommendation of the City Manager, the report dated February 28, 2023 entitled “Developing the 2023-2027 Strategic Plan: Draft Strategies and Order of Magnitude Costing” BE RECEIVED for information;

b) the , revised draft strategies for the 2023-2027 Strategic Plan BE ACCEPTED for additional consultation with the public;

c) the report dated February 28, 2023 entitled “Developing 2023-2027 Strategic Plan: Community Engagement Update” BE RECEIVED for information;

it being noted that the Strategic Priorities and Policy Committee received a staff presentation with the attached additional slide and the attached delegation from G. Henderson, CEO, London Chamber of Commerce with respect to this matter.

Motion Passed (12 to 0)

ADDITIONAL VOTES:

Moved by E. Peloza

Seconded by A. Hopkins

That the delegation request from G. Henderson, London Chamber of Commerce, BE APPROVED to be heard at this time.

Motion Passed (14 to 0)

Moved by S. Franke

Seconded by D. Ferreira

That the Committee recess at this time.

Motion Passed

The Committee recesses at 5:36 PM and reconvenes at 6:08 PM.

Moved by C. Rahman

Seconded by J. Pribil

That Strategic Area of Focus Economic Growth, Culture, and Prosperity: Expected Result 2.2, BE AMENDED subsections a) through e) BE AMENDED in the Draft Strategic Plan by including London Chamber of Commerce’s expected results and draft strategies.

Motion Passed (7 to 6)

Moved by S. Lewis

Seconded by J. Pribil

That the Committee recess at this time.

Motion Passed

The Committee recesses at 7:52 PM and reconvenes at 8:05 PM.

4.3   Developing Council’s 2023-2027 Strategic Plan: Draft Metrics

2023-02-28 Staff Report - Strat Plan Draft Metrics

Moved by C. Rahman

Seconded by S. Franke

That, the following actions be taken with respect to developing the 2023-2027 Strategic Plan:

a) on the recommendation of the City Manager, the report dated February 28, 2023 entitled “Developing the 2023-2027 Strategic Plan: Draft Metrics” BE RECEIVED for information; and,

b) the attached revised draft metrics BE INCLUDED with the draft 2023-2027 Strategic Plan.

Motion Passed (13 to 0)

ADDITIONAL VOTES:

Moved by S. Franke

Seconded by D. Ferreira

That the Strategic Area of Focus: Housing and Homelessness, Expected Result 2.2, BE AMENDED in the Draft Strategic Plan by adding a new Draft Metric c)

Motion Failed (4 to 9)

Moved by S. Franke

Seconded by A. Hopkins

That the Strategic Area of Focus: Wellbeing and Safety, Expected Result 1.3, BE AMENDED in the Draft Strategic Plan by adding a new Draft Metric b) % of residents who indicate they are happy or very happy.

Motion Failed (5 to 8)

Moved by S. Franke

Seconded by D. Ferreira

That the Strategic Area of Focus: Wellbeing and Safety, Expected Result 1.6, BE AMENDED in the Draft Strategic Plan by adding a new Draft Metric f) # of hectares of naturalized parkland.

Motion Failed (4 to 8)

Moved by S. Franke

Seconded by S. Lewis

That the Strategic Area of Focus: Wellbeing and Safety, Expected Result 1.6, Draft Metric c) and Expected Result 1.7, Draft Metric a) BE REMOVED from the Draft Strategic Plan.

Motion Failed (6 to 6)

Moved by S. Franke

Seconded by A. Hopkins

That the Strategic Area of Focus: Climate Action and Sustainable Growth 1.2, BE AMENDED in the Draft Strategic Plan by adding a new Draft Metric i) grade level for watershed.

Motion Failed (6 to 7)

Moved by S. Franke

Seconded by D. Ferreira

That the Strategic Area of Focus: Well-Run City, Expected Result 3.1, BE AMENDED in the Draft Strategic Plan by adding a new Draft Metric d) % of employees who say they are happy with their work and workplace.

Motion Failed (4 to 9)

Moved by H. McAlister

Seconded by A. Hopkins

That the Strategic Area of Focus: Well-Run City, Expected Result 1.2, BE AMENDED in the Draft Strategic Plan by adding a new Draft Metric d) # of Londoners participating in public participation meetings (in person and online).

Motion Passed (11 to 2)

4.4   Consideration of Appointment to the London and Middlesex Community Housing (Requires 1 Tenant)

Moved by S. Lewis

Seconded by H. McAlister

That Cara Awcock BE APPOINTED to the London & Middlesex Community Housing Board of Directors for the term ending December 31, 2025 (Third Class); it being noted that the Strategic Priorities and Policy Committee received a communication from S. Chowns, Board of Directors, London & Middlesex Community Housing with respect to this matter.

Motion Passed (13 to 0)

4.5   Consideration of Appointment to the Committee of Adjustment (Requires 1 Member)

Moved by S. Lehman

Seconded by P. Cuddy

That Mariam Hamou BE APPOINTED to the Committee of Adjustment for the term ending November 14, 2026.

Motion Passed (13 to 0)

Consideration of Appointment to the Committee of Adjustment

Majority Winner: Mariam Hamou

4.6   2nd Report of the Diversity, Inclusion and Anti-Oppression Community Advisory Committee

2023-02-28 Submission - DIACAC - Report

Moved by D. Ferreira

Seconded by P. Cuddy

That the following actions be taken with respect to the 2nd Report of the Diversity, Inclusion and Anti-Oppression Community Advisory Committee from its meeting held on February 9, 2023:

a) the Diversity Inclusion and Anti-Oppression Community Advisory Committee BE AUTHORIZED to organize and host an event on Friday, March 31 at approximately 6 PM, to recognize and celebrate Trans Day of Visibility; it being noted that Victoria Park would be the preferred location for the event;

b) the Civic Administration BE REQUESTED to investigate the Corporate use and potential cessation of the term “stakeholder”; it being noted that the Diversity, Inclusion and Anti-Oppression Community Advisory Committee, received a verbal presentation from B. Hill with respect to this matter; and, 

c) clause 1.1, 2.1, 2.2, 3.1, 4.1, 4.2, 5.1 and 7.2 BE RECEIVED.

Motion Passed (13 to 0)

5.   Deferred Matters/Additional Business

None.

6.   Adjournment

Moved by S. Stevenson

Seconded by P. Cuddy

That the meeting BE ADJOURNED.

Motion Passed

The meeting adjourned at 10:25 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 (7 hours, 34 minutes)

Okay colleagues, I’m gonna call the meeting to order. This is the 10th meeting of the strategic priorities and policy committee. I’m gonna start by doing a land acknowledgement. The city of London is situated on the traditional territories of the Anishinaabak Haudenosaunee, Lene Peiwak, and Adewandran.

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 to many First Nations, Métis, and Inuit people today. As representatives of the people of the city of London, we are grateful to have the opportunity to work and live in this territory. Further to that, I wanted to also state that the city of London is committed to making every effort to provide alternate formats and communication supports for meetings upon request.

To make a request specific to this meeting, please contact SPPC at London.ca or 519-661-2489, extension 2425. I will start with disclosures of pecuniary interest for colleagues and see if there are any. Okay, seeing none, we do have one consent item. It is the 2023 assessment growth funding allocations.

On the added agenda, there is an additional piece of correspondence and a delegation request. I’ve also been asked by a colleague to pull case number 11 to be voted on for receipts separately. And that’s the case related to the police services increase. And so, before we get to that though, I think I’d like to hear if anybody is willing to move a motion to hear the delegation request on this item, there’s no staff presentation on the assessment growth business cases, although our staff are certainly able to answer questions.

But let’s entertain the idea of the delegation first, and then we can do the Q&A with staff afterwards. Delegation moved by Councillor Lehman, seconded by Councillor Hillier. Okay, does anybody have any discussion or comments on the delegation request? Okay, we’ll open that request for delegation for voting.

Closing the vote, the motion’s passed 14 to zero. Okay, Mr. Wallace, you’ve been granted five minutes for delegation today. Got my timer ready, although I usually stick under it.

So I’ll let you get started. Thank you, Mr. Mayor, and thank you, Councillors, for allowing me to speak to this consent item. I have three points to be made.

Let me start with the first one, which is obvious this is not a consent item. The motion says in the recommendation is to be received for information. Councillors, this is a $14 million decision made on where money will be spent of property tax money. You have an open public process for the budget system that you just went through.

There’s no reason why this should be on the consent item. The way this reads currently, that without any discussion, without any public input, the decisions made by the treasurer on where the surplus money or this additional allocation of growth money would be done through their office based on the input from the business cases that were provided and you are receiving it for information. Well, you’re not receiving this for information. You are making, these are directions that you’re making, you’re spending tax payers money that has come from the property tax from assessment growth.

They should never, ever be in the consent agenda. I do have an issue with the use of consent agendas here, which I have spoken to before. I’m looking forward that when your strap plan going forward, one of the sections in your strap plan is about one of the areas that a focus is in talks about inclusion. One of the outcomes is all lenders have the opportunity to participate in civic engagement.

You need to be able to, going forward, take this off the consent agenda and this should be in items for consideration ‘cause that’s what you’re actually doing or that’s what you should be doing with this amount of money. Listen, you have a very, very competent, critically astute treasurer. It’s nothing to do with the decision making that’s in these business cases. I have no issue with that.

That’s my first point. You need as a council to review what the role of the public is in input and opportunities at city council and at committee. I’m happy to provide that any information on that going forward after the strap plan is approved. The second point is I wanna make a few points from the actual report.

It says that this assessment growth, which clearly comes from additional property tax collected from expanded housing and businesses. So part of our industry is part of that growth that you’ve had that 14 million that’s there. The assessment growth is used to fund extension of municipal services provided to the property tax base. In our view, the services that development and planning department provides is an extension of what the services that you provide the public.

Our members are very much taxpayers in this community for a lot of properties. And we believe that this money should be viewed in that way. There is an approved assessment growth policy. I would be recommending that this council look at that going forward, particularly with the commitment to the 47,000 new homes in 10 years, which is basically doubling what you’re doing now and have a look at what that policy states.

My final point, Mr. Mayor and council is this. You’re approving 14 million dollars. About 12 million of it or so has been allocated through the business case process.

Then the balance due to policy goes to split between debt reduction and capital infrastructure, the capital infrastructure graph. My opposition, our position is this, that once the business case piece is looked after, that that allocation should be split three ways. A certain percentage, let’s say 10% of whatever’s left over goes back into development and planning, the department that generates this revenue. Let’s be absolutely, I know the treasure doesn’t like putting money back into it just because you make money, you shouldn’t get it back.

But from a business, if you treat anything in government like a business, if anything, you should be reinvesting where you’re generating revenue. So let’s say 10%, capital 200,000, and then the balance gets split between debt reduction. 20 seconds. Yep, debt reduction and the infrastructure gap.

I’m asking you, not making any changes tonight, ‘cause I know that’s not gonna happen. But going forward, have a look at where that new assessment that you are not capturing in the current budget system that comes at this time of year, how it can be reinvested in the department that generates it for you. Thank you. All right, thank you, Mr.

Wallace. That concludes the delegation request that we have before us. I would look to see if colleagues have any general questions on the assessment growth allocation funding. If you’re looking for some comments on the current policy and how it operates, I know our staff could certainly comment on that based on both the correspondence as well as the delegation.

And as was requested earlier, I’ll be separating the vote into two pieces. But at first, I wanna deal with any general questions that colleagues might have about the process. Councillor Lehman. Thank you.

I think Mr. Wallace raises some interesting points. However, I want to ask staff through you, Mayor, we deal with certain things in our four year budget process. One of those things is surplus, which we allocate as per a prescribed thing that’s agreed to in that process.

And assessment growth is, do we cover that as well at that time? Is that correct or is that another process? Ms. Bebel?

Through the chair. So I think the question is, do we cover assessment growth at the same time as when we do our surplus deficit? Did I get that? Did I understand that correctly?

Yeah, I’m just trying to get to the nub. Like Mr. Wallace expressed, that’s a considerable amount of monies that we’re talking about. He expressed concern about community engagement on those expenditures.

Where is that debated? Is that debated at the four year budget process? Through the chair. Thank you for that clarification.

So the way the assessment growth policy works is, the policy itself delegates to the city treasurer the allocation of funding via a business case through the assessment growth policy to be clear as to support the needs of a growing city. So as new assessment is built and new homes and houses are built throughout the city of London, the services that we deliver currently to the rest of the city of London has to be extended to those new homes. There is an additional cost to that. So the intent of the policy is to continue to allow the additional revenue that is generated through growth to pay for the additional cost to service that growth through the policy.

So there is no debate at the budget because it is not approved through the budget process. It has been delegated outside of that process through the report that you see before you today. So based on the business cases that I receive in accordance with the policy, I review them to ensure that they meet the tests and are in accordance with that policy. And if they are aligned and all of the information has been there and the business case has been properly made to serve the costs of those new growth, then I would approve those business cases in that respect.

And that is why this report is before you today as an information report is to advise the council of the business cases that I’ve received and how they’ve been delegated and basically in accordance with the policy to fulfill that. The if there is any remainder, the policy is very clear with how that is then allocated, which is what you see contained within this report for you today. Councillor Lehman. - Thank you.

I appreciate that that information is on. My comment is this. I think that this is something that should be explored in our four year budget process to provide a little, I like the idea of the way we handle surplus. It’s a debated process.

Exomelco’s here, Exomelco’s there. There seems to be a lot of gray area in defining, especially as our cities are undergoing such a tremendous amount of growth. I just want to get away from any concerns the community might have that decisions are being made without their input. So I don’t mean to change things now, but I just want to, I think it’s something that we should look at next year at this time when we look at the four year budget process.

So Councillor, what I would suggest is for anybody feeling the same way as you, the path forward would be to review the assessment growth policy, which is the authority that the treasurer is exercising a delegated authority under, and the process under which we make these decisions. And certainly that work could be done. The pros and cons could be measured and we could make a change of approach in the future, as was even suggested by the delegation wasn’t looking for a change today, but a process in the future. So, I know that we have a governance working group that could be an appropriate place to have that review conducted once that group comes together and starts meeting.

Through SPPC, we could task that to that group. So that would be the process to review the policy just so colleagues know. Councillor Frank. Thank you.

And through the chair, I’d like to, I don’t know, I guess second, not the motion, but the sentiments that Councillor Lehman had. In addition, if I could maybe add to the governance working groups, working plate, if we could also see the assessment growth cases that don’t make it past the policy, so I know that there have been some in the past that have been submitted that don’t meet the criteria that are laid out, and I do think it is a value for council just to understand which ones have been submitted and why they didn’t achieve the policy criteria. So, if I could add that maybe to the list of things we’re going to work in group to look at when they’re looking at that policy. So, we have a policy about reviewing policy.

And so, ‘cause the policies are reviewed on a regular basis, so I’m going to have the clerk just give some information about that process and way we would expect to see this policy potentially reviewed as a due course. Thank you, through the chair, I’ve been scrambling to try and pull up said policy, and I haven’t found it yet, but 2023 is a year where all of the policies will, the review will be undertaken as a housekeeping matter, so you will see all of these policies coming forward through the regular committee cycles. So, at that time, if some more in-depth work was to be done, it could be referred to the governance working group for review consultation. Some policies might be reviewed in a very routine way, some we might be looking to make substantive changes too, so we can kind of hit that as they come through committees.

Deputy Mayor Lewis. Thank you, Your Worship, and through you, first to colleagues who have expressed some interest in having this reviewed, although it’s a housekeeping policy, I will offer right now because I’ve been making a list of some items for a direction through SPPC to refer to the government’s working group, including some items that were not finished from the last term. So please, if you want to reach out to me individually with an email to ask me to include those in that list, then I’m happy to work with you on that, and I actually will hopefully be bringing forward, I wanted to get through the strat plan first, but then bringing forward a motion to SPPC to provide some direction to governance working group. So, I wanted to share that with everybody right now, so that if there were things that you wanted to see on that list, please forward them along.

Now, through you, Your Worship, before we get too far into the weeds, I wonder if staff could indicate, because it is assessment growth that we are allocating, I’m very much aware that this is not money we can just put wherever we want. These business cases have to be tied to the growth of the city and the increased costs of service delivery as a result of that growth. So I’m just wondering if our administration can provide us just a quick overview of those sort of areas that are eligible for assessment growth considerations to begin with, because I know that there, I’ve seen a couple of comments from the public, like, oh, go spend it here on something that was not even municipal jurisdiction, but provincial. But there are things we cannot even spend it on that are in municipal jurisdiction because it’s growth related.

So I’m just wondering if our staff could provide colleagues with a little bit of clarity on what’s eligible. Go ahead, Ms. Berbone. Thank you, through the chair, so typically what this covers is specifically with respect to the operating costs.

So as we have growth in the city, the capital costs are generally funded through the development charges and through that background study, this is primarily for the operating costs. So very, very common items are specifically, are snow plowing, additional costs to pick up garbage, additional hectares of land that we now, that are parks that we need to grasp for cut or along the boulevards and places that we need at grass cutting, et cetera. So those are some very common examples. So where there are service improvements, so if, and all of the metrics in the business cases are based on the existing levels of service and what it costs to deliver service.

So if there is something that is truly a volume-driven increase that isn’t specifically tied to population growth or additional homes being built, so an increase in the level of service is not something that would qualify under the policy, as that’s not something that we would be currently delivering, that we would not exclude. So if someone was trying to put in a bit, so as Councillor Frank had raised earlier, if there was a business case that had come forward that was to enhance the level of existing service, that would not qualify given that current level of service is not delivered today, but if it was to extend those services to the new homes, those are the kinds of costs that are included. Thank you, I just thought it was very important to get that sort of preliminary understanding out there. I know for some of us this is the first time dealing with an assessment growth item on the agenda, so I just thought it’d be good to have that information shared out, and that answers my question very well.

So thank you. Any other questions before I move to dividing this up, and we can obviously still have discussion on the components that are divided, I just want to deal with any general questions about the process. Councillor Frank. Thank you, and through the chair, I was hoping that staff could maybe comment on the business cases that were submitted that didn’t meet the criteria.

I just know that there were a couple this year, and I was just wanting to hear a bit more about what they were, and maybe how they didn’t meet the criteria. Thank you. Ms. Burble.

Thank you through the chair. I’m going by memory, I don’t have them right in front of me, but there were two business cases that did come forward, and they were very specifically with respect to new services, delivery, and extension of a new incremental service level increases. So because those were not levels that we currently do today, those were not approved in accordance with the policy. Good, okay.

Okay, so I have a request to deal with, and again, all of these items are for receipt based on the policy currently, but I have a request to have a vote on case number 11 related to the London Police Services complement increase items separately. So if anybody wants anything else, besides that item dealt with separately, I’d need to know now. Otherwise, what we’ll do is we’ll have a motion to receive all of the report and the delegation and kind of the compendium of all the stuff we need to do with the motion, with the exception of case 11. So is there someone willing to move that?

Councillor Stevenson, seconded by Councillor Cuddy. Any discussion on that grouping for receipt? Nope, okay, I’ll open that for voting. Closing the vote, the motion’s passed 14 to zero.

Okay, so do I have a mover and a seconder for case number 11? Councillor Stevenson, seconded by Councillor Layman. This is for the police services increased complement business case, and again, this is a motion for receipt. And that’s moved and seconded questions and comments.

Councillor Frank. Thank you, and through the chair, I was hoping to ask staff some questions, and I’m not sure maybe who would be able to answer them. But one of them, I was hoping to ask for the London Police Services is what the breakdown are of their calls for service, for example, what is the percentage of calls related to mental health, wellness checks, people deprived of housing. I’m just trying to get an understanding of, I know that there are some details about increases, but I was hoping to hear what those breakdowns were.

I’ll start with Ms. Barmon. I’m not sure who would back you up on that, but I’ll start with you. So thank you through the chair.

So primarily looking at this business case, so when the business case comes forward, they’re looking at a very high level with respect to justifying the number of officers. So it is at a holistic level, and based on the officers per capita, which has not kept up with the assessment growth increases that have put forward. So we did not look specifically at the amount of the metrics per call, because that isn’t really relevant in terms of a growth, given the population increase that the city of London has increased, that more than justifies what the increase in the level of the officers that they’re looking at. Given the increase, they’ve been putting forward that based on the board’s recommendation over three years, as opposed to coming at it all at once, given that would have a very, very significant magnitude, which has been helpful in terms of trying to manage what that ask coming forward would be.

Thank you, and to the chair, I’m not sure if there is anyone though able to answer the question regarding the breakdowns on calls for service, and I’m not sure if anyone is here from LPS, or if there’s other staff members, maybe who know? Thank you. So we don’t have anyone from LPS here. So I don’t think we have someone who can answer that particular breakdown if the deputy city manager doesn’t have it at her disposal.

Certainly the police board, you can approach them and get asked them for some data. I’m not sure what they’ll be able to give or not, but there isn’t anyone here who can answer that question specifically. Thank you. Well then, it does make the rest of my questions a little bit more difficult ‘cause they were directed specifically to lend police services, and I think probably their staff would be best equipped to answer them.

I guess I’ll just hop then maybe to some of my comments. I personally am really struggling with this request ‘cause I, oh, yeah. I have a suggestion for you. Although we won’t have it before us today, this is a committee recommendation that we’ll go to council.

So you could certainly endeavor to, if you have a series of questions related to the business case, you could pass them on to say the deputy chief’s office or the chief’s office and see what answers you get in advance of the council meeting, which hopefully will help you with your voting decisions at that time. So I know it’ll be a little bit difficult for today, but there would be that opportunity since we’re not making a final decision on the receipt of this business case today. Great, thank you. No, that actually is a really good point and then I will save a bunch of them.

I think I just, I will say my comments ‘cause I think I will be voting differently than some of my fellow councillors. And as I was about to hop into, I’m personally really struggling with this request ‘cause I have heard from citizens, some citizens really want more police presidents and some citizens really want us to address the root causes of crime and not necessarily increase the police compliment that we currently have. And I feel personally very strongly this request is very similar to our EMS services request. And as we know, the EMS services request came through because we were seeing a significant increase in offload delay times because of how the province is managing our healthcare system.

And based on what I have read in the news and heard from other staff members, I have heard a lot of the calls and the increase in calls are dealing with mental health and drug addiction issues, which I think are healthcare responsibilities. And so I really do in the future want to evaluate our success in a reduction in calls, not necessarily a shorter response time. And we know that calls for mental health and drug addiction are on the rise and relating to those people who are experiencing those healthcare issues. So I personally won’t be supporting this increase because I do think we are covering provincial healthcare funding through sending police officers to deal with things that we should be sending doctors and nurses and social workers to be dealing with.

Not that I have anything against the work that is being done by one police services and I have attended some of the community consultations and spoken with various police officers and my understanding is they also personally don’t want to be responding to these calls and would also appreciate maybe the correct experience professionals being sent to a lot of those calls. So I’ll save my questions I guess for when we have council and we have some police service members there to ask, but I will be voting differently. Thank you. So let me say we wouldn’t have police service members at council to ask the questions.

I was suggesting that you could ask the questions of them between the meeting because we tend not to have delegations at council. So I didn’t want to have any false expectations there. I have a speaker’s list. I have Councillor Layman, Councillor Lewis, Councillor Hopkins and Councillor Stevenson.

Thank you, Mayor. We all sit on various boards and commissions and we sit on council and we’re asked to wear two separate hats for those roles. And I just wanted to say at the outset, I’m speaking now as under the hat of a councillor, not even though I sit on the police services board. I’m not speaking as a police services board member.

Councilor asked about certain statistics and I’d like to highlight some of the stats and numbers that were included in our report. We have officers per 100,000 people. We have 145 officers in London. That’s 20% less than the provincial average of 181 and even less further still than the national average of 191.

The last two years has been a 30% increase in violent offenses. Currently in the province on average, there’s about 2,300 property crimes per 100,000 residents. In London, we have almost double that of about 4,300 property crimes per 100,000. Sexual assaults are up 42% over three years.

Physical, emotional abuse of elders are up 178% over three years. Child abuse up 24% over three years. With the addition of 54 officers of which, which this is just a part of, after we add 54, we’ll still be 12% less than the provincial number of officers per 100,000. But that’s more of a board matter.

I’m just giving you a heads up when we get to the four-year budgeting. As a councillor, I toured the 911 center a year or two ago and I encourage all my colleagues to do the same. What I saw was 200 unanswered calls facing officers on the board when they arrived to work that day. What is the impact of that?

Well, on Londoners, they’re not getting response. Maybe in two or three days, they’ll have an officer finally be able to make it out to answer that call. What does that lead to frustration? That leads to anger, which I saw and I heard at the door when I campaigned this year.

You know, I think it leads to is non-reporting. People go, what’s the use of calling it in? And that’s very judgmental to how modern policing works. Modern policing works on getting statistics and data so they can prevent crime before responding to crime that’s already happened.

And they need to know where crime is happening. The other impact is on officers. And we see it daily with burnout. We can’t hire, we’re having trouble finding officers to apply for a job that used to be highly in demand.

We see a number of officers often stress leave because of the burden that’s placed on them. And I hear it, the stress that they’re under because they can’t catch up. And when they do get out to a property owner or someone who’s called 911, those folks instead of happy to see the police are upset and be frustrated. Our citizens do not feel safe today.

I remember as a rookie counselor on the first time when I went at the four year budget, police came in, I think 2.4, 2.3% increased their requesting. And I was thinking that was a good thing. Boy, they’re efficient. Police is our biggest item on our budget.

That was gonna help us keep property taxes down. But I’ve since seen that police have trimmed all the fat long ago. And what we’re doing now is we’re cutting into the bone. One of our main responsibilities as counsel is to keep our city safe.

London, as I think, has made it clear in the last election that we are failing in that regard. I think it’s time to correct the imbalance that we see. So I encourage you to support this and I encourage you learning more about it. I think it’s good that counsel that you are going to look into those things.

I think that’s very important. I encourage counselors to go on the ride-longs, visit 9-1-1 center, learn what our police are doing. We tend to frame it as just a homeless thing. It’s way more than that.

There’s a lot of stuff that’s going on to our city that our police are there to protect us with and deal with. So thank you very much for attending. Counselor, sorry, Deputy Mayor Lewis. Thank you, Your Worship.

Well, Counselor Lehman highlighted some really important factors there. I agree completely that we have to consider the impact of the understaffing on our officers themselves and the stress that that puts on them. We talk here and we thank our staff for the work they do here. We need to be thanking those officers too, but thanking them is not enough.

We need to provide them the staffing levels that they need to do their job appropriately. Counselor Lehman talked about the property crime, 86% higher than the provincial average. And I have heard from my constituents, the same thing that he related, my concern is the number that are unreported because people have given up even trying to report them. And that should not be the case in London, Ontario.

People should be able to report those property crimes. And that doesn’t mean that an officer is gonna show up right away because your shed was broken into, but that they will ultimately get a police response. But right now, they can’t do that because they don’t have the officers to do the day-to-day business. I visited the 911 center as well.

And on a Wednesday morning at 10 a.m., there were over 100 calls waiting in the queue as officers were coming on shift. Over 100, on a Wednesday morning at 10 a.m., so imagine what it’s like during peak period. It’s no wonder we’re experiencing officer burnout. It’s no wonder the officers are feeling frustrated and tired and frankly disappointed that they can’t do the proactive policing work as well.

I’ve had nothing but wonderful things to say about the core unit before it was disbanded so that those officers could be reassigned to frontline 911 calls. They were really, really helpful at diffusing and de-escalating some potential neighborhood issues that I had in my ward before they became criminal issues. And we don’t have that unit right now because we don’t have the officers to staff it. I know that we don’t have the officers that we need staffing traffic enforcement right now.

And every single one of us around this horseshoe gets complaints, I would wager daily, but at least weekly about bad driving behaviors in the city and the lack of seemingly police enforcement. But if we don’t have officers to put on the streets because they’re all busy tied up responding to 911 calls that they can’t proactively do traffic enforcement, we are never going to see progress made on that front. I’m gonna share a story from the Argyle BIA. ‘Cause this is not just a downtown issue.

The franchise owner of my Canadian Tire store called police because an employee was assaulted by a customer. And it was more than six hours before an officer was free to respond to that situation. Somebody who’s at work and is assaulted by somebody who’s in the store, whether it’s a server in a restaurant, whether it’s a clerk at a retail store, we talk about the difficulty people are having recruiting employees right now. The employee doesn’t feel safe at work.

We’re not going to solve that problem either. So I really, really strongly encourage individuals to support this business case because Councillor Lehman is 100% correct. This is not just an issue around the housing and homelessness crisis that we’re dealing with right now. If we took all of those mental health calls and all those homelessness calls off the police docket tomorrow, they would still need these officers.

I agree 100% with Councillor Frank, by the way, mental health and addiction treatment is provincial responsibility and it’s a healthcare matter. And the province needs to step up and help us with the funding to deliver those services. And later tonight, we’re going to be talking about our Housing and Homelessness Summit and the outcome from that. And I think we’ve developed with a number of people who are in the gallery here tonight a really solid blueprint to move forward.

But we’re going to need our provincial partners at the table. But that is one prong. We cannot ignore the community safety aspect and this business case is towards that second prong. So there’s compassion and work towards mental health and addictions, but there’s also enforcement and community safety that needs to happen.

So I absolutely think that we need to fund this business case and I really encourage people to think for a moment about how fair is it for an employee to not feel safe at work because the police officer can’t respond or somebody to not feel safe in their home because the police officer can’t respond. We’ve got to address this. So I encourage you to support this. Thank you.

My speakers, this includes Councillor Hopkins, Councillor Stevenson, Councillor McAllister so far. I’ll just remind colleagues that the matter before us is receipt of the information that the Treasurer and Deputy City Manager has reviewed and is authorizing this business case. So there’s no motion on the floor to do something different at this point. I’m going to let the debate continue because I think people are raising points but I just want to be colleagues to be because when I hear some comments about support this so that we can or don’t support this, like there’s a motion to receive on the floor tonight.

And I think points are being raised but just be aware that that’s what’s on the floor. Councillor Hopkins. Yeah, thank you, Your Worship, for reminding us that we are receiving this and I do want to make a comment and I will be quick. I will be supporting the almost 4 million going forward for the 20 police officers and upgrades to vehicles but I also understand where Councillor Frank is coming from.

We are going to be addressing most likely in the four year budget going forward 32 more officers. And I think when we go through that four year budget, we need to have a better understanding what policing and how policing works in our city now because as a Councillor, when I speak to the community about policing, the expectations of the community are very different to the expectations that the police services have. It’s I think a lot more complicated than it ever has been and I would like more information when we do go through the four year budget just following up on Councillor Frank’s concerns ‘cause I hear them as well. What are these numbers mean and what difference will these added police officers mean to the safety of our city?

I won’t go into the numbers, Councillor Lehman, showed how far behind we are as a city but I think it’s more than that and we need to have a better understanding about policing in our city. So that is what I would like to look forward to in the four year budget when we address safety. Thank you, Councillor Stevenson. Thank you and I’ll keep my comments brief as well and as Councillor and not as a member of the London Police Services Board but I do want to reiterate that this business case is not based on the issue with calls.

It is based on the need for a number of police officers for an increase in population and we are far below it. This is only gonna add 17 frontline officers, the rest are communications, HR maintenance, there’s a sexual assault and child abuse officer and a couple for training. So I just really, safety is a huge, huge issue in the city. In my ward, we had at the Gold buyer shooting and fighting for his life within a morning break-in and robbery and it’s my understanding that we are not only getting the population from Toronto but we’re getting the crime too and the violent crime.

There’s a lot more guns in the city, there’s a lot more violent crime and I’m 100% supportive of this and my understanding from residents is that safety is a number one concern. Councillor McAllister. Thank you and through the chair, I think what I’ve heard this evening, for me personally, I don’t think this shouldn’t be an either or situation. I do believe we need to see an increase to the number of officers but on the same hand, we also, as some of my colleagues have indicated, we need to see an increase in social workers as well.

As we’ve heard, the police aren’t able to respond to the crimes that our citizens are reporting on a regular basis and we’re all hearing that. We’re in the midst of a homelessness, mental health and addiction crisis and the police can’t solve this. What we’re seeing is an offloading of healthcare to cities and our police. I will be supporting this business case but I just wanted to point out, this is what I think we also need to acknowledge is that we need the increase for police to support enforcement but we do also need to recognize that social workers play a vital role in helping address all those crises I identified.

Thank you. I have Councillor Vameer Bergen. Thank you, Mayor. Yeah, I will be supporting this 110%.

We have people in our community that unfortunately are still looking to defund the police and nothing could be more of folly in terms of a wrong policy decision or policy direction. We’re in a period where we desperately need refunding of the police. We need to invest some very good points have been made previous. The fact of the matter is our police officers with the workloads that they’re having to carry are burning out.

They’re looking at endless overtime. Clearly this is a step in the right direction. It has to continue. We’re rapidly growing.

Our population is what now, 423,000. Here we are sitting at the bottom of police presence or close to the bottom. So this simply cannot continue. It’s a recipe for disaster.

It’s dangerous for our residents. And the residents of London have the right to expect a timely reaction to a situation that they may find themselves in and having a timely presence of police when needed. And currently that’s just not the case. So I would certainly urge all of us to support this.

It’s necessary. It’s common sense and it’s definitely a step in the right direction. I have Councilor Frank next. Thank you, yes.

And I appreciate all the comments that other Councilors are making. I actually don’t necessarily disagree with most of your points. I agree that this isn’t just about mental health and drug addiction issues. I do see that there’s a current belief that somehow meeting the provincial averages will make our community safer.

And that’s one of the things actually I was hoping to speak with the police about. I’d like to see the data that supports having more police officers means more safety. And I’d also like to understand safety for whom. I think we do as a Council applaud that we are in I think the bottom third of how much we collect for property taxes.

So I do think it’s no surprise that we also then, many of our services are very lean organizations ‘cause as a city as a whole, we do not collect a lot in property taxes comparable to other Ontario municipalities. But overall, I just wanted to kind of reiterate about how I don’t see it necessarily as just a mental health and drug addiction crisis. I think in the past 10 years in Ontario, but broader across Canada and across the world, we’ve seen a marked decline in our social security net. Most people in our community and across again Ontario are living paycheck to paycheck.

We’ve seen a dramatic rise in increase in the disparity between those who are very poor and those who are very rich. We’ve seen an increase in people living without a home and increase in property crime and increase in hate crimes. And I think overall, we are unfortunately, despite our best efforts and our best intentions growing more and more divided. And that personally scares me.

I think that’s where I think safety is a very big concern. COVID didn’t help and now that is really social media. But to me, if we look at this at a higher scale, property theft is honestly a redistribution of resources. People who have nothing needs a way to survive and they’re very desperate.

And we’ve seen that increase incredibly, as Deputy Mayor Lewis mentioned in London, because we have a lot of incredibly desperate people who are being forced through lack of options to choose something, to try and get by. So I do greatly respect and appreciate the dedication of the London Police Services to our community and for stepping up to answer all of these frontline calls that are sometimes out of their scope. And I do hope in the next five to 10 years, both for the police services and the community, we see a reduction in these complex calls that they are responding to. I do agree with Councillor Layman that we need to keep our city and our members of our community safe.

I may not have the same actions that would produce the same result, but I believe that we do need to keep our community safe and I do think that there are lots of ways we can be doing that. I’ve had wonderful experiences personally with the London Police Services. I lived in an apartment and we accidentally left our keys in the front door. Don’t do that.

We did have somebody come in and take our laptops and I walked into the living room while they were in mid-progress at 4am on a Sunday morning and had to call the police services and they were there within five minutes. I think it was because it was 4am on a Sunday and perhaps not a lot was going on. But I think success there for me, I appreciate how fast they responded. I appreciated what they did.

They got my laptops back and my wallet. But I think success there is not having that happen in the first place. So that person not feeling that they need to come to my home and take some of my personal items. So I genuinely believe that we don’t, people don’t want to commit crime and I think a lot of the reason behind that is through trauma and maybe a lack of options, people are forced to do what they must to survive.

So I think if we want crime to go down, we need to rebuild our social security net and to do that I think we need to be investing in other things. And I do think actually Mike might appreciate this but I do think some of the reduction in the police response rate would come if we stopped doing urban sprawl because it does take them quite a long time to get across the city given the level of traffic congestion and that is in my opinion because of urban sprawl. So if we addressed urban sprawl, we could also see a reduction in police response times. But those are just a couple of my thoughts.

And again, I look forward to speaking with various police staff and I will be reaching out to hopefully do a tour of some of their facilities. So thank you for that suggestion. Thank you. I have myself next on the speaker’s list so I hand the chair over to Councillor Palosa.

Thank you and I’ll just start by reminding the gallery of no verbal comments that allowed as our speakers take their turns and making sure that Councillor’s feel safe on workplace too as well as our fellow guests in the gallery. My speaker’s list starts with Mayor Morgan. Thank you, colleague. So I want to say I appreciate all of the comments and despite my earlier caution about the nature of what we’re discussing today, I think sharing these perspectives on the floor I think is quite helpful for us as there likely will be discussions on the multi-year budget about the directions we need to go on these sorts of issues and so getting a sense on where people are thinking and where they stand on things I think is good.

And I also appreciate that the diversity perspective is important. These are conversations and discussions. The conversations and discussions that Councillor Frank is raising our conversations and discussions that are happening across the country about how we best tackle the complex challenges our community are facing, the intersection of crime and other social issues and where to invest those resources to be effective. And I’m reminded of a saying that I know both the city manager and Ramina Morris, our director of anti-racism and anti-oppression often say although maybe not used in this context and that’s the words both and.

They’re complex issues. We need to both ensure that we’re adequately providing police services to meet the demands of residents including the service levels. And we need to make significant investments in tackling the determinants and the social determinants of what can be putting people in a situation where they feel they might need to resort to crime to survive. And so we have two important discussions today.

This one on supporting a police ask and another one coming up next of which there are many people in the gallery waiting to hear on how we transform our system and make significant and historic investments and transformational change within the health and homelessness space. We need to do both and more. These are complex issues and complex challenges and they’re not going to be unsolved by simple if we don’t do this and this instead all of our problems will be solved. So these are important debates to have and important discussion points to have on the floor for consideration.

The point I will remind you about with this particular ask of the police budget is remember, this is a growth related business case. The city has grown dramatically and is expected to increase in population dramatically in the future. We are one of the fastest growing communities in the province and country and we do not have the resources within the police service to keep pace with the level of service that people expect. So I think we need to make this investment and I support the Treasurer’s decision in supporting this business case.

And I also think we need to make significant investments in other areas to take pressure off of those types of service calls that the police are making on mental health, homelessness, addiction services, the things that are healthcare issues because in the future we need to control and mitigate the pace of police costs and the cost expansion based on the challenges that we have within the budget structure. So my hope is that we do both and we do both of these things and the results are we curtail the pace of needed investments in police down the road but that day is not today, we need to do both right now. And so I’m supportive of what we have before us. I’m supportive of the decision the Treasurer and Deputy City Manager has made.

I’m gonna be very supportive later in the meeting about investments elsewhere. So thank you. Thank you and I return the chair to Mayor Morgan. I have Councillor Ferrera.

And thank you and through you. I was just kind of waiting just to see what all my colleagues were just kind of thinking or what they had to say on the matter. As a downtown word Councillor, before I was a downtown word Councillor, speaking from my armchair when I had less of a stake, I still lived in the ward, so I still saw what was going on but I was a little kind of adverse towards increasing the police budget. But once you start getting into the reality of things and you really start seeing what’s going on, it’s true.

I do get throughout the campaign, I had a lot of people speak about this issue and then as sitting in the Councillor’s seat, I do get these calls almost daily. So speaking to other Councillors and what their concerns are, especially with the social security nets and the other issues that we would like to provide money for, I’m definitely on board with that and that’s really where it all started for me, but just kind of learning with the realities of how things are right now. I am gonna support this receipt of this and I am gonna support what the treasurer is recommending just because speaking with all the stakeholders, like I got people at their doors telling me, I have an issue, I make a call, I have to go online, I report it online. Sometimes people, the police may not show up and that is simply yes, because we are too lean at the moment.

There was a time in the past that argument being a lean police force was an argument that was you saying, look what we can do, we can do this on such a lean capacity, a small capacity, but nowadays, especially with the increase of the population, it does seem to, the need is definitely there. So those are the things that I really wanted to say and speaking to also on the police force itself, I’m kind of focused on the people approach, whereas the people at the door, do they get the services that they need? Do people who are houseless right now, do they have the services that they need? Do the police, their people as well, are they in a job that they’re able to maintain as a human being?

And these are a lot of issues that we’re seeing, like we’ve spoken before, the attrition rate for the police right now is alarming. Officers leaving the force altogether into another industry. Officers going to other police forces, how are we supposed to be competitive with that when the pay structure is pretty much the same? It’s the queue.

It’s the amount of work that’s coming in is really what the issue is at this moment. And that just amplifies the issues we have because if we have a force that’s not able to meet the demand that the city needs, and then we have issues of police burnout, we are going to see kind of like a double effect where it’s just pushing us down and down and down being able to provide the services that we need. So these are the reasons that I would be supporting this receipt of this motion. And it is a receipt.

We’re not actually deciding on it today. So that’s basically what I really wanted to put out there. And so I do see all the concerns, and I would also add like the mayor has just said, we are going to be speaking about our social aspects later in this meeting, we’re going to be speaking about that. What we saw in the Health and Homelessness Summit in the whole of community program that’s coming out, and we’re also going to be speaking about the cost orders of magnitude for our strategic plan with our housing goals as well, and the services there.

So all these things are going to be spoken about today. So that’s basically just what I wanted to throw out there. And I’m sorry I didn’t say that before. The mayor did say what he wanted to say, but I just wanted to put that out there.

So thank you. But that’s okay. I don’t need to go last, and you spoke very well. Any other speakers?

Okay, so this is business case number 11 for receipt. It’s moved and seconded. We’ll open that for voting. Opposing the vote, the motion’s passed 13 to one.

Okay, thank you. We have no scheduled items. However, we do have a number of items for direction. And I will make note that there’s a significant number of added letters related to item 4.1, which is the Health and Homelessness Summit’s proposed whole of community system response.

So I hope you’ve had time to take note of each and every one of those. And I’m not saying that because I wrote a letter, but many community members did as well. And for this section, I’m gonna have our city manager, Lynn Livingston, start off with some comments. Thank you, Mr.

Chair. And I appreciate the opportunity to introduce this very important item. I do have a few remarks that will take just a few moments. So as members of council know very, very well, London is experiencing a health and homelessness crisis.

And the community is looking to all of us to address it. The impacts of this crisis are significant, urgent, and affecting our entire community. This crisis is impacting members of our community who are suffering and in some cases dying on our streets. This crisis is also impacting the health of our businesses and of our community overall.

And we know that many agencies, organizations, and volunteers and businesses have done amazing and good work to try and help those who are most marginalized and homeless in our community. But those efforts alone are no longer able to respond to this crisis, no longer able to respond to the dramatic increase in the volume and complexity of health and housing needs that we are seeing today or to the pain and suffering of individuals and our community. What has become very clear is that something needs to change, to save lives, to better deliver health care and housing to those that are most marginalized in our community and to address the whole of community impacts of this crisis. So that call is what led to the London’s health and homelessness summits and the whole of community system response that has been tabled for council’s consideration this afternoon.

The work has happened very quickly by necessity between November and January of this year. But it’s important to note that while it has happened quickly, it is built on data, it is built on best practices from our own community and other places. And it is built on the breadth and depth of expertise of over 200 people from across 70 organizations, representing community health and social services, institutional healthcare, education, emergency services, business and economic development, land and housing development, city of London staff and staff from other levels of government. The proposed whole of community system response is, in my view, elegant in its simplicity.

There are fundamental components. Two of them are that it is people-centered, both from those who are being served and for those who are doing the very hard work with people. And it is housing-centric, intentionally designed to get folks housed because housing is healthcare and a fundamental human right. The system that’s being discussed is a single holistic system of care with multiple locations distributed throughout the community.

Hubs that focus on the very immediate needs and deliver clear and direct pathways to care and housing on a unique person-by-person basis. These hubs would be purpose-built and population-specific. They would each host a range of common and integrated care and service functions in each location that had been identified through this process. They would be delivered by multi-agency and interprofessional teams.

And they would be where all doors lead. This is the place you go with one number to call for referral. The hubs would be designed to very intentionally counteract people to timely and direct pathways to housing along a support continuum. That housing continuum would include the highest level of support.

Interdisciplinary 24/7 supports on site through a range of supporting housing options for individuals in private housing, whether that’s daily or weekly or on some other basis, all the way to independent living. The system is premised on very important set of shared values and principles in order to ensure consistency and unify the work truly as a system. These include respecting individual experience and ensuring choice and care. Promoting dignity.

A system based on anti-racism and anti-oppression framework. A harm reduction approach, trauma and violence informed. A system that is culturally safe and informed by the social determinants of health. One that is co-designed with providers and those with lived and living experience centering those important voices.

One where there is shared accountability and engagement, communication and transparency. A continued commitment to prevention and advocacy while we try to serve those in need. And a supportive system that is based on mutual respect and care for everyone participating. In addition to the service components that would need to be in place, there are some critical system foundations that will also need to be addressed.

These include workforce development, which looks at attraction, retention and engagement in a collaborative and shared way, ensuring that we have greater resources to hire and train and boost the well-being of our frontline workers who are doing such incredible work. System governance is also one of those critical foundations defining governance and leadership and accountability for the structure of this system. Ensuring there are standards of care, establishing sector-wide standards of care to improve consistency in the approaches to outreach and intake, harm reduction and anti-racism and anti-oppression practices and low barrier spaces. We need to have shared systems and processes and support so that we have common policies, procedures, tools and training to be able to support the system to deliver consistent high-quality care, but also to support businesses and community members with the tools and supports they need.

Additionally, this would include a review of policies and procedures and bylaws so that we can support the whole of community response. As well, a fundamental foundation is centralized data and measurement. This is looking at developing centralized data sources so that we can understand what differences being made, impact measurements that are in place and it will include new or enhanced assessment tools. The proposed approach is based on our estimated numbers for the scope of the system based on our current rosters, the information we currently have.

So based on the number of folks that we believe need support in our community, we would propose having 12 to 15 hub locations across the community in place beginning with five this year. Each hub location on average would serve approximately 25 to 30 people, but that each hub would really, while delivering the common set of functions, the number of people would really depend on the population being served, the level of acuity. So whether this is women, youth, highly acute folks, that’s what will determine the actual numbers, look and feel of each of these hubs. And for housing, we know that we need an immediate investment in the highest support of housing with a goal of over 600 units over the next three years, but looking to have 100 units of highly supportive housing immediately.

So this is a vision to transform the current programs and services into an integrated, people-centered housing-centric system through the development of a network of these integrated hubs, all with common core functions and a support of housing continuum. The summits achieve the goal of identifying a shared community response, a shared direction, but this is not yet a detailed plan. That is what would happen next. The next critical phase begins with a focus on system governance and implementation we’re proposing to start in March.

This is where many of the how questions would begin to be answered. What exactly does this look like? How will it work? Where will the hubs be located?

That will all be developed through implementation work and co-design. As with the summits, this work would be open and inclusive to leaders from across the sectors, and an important part of co-design will also include consultation with those who have lived and living experience, and those frontline workers who are critically important. Also a very important part of this work will be the ongoing communication and engagement with the London community and other levels of government. The first system governance and implementation meeting has been set for late March with the co-design work anticipated to begin April through June.

Another important aspect of moving forward with implementation is resources. And as we work to transform the existing system to the one that’s been shared for council’s consideration this evening, we know and it’s been said by a few of you already, that it will require more and different resources to implement. In our staff report, you will note three key aspects to resources. The first is municipal, and there are two areas here, at least in the staff report.

So the first is identifying a backbone team that would support the ongoing nature of this work, the facilitation, engagement, communication. This is not side of the desk work. While we are looking to some of our partners to contribute to this team, civic administration has identified existing resources to support a backbone of three staff to help this important work to move forward immediately. The second area for the meters penalty and for council to consider, is to build on the decision of previous council to direct the remaining London Community Recovery Network funds to address homelessness.

Civic administration is recommending that that funding, that 2.8 million, be allocated to initiate the implementation of the whole of community system response. Specifically, we would anticipate that this funding would be directed to support the initial five hubs, or the hundred units of highly supported housing, but we would return to council with those details for your consideration. The second area for resources that’s important to consider, is of course, the provincial and federal governments. We already are underway with actively pursuing funding from other levels of government to support the implementation of this response, through the mayor’s leadership at OBCM, and councilor Hopkins leadership at AMO, as well as our own advocacy strategies with the province and federal government, and those will need to continue.

And finally, and this makes us unique, I believe, is our community. Of course, everyone will know the very generous gift from an anonymous donor family of 25 million to fund the system response, and that cannot be understated. This historic philanthropy, also though, has the engagement of the land and building sector and businesses, and I think that that positions us like no other community in Ontario. In summary, our staff recommendations for council’s consideration are that council endorse the health and homelessness whole of community system response that was developed through the summits.

Recommendation B is that civic administration be directed to allocate the remaining 2.8 million from the London Community Recovery Network funds to support the implementation of this system. C is that civic administration be directed to proceed to support the implementation of the whole of community system response. And the last recommendation is directing us to return to future standing committees with regular updates. That’s my introduction, Mr.

Mayor, and we would be pleased to answer any questions. Sure, colleagues. I’m gonna do something a little bit differently now. I will have some general questions for the city manager and her team on this.

But given the importance of this topic to myself and the community, I’m actually gonna leave the chair to have Deputy Mayor Lewis chair of the meeting. And at the appropriate time, I’ll be willing to move the staff recommendation after the question and answer period is done. And I’ll make some further comments about my support from this recommendation at that time. So I’ll hand the chair over to the Deputy Mayor.

All right, we will start the speakers list with Mayor Morgan. Well, I just, Mr. Presiding Officer, do you want me to put a motion on the floor now? Or did you wanna do the general question and answer that the city manager asked?

If you would like to put a motion on the floor so that we can frame our discussion, that would be great, that might also spur colleagues for any specifics that they may want to address in terms of any changes they wanna make to the motion. Sure, I think at your time already ‘cause I’m gonna make some comments. So first off, I will be clear that I will be moving the staff recommendation before you. And I know a number of colleagues have some small amendments to it that they’ve alerted to me, which I’ll let them raise and then you can go to me ‘cause I consider the ones that I’ve heard friendly.

So I don’t know if you wanna wait for a seconder but I’ll make some comments once you have that. Councilor Layman has already indicated he was quick to pass me a note already to say he’ll second. So you have a seconder and the floor is yours. You have five minutes.

I might be a little generous with the timer but you can begin now. Sure, so let me first say, I did prepare some notes on this but given the comments that our city manager made, there would be some overlap. So I’m gonna talk to a few groups in the room of course through the presiding officer. The first is to those in the community who have done the work on this.

First and foremost, I wanna thank you for the incredible work that you have done. Hundreds of you coming together, representing dozens and dozens of organizations, putting aside differences of opinions, processes, the way you used to work in the past, all coming forward to try to tackle what is the most important issue our community is facing and one of the most important issues that will be before this term of council and the decisions we need to make that I don’t think will be trumped by any other issue that comes forward. I know that many of you have worked on the front line as well and I do know it’s a diverse group of builders, developers, healthcare professionals, but to those who’ve worked on the front line, I know some of you have worked your entire lifetime towards this and I know how frustrating it’s been because you have seen things get worse over that time period. You’ve seen people you’ve cared for die over that time period and you have likely been as frustrated as others have been in our inability to do something that makes this better.

I think many of the community who weren’t working in this space woke up from a pandemic where it was very easy to ignore the types of things happening, to ignore the illumination of the inequities in our system and woke up from the pandemic to see that things were not good in our street, on our streets, in cities of our size across the province and the country and this compels a level of action that is unprecedented and a level of cooperation and coordination that had yet to be seen in our city and has yet to be seen in other cities. And as the city manager said, what we’re doing here is truly leading the way. I say to our city manager and I know through the chair that you don’t often take credit for things and nor am I saying you should get all of the credit for this. But I will tell you, time and time again, members of this group who have worked, people who have been involved in this space, time and time again, a point to your humility, your leadership, the approach that you’ve taken to keep a group together and keep it focused on coming towards a solution that can be before us today.

And I know that there are many more steps in the process, but I wanna say a heartfelt thank you for the incredible amount of time that you’ve spent on this, for taking this on beyond all the other important duties of running a city and all of the other challenges that we face in our community. Because I just, I can’t say how many times I’ve come across individuals who have said, this has been held together because of work that you’ve done, the people that you’ve surrounded yourself with and the space that you created for people to have frank, honest dialogues and conversations that needed to be have. And that I’m not saying to take away from any of the work of any individual in that room, but I know having worked closely with our city manager, how much is on her plate, how stressful that job can be. I got a little bit of a peek into that with my job now and what it takes to really provide leadership, especially leadership from behind, which is often happening in this space where many others have many expert opinions on how to move forward.

To my colleagues on council, I know we ran an election last year and I don’t think any of us thought that this would happen in the way that it’s evolved. I don’t think any of us could have possibly predicted the incredible generosity and trust that came from an anonymous donor who donated a significant portion of their wealth, put up matching funds without having any idea except through the discussions that were happening with the Health and Homeless Summit on where we would get to, but having that trust to put significant dollars behind this. And that’s only a part of what we need. But I took the state of the city as an opportunity to really say to our community that we recognize that this is a challenge that we have to tackle.

This is something that we as elected officials have to be part of the solution on. This is something that the city needs to provide leadership and partnership on and we have to be part of the discussion and part of the solution. And so before you today, you see the first step in that opportunity for us to be part of a solution here. Again, there will be many, many more steps, but I don’t think that there is any more important work that we will do in our time on council than this.

I don’t think there’s anything that will be more impactful to our community and those on our streets who are suffering than this work. And I don’t know what the full scope of the work will be ahead, but I know that we have a council and a team of people who so far has shown themselves to raise differences of opinion, to challenge ideas, but do so respectfully, thoughtfully in a way where we come together with better solutions. And I anticipate we will have many discussions on this moving forward, but I think today is the day for us to take that first step together. The final thing I want to say is, as the city manager mentioned, this work is so important to me that I’ve decided to devote a significant portion of my time externally to the city and working on this through the Ontario big city mayors.

And I appreciate the work that Councillor Hopkins is also doing through AMO. Mayor Patterson and I, Mayor Patterson is the mayor of Kingston and I have presented and passed a motion through OBCM to form the basis of our lobby position with the province on this, which very much aligns with the work being done out of the health and homelessness summit. We are laying the groundwork for the wider partnership that needs to happen while this work is happening here. The partnership that will need to be involved in this absolutely involves other levels of government, including the province.

The healthcare resources that we’re going to need to tackle this issue can only come from the province and it will be an exceptionally important discussion that we need to have. But let me tell you, and I know many of you will stand with me in those efforts, we are positioned exceptionally well to have this discussion. We not only will come with a plan that has widespread and near unanimous community support, but with significant dollars in hand to make the significant asks that we need to make and to challenge and work with other communities across this province to take similar actions in their cities because we know this challenge is not defined by our city limits. It’s not defined by the borders of the jurisdiction we’re responsible for, but it is about people’s lives.

It is about their suffering and it is about how we do better and we cannot just hope to do better within the borders of the city of London, although we absolutely must take action. We must be leaders across this province to challenge others to do the same, so that this issue is something that is tackled on a wider basis. The work ahead is important. I think it’s transformative.

I support the motion before us. My time is probably up now, but I look forward to the debate today and I look forward to the discussion and absolutely I look forward to the important work that we can endeavor and embark on ahead as a council with an important community partnership that has been working on this for months and some for some people decades. So thank you. Thank you, Mayor Morgan.

And I allocated my five minutes to you as well, so you wouldn’t go over the time. I look for other speakers to this council, sorry, Councilor Palosa. Thank you, Mr. Presiding Officer.

And to those in the gallery tonight, thank you for being here. I know the chairs aren’t the most comfortable and we brammer on before we come to the speaking to this. So thank you for all your work that you do behind the scenes and for caring about this to all the 70 organizations and over 200 individuals in our community. Thank you for all that you do.

This is really a community-led plan and a system-wide plan versus one-offs, which is definitely a first for us. And with no disrespect to those around this horseshoe and those who have served before, but it’s amazing what you can do when politicians step aside, give you the space that you need and listen to the report that comes back to us, listening to those who are frontline workers from these various sectors, knowing what is best, what their clients need, what Londoners need, and that lived experience that comes back to us. So thank you for bringing that forward. And for the community in this report, it’s a stakeholder-led community-led community-made that as we know, and it’s sort of been mentioned in the state of the city of address, we, ideally we don’t only focus on political cycles, but in a four-year cycle, this plan will truly outlive anyone around this horseshoe and really have long-standing community impacts for the Londoners of today and those for tomorrow, and those who might come to need our services going forward who are actually okay right now.

And absolutely nothing about those in our community who need these supports without them. So that’s why it’s so important that you’re here and you keep showing up and keep pushing us to do better. And it’s more housing wraparound supports in everything in a timely fashion. So as it’s been said, this is the start of the plan, and I just want to thank my colleagues around the horseshoe tonight for their support and the community conversations we’ve given space to and for all those who show up at the table and the time and need to come back and have faith that things can change when sometimes things are community seems so dire.

So thank you for being here tonight and with us on this journey. Thank you, Councilor Palosa. Do we have other speakers to the motion that’s on the floor? Councilor Stevenson.

Thank you and through the chair. This was a number one issue for my campaign. A number one issue for a lot of people in Ward 4, it has been very difficult to stand back. It’s been very difficult to not be a part of this process.

And I’m looking forward to being a part of it going forward because although we’re not the ones in the front line, the city, the residents hold us accountable for the outcomes. We’re responsible for the situation that is there right now and we will be responsible for creating a very positive change going forward. It’s on us. We are the ones responsible for ensuring that things improve for our most vulnerable population and for our core areas and the other issues that residents have.

So and the issue of trust is truly important and I think it’s trust, not trust without accountability and communication and transparency, but with it and strengthened by it. So I’ve got a couple of amendments to put on here and I’m happy to say that staff has been very supportive of the amendments and provided the wording. The first amendment is on B and it is added to what’s already here. It will say it being noted that civic administration will return to council with the business case detailing the proposed use of funds.

And then under D that it will just add instead of reports, but monthly reports back. And I think the intention, although it’s not explicit there is that it’s operational and financial so that communication is just really out there. I know the people in my ward care very much about what’s happening and the $25 million donation which was so exciting has everyone even more interested in what’s happening and us being willing to answer the residents and assure them that positive changes are coming and that we are part of the process and ensuring that money is spent as well as possible and the results are as good as possible and contributing what we can to the process. I think is really important.

So I thank everybody for what they’ve done and I’m looking forward to what is created. So thank you for that. First of all, have you sent the language for those to the clerk? I have and Councillor Rahman has agreed to second.

Okay, so we have a mover and a seconder for those amendments. I’m gonna go to the mover of the original motion first just to see if he deems it as friendly. Now we are at committee. So we can actually amend motions on the fly but I think given the importance of this issue, what we’ll do is deal with the amendments as separate votes and then we’ll vote on the motion as amended.

So first I’m going to go to Mayor Morgan to see if he deems these as friendly. Yes, so let me be clear. What’s being asked is the exact way that we’ve spent every other single dollar of the London Community Recovery Network funds. And so I think that that is a very appropriate addition to part B and on part D, our staff have said all monthly reports, although aggressive at the start, given the importance of the issue is likely appropriate.

We may adjust that as we move on. And I would ask if we are that aggressive in the cycle that colleagues would give some diligence to some things likely landing on the added agenda, given with three weeks lead time, we might just get an update and then a report being due the next week, four or three weeks later. So if we want timely information and we want monthly information, we may have to accommodate things coming on the added agenda and not be critical of that being last minute. So I’m happy to support both as friendly with just those comments.

Thank you. I’m going to go to city manager Ms. Livingston for some comment on that because your comments raised her hand. So Ms.

Livingston. Yes, thank you, Mr. Presiding Officer. And I appreciate the understanding and flexibility on delivering a regular report.

I would just note that I would in the entrance of transparency wish to begin that in April since the first meeting of implementation does not occur till the end of March. So if I can have council’s understanding for that and we would begin to report on a regular basis in April. I see lots of nodding. So I think we have councils understanding there as a consensus unless anyone is objecting.

And if you wish to object, please do so now. And I’m not seeing anyone doing that. So oh, Councilor Stevenson, comment. Just one request, is it possible to get an update on what’s been spent so far on this health and homeless summit?

Like just to bring us up to date on this project? I think from the LCRN funds we haven’t spent anything yet but I’ll go to Ms. Livingston and see if she can provide some further details. Through you, Mr.

Presiding Officer, we have not spent any resources of the LCRN funding if that is the question. I guess I’m thinking of other funding just to bring us up to speed on the project so far. Ms. Livingston.

Yes, so in terms of the resources spent to support the summits, is that what you are asking for? So we had, it’s under $100,000. We worked with a consulting firm as well as supporting the events to occur at the Hellenic Center. Thank you, Ms.

Livingston. Councilor McAllister, next on the speakers list. If we’re focused on the amendment or the main motion. Amendment, okay, Councilor McAllister.

Thank you and through the Presiding Officer, question with regards to the reporting. So you had mentioned in terms of having the three staff who will support this on the city side, is this reporting being done by them? Or are we asking the partner agencies that we’re working with to allocate their staff in terms of reporting back? Just keeping in mind that we’ve just acknowledged that the hard work that all these agencies have done and in terms of the front line work that they’re trying to accomplish, whether they have the staff complement to be able to provide this reporting to us in a monthly fashion, thank you.

Ms. Livingston. Through you, my understanding of the request is a regular monthly report on the work that’s being done to implement the whole of community system response. So I would envision that that is a report coming from staff, providing Council a sense of the progress.

So for example, when the community identifies the system governance and implementation structure, we would share that information with Council in one of those reports providing a monthly update on where we’re at with implementation along the way would also be the business case once we understand where it is best to allocate the LCRN funding that would also be part of it. So no, I’m not envisioning that this is the work of agencies to do, it would be the work of our staff team that are supporting the implementation to bring the reports forward. That’s how I’m envisioning it. And I see Councilor McAlister nodding, so you’re good with that, Councilor.

Okay, I’ve got Councilor Hopkins next on the list. Yeah, thank you, Mr. Presiding Chair and to the amendment, I appreciate the two amendments coming forward. I do wanna make a comment around the monthly reporting, though, through you, just to staff.

I do see it as being a lot of work on a monthly basis and maybe prematurely just thinking what exactly is gonna be in that report. So I would be okay doing it every other month. I know we spoke starting in April, but I’m just a little bit cautious as to exactly what we as a Council want in that reporting, but definitely having some form of reporting and updates. And like I said, I would be open to even having it every other month or something to that effect as it relates to the LCR and funding.

I think we heard from the city manager exactly with the three staff people and most likely that business case coming forward to us whenever that gets done is fair. When we have spent the LCR and money throughout the past couple of years, we always had that reported back to us, so that makes sense. I would like to just make a comment on the reporting part. And I know there’s a number of community members in our city that have donated to the, that partial $5 million matching funds.

And I do think it is important somehow out there that the community be somehow given not regular updates, but a way of understanding where we are when we are going forward in particular as we’re trying to fundraise to, I think it’s important that the community be aware exactly what we’re doing. We may even have community members here that have donated to the matching funds, but obviously maybe through the city website, but some way that they can see where we are as we go forward with this initiative. So those are my comments, thank you. Thank you for those comments, Councillor Hopkins.

And I will just suggest to colleagues that staff have indicated while it’s aggressive, they feel that they can do monthly reporting starting in April to begin. But of course, we can always change that frequency as time moves on if we find we’re not giving them enough time that’s always council’s discretion to change that reporting structure as well. So I would encourage everybody to keep an open mind and talk to our staff about whether or not that monthly reporting cycle is reasonable once we have things up and running. So I just wanted to share that as we work through the speakers list here.

Councillor Lehman, I have you next. Thank you, presiding officer to the amendment itself. I see value in a month reporting. I don’t want to put onerous tasks on city staff because I want to see this up and running.

I don’t want to see delays either. However, to Councillor Hopkins’ point, there’s a considerable amount of public money coming in and I think transparency here is important to have the confidence of Londoners. And the other point is this is that I want to see us building a sustainable model. We’re very fortunate right now to be coming in with an unbelievable donation as well as monies from the LCR.

And we won’t have that in years to come, but I believe that we need to develop a model that we can continue to operate in a efficient manner that is sustainable. And I think I’m hoping that while monthly reporting might be seen as an additional task so that it can be used to develop that model for building a system in place that we can use for the years to come, which no doubt will begin next year when we talk about our multi-year budget. As far as the LCR and the sorts of funding, I think that’s totally appropriate. I believe COVID is a major contributing factor in what we’re seeing out there.

So I think that’s very appropriate to that. So I will support the amendment. Thank you, Councillor Lehman. I’ve got Councillor Ferreira next.

Thank you and through you for the amendment to the motion, it does sound reasonable. I’d like to read it first, but it does sound like something that I would support. But what I really wanted to say— Councillor, sorry not to interrupt, but the clerk has put it in eScribe now, so you’ll be able to read it there. Okay, thank you.

I really wanted to say, yeah, as Councillor Lehman just said, we are very fortunate. We have a huge donation coming through, and we are also very fortunate for everybody from the community that stepped up and came to the Health and Homelessness Summit, and provided your input. I can see there’s some of you in the gallery right now and some leaders of some of the agencies, and we’re just fortunate for that because you guys have done great work, and we actually have some type of system that seems like it will work. It is a skeleton system, it seems at the moment, and I know that it will be developed further in the future, but at the moment, it’s definitely raising the hope of other Councillors here, and many of the community members that I’ve been speaking to about it, so I’m very grateful for that.

I also just wanted to point out that as we develop further, I do hope that we continue getting your support and your input to develop the plan, especially from the frontline workers and from the agencies in this space, because it’s clearly been very beneficial for us, and it’s helped us a lot, so that’s where I’ll keep it from that, and I’ll check out the amendment for the motion. Thank you. Thank you, Councillor Ferrera. Any other speakers to the amendment?

Councillor Palosa. Just to request that C&E be called separate, please. Okay, we can have the clerk call them separately. Any others?

Councillor Stevenson. Yeah, I just wanted to get in that my focus on the reporting and the accountability and transparency is all because we all so much want help for this population, right? So it’s all about getting the results for this population that needs it so much, and that is the ultimate goal. I think we all share that, and that’s the whole reason for the amendment, is just to be sure, do everything that we can to ensure that the results are met.

Thank you, Councillor Stevenson. Do we have other speakers on the amendment? I see none, so just before we call the vote on this, two things, because the mayor and I have switched seats, I will ask him to vote verbally on the amendment piece, I’ll vote verbally as well, since we’re not logged into our appropriate e-scribes, and I will just say very, very briefly on the amendments, if you’ll indulge me quickly from the chair. The group that we still have to talk to about this plan is the public at large.

We’ve got a really solid blueprint here from those who participated, but I really like the addition of the reporting because I think that’s an opportunity for us to communicate out to the citizens of London where we are in developing this blueprint into a fuller framework. So I will say I know it is going to create some extra work for our staff, and certainly if it becomes too much, I hope you will very much let us know so that we can alter that schedule, but I think it’s very important for us to be able to communicate out to our constituents as individual residents who may not have been part of these discussions so far on where we are. So I will end my comments there, and we will call the vote on C, that’s the amendment to adding, it being noted that civic administration will return to council with a business case detailing the proposed use of the funds. And we will open that for voting in E-Scribe, and the mayor and I will vote verbally and I’ll indicate my vote is yes.

My vote is yes, right? And just for clarification, Councillor Stevenson, I know you had suggested B and D, but if you look in the full agenda in E-Scribe, that the two pieces have been re-lettered so that it actually is C and E rather than B and D. Closing the vote and the motion is passed, 14 to zero. Okay, we will turn now to the main motion as amended.

Oh, sorry, we’ve got part E to deal with first, Councillor Palazzi, you did ask for that to be separated. And thanks to our clerk for getting right on top of us on that. So now we’ll call part E and again, the mayor and I will be voting verbally and I’ll vote yes, mayor, vote yes. Closing the vote, the motion is passed, 12 to two.

Thank you, colleagues. And now we will return to discussion on the main motion as amended. Councillor Stevenson. I apologize, I didn’t catch this earlier, but E does not say monthly, it does.

All right, I take it back. I have no one else on the speakers list. So we will once again open this to vote unless anyone wants to indicate they’d like to speak before we do so. Councillor ramen.

Thank you and through you presiding officer. I just wanted to start by again, thanking the community members, the over 200 individuals that have participated in the summit for their participation and their commitment to looking for new solutions and working on this whole of a community response. I know that Councillor Stevenson also mentioned that sometimes it’s difficult being out of the room for these types of conversations. And one of the challenges I know that I found was that a lot of people were leaving these talks excited about the change that was coming.

And that was wonderful to hear in terms of the renewed hope, especially for folks that were feeling very burnt out or feeling that they were part of a system that was difficult to change. So I wanted to thank those that have taken part in these conversations to city staff for being willing to think differently about the way forward, especially with work that you’ve been, for many of you, dedicated your life to. I will be supporting the plan in front of us and the way forward. And I know for the community and folks that I’ve heard from already, there’s concerns and challenges around accepting a plan that isn’t fully laid out and isn’t fully developed.

And I’m gonna reiterate something that our city manager has been saying around building the bridge as you’re walking across it. And how we will get that out to the public is really important. How we’re building as we’re walking across. And I think that the accountability measures that we’re looking to put in through those amendments that we’ve just now passed are that opportunity to have that conversation with the community about how we build, making sure that we have a really excellent communication as we go forward about how we’re moving this process forward and how it is going to have impact.

My hope is a year from now, we’re going to be hearing an update and hearing the successes of where we’ve gotten to already in this process. But I also think back to your conversation around assessment growth and policing. And I think we’ll have dual successes. And I think that that’s also important to note is we’re undertaking two approaches at the same time that’s increasing our policing, as well as looking at a differentiated community response.

And it’s important to see the system. And I was really pleased to see our emergency services involved and also their commitment to a new approach as well. So I just wanted to thank again, those involved and look forward to supporting this. Thank you.

Thank you, Councilor Raman. Any other questions, comments before we vote? Councilor Raman. Thank you.

Today I met with operators of Tim Hortons up my ward and it was about this type of discussion that all of us have been having for the last number of years. And for the first time, I had what I felt something positive to say to these folks that were feeling incredibly frustrated, feeling that no one was listening and didn’t have any answers. And I guess that’s what it comes down to. When we’ve talked about this issue, it’s so complex.

Everyone recognizes the problem. But what everyone says is, when you ask them, well, what would you do? No one has the answer. And so I’ll say to Ms.

Livingston, thank you for giving us an answer. You took, you took on this role to bring in 70 organizations, 200 people, and somehow come up with a solution where we can start to address this problem. Thank you all to participate in that unbelievable discussion, adventure, hard, I’m sure it was, to achieve some sort of consensus. We had large corporate citizens, kind of life, Libra, et cetera, sitting down with hospitals, sitting down with developers, sitting down with so many social agencies, city staff, economic organizations, and to see a consensus come out of those disparate people in our community, I think, underscore that we’re on the same page here.

We as a council, I think we as a community, want to see this problem addressed. Will this be the solution that ends homelessness and mental health and addiction? No, but I believe honestly that this is a gigantic step in the right direction, which has been mentioned today in our discussion, we’ve seen the balance of, and I see it out in the community. Compassion, compassion for those that are suffering on our streets with mental health issues and addiction, but also a concern about safety for families and well-being for their homes, their businesses, et cetera, and was mentioned by council around just now.

I think as an example, we addressed it both with talk about policing, enforcement, and law and order, but on the other hand, this incredible commitment to this road that we’re about to go down. So Ms. Livingston, thank you for your work on this, for heading this up to all those that were involved in being part of the solution. Thank you so much.

It means so much to ourselves, me as a counselor and to my ward constituents, and here we go. Like I said, this is the first step on a road that’s gonna take many different paths as we go along, but at least we’ve started. So thank you very much. Thank you, Councilor Lehman.

I’ve got Councilor Hopkins next. Thank you, Mr. President Chair, and there’s not too many things that put a smile on my face, that this definitely is, I just wanna give my thanks to the stakeholders in the community for being part of the summit, the frontline workers, Ms. Livingston, and city staff.

I know it’s a team effort. Thank you for making that happen. I know as a board member of AMO and Mayor Morgan spoke about the need for resources and the work that needs to be done and the lobbying, and I am really looking forward to lobbying the provincial government, obviously the federal government, but I am just so proud and pleased that as a city, we’ve all come together and how we move forward, we’ll see what’s going to happen, but I do think that I would like this Council to be known as a Council that has respect and treats the vulnerable people of our city. So thank you.

Thank you, Councilor Hopkins, Councilor McAllister is next. Thank you, and through the presiding officer, I’ll keep my comments brief. I do also wanna express my thanks to everyone who was involved in this landmark collaboration. I think everyone deserves credit for coming together, talking through these very important issues that really have such an important impact on our community and our city at large.

And I think, as everything’s we’ve gone through and said, it’s great that we were able to bring all the partners together, but now it’s up to us, and I would encourage all my colleagues that we now have the duty of moving this forward, and we have to ensure that we maintain the political will to actually see those results that we’re all looking to see. And I would say that this is a call to action for us, that this will probably be one of those defining moments of this term in our council, that we have been given this task. We have heard from the community, we’ve heard from all of our partners, and it’s now up to us to see it through, so thank you. Thank you, Councilor McAllister, I’ve got Mayor Morgan next on the list.

I just wanna add to the debate, ‘cause it’s been raised a couple of times and no offense to the colleagues sitting beside me, that it’s kind of on us. I just wanna be clear that the shared community work and the work of the group that came together will continue on, and there’s two phases that was mentioned that will happen. One is the implementation, and another is essentially setting up the system governance of which I would expect that we would have a role in, but we would not be exclusive to that system governance piece. And so I anticipate, although yes, we have important work to do as a council, we will be part of a continued community collaboration on this, which is the only way this is going to be effective is to have all of these voices that have come together continue to be at the table, continue to be modifying the system, continue to build the bridge that we’re walking across, and kind of keeping people on it as we go.

And so I just wanna be clear that the expectation is not that it’s all us now and we’re getting handed a ball and we’re gonna do everything. This is a shared collaboration that we are now a part of, and will be an important next phase in this work of working together, building on the success that the community has created, but now together as a larger group that involves us on a shared project. I have no other speakers on Councillor Frank. I just wanna say I really like getting good job, everyone.

That was very brief, Councillor Frank. Thank you for being respectful of everyone’s time. I have no one else on the list, so I will get the clerk to open the vote. I am gonna just briefly say from the chair, I wanna echo the thanks that so many people have offered to everyone, and also echo what the mayor just said.

The work is not done, so the challenge is now to continue the work in the next step. And the clerk has opened the vote, so we will ask colleagues to vote, and Mayor, please, in favor, and I will also be voting yes. Opposing the vote, the main motion as amended is carried 14 to zero. Thank you colleagues.

Now this is the part where I should give the mayor a hard time about saying he can’t actually have the chair back until I give it to him, and I could just continue on in the agenda, but I am going to turn the chair back to the mayor now to take us through the rest of the meeting. Yeah, and before we switch seats, colleagues, our staff will engage in the strategic planning discussion, as well as I know a number of people will wanna probably, although you’re welcome to stay, maybe not stay for that, I would like to entertain, and I don’t want people to go anywhere, just a five minute break to allow our staff to get set up for the strategic plan discussion, let the gallery shuffle, so why don’t you lead us through a quick vote on that. So, Councilor Hopkins, you’re willing to support that as well, so we’ve got a motion for a five minute recess, and we can just do this by hand, all those in favor. That motion’s carried.

Colleagues, we will resume at five pm sharp. Okay, we’re gonna get, we’re gonna get going. I just wanna outline for colleagues the approach that we’re gonna take, because we do have a scheduled break at 5.30, which is not long from now, which is why I said that was gonna be a quick short break. We’re gonna have the staff presentation on the, the strategic plan that they prepared for us.

We’re gonna entertain the delegation request, and then at that time, depending on the timing, I think that’ll be probably one more break, and then we’ll come back and we’ll do all of the really efficient, logical, effective work on the strategic plan that we’re going to engage in after the break. So, at this point, I’m gonna turn it over to our city manager to do the staff presentation. Thank you very much, Mr. Mayor.

So, I’ll just walk through an overview. It’s a big night tonight in terms of strategy discussion and lots of information to share. So, I’ll do a quick review of where we’re at in the process. Ms.

Wilcox will then provide you with the results of the community engagement up to this point, and then we’ll move into the strategy’s order of magnitude and metrics. So, just a review of what the purposes of Council’s strategic plan and a reminder of the connections to our allocation of resources through MYB and our technology investment strategy, and the guiding principles, you’ve seen these many times, so I will not reiterate them for you. The timelines that we’re working towards, so seeking to support Council to finalize your strategic plan in April, in May, the multi-year budget process begins, as does the work on the implementation plan with us having that in place for November. So, this process, you’ve seen a number of times, so just highlighting what will happen this evening.

Reviewing the order of magnitude costing is really a tool to assist you in your decision-making with respect to draft strategies, which we would be seeking from you this evening, and then the next discussion would be to review and provide any direction you might have on the draft metrics. That’s where we are this evening. The steps after that are heading to the PPM on March 8th and providing any final direction you might have for the plan, and we would return to you on March 28th with presumably the final draft, seeking Council decision in early. This is the engagement timeline that you’ve also seen a number of times, so we are coming towards the end of the third phase.

Lots of engagement, and Ms. Wilcox will speak to that in just a moment over the last couple of weeks, and through get involved, stakeholder meetings, ward meetings, pop-ups, culminating in the PPM, and you’ll hear some of the information from that, or you will hear the information from that to date. Reminder of our strat plan structure that we’re driving towards and how those pieces all fit together, so strategies which you’re focusing on this evening are the actions to achieve the outcomes and expected results that you’ve set thus far. And with that, I will turn it over to Ms.

Wilcox to walk you through the results of the engagement so far. Thank you, and through the chair. So as Ms. Livingston said, we’ve been quite busy over the last few weeks since February 8th, and this has included continuing to gather input across the organization and through the city’s agencies, boards and commissions and organizational community partners.

It’s also included meetings with advisory committees. Our get involved platform has included all of a continued ability to complete surveys there. We launched a community conversation toolkit which allowed organizations, businesses or Londoners to share their thoughts, host a conversation, and send that into us. There have been many council-led engagement opportunities during this time, and we had community connectors leading pop-ups, and I think to date, there have been about 28 of those that have happened at our busiest centers across the community, and there are seven more planned in the coming week as we lead up to the participation meeting taking place on March 8th.

So across all of our engagement mechanisms, we heard from over 250 Londoners, and that was, again, across all mechanisms, there was the opportunity to share thoughts on the draft vision, mission and values, the areas of focus, outcomes, expected results, and the strategies that were tabled for council on February 7th, so the results I’ll take you through are those from the February 8th to the 24th. On note as well, we’ve included the number of times, so you’ll see an N across all of the themes that we’ve identified. It’s not to represent an individual response, but it’s the number of times we heard a theme across all of our engagement channels, ‘cause if you think at a ward meeting, you might be able to share at a number of post-its at any of the boards, so it’s representative of how many times response was provided across our data collection methods. So again, there was an opportunity to share thoughts around the vision, mission, and values, and our questions were structured around, is there anything that you would like to see added and any other feedback?

So what we heard in this, there are some additional words to be considered, and sometimes that was specific to one of the statements, and sometimes it’s a broad statement around please include more focus on any of the number of themes noted here. There were some feedback, again, about more clarity and specificity in being required. An example would be feedback that stated that these are statements that it’s hard to connect with, so ensuring that Londoners can connect with those is really important. And then we also heard the third theme here that the vision, mission, values had improved from where they started on earlier in January.

When we looked at the areas of focus, there was a section that allowed Londoners to share what is missing or should be added to the areas of focus, and the themes are here. So adding arts and culture as a separate area of focus, again, including definitions and clarifying terms, including affordability, planning and development, focus on environment and green spaces and learning and education. Overall, again, there was a section where Londoners could provide feedback on just general comments on the eight areas of focus, and the feedback here was that there are too many areas of focus considering the order of the areas, and if there would be some consideration in putting them in order of importance. Also, a common theme that there is agreement with the eight areas of focus.

So, again, there’s four responses that indicated that there was a need to further revise the areas of focus to ensure consistency and avoid redundancy and referencing other plans. So I’ll take you through each of the specific areas of focus. So in this section, there was the opportunity to provide feedback on all of the components, so the outcomes, the draft expected results and the draft strategies. And so what we heard in terms of reconciliation, equity and inclusion about what could be added, definitions, including accessibility and anti-abolism, be inclusive of all culturally diverse communities and consider broadening the strategies to include all Londoners.

Any, in terms of overall feedback on this area of focus, there was a common theme that it’s really important to engage Londoners in the implementation of this work and general agreement in having reconciliation, equity and inclusion as an area of focus. We looked at housing and homelessness. What we heard about what could be added were specific strategies related to the variety and continuum of housing options, including mixed use and higher density. Again, the notion of further clarifying and revising some of the language in the strategies and also to include definitions and use plain language, a focus on affordability of housing and also adding a strategy related to accessible and supportive housing.

Overall, in this area of focus, addressing the issue of homelessness, taking action, setting clear goals, getting to the root cause of issues and general agreement. While being in safety, there were a number of things that were noted that could be added. This included addressing issues related to safety, focusing on mental health and addiction supports, financial wellbeing and affordability, including a strategy related to animal welfare and also something around streetlights. Looking at overall, creating recreation arts and cultural activities and opportunities for all that services and life standards are equitable.

General agreement in having this as a specific area of focus and then there were some comments as well and themes around alternative solutions to policing and then ensuring that implementation of this area of focus on the whole is a collaborative effort. For safe London, there was a common theme around including additional populations and taking an intersectional approach in the implementation of this area. And also expanding it to include everyone collaborating with experts and individuals with lived and living experience when it comes to the implementation of a safe London for women, girls, gender, diverse and trans people and a notation that there’s an appreciation of having definitions included here. In terms of economic growth, culture and prosperity, the common themes of what could be added were again, plain language and definitions, a strategy related to keeping people in London and creative place making that focus on safety and expanding.

There’s a strategy on small businesses. So suggestion to expand that beyond small businesses and a strategy about making it easy to do business in London. In terms of what we heard of what could be added here as well, continuation and having a strategy related to vacancy in the core area including non-profits, ensuring that language is inclusive. So example would be an inclusive economy and expanding strategies to be inclusive of recreation, sport, tourism and culture.

Again, overall, ensuring there’s collaboration during the implementation, continuing to invest in and develop the core, more access to arts and culture activities and pieces as well around not solely focusing on the core area and the role of training for police in supporting the implementation of that specific area. Mobility and transportation, adding strategies around reducing traffic congestion and road safety and also improving the efficiency and access to public transit. There were also themes around having strategies that were related to cycling, winter maintenance and snow removal and expanding creating better connections with public transit. Additionally, adding and including accessible transit and paratransit strategies within this area of focus, adding strategies to improve public transit infrastructure and including walkability and regional transit.

And overall, the feedback on this area of focus, when again, when there’s a section to tell us any other feedback you’d like to share, consider how funding affects public transportation and making active transportation a priority. Climate action and sustainable growth, common themes here were clarifying language and providing definitions, having strategies related to infrastructure and development, naturalization and related to planting. And overall, an agreement with this area of focus was a common theme and being more specific in how this work would be implemented in the life of the plan. And the last area of focus is well-run city.

So looking for a common theme that there was a strategies related to communications and engagement and again, definitions and clarifying terms. And that there was a general agreement of the importance of having this area of focus and recognizing the importance and impact of this work. And I wanted to note as well, while we heard from, as I noted in an earlier slide, there were over 250 Londoners that engaged in the process. You were not required to respond to each and every question as part of the survey.

So the end is low in many cases because you may have been able to go in and just add a comment around that specific area that was really important to you and you weren’t required to provide responses across. So the, the theming and the notation with the end for each is reflective of that in the approach in the survey. And I’d be happy to answer any questions related to the engagement in the past few weeks. Okay, questions on the engagement over the last few weeks?

I don’t see any. There’s one, Deputy Mayor Lewis. Sorry, we waited until you moved away and then we decided to ask a question. Sorry for letting Ms.

Wilcox move all the way back to her chair and then calling her back at your worship through you just a very quick question and it relates to the comment that she just offered ‘cause I was noting the same thing. The end factors are fairly low in, well in fact the highest one is 19 and if we had 250 community engagements that would certainly indicate that not everybody responded to everything. I know from the pop-up sessions and my own ward meeting, people can move around the room and focus on the areas they were particularly interested in in the online process. I’m just wondering from a process standpoint and maybe I’m getting overly technical here but how would people have had the option to skip through the survey and not respond to some sections but respond to others?

‘Cause to me when we got this many low ends, people read a lot of areas that they were happy with because they didn’t provide us any sort of change direction. So how was that, I guess, how did that process work? Thank you and through the chair. Yes, thank you for that question.

And I think it’s absolutely is that where when you navigated the survey, you were asked is there anything you would like to add? So we did hear general feedback on, no, I’m good with what is in front of me and moving on to the next question. So these reflect as part of whether it was at a ward meeting or a pop-up or on our get involved site where if you wish to see something added in addition to what was in front of you in draft, then this is what reflects the comments that were received in those questions. Same as the additional questions and overall, this reflects anywhere where, again, we have many people navigate through and say, no, I don’t have any additional comments and go move on to the next question.

Great, thanks for that answer. That’s the only question I had. I think it actually speaks very clearly and strongly to overall from a sample of 250 plus, how much Londoners are pretty supportive of the plan that’s there now. So as we think about that, and especially as we, I know the mayor has an opportunity for us to break soon for dinner, but I would say that it’s certainly something for us to reflect on that most people were supportive of what’s been put out in the draft form so far in most areas.

So just not really need to say to Ms. Wilcox and Mr. Steinberg and Ms. Livingston and the rest of the team, that I think this reflects very positively on what we’ve already got before us.

Okay, any other questions before Councillor Lehman? Yeah, I just want to follow up on Councillor Lewis’s comments there. The amount of work City staff has done is incredible. I know Councillors have held more meetings across the city.

And I want to know how I use this information ‘cause I, for me, at first blush, I see N equals five or N equals 19, N equals 12. I have a city of 420,000 people. It’s been a while since my stats course is at Western, but it would strike me that these are statistically insignificant. How would you suggest we use this information?

I’m gonna let you answer if you’d like, but I would say to the Councillor before you drag Ms. Wilcox into a question like that. As I’ve said before, we get many pieces of information to help us make decisions, whether it’s someone stopping in the grocery store or conversations at doors, emails, phone calls, the information from a survey, discussions with staff, discussions with colleagues. And so a very difficult question, you’re welcome to give it a go, but I certainly recognize that that’s a tough one.

Yes, Councillor Lehman. I, with respect, Chair, I totally understand that. We’re dealing with this particular area of, you know, how we arrive at, you know, our strategic vision, right? And maybe that was an unfair question to say, ask, telling you how to, you’re presenting the information, how we use it is up to me, I guess.

Do you wanna know how this compares? I’m just trying to figure out if this is valuable to me, quite frankly, and correct me if I’m wrong, Chair, I totally appreciate your guidance on this. Like, is it, do I look at this as, you know, if one’s 19 and one’s four, does that mean it’s five times more in favor of, extrapolated across the city? Or is this a bare minimum of some feedback from the community?

So I think that is a fair question. The one that I had a caution about is, the question about how you should interpret this and use it, but I’ll go to this Wilcox on this question. Thank you and through the chair. Yeah, it’s absolutely valuable information to consider, and we’re providing it to you as information you can consider in your decision-making this evening.

I think when you look across, again, given how we’ve structured the sessions and how you can participate in it, I think this brings to the surface the key issues. So of those 250 Londoners that participated and took time to share their feedback, these are the things that were raised as being something that was missing or needing to be added. You’re correct, it’s not a representative sample, that’s about 502 in terms of our community, but it does represent conversations that an organization may have hosted. And again, that’s coming through and highlighting key issues in that conversation or that someone posted at an award meeting or a community pop-up.

So I think it is information to support you in your decision-making and on balance kind of looking and seeing where we may have missed something in terms of the theming or strategies. Thank you. Any other questions on the engagement process piece? Okay, I think you’re good.

Thank you for your work. So that leads me to just introducing how we’ll approach the rest of the evening. We would recommend Mr. Mayor that we, the first discussion would be a full group discussion of all of SPPC with respect to the strategies.

You’ve heard some feedback, as well as the order of magnitude costing as an additional piece of information to consider. So that would be the first piece once council is completed, that we would then move on to the next discussion in terms of any direction you may want to provide with respect to metrics. So that’s how we would suggest approaching this evening. Okay, so thank you for that.

What I’d like to do next colleagues, just given the timeframe is I’d like to entertain the question to you on whether you want to grant, make a motion to grant the delegation. After that point, and we’ve heard from the delegation, we will take a break, a half an hour break that was scheduled, and then we’ll come back and we can ask some more questions of staff or we can get right into the work. So, Councilor Palosa willing to move the delegation? Yes, I’ll move the delegation.

Okay, Councilor Hopkins is second. Any discussion on granting the delegation? Okay, we’re gonna open that for voting. Yes, Councilor Privel, closing the vote.

That motion’s passed 14 to zero. Okay, Mr. Henderson, you got five minutes for your delegation, so go ahead. Thank you.

The presentation I’m gonna make today was prepared in collaboration with Pillar, not-for-profit, the Grand Theater, Museum London, and other members of the business, cultural, and not-for-profit community. The fact that the business, cultural, and not-for-profit community stands as one on this presentation, I think should speak to the importance that we together place on culture, creativity in the arts, and their place in the strategic plan. From a business perspective, tourism together with a thriving cultural and sporting tapestry is absolutely essential for the growth and prosperity of our city. And there, I will say, there is some consternation in the cultural and business community about where we are, currently with the plan.

And I do not believe that you should necessarily consider the results of the consultations so far as dispositive of the mood. So I’m going to run very quickly through the changes that we believe should be added. And they were put into your emails. You have a black line, and you’ve got a clean copy to look at.

So I’m going to go quickly through them. Expected result, 1.1, we would suggest the change, strengthen existing and introduce new partnerships. We would suggest removing the words, improve city of London processes, and supports for businesses and entrepreneurs, and replace it with more inclusive wording. Create a regulatory framework in which businesses, entrepreneurs, cultural, and not-for-profit organizations can prosper and grow.

1.4, add the words and retain talent to the result. In 2.1, city of music, use existing, and then add the words and create new assets. And then we have suggested a range of new strategies for you to consider. To initiate professional and artistic exchange programs.

To undertake research and analysis on the local impacts of culture, sport, and recreation and heritage. To undertake communications and awareness-raising activities. To work collaboratively. To ensure London’s cultural and heritage venues are inclusive and well-maintained.

And to actively support the work of Heritage London. 2.2 was focused exclusively on film, which we feel is overly granular. And we would suggest that that expected result be more inclusive thusly. Enhanced and increased creation and distribution of all cultural activities, goods and services.

And yes, notably film and music. We would suggest that databases be created not just for filming, but also recording. That we market London not just as a film center, but to creative producers throughout all cultural industries. That we support and promote not just a film festival, but all festivals and events.

That we continue to promote London’s creative film industry. But all other creative industries as well. And we would advocate creating a plan to attract and retain cultural workers. We would also suggest that you add a third.

And that is to work in the area of tourism. So that London is recognized as a premier tourism destination. Outcome 3 is also very granular. That currently focuses on musical talent.

We believe that this is one of the most critical changes you could make. To say instead that London will integrate creativity and culture into local development strategies and plans. Now if you look at 3.1, 3.2, 3.3, they all basically say the same thing. And we believe they can be simplified into one important statement.

That Londoners have increased access to and participation in cultural and creative activities, both as creators and consumers of culture. And then as strategies, we retain all of the great strategies that have been brought to you so far. But by adding a couple, importantly, to develop hubs of creativity and innovation. And more opportunities for creators and professionals in the creative and culture sectors.

To increase access to existing spaces. And to simplify permitting procedures and reduce costs. To rationalize and improve bylaws and regulations. 30 seconds.

Yep, I’m there. To create a more music and musician-friendly environment. And most importantly, not most, but update the cultural prosperity plan. Those are my remarks.

OK, thank you for the delegation. As I said to colleagues, at this point, I think it would be appropriate for us to take the break. We know what we’re expected to work on tonight. We’ve got a plan.

We’ve heard a delegation with some suggested changes to this. I will note for colleagues, if you’re looking to make some of the changes that have been suggested, it will require a counselor to suggest to do so as we work through the document, which we will do after a break. So without further ado, I’d entertain a motion to break for 30 minutes. Councillor Frank, seconded by Councillor Ferrera.

Any discussion on breaking? Oh, by hand, I did that by hand. OK, we’ll do that by hand. All those in favor?

That motion’s passed. OK, we’ll see in 30 minutes. OK, I’m going to call the meeting back to order. So before the break, we had the presentation from staff just on outlining where we are today.

We had a delegation. And now we’re going to work through section by section, the draft strategies. And if colleagues are looking to revisit either an outcome or an expected result, you can kind of do it as we go through. But my preference here is to do these slowly, one at a time, get everything done in that, and make a decision on whether or not we’re putting something in, and then move on to the next piece.

So I’m going to let the city manager just kind of introduce where we are. And obviously, if you have a question about what a draft strategy means, then we can go through that. But why don’t you lead it off, and we’ll move forward. Thank you, Mr.

Mayor. So as you can see on the screen, well, we would propose to start with the first area focus of reconciliation, equity, and inclusion. And you can see the outcomes expected results and strategies. As the mayor has said, the focus tonight is the strategies.

However, if there are changes to any of the other components that you would like, we will do that. So you can see the first two. I believe there’s three in this section. So you can see the first two.

And I’ll just, Mr. Mayor, leave it in your hands. Sure. Councillor Stevenson.

That’s OK. Thank you, and through the chair. I’m just wondering from staff, we’ve got a lot of dollar signs now in the one section. So at what point is the right time to start looking at some of these you want us taking out some of the ones that we think aren’t going to make the cut based on the dollar signs?

Your worship, yes. That’s exactly— I’m not sure I would say make the cut. But the idea of the orders of magnitude was to give you a sense of, if we do this strategy, is there a cost above base budget? What is the range of that cost?

So that if you want to include the strategy, you’re aware of the potential cost, of course, the specifics of that get addressed through the multi-year budget. But it may also influence you to say, no, I don’t want it. I don’t want to consider it. It’s not where we want to put resources at this time.

So it’s just meant to be an additional piece of information as you think about what you might like to do with the strategies. Go ahead. So based on that, when I look at this section of the strategic plan, we’re at four to almost $9 million. We’ve got two, four, six single dollar signs and a $3 sign.

May I ask 1.1 B, has $3 signs beside it? Can we maybe have an understanding as to why that’s so expensive? Dickens. Thank you.

And through you, your worship, this particular strategy speaks to additional Indigenous specific funding to implement the GWTOSH cut Indigenous homelessness strategy and to some overall continuation to support the implementation of that plan, including supporting some of the capital needs for an Indigenous healing hub and some of the Indigenous outreach programs attached to the GWTOSH cut plan that previous council has supported. Before I go back to Councillor Stevenson on that, do we allocate money? So I guess what I want to determine is when there’s dollar signs, is this new money or is this spending some allocated money? Because in that case, I think there was money allocated, but not spent yet.

And so I think we want to get a sense on ongoing cost moving forward. So Mr. Mayor, I want to be clear that where the dollar signs are, it’s where there’s incremental costs of new operating or a new capital. We’ve tried to give a range to help inform councils thinking about each of the strategies.

The specifics— so if the strategy is left in, I’m not going to say it’s $3 or $2 signs. We will do the work through multi-year budget to bring forward the specific business case around those components. This is just to give a sense order of magnitude of the implications. And just a reminder on that particular strategy, that is a council approved plan.

Just before I go to— I have other people to speak, but I want to go back to the council, OK? Councillor Hopkins. Yeah, just following up on Mr. Livingston’s comments around the business case.

So just so I understand that if we do go forward, a business case will come back to us. And then that would be the time that we would agree or not to do it. Yes, you’re worship. So this is the connection between the strategic plan and the multi-year budget.

So the next step, once we have council’s strategic plan, if there is this strategy in it, then it would transfers into the work of the multi-year budget, which the multi-year budget includes business cases for new funding. So council would be very clearly making that decision. What the multi-year budget also does, where there are year-over-year strategies, would be our best efforts at the pacing of the implementation of that strategy, which would also, if there’s new dollars, whether it’s operating or capital, would come forward as business cases through the multi-year budget process. Councillor Roman.

Thank you, and through you. I guess in the first section, that’s where I was a little bit confused, because where there were some items with dollar signs, and then there were some without any dollar signs, I just don’t want to give anybody the false impression that some of these things do not require any funding, or do not require perhaps any death resources or things like that, because I know some of them do, based on the work that we’re doing. So I’m just trying to figure that piece out. And with the explanation that Mr.

Dickens gave us around B, 1.1 B, I’m just wondering why that would show up here and perhaps not further down in the plan related to housing or related to some of our other strategy work. I can see why it shows up here, but I’m just wondering if maybe then it somehow almost seems double-counted in a way, thanks. Go ahead. I will, through you, Mr.

Chair, I will tackle the first question and then refer to Mr. Dickens for the second. So this is any incremental funding. So we do have an ARAO division.

They have a budget. There are positions that are funded. There is one that is temporarily funded, which is why a dollar sign shows up here to indicate making that position permanent. That’s part of what’s in some of these.

So the way to look at it is not that they’re— the way to understand it is, yes, there’s existing funding. If we’re not putting a dollar sign, that’s because we believe we can deliver their strategy within existing resources. If there is a dollar sign or whatever number of dollar signs, it’s trying to say we would need additional resources to be able to deliver. Can I— sorry, Mr.

Dickens, go ahead. Thank you, and through you, Chair. The reason that it’s in this part of the strategic plan is because the work is indigenous-led and not civic administration-led. And we felt that it was better reflected there with the intentionality that it’s tied to the indigenous work.

So I just want to step back for a sec, before we go too far down the costing and what it means path, so that we’re all on the same page on the approach here. So I’d like you to comment on the following, if you could. So we’re going to go through the strategic plan process. Some of these things you feel like you can address within existing budgets.

Some of them are having incremental costs where indicated with different magnitudes. In some cases, there may be opportunities to engage with other partners, like provincial and federal governments, potentially, to take on some of the costs in some cases. But all of that will be fleshed out in the multi-year budget process through business cases. So the question probably on some of my colleagues’ minds is, how do we reconcile?

This sounds really good. I’d like to do it and put it in the strategic plan. And when we get to the multi-year budget, say, with all the things in the multi-year budget, we can’t afford to do everything. So we’re not doing this now.

Where does that leave us from a strategic plan perspective of putting something in that maybe we don’t fund? And how do you suggest we approach that in a way that is genuine to staying true to the strategic plan, but reconciling that we have to have a budget discussion about limited resources later where the details will be? It comes down to the pacing. So we are trying to be transparent with counsel that if you choose a strategy, we anticipate there will be an incremental cost.

And to give you a range of that— it’s by no means a budgeting exercise. It’s just to say, when you get to the MYB, don’t be surprised if you see a business case. What you can be assured is that at civic administration, we would be paying a lot of attention. Counsel will likely give us a range to work within.

And we would do that. And we will be giving a lot of consideration to how we minimize tax impacts. We always do that. We just did that for the last budget update.

But we want there to be an understanding for some of these strategies to be implemented and investment is required. But the specifics of how much, over how many years, that’s what comes through the MYB. I hope that was helpful, a context for colleagues, because there’s a point where we can chop some things out now. There’s also a point where we’re after the PPM or any time through the strategic planning process.

There’s also a time where we can adjust the pacing and timing of things to control costs to down the road. Obviously, though, if you put a whole bunch of things that cost in there, it’ll be tricky. Oh, I’ll go to Ms. Barmo.

Thank you, through your worship. Just to add to that, after the strategic plan is completed, the very first step that will set the stage for the MYB in addition to what Ms. Livingston said is that there will be a target setting exercise. So that’s where counsel will be able to direct us what the parameters of which, perhaps, what the investments that the council would want to do to be able to guide us to the extent of the pacing and what we would then be bringing back as part of the multi-year budget.

So where are these orders of magnitude may be helpful? Is perhaps you might tweak language because given the significance of it, you may wanna tweak it so that it’s maybe not as significant, perhaps, given there’s many things that you may wish to do. So it’s really intended to be a tool so that council fully understands the implications, and then the MYB will start with the target setting where we will get the direction as to how much investment the council and the tax rates you may wish to support, and then we would do the work to bring back on the MYB, how we would implement the council strategic plan with the business cases that would fit within those ranges provided by council. Councillor Stevenson.

Thank you. Given the dollar figures on this section already, that we have a new department that’s just been created in the last couple of years, and the request that I’ve seen come back in the small feedback that we’ve had around having less focus issues, and to be more focused, I would like to vote on each of the ones with the dollar sign on here, to vote whether we wanna keep them, and I’d also like to know which one of these is the one that makes full-time the position that we have in the department. So I wanna go to the question first on the— Your worship, that is 2.1A. 2.18 doesn’t have incremental additional investments, so that’s something that, although not funded, you feel like you could do with an existing button.

Sorry, there should be a dollar sign there. Do I have the wrong one? 2.1A is correct, yes. It’s making a position that we have funded temporarily permanent.

I don’t have the permanent dollars for it. Sounds like we need to add a dollar sign. There are. Oh, where am I looking?

Your worship, these are the strategies the order of magnitude is accepted. No, that’s not scrolling down on the page that I had. I see the dollar sign now. So Councillor Stevenson, you said you wanted to vote on all of the things with dollar signs.

I’m just recommending that at this point, we just confirm that we do want those still in there, now knowing that there are dollar signs beside those, and that one relates to a position that’s temporary that is looking to be made permanent, and that the other one is part of a previous commitment. My understanding is 1.1B was previously proved by Council, so knowing that. I guess we’re at a point in the process where I think the colleagues want to take something out, we certainly could. We still have a PPM on some of these matters too, so there may be some desire from some colleagues to keep some things in to get that additional direct information from the public as well, before we decide to lop some stuff off.

So rather than vote on each and every one, which would be time consuming, and we still have to work through all the metrics, if there’s something that someone feels like they think now is the time to take it out, it might be best to deal with those as one-offs. Knowing that we can take another go at this after the PPM as well, and knowing that if we make some adjustments to the draft strategies, or even the expected outcomes based on, say, the delegation or something else, that there may be additional adjustments that need to be made to the strategies and the order of magnitude costs. So I think before we just get too far down the path, we should decide when are we going to do what, so that we’re not doing the work twice. So I think, and I see the city manager’s hand up, I think what might be advantageous is like, let’s deal with the things that you really would like to take out now, and otherwise leave them with the option that we can take them out later to the city manager.

Your worship, I just also want to be clear that these dollar signs aren’t all for civic administration, they also, this is a rollup of all the ABCs, so this reflects, for example, actions the London Public Library might need to take, or our conservation authorities, thank you, I lost the name, there for a moment. So just, it’s not just civic administration, we’re just trying to give you a sense of the whole picture. Go to Councillor Hopkins. Yeah, thank you, and just to follow up what you said, Mr.

Mayor, I wonder if it is the right time now to remove anything given that we have not had a public participation meeting yet, and maybe through you to staff, is that exactly what you’re looking for, is what we can remove, or can we just add as opposed to subtract, and then after the public participation meeting, get into the weeds? Go ahead. Mr. Mayor, I’m truly in the hands of council, we were anticipating receiving some direction this evening on changes to the strategies that you may wish to have, so that we could turn that around for the PPM, and we anticipate more changes coming out of the PPM, I just want to remind you that we’re trying to get to final direction, coming out of March 8th, so that we can give you a final draft on March 28th.

So if you’re able to provide direction this evening, that’s great, and we anticipate further direction on the 8th as well. Yeah, I’m gonna go to a couple more Councillors who have some thoughts, and then I’m just gonna make a decision on how we’re gonna proceed. Councillor Ferrera, I’m sorry I missed you, and bumped Councillor Hopkins in front of you, go ahead. And thank you and through you, no worries for missing me, I just, I wanted to point out you actually, you kind of alluded to it, Mr.

Mayor, and Mr. Berbal and kind of alluded to it too, but the phasing in of everything, from what I understand, doesn’t have to be within the four year multi-year budget, it can actually be beyond that, so if we consider, I just wanna, that is correct, sorry. Thank you through your worship, that’s with the pacing, so absolutely, and that’s what some of the budget discussion is, is that if Council is trying to stay within a certain parameter, it may be begun within the next multi-year budget, but it may not actually be completed, so really what the Council has is the ability to set what the investment is over that period of time, and it can be as slow or as quick, and certainly through the direction, through the target setting, we would look at putting forward an implementation plan that would be in accordance with Council’s wishes, so that could be as fast or as quick, or as slow as Council would like to see that proceed. And thank you, I just, like, I wanted to just kind of clarify that a little bit more, just to point out that, that is also a strategy, like, you know, we do have huge costs here, and obviously we’re gonna have to make some cuts, but for some things that we do really wanna prioritize some, you know, big ticket items, we can push it down a little bit further than the four year multi-year budget, so that is a strategy as well, thanks.

Thank you, I have Councillor Frank and then Councillor Layman. Thank you, yes, and I just wanted to perhaps echo Councillor Hopkins’ points and share that, I feel at this point, I don’t have enough information to start taking things off of this list, and I’d rather see, like, true costing, while I appreciate the work that staff has done and to try and give us some best estimates, I’m much happier to kind of believe it as is, and then do some thinning as needed later, but I don’t wanna miss any of the good work that we want the community to do, so thank you. Councillor Layman. Just a quick question, the incremental operating costs from 24 to 27, is that annually, or is that the total sum of four years, so the annual impact would be divided by four?

Thank you, that would be the annual incremental cost. Through you, Chair, so just a quick calculations, taking the low end of the range, and each thing adds up to, like, 81 million dollars annually. Like, I just, you know, it’s great to throw in everything in the kitchen sink, but when do we make some decisions? Do we go through this whole process, knowing that that, I think, rough back in the envelope, that’s like a 13% increase, without even talking about costs that just inflationary costs of sustaining current services.

I don’t want to create a false expectations, or be a lot of work for staff only to come to this point. We’re about, you know, in the strap plan, or for your budget, to do a massive job pairing this back. Go ahead. Your worship in the past strategic plan, I’ll just use that as an example, ‘cause some counselors went through this process.

Council set a strategic plan, and then went through the multi-year budget exercise. There were some strategies, out of the multi-year budget exercise, that were then not funded. So that, the way we reported on that is just to say, it wasn’t implemented because funds weren’t provided to do it. So it was indicated initially as a desire, but when the details around the specifics of the funding became clear, that’s when, I’m just sharing with that as, I mean, you can change it now.

There’s also the option to address it through the multi-year budget process. Go ahead, Councilwoman. So we finished the strap plan, you know, we’re kind of the things that we want to address. Then we get to the four-year budget.

Do you go from a top-down approach, you kind of get a feel for tax increases, and kind of bring suggestions to get into kind of that narrow range? I don’t remember four years ago, having to make, you know, that much of a, you know, there was tweaks, and what we got from staff was pretty reasonable. It was there, I mean, we had to make some adjustments, so it wasn’t of this magnitude. Your worship, that will be the exercise that we undertake.

So as Ms. Barbone indicated, the first step will be for Council to set the target. What range do you want us to work within? And then we will develop an MYB that works within that.

It may, to Councilor Furrer’s point, draw the pacing out over many more years. We may say to you, you can do this much, which ties to the targets, right? So that ties to the targets around, which is why you see metrics, not targets yet, right? So that’s the interrelationship, and that’s what sets the pacing and magnitude of what can be achieved.

And I do remember that from the last process. When we got to the multi-year budget, there was that chart that said, this is how much is inflationary pressure, this is how much is related to your strategic priorities, this is how much is related to the agency boards and commissions, and we kind of had that laid out, so we could see what percentage of the increase was related to what? The way we made decisions, I think was through the business case process, and some were recommended, some were for consideration, and some we said yes to, and some we didn’t, and I think that’s what the city manager’s saying. For some of the ones we didn’t, guess what, if it was a priority in the strategic plan, we voted not to fund it, it didn’t get done, and it’s recorded as not completed, ‘cause it’s not funded.

Okay, I do have others on the speakers, as I have Deputy Mayor Lewis. Thank you. So I will say, if there’s something, somebody feels really strongly, they won’t hold out tonight. I’m certainly willing to entertain that.

When I looked through this, and this is just some constructive feedback for staff for the future, perhaps we could have a couple more brackets of costing where those upper gaps or those upper ranges are not quite such a large range. When we move from the first two brackets where we’re talking about half a million dollars, and I know because some things are very expensive, you have to have a bit broader range at the top, but when we go from 5 million to 19.9 million, as Councillor Layman alluded to, even using the low end of the number is very high, and I would be concerned about underestimating for myself in my decision-making process, what kind of pressures we might be putting on staff to meet those budget targets that we will encourage later. So that’s just some feedback for the future. I will say that I absolutely recognize, and I’m gonna share an example from the last strategic plan, and I might open some old wounds for some people who might be tuned in, but there was a big funding ask, and it was in the strategic plan, and Councillor Squire and I argued to take it out because we weren’t going to do it.

It stayed in anyway, and then the multi-year budget came along, and the back to the river bridge lookout thing at the forks of the Thames was not funded and was canceled. So that it’s in the strategic plan does not guarantee that it is going to be funded. Priorities change, circumstances change as well. We have all lived that in the last four years, how radically circumstances can change.

So I would just say I am comfortable if people have some suggestions that they want to delete tonight or that they want to add. I’m happy to hear either of those options. I will say for me, the concern is that I’m not sure in terms of the things with the four and $5 signs in the legend, where we would reasonably as a council be looking to make reductions. Certainly the pacing might change, but these are some pretty core when we’re talking about housing, transit, policing, and some climate change mitigation measures.

Those account for some pretty significant dollar signs in this scoping exercise. So I would say that I’m not sure how much of this is really something to remove versus it’s more of a discussion around pacing in the future. So I just wanted to share those thoughts, but if anyone has strong feelings on any of these, I think we can, the public has seen the draft for a little while. Yes, we will have some public participation on the eighth.

I have yet to sit through a public participation meeting where the gallery has people suggesting that we remove things. Everybody always wants the stuff added, but very rarely does somebody say, you know what, I’m gonna offer up this suggestion for a reduction, that’s incredibly rare. So if there’s something that you do feel should be removed, I’m certainly happy to entertain that at least tonight and see where that discussion goes. But I don’t think we should rule out everything goes forward just because it’s in there tonight.

Okay, I think, Councillor Ferra, I have you on the list again, and then I’m gonna make some comments, so go ahead. Thank you, Mr. Merritt, through you. I have actually, Councillor Lehman, when you actually brought up the incremental operating cost actually kind of sparked a question to me.

I thought I knew the answer, but I thought I would just kind of pose that to staff and see what the actual answer is. And on the total capital cost side of things, that is not something that’s ongoing, obviously. That’s like a one-time thing. So that’s just one question I do have another one after.

Capital costs, go ahead. Thank you, three-worship. Capital cost is the total capital cost, and because that is a one-time, it is the full total cost. And there are also a range of ways to fund capital costs.

It could be debt, could be capital levy and hit, actually hit the tax base. It could be pulling from reserve fund if there’s, or reallocating reserve funds. So those sorts of sources of funding will come out in the business cases associated with them. We won’t have that detail today, okay?

So here’s how I’d like to, oh, go ahead, sorry, go ahead. Thank you. And sorry, my last question, I’ll keep it really brief. The ones with the $5 signs, the 20 million plus, is there any way to gauge how much more of that 20 million, like 20 million plus could be 20 million to 50.

So I just wanted to know if there’s like a way we can look at that to really kind of, if we would know how close it is to that number. Might have to ask a question when we get to that one, because I think they might have different answers, depending on the dollar signs, but go ahead. Thank you through the chair. That may be, and depending on what strategy there, we may have some ideas, but again, it would ultimately potentially be timing to the pacing and potentially other sources of financing to truly, we could give you an estimate, depending on what that is specifically, if you’d like to know details on something, we could provide that information.

But again, depending on the pacing, that probably could change also. Okay, so here’s how I’d like to proceed. I know in early on in this strategic planning process, I did the very friendly, let’s throw everything in, and we’ll kind of do it at the end. I think we’re to the point where, for efficiency and to keep things going, I’m gonna move more to, if you want something out, you’re gonna make a motion to take it out, and I’m gonna see if there’s a seconder, and then we’re gonna vote on it.

If you want to change language, you’re gonna make a motion to change language in that item. I wanna see if there’s a seconder we’re gonna vote on it, and we’re gonna proceed through that way, so we don’t get ourselves to a position where we’ve got a whole bunch of stuff that people may or may not agree to, and we have to pull it all back apart. So that means as we go through these sections, if you want to make a change, make a specific motion for the change. If you wanna take something out, make a specific motion, and we’ll proceed that way.

And I think that way we can make some decisions, and just realize these will not be our final decisions, just because something goes one way here, it may be because colleagues feel like it should stay in for the PPM, but might be willing to revisit that later. So I think put what you think you feel you need to at this point on the table. But for efficiency, I’d like to just proceed that way so we can roll through this. It’ll still be time-consuming, but we’ll be able to make some decisions, I think, tonight, and draw some conclusions.

So with that, sorry, I’ll go to Councillor Stevenson, and then we’re gonna start to proceed. Yeah, I just wanna say thank you, and I’m happy with that. I thought I’d checked prior to making that as to how and when to do this. I am just conscious of the financial strain that a lot of people are under right now and just wanting to be conscious about that.

I was excited to see how many of these could be done with existing resources, and I’m happy to move forward, however Council wants. So that means that’s the process we’re gonna follow. So as we go through these sections, our staff are gonna introduce them. If you have a question, you can ask a question, but if you’re looking to make a change, before we get through the section, suggest the change.

Okay, so I’ll go back to Ms. Livingston. I think we’ve got our plan now, and we can proceed. Yes, your worship, thank you for that clarity.

So we’re at the first area of focus, reconciliation, equity, inclusion, and on the screen you see the first two outcomes and the related strategies. So any changes to wording or— So what we’ve got is first section, outcome one, outcome two and the related strategies associated with them. Is anybody looking to make changes to those areas? You can go to the next, sorry, I think we need to, we didn’t have outcome three on the screen, so just allow colleagues to see.

Yes, so now the screen we’ve got outcome two and outcome three, is that how you wish to proceed based on what people can see on the screen? Yes, I just want, ‘cause we’re looking at the screen, so I think we’re dealing with what’s on the screen, so then once we’ve dealt with that, we’ll go to the next part. So that means, I think we did one and two there, so now we’re on just three at the bottom. So any changes to outcome three, I just question, we’re doing the outcomes and strategies, but we’re gonna do the metrics after this.

Okay, so metrics are coming after this before anybody starts to jump into the metrics discussion. So no changes for outcome three, no adjustments there, so we’ll move to the next section. So housing and homelessness and on the screen are outcome one and down to 2.4 of outcome two. Okay, so housing and homelessness, you see 1.1 all the way to 2.4, so we’ll deal with outcome one and outcome two in their subsections.

Changes to this area, just let me know. I don’t see any, so if you can scroll now to what outcome three on. So the last outcome in this area is outcome three. Outcome three changes, proposed outcome three, onto the next section.

Yes, Mr. Mayor, so we’re at wellbeing and safety, so we’re looking at the strategies for outcome one that go all the way with the expected results to on the screen 1.4. Okay, so this is wellbeing and safety, 1.1 to 1.4, all of outcome one. Actually, it’s not all of outcome one on the next page, it’s more strategies for outcome one.

Nothing here, okay, you can go to the next group. So the remainder of that first outcome all the way down to 1.9 in the associated strategies. Changes to this, exterior. So that leads us to outcome two of wellbeing and safety and the strategies tied to all the way down to 2.4.

Outcome two to 2.4, no changes. If anybody wants me to slow down, I don’t want to have to go back, so just do as London is an affordable and supportive community for individuals and families. There are four areas under that that are on the screen. Councilor Palosa, go ahead.

Thank you, just my concern, I guess just in wording or interpretation of 2.1, housing in London is affordable and attainable. Just the part being ensure that there is an adequate supply of lands for new home and services, just making sure that this implies like, we have undeveloped land also redevelopment in fill, but it’s not specific just to sprawl, just through you to staff. Mr. Mathers.

Through the chair, that’s my interpretation of it, but if there’s more clarity required, then that can be added, but that would be my interpretation that it’s all forms of housing. I’m satisfied. Thanks, Councilor Palosa. Good to move on from this area.

I wanted to make sure you’re good. Okay, we’ll go to the next area. So the next section area focuses safe London for women, girls, gender diverse and trans people. And I think the entire area is here on the screen with all of the strategies.

So this entire area changes. Through you, your worship to staff, I just have a question about language when we are, and I’m gonna use this as a broad brush statement for all of the draft strategies here. When we are talking about gender diverse, I want to make sure that staff are interpreting that as inclusive of all the different identities within the LGBTQ+ community. And I’m seeing nodding of heads, so I’m satisfied with that.

I just wanted to, that was a question that was asked of me, and I wanted to ensure that I have some of staff. Okay, you got the nodding answer, you’re happy with okay. Any other questions or changes to this area? Okay, you can go to the next one.

The next area focuses economic growth, culture and prosperity, and I might suggest we just go outcome by outcome here, ‘cause there have been a number of suggestions made this evening, so we’ll start with outcome one, 1.1 to 1.4, and all the associated strategies. Yes, and so there was a delegation that had some suggestions here, so I prefer colleagues to be specific and not make a, I want to accept every recommendation that the delegation made, so if you’re looking to adjust, and you can be relevant, so if there was a suggestion that a few be combined into one section, so if you’re gonna suggest that, you can suggest that, but let’s go through 1.1, I have Deputy Mayor Lewis first. Thank you, Your Worship, specifically on 1.2, where the increased economic activity from our core in the greater community. I did hear, and I think that the comment from our delegate tonight that suggested through key service partners, including, and there was the suggestion of the addition of the London Chamber of Commerce, LEDC, Tech Alliance, SBC, and the business improvement areas.

I do think that adding the Chamber of Commerce to that list specifically makes some sense, so I’d like to move that we amend that language to include the Chamber of Commerce in strategy A bracket A. Okay, so to a slight process improvement to what I suggested, if it’s moved and seconded, I’m gonna ask if there’s consensus, if there is, we’re not gonna have to go through the whole loading in the system and voting, we’re just gonna accept the change. If there is a consensus, like if I see a hand raise that there isn’t consensus, we’ll do a vote. So we know the suggestion that’s been made to add in those other partners in 1.2, is there a consensus on making that change that’s moved and seconded, yes, not consensus?

Oh, so if you don’t, I got it, okay, you’re thirding, so we’re good. Does anybody object to this change? I’ll ask it that way, that’s a better way to ask. No, a question, go ahead.

This is a piece, he said the Chamber of Commerce, but then you said the partners, plural, so I just wanna make sure, are we talking about Chamber of Commerce? Are we talking about the other? I think you’re suggesting to add the language in the Chamber of Commerce, Comma, Hiller, Comma, LEDC, so just a specific change that was suggested to 1.2, if you have the document that Mr. Anderson passed around, you’ll see the exact language, so that’s the change that we’re suggesting.

So no one objects to that, okay. Mr. Mayor, can I just confirm that Council can actually see this, like on the screen in front of, you can’t see it in front of you? This is the problem, okay.

So that’s why we’re, that they can’t see it. See, I got multiple screens, so I’m just saying, I don’t know how to help here, ‘cause that’s why you’re asking the question, you can’t see what’s in front, or can you? No, I’m on the strategies. Can you see the change we’ve made?

Okay, all right, if you can see the change we’ve made. So yeah, so if you help, if you toggle your screen to the non-voting screen, you should see the staff making the suggested changes that get moved in seconded, so that you can, I can ask for your consensus on that. So that’s the button in front of you. Thank you, Councilor Flosa, you should have that on your screen just because of the way that the E-Scribe works, so you should be okay.

So you see the change, I just had a question, but I don’t think anybody objected to us just caring for that change in 1.2. So I’m gonna say that’s good. So we’re still in outcome one, any other changes that colleagues want to suggest, and do you want us to go through 1.1, 1.2, or just all of outcome one? All of outcome one, your worship, unless there’s— Yeah, let’s deal with them when it comes together.

So other changes in outcome one that you’d like to make. Go ahead. Yes, in 1.4, I do think it’s all so reasonable in the language that says, is a regional center that proactively attracts and retains talent because I do think that sometimes there’s a need to work on our talent retention as well. So I would be moving that change.

So you see the change on the screen? Is there a seconder for that change? Okay, I see multiple seconders. Does anybody object to that change being added in?

Objections online? Okay, so that change stands. Councilor Pribble. I do it for the same 1.4 and a recommending to add as a destination for new investments, education and talent.

So I’m recommending to add education after investments. Based on just the investment, investments and talent, it includes education as well. So attract and retain skilled workforce by marketing London as a destination for new investments, education and talent. Is there a seconder for that change?

You can see it on the screen. Councilor Cuddy is willing to second that. Anybody object to adding in that word education there? Okay, that change will stand too.

Other changes to outcome one. And I should know we can make wording changes to outcome one as well, if you want. It’s not just the subsections. No one suggested that, but I’m just letting you know that now is the time if you’re thinking about that.

We good with outcome one being done? Councilor Pribble. Actually the one that was 1.1 strengthened partnerships. I did like the proposal strengthened existing and introduced new partnerships.

So I’m proposing to add the existing and introduce new into the 1.1 A. Okay, so it doesn’t limit us only to the existing ones. So we are focused and more aggressive on gaining new as well. Understood, is there a seconder for making that particular change?

Okay, Councilor, Deputy Mayor Lewis, any objections to that addition? Oh, this process is working well so far. So keep with it. Okay, that’s a change that will stand as well.

Now that I’ve said that, the next one is gonna go to a vote for sure. Other changes to outcome one. Let’s move to outcome two. The outcome two, changes to outcome two.

Councilor Pribble. I did like also the recommendation 2.1, use existing and create new assets. So again, we are not just working with what’s already in place. We are being proactive, looking into new as well.

That’s 2.1 B. Is there a seconder to add that in? Okay, Councilor Ferra. Any objections to adding that language in?

Sorry, go ahead. Do you object to— Well, before I write consensus or objection, I would like to, through you ask staff, their interpretation of creating a new assets. Because this is focused on the UNESCO city of music. And it does talk about a destination for arts, culture, and sport.

But would we be interpreting this as, in terms of new assets, things that align with our other plans that have already been developed. For example, our Parks and Recreation Master Plan. Because if we’re talking about things like investigating the building of a performing arts center or something, then I’m objecting. If we’re talking about we’re renovating existing facilities and maybe we’re, the new is things that are in other parts of our plan.

Then I’m fine with that. So I just want to know how staff would interpret that. Through the chair, the current interpretation is more the promotion or the building the existing resources, like an incubation of those types of things. It doesn’t actually include facilities.

So if that, if you want that to be very much clear, then just ensure that that’s included in the actual strategy. But that’s what staff say. I want to go back to the person who had to do and to make sure that’s Councillor Pribble’s intention. Plan intention.

Sorry. That was my intention. I don’t know if it’s the same as delegate, but that’s certainly, what Mr. Mater’s just said that was my intention, my personal intention.

Okay. So honestly, with respect to the delegation, it’s up to us on how we want to interpret it. So as long as we have consensus with our staff and what you’d like to do, that’s what we need to do at this point. And if honestly, the delegation or anybody else in the community feels like it should be expanded, there’s a PPM to make that suggestion to us.

And if someone wanted to suggest that we do a performing arts facility, we would change that language based on feedback that we got from the public. So, okay. So no objections then to adding in that piece. So that’s that part.

Other changes to outcome two. Yes, go ahead, Councillor Hopkins. Yeah, sorry about that. Your worship, I’m just looking at multiple things here and we’re leading outcome number two.

We’re in outcome number two. I haven’t left it yet, but— Okay, we haven’t finished it though. So if you want to make a change, I’d do it now because just about to depart. So I have a question through you.

I know I’m looking at the chamber’s comment or request as it relates to 2.3, which is London is recognized as a premier tourism destination domestically and internationally. And that would be under the expected result through you to staff, what are the implications if we do that in our strat plan? Just asking. So if we added a expected result that has no draft strategies yet, I guess how would you approach that?

Is that’s a question? Yes, go ahead. Your worship, I’m not sure we could tell you on the floor. I think we would need to go back and consider what that means and whether there are, ‘cause I do think we have strategies that address destination of choice in other parts.

So I don’t know if it would mean moving some of them or creating new ones. We haven’t had an opportunity to consider it. If council adds it in, then we will try and do that work and turn it around for you. I think the change here was that the word tourism wasn’t specifically mentioned in this section.

And I think the intent was to identify a tourism as a destination. The other pieces are creative strategies, destination of choice for working, living and recreation. But it seems like the desire here was to add a tourism-focused component and attract both domestically and internationally. Now, there’s no draft strategy to that.

Obviously, we have a tourism agency. So I think that was the intent. But Deputy Mayor Lewis is on tourism, so it’s good that he has his hand up, so go ahead. Yes, sure, worship.

Thank you. First, I want to highlight to colleagues that this same outcome was proposed at our last strategic plan meeting and we removed it. I’m not in favor of putting it back in, but I also do want to underline that for the first time ever, because it did not have one under the previous general manager, but under Ms. Finn, for the first time ever, tourism London has its own strategic plan that has just finished developing.

The board actually just approved it formally and finally today at the board meeting at lunchtime. So those pieces are in place and being handled by an external ABC. So I would really encourage colleagues to just allow tourism to continue to lead on this and work through their own strategic plan. Go ahead, Councillor Hopkins.

Yeah, through you, your worship to Deputy Mayor Lewis. I appreciate having that update. I think it’s good to know that there is a strategic plan with tourism London that’s been updated. But I also heard from staff that there’s probably other opportunities to address the tourism part within our strategic plan as well.

So I think I’m satisfied. Okay, so you’re not making a change at this time, but you’ve got your question and answer, okay. So I’ll come to any other changes, Councillor Pribble. I know that we’re out of proposals by the delegate for outcome two.

If I look at London as a destination of choice and we are listing the UNESCO and the film industry, I do feel that we have more to offer for the destination of choice. I know there was a proposal of various other things. I’m not saying that all of them potentially not all of them, but I would love to see London is a destination of choice. Go behind UNESCO and the film industry because we do have more to offer as a destination of choice.

I don’t know if anyone wants to revisit the proposal. It was enhanced and increased creation and distribution of cultural activities, goods and services, notably the film and music industries. So I know if it’s the words if other Councillors don’t feel comfortable with, but I would love to see, as I said, more than just UNESCO and film industry because I do believe we have more to offer as a destination of choice. So you’d like to expand 2.2.

There is suggested language from the delegation, but you’re not tied to that language and you’re looking, it would be helpful if we were more specific on this because it’s tricky to say, you’re just willing to have different language there. I’d prefer if you want to make a change that you make a specific change. If you don’t have a specific change at this time but you’d like to entertain one, you could certainly work on language before the next time we come around to this is, but it’s helpful to deal with specific language and not just, I’d like to expand this part. So I wonder if we could expand somehow the cultural activities and because the cultural activities will cover more things that we can come up with the strategies, not just again tied to those two that we have there.

So I know if maybe the staff could help out with that or have a suggestion, but I think the cultural activities we can explore it more. By the way, while the staff is working with it, I just want to thank the staff because on this area, I did spend some time with them and I just want to make sure that a lot of actions and tactics that I was proposing, I want to make sure that we’ll find a home for it and the staff did go through it with me and for the implementation plan. So I would like to thank the staff because there was my worry that we wouldn’t find a home for it later on, but staff was very helpful and assured me that we can find a home for it. Your worship, we’re putting the wording up that was provided to give Council something to work from here and to try and be helpful and with furthering the discussion.

Councillor Roman. Thank you and through you. Yeah, I’d support putting in the language on enhanced and increased creation and distribution of cultural activities and goods and services as it’s written here, but then I do believe we’d have to then alter A, B, C, D, and E as proposed by the chamber. And I am thankful for the work that was done ahead of time to meet with those in not just the core, but also in our cultural industries to have those conversations because I think that it is strengthening the language here and making it so it’s not as specific just to film but into film and music, which I think helps us to achieve some of our UNESCO goals as well.

Okay, so Councillor Roman, are you interested in making— Sorry, I’ll be clear. Are you just— The adjustments that were suggested. Yeah, I’m looking to move to point two and the A, B, C, D, E that was provided. Okay, so I want to give a second to have that put up.

I know the language was emailed to her staff. I’ll ask if there’s a, okay, so there is a seconder. But let’s just give it a moment to put that up so people can see before I ask for consensus. And I will say if there’s not consensus, but there’s like two or three words that you’re not happy with, like we could see if there’s some ability to drive consensus rather than voting the whole block of this down.

So I’ll ask for consensus in a moment once everybody’s seen it and if there’s not, then I’ll listen to the speaker’s list on what adjustments might need to be made. And if you’re just right against the whole thing, like that’s fine too, we can vote eventually. Go ahead, Councillor Roman. Thank you and through you as it’s going up on the screen.

I did see these comments as being supportive of the desired results in just, again, the tweaking of making more film and music specific and then just broadening a few of those definitions around supporting not just one festival but multiple festivals as it relates to the industry. And I think that that just, again, helps if we’re looking for a growth strategy. We have to envision that these things will grow and money to support in different ways. I’ll go to Deputy Mayor Lewis.

So your worship, I’m going to want this one to be a recorded vote. I will not be supporting this one. I liked the version that we had before. I know that we heard from the delegate that there was a sense from a few members of the community that it was too granular.

But frankly, I want a strategic plan with goals that are accomplishable and focused. It is not a blue sky world out there. We’ve got lots of challenges that we have to overcome. I think what we had to begin with was both practical and measurable and something we could obtain in four years.

I think this actually weakens the strategies. I think it’s less specific and I think it’s more of a, well, honestly, it’s a bunch of buzz words to me and I don’t mean any disrespect to those who have suggested them but it’s a lot of creative producers through the cultural industries, including, and we keep repeating a number of words over and over again and we’re just making things more complicated in my view. So I won’t be supporting this one. I liked the original version that we had.

So we’ll have a vote on this at the appropriate time but I’ll have discussion first, Councillor Hopkins. Yeah, I tend to be in favor of the changes. I do think they’re a little bit more specific. I’m not sure if we need D though, I just would like to, and what does D imply when it comes to promoting London through social media newsletters and online campaigns.

I’d just like to have a better understanding of what that means. I’m gonna go to Councillor Raman. Thank you and through you. I obviously can’t speak to all the aspects.

When I read yours commenting on D or E, D, continued to promote London’s creative industries through social media, et cetera. I just thought that it saw that as an opportunity for the city to get involved with more of that. And again, having broader reach than maybe some organizations do, that’s an opportunity again to share the message out. And I didn’t see that as being cost prohibitive.

As well. Councillor Pribble. I personally would take it out as a strategy because I do believe it’s more of an implementation plan and can be done from the bottom. So I personally would take this one out.

Take Dio? It’s okay. Yes. Sure, is the mover okay?

Okay, so the mover seems like, and you know what, if we vote all this down, we can add D back in if that’s like, we go back to the original state. So for now, the change is to also strike D. So it’s the yellow and the striking of Councillor McAllister. Thank you through the chair.

I, he isn’t sitting well with me just because cultural workers is just a term I’m unfamiliar with. And I feel like that’s a very subjective. We’re talking specifically to film, music, restaurants. It’s just, it’s very big to me.

And I think it’s too ambiguous for my liking. I don’t know if anyone else feels the same way, but I can’t quite put my finger on it, but it’s not sitting well with me. It’s a privilege. I recommend this one as well to take it out because again, develop a plan and we actually have coming down the road implementation plan.

So there’s no need for it to be in this strategy. Councillor Ramen, you were at the mover here. Okay, take, take E out. Sure, go ahead.

Okay, so now I like this. We’re getting a little more concise with the change. We can, it’s smooth, like it’s still moved and seconded. So discussion, then we’ll have a vote on this change.

And if the change doesn’t fly, we would revert back to the original language and then can continue to make adjustments to this if we need to. Any other discussion on the changes as you see for us? Additions of the yellow striking of the strike through components. Okay, so I wanna actually do this in the system.

So it’s a recorded vote. So if you can do up a motion that says the edits to section, basically the edits to section 2.2 be approved. Everybody knows what they are. They’re clear on the screen.

And so we’ll be voting on all of them as a block. And again, if it fails, people can make other changes to this if they’d like, but we’ll try to deal with this as effectively as possible. So is everybody okay to vote now? Remind me who the seconder was for that, just ‘cause we’re putting a question.

Was that you, Councillor Hopkins? Councillor Pribble, Councillor Pribble in a second. So if you switch your screens to the other screen, as soon as we have that up, we can open it for voting. If we haven’t already, slow, sorry.

Closing the vote, the motion is passed. Seven to six. Okay, so we’ll keep those changes. Is there any further changes to outcome two?

Going slow, so people have a chance to look through. outcome three has three components to it. No changes to outcome three, Councillor McAllister. Yeah, just 3.1 A, ultra workers.

Again, I just can’t, it’s too vague of a term for me. I’d like that taken out, please. I see you wanna strike. It’s in the A and D.

Cultural workers. And in A and B, yes, go ahead. Thank you, through you, isn’t it arts and culture workers? So it’s people that work in the arts and culture.

I just think it’s redundant. I would assume it’s people in the industry. I don’t know if we need to call out workers, but that’s just my thought on it, Sir Robin. I don’t know the industry terminology well, but I’m just wondering if it’s to encapsulate or capture people that may not be artists or creators, but maybe lighting, design.

I don’t know, I’m trying to think of technicians, that kind of thing. That’s from McAllister. Industry, I don’t know. I just find it redundant to keep calling it out.

Deputy Mayor Lewis. I also find cultural workers really an awkward term, but I think perhaps what we could say is collaboration and opportunities for individuals working in the arts and culture sector. That way we would cover technical support staff, as well as the artists and creators themselves. We’re gonna get the strike throughs too, don’t worry.

Mr. Steinberg is fast, but he’s not quite that fast. And that change just applied to A. We don’t need workers.

Okay, that’s a suggestion. I need a seconder for that. I see two nods over there, so we’ll count that as a seconder. So is there objections to this particular change?

There are no objections, so we’re gonna have that change stand. Other changes to outcome three, that’s approval. I just wanna add that there were through the delegation, other draft strategies, but I wouldn’t implement them, any of them now, and I do think that there are more potential, again, actions that could be implemented into the implementation plan. Any other changes to outcome three?

Too fast, but I am gonna move on. Outcome three’s get outcome four. Go to Councillor Ferreira. And thank you, Mr.

Mayor, through you. I would like to make an addition to outcome four, 4.1, and I’d like to hopefully put it as D under C. And the addition I would like to see would be, and the wording is develop capacities in Midtown to increase economic and community wellbeing. Is that a seconder or question?

Councillor Stevenson, go ahead. My question is just why specifically Midtown when it’s included in the core area, all of this was the core area. Go ahead, Councillor Ferre. Well, Midtown, they’re pretty organized, and I see them as a community association that’s kind of left outside trying to get in.

There’s a lot of, like for downtown, and for old East Village, there’s a lot of funding initiatives that they can get within current programs right now, but Midtown doesn’t have any of, well, a lot of them, so that’s why I wanted to put that in there. Seconded by Councillor Stevenson, so there’s a change that’s on the floor. I’ll go for objections to adding this change first, expensive, and stares at me, and gives no indications of nods. I’ll say there’s no objections then.

That’s just me giving everybody enough time to think. Okay, so we’ll keep that change in. Other changes to outcome four, of which there’s a number of sections here. Councillor Stevenson.

Thank you. I would like to add under 4.5 as number F, and thank you to Ms. Wilcox and Mr. Steinberg for helping me with the wording.

I’d like it to say identify balanced and compassionate solutions to social service delivery, balancing the needs of businesses, community, and service providers. Is there someone who’s willing to second that language, Councillor Pribble is? So that’s now up on the screen as a new F. Is there any objections to adding this new F?

I don’t see any objections to adding F, so we’re gonna keep F. Councillor Pribble, other changes. I would like us to consider change 4.3C, where it states increase awareness. I would like to change it to evaluate opportunities to expand CIPs.

So I would like to evaluate opportunities to expand, not just to increase awareness, again, looking outside the box, and potentially come up with other opportunities. That’s my thinking behind it. So you wanted to be evaluated opportunities to expand the CIPs core area, community improvement plan incentives? Yes.

Is there a seconder for that? Mr. Stevenson, is that objections or? Okay, so there’s some objections.

So we’ll have, let’s have a discussion. So discussion on this potential change. There is a mover and a seconder to support it, so Councillor Frank, you were first up, so go ahead. Thank you, yes.

And while I think I understand the intention behind this, I would prefer to wait until we get back the five-year evaluations of the core community improvement plans before creating a strategy to expand them. Councillor Depp, Mayor Lewis. Well, did owe to what Councillor Frank just said, and I will say I would be very, very cautious about language that talks about expanding one CIP to the exclusion of others. We’re going to end up with a list of people coming at annual budget updates, asking for business cases for their BIA CIP areas as well.

We have a fair amount of investment in the downtown core in this plan already. I was supportive of the awareness, because I’ve encountered merchants in the downtown who weren’t aware of some of the programs that they could access. So I was supportive of the awareness. I am not supportive of the expansion.

Any other speakers? Councillor Privel. I’m just, I’m not proposing that we are going to enlarge it, but again, there could be opportunities out there and we are going to evaluate them. So we are going to see, does it make sense for our community or not?

So again, it’s not that we will have to, but again, it just inform, you know, inform in my eyes was very vague, and again, closed doors. Evaluate opportunities, again, for us to think outside the box. We are not saying we are going to do it. We are going to implement it.

We are going to spend more money. But again, we are not close-minded. We are open-minded. We are going to evaluate all opportunities.

And we might do it from within. We might learn from other communities. And just, again, thinking outside the box. We are not committing.

We are not making any commitments. I put myself on the speakers list too. So I’m not really supportive of this change either if I’ll just speak from the chair. One, because we’re already doing it, and two, because, you know, above, it talks about, finalize the review of core area, improvement plans to recommend enhancements to address key priorities on the residential occupancy and livable space on the core side.

I think we’re already undergoing this work. And I do think if you provide the directionality on this piece, you’re kind of opening it up to everybody wanting the directionality increase. We’re already doing the review. The incentive plan is already there.

I think you can promote them from the perspective of increased commercial occupancy in the core without having to provide the directionality. So I like the original wording. I do support the general intent of what the counselors are saying, but I’m not sure it’s necessary to change the language. That’s my own feedback on this.

I had Deputy Mayor Lewis on the speakers list, and then I’ll go to you, Councillor Stevenson. Actually, I’ll yield to Councillor Stevenson first. I’ve spoken on this once, but keep me on the list, and I’ll chime in after. Go ahead, Councillor.

Well, based on the subsequent discussion, I’m withdrawing my second. Okay, is there anybody else who wants to second this change? Okay, so that goes back to the original language, and Councillor McAllister, other changes in this area. Speaking to 4.5A, just following up the discussion we had earlier in terms of our police resources, I just want to express, from my words perspective, that the only place that a lot of people see police currently is the core, and I know I have received feedback that, and I agree, I do agree that the core does need attention.

Keeping in mind that our police headquarters is in OEVE, I just want to express that a lot of citizens want to see those resources to the city, and not to the core. As we are strapped for our police officers, as Councillor Layman said earlier, in terms of how many police we have, in terms of our ratio of the city, I just want us to keep in mind that that doesn’t preclude having boots on the ground elsewhere in the city, because that’s something I hear a lot, that they want to see police presence, not exclusively in the core. So, I know that doesn’t necessarily fit in this, ‘cause this is specifically speaking to the core, but in terms of safety more and generally for the city, that we want those resources to be spread out, thank you. What are you suggesting you want to change?

Increased police presence of officers in the core, but I don’t know, something along the lines of just, I’m just trying to think, ‘cause we’re increasing our resources, that those resources aren’t exclusively going to go to the core. The challenge is, is this section is about the core area, like the whole section is. So, it would be very difficult to change that and keep it, I think, in this section as your, that’s probably why you’re struggling with the language. So, I’m gonna go to Councillor Stephen, I can come back to you if you think of another way you want to do it.

I’ll go to Councillor Stephenson next. Thank you, I have an idea, because that one is right under the core, but under wellbeing and safety, 1.4C, it currently says, enhance police response times, and maybe we could say, enhance police presence, and improve response times, and that would be across the city. And the city manager was on the list, but then she gave a thumbs up, or a point, when you said that, so, that sounds like a way, if colleagues don’t mind jumping ahead to that piece, since it’s addressing an issue here, and making that a small change now, and then obviously we can come back to this section, but I’d like to get this done while it’s top of mind. So, enhance the police presence, and response times for emergency calls, urgent calls, and that’s so that it reflects across the city.

So, I see there’s a number of seconders for that, so. Yeah, I would just say, enhance police presence, and improve response times. Any objections to that? So, that stands, let’s roll back to the area we were in.

I think, Councilor McCalister, you’re probably good now. Any other changes to outcome four in this area? I’m gonna move on, move to the next section. Go ahead.

Your worship, just to be clear, the wellbeing and safety we had already gone through, so, we won’t be going back there, unless Council wishes to. My mistake. No problem. And so, now we’re on to mobility and transportation, and on the screen is outcome one, that’s the only outcome, and all of the strategies are in front of you.

Okay, mobility and transportation, there’s all of the strategies here. Councilor ramen, go ahead. Thank you, and through you. So, there was a discussion that happened at Civic Works Committee, in which we supported bringing forward some recommendations to Council, but in terms of the timing of when Council meets, when we’re in our process, et cetera, I’m just worried that some of this might get missed, so I’m just trying to find a way to bring this into today’s conversation, the recommendations that were proposed, that we then discussed would come to the strategic planning process, for discussion within the process, and if we wanted to include any of that language in here, noting as well that some of these are deliverables by LTC and not, and specific to paratransit as well, that are not specific to our plan.

So, the recommendations that were discussed at that meeting were by September 2023, same day booking options, smart card access in every bus and sensitivity training for drivers. Now, I do realize we have some language in here around paratransit, I’m just wondering if we feel that in the strategies, and then the outcomes that that is somehow connected or reflected, if we can comment on that, and then the four-year goal of increasing ride capacity by 10%, and again, just bringing this conversation forward on behalf of the community, as that was part of what we discussed at CivicWorks. We go to staff to see if they have a suggestion for this. Yes, your worship, I think at this point, we would need to work with LTC to understand how to adjust the strategy.

So, if I understand your question about steps, those recommendations would be going to council on March 7th, is that correct? And then we have the PPM on March 8th, so perhaps what we can do, allow council to make a decision around this, but in the meantime, work with LTC so that at the March 8th, after the PPM, we could offer some changes, if needed, should council pass that, and we would be ready. I think that’s the best we could do in terms of the steps. Councillor ramen.

Thank you, that I’m satisfied with that, I think that helps to make sure that it’s reflected appropriately. The other piece I had on the transportation side was around electric buses, and just noting from community members and committee, that some committee members, that there wasn’t a reflection, they felt, specifically around green buses. I did go through this with the Strat Plan team, and they did share where they see it connected, just didn’t know if anyone else felt that we needed to be very explicit in our language around that. I know we talked about, there’s a piece about the fleet, but, and we may not want to be extremely specific around electric, and say, more around our approach, but I just wanted to bring that up as it’s a big part of our strategy as well.

Deputy Mayor Lewis. I’ll just share some thoughts, because Councillor ramen did invite them, that I’ve heard from somebody about electric buses too, but I’m pretty comfortable with where we are on that already. There is an approved direction from the past council. Staff might correct me if I’m wrong, but I believe the PTIS funding business case has already gone through.

We’ve also dealt with some of the infrastructure needs for LTC, for new headquarters. So, to me, I feel like that’s, it’s already something that is happening, and so the generalities of the language in there I’m pretty comfortable with right now. I know that certainly there will be some moves from our staff and from the mayor’s office and others when the federal government brings its promise transit funding, dedicated transit funding opportunity online that we’ll go get some money from that, but even there I don’t feel like we need to include that right now. I feel like it’s more of an implementation rather than a strategy.

Mr. Stevenson. Thank you. My question in terms of it came up around the tourism board about how it was concluded in their strategic plan, and I’m just wondering at what point do the actions of, or the outcomes of boards and commissions be included in our strategic plan and when we don’t, if somebody could just explain to me.

Your worship, this is the top-down bottom-up process. So, the way that this plan has been developed is having input from all of the ABCs in terms of the proposed areas of focus, outcomes, expected results, all of those components. So, our understanding is that reflects their strategic plans and efforts. That’s the input that’s happened.

Of course, there’s been council’s direction on some of those changes. So, that’s how we’ve attempted to integrate their work into the document you have in front of you. Thank you. Other questions?

Raman, you’re okay with the responses, okay. Any changes to this section, then? Will Indian transportation? Yes, go ahead, Councilor Lehman.

Yeah, I just wanna follow up on Councilor Raman’s thoughts there. I’m concerned that if it’s not explicitly in this strategy that it could get delayed. And I’d like to see 1.2, see added, continue our path to transforming our bus fleet towards electric fleet or some wording that acknowledges past council’s direction on that. That we continue to head in that direction as opposed to just getting our 10 buses and leave that there unless there is some sort of program that comes from federal government or something like that.

I think we have to acknowledge that this is a direction we wanna continue. Okay, so there’s a suggested language you’ve given on a new seat that says continue our path towards transitioning our bus fleet to zero emission. Is there a seconder for adding that particular language? Councilor Ferra, any objections to adding that?

Okay, we’ll leave that in. Any other changes to transportation and mobility section? Your worship, we can focus on the first two outcomes of climate action and sustainable growth and the associated strategies. Okay, let’s do the first two first.

So that’s outcome one and outcome two. Any changes or adjustments to outcome one and outcome two? Okay, let’s go to the next outcomes. Number three, changes to outcome three.

No changes to outcome three. That would complete that. Go ahead, Councillor Hopkins. Sorry, I’ve had a moment of where we are, where on climate action and sustainable growth right now?

Correct, yes. My apologies. I know I’ve added some, have some information on to staff about outcome number one and 1.3 adding that London is one of the greenest and most resilient cities in Canada. I’m just hoping to add to that in our plan and in being specific to the implementation policies of the London plan, the direction.

Number four, and if you look at number four, there’s a number of points, but just generally speaking, and I know we’ve touched upon them in other areas, but just really focusing on the fact that we want to become the greenest, one of the greenest cities in Canada, but looking at developing and implementing and lead plans to take action on climate change mitigation and adoption, number two, use ecosystems, watershed approach, three, protecting and enhancing our Thames Valley corridor and its ecosystem. I’ll stop at number four, protecting and enhance the health of a natural heritage system, not saying we can implement each and every single one of them, but just really underlining the importance of trying to become one of the greenest cities in Canada. So with that, I would like to add 1.3, London is one of the greenest and most resilient cities in Canada. So I understand you want to add 1.3 and then move some of the draft strategies under 1.3, from the one above, or you want to create new draft strategies?

So this is my problem. I’m looking at too many of them. I’m going to just turn my head behind. Hold on, that’s not going to work.

Switch your screen, we’ll give you what we’re looking at. Yes. Do you have a no, Councillor? So I see that piece, but are you looking at it?

Yeah, and then as an A, a percentage? Sorry. And as an A under, in the next column, with the draft metrics of, oh, we’re not doing metrics. No.

Okay, that’s where I got kind of confused. Okay. So I will wait until we get to the metrics part of things. Okay, but do you have strategies for this new one?

I would like to put it in because then we could deal with metrics. I’m not sure the process, so maybe through you to staff, if staff can sort of give me a bit of direction here as to where— I guess what I’m losing is you have a result and you’re looking to add some metrics, but there’s no like, what is the associated strategy that’s going to go with those metrics like in the middle? Well, the strategy would be the London plan. Okay.

I just want to go through you to staff if I can get a little bit of clarification. I’m looking for where that can be inserted. Where’s the best spot? So the counselor has a desire to incorporate some language that doesn’t be, so maybe you can see if there’s a way to help out here.

Yes, your worship. I wonder actually if it elevates to the level of the outcome, so it’s fitting into the language of the outcome of being, I mean, we can play with it a little bit. Yes, I mean, you could replace it, I think. Yes.

  • That’s the intent. I think that I see some nods that it might be a refocusing of the outcome to be what you’re suggesting is a strategy here and elevate that London has a strong and healthy environment. You just want to be a little more bold in the language with what you’ve put on 1.3 and everything kind of below it does fall under that banner. So does that work for you?

That works for me. I know I see Ms. Sheer’s hand up as well. I can get her comment, but I thought of that too.

I’m looking for a little bit of direction from staff. Where’s the best spot for it? Go to Ms. Sheer.

My apologies, your worship. I’m home with a bit of a cold. I would suggest that maybe outcome two could be we work to reflect that we’ve said it’s a model for climate action and sustainability in alignment with the climate declared emergency and the climate emergency action plan. I think we could work with the wording on either one or two, but two seems to already sort of be going down that path, but we certainly would be into the councilors’ advice on that.

I appreciate that. I looked at number two as well, and I’d be comfortable with that. Sort of adding London is one of the greenest, most resilient cities in Canada behind outcome number two. Okay, number two is already pretty long.

And Jessica’s outcome number one says it doesn’t mean that there aren’t other components of outcome two that might apply, right? My shear is handsome as well. Go ahead, sorry. I got to look at the right screen.

That’s my fault, sorry. No, my apologies. It’s certainly harder to do this from home when we’re back in real life. What we could potentially look at is putting in the language that London is one of the most greenest and resilient cities in Canada in alignment with the council declared climate emergency and the climate emergency action plan.

So we could get rid of the section that says is a model for climate action and sustainability. I think that’s captured very, very well in these draft strategies and in the particular outcomes under it. Yes, I think I see some nods here that that fits better. And I will say it might be difficult to do from home.

It’s not a piece of cake here either. We’re doing our best though to work through it. So we appreciate your suggestion. I think that’s very helpful.

Thank you Your Worship and thank you for your patience. Okay, so we’re gonna leave outcome one as worded before. We’re gonna adjust the title of outcome two to align with what Councillor Hopkins has suggested. Yes, I did see someone willing to second that with all the nods.

So any objections to adjusting that language and outcome two to align with how it looks on the screen now? No, okay, great. So that’s good. So I think before we were there, no one else really had any changes to this section and we were just kind of wrapping it up before you jumped in Councillor Hopkins.

So I’ll just ask one last time does anybody else have any other changes to this area? No, okay, next area. We did outcome three, ‘cause we did that before we scroll back up when Councillor Hopkins was there. So I think we’re on the bottom.

So the last section is well-run city and we’ll look at the first, we’ll see if we can get the first two outcomes on the page. There you go. First two outcomes and associated strategies. Okay, changes to this area.

I want to add committee meetings are well-chaired and efficient and no. All right, I don’t see any changes to these two that anybody has. That takes us to the last outcome. Outcome three, changes to the outcome three base.

Councillor Frank, go ahead. Thank you. Could I suggest we add the word to 3.2C? Could we add the word fun?

Strengthen a safe, fun and safety-conscious workplace? It’s already fun. See what you’ve caused. You’ve already made it fun.

We don’t need it in the strategic plan. It’s a lot of fun. Okay, there’s a seconder for adding this much fun into the strategic plan. So strengthen a safe, fun and safety-conscious workplace for every employee, contractor and member of the public.

Go ahead. Your worship, I love fun. And I would like to suggest that maybe with respect to the Councillor, it maybe it fits a little bit with implement 1, 3.1B, implement the people plan to build an enterprise-wide culture that is inclusive, inspiring, motivating and fun. The purpose of 3.2 is really on the safety-respectful aspect, which is also fun, but just- Okay, so do you like moving fun to a different area?

Okay, and fun. I had Councillor McAllister before you. Just a point of personal privilege, Your Worship. I just want to state for the record that Ms.

Livingston has a different definition of fun than I do. (audience laughs) I’m so excited I was about talking about tax ratios last week, I think I do too. The- Oh, I just wanted to chime in with a quick- Yeah, I look forward to the metrics of fun. (laughs) Well, don’t worry, they’ll be developed.

There’s a whole team of people across the city who can help with that. Okay, so there’s a mover and a seconder for adding fun into this section. Is there any objections? I don’t know who’s gonna object to fun, but I don’t see anybody objecting to this edition.

And thank you for the suggestion. We’ll see how that gets prioritized in the budget. Okay, so we’ve added fun in other additions to outcome three. Seems like we’re getting close to a break.

So, I think we’ve completed now the run through of all of these components. And the next piece is metrics. I think we’ve been back at this for just under two hours. Would you like to introduce what we’re doing next?

And then maybe we’ll take a short break. People can have a moment to use the washroom, refresh their beverages. Yes, thank you, Your Worship. So we would propose to approach the metrics in the same way section by section.

I would like to begin with Ms. Wilcox giving a bit of just a brief description of what the metrics are, how we approached it, why they look like the way they do so that everyone has coming from the same place. And then we would propose to go section by section. So would you like to take a break before that or do that first?

Would you like to take a break now? Also learn. Okay, would you like to do that after we come back, have the go through by Ms. Wilcox?

I just need some nods. Yeah, okay, yes. Okay, so why don’t we give ourselves 10 minutes? That’s gonna be just after eight o’clock, we return.

Okay, so all those in favor of, sorry, 10 minute recess moved by Deputy Mayor Lewis, seconded by Councilor Pribble. All those in favor of a 10 minute recess. We need you to vote with a clerk needs account. In favor of a 10 minute recess, put your hands up.

Motion’s carried. Thank you. Okay, colleagues on it, call the meeting back to order. So we got one little piece to clean up from the previous section, and that is, we actually completed a section, ‘cause the metrics is a different part of the agenda.

So I’m gonna look for someone to move and then second the following motion, which is, the following actions be taken with respect to developing the 2023 to 2027 strategic plan A, on the recommendation of the city manager, the report dated, da, da, da, be received. The attached revised draft strategies for the 2023 to 2027 strategic plan be accepted for additional consultation with the public. The report dated February 28th, entitled, be received, and it being noted that there was a delegation. Mr.

Someone willing to move that. Councilor Raman, seconded by Councilor Cuddy. Any discussion on that? We can open that for voting.

Councillor Palosa, Councillor Palosa, absent for the time being, posing the vote, and the motions pass 12 to zero. Okay, so now on to metrics, and I’ll go back to our staff. Yes, thank you, and does the clerk need something? Okay, just a concern.

Is there a lot of fun happening over there? There’s a lot of fun happening over there. Okay, as long as that’s the case, I’m all good. I’m actually going to ask Ms.

Wilcox to do a very brief introduction to this section, and then we will move to go section by section on it. Thank you, and through the chair. So the metrics are the unit of measure or the data point that would be used to measure progress and performance in the implementation of Council’s strategic plan, and the metrics that are in front of you have been developed to align with the draft expected results, which are supposed to tell us about the change required to achieve the outcomes that have been established by Council. We’re possible, we’ve added in population level indicators.

You’ll see those at the top of each section. While we don’t have substantial influence or control over these indicators, we are suggesting that these could be monitored to provide additional context for the overall state of the area of focus. The draft metrics have been developed with input from all service areas, as well as the city’s agencies, boards, and commissions. And again, the purpose of them is to provide an understandable indication of whether we can see the intended change in the community as a result of the implementation of the strategic plan.

So in establishing the metrics, we considered the following. Is it clearly connected to the expected result that know it when you see it in terms of the change in the community or the organization? Do we have timely and reliable access to the data? Do we have a purposeful stake or influence over the metric?

And can we drive accountability through specific and quantifiable targets? And we also looked at can we build metrics that establish a common reporting mechanism across many service areas in our agencies, boards, and commissions? This was a key learning from our last strategic plan. And so we’re trying to avoid duplicate metrics where we may all report on the same thing.

And in our last plan, we would have reported all individualies. We tried to roll those together and include many entities in those metrics. Again, they’re not intended to reflect all aspects of the work of the city or the ABCs. And that detailed reporting would come through the implementation plan and also through the various standing committees when there is reporting on specific plans.

Targets for each metric, including the direction of change. So an increase or a decrease will come once the multi-year budget has been established. And as was discussed earlier, that’s where the pace of implementation would be set. We do have, just we got a slide and refer you to the screen.

This is an example of what you could expect with the conclusion of the multi-year budget. So we’ve pulled this from the previous strategic plan. And this is something what it will look like when we add targets to the various metrics. So the intention today is to establish the unit of measure.

What is that data point? And then the target setting would happen across those metrics once the multi-year budget is complete. Thank you Ms. Wilcox.

We just wanted to show what it will eventually look like. Tonight you are identifying the unit of measure, but this is what eventually happens once the multi-year budget is established and we understand the pacing. So this is what you, how those pieces all connect. So maybe I’ll just Mr.

Mayor pause to see if there are any questions about what Ms. Wilcox had to say and then we can move to the discussion of the each section. Sure, Councillor Frank. Thank you.

I just wanna confirm, is there an intensification target for the primary transit area that I just saw on that slide? I’m just curious, ‘cause I haven’t seen that before and I’m just very excited, totally. But is there, I didn’t know there was even a target for that area. Anyway, that was just an aside.

I was very excited to see that. Thank you for, I’m glad the examples slide excited you. Which is, I think from our previous strategic plan, right? Yeah, so, okay.

Any other questions on the metrics, the presentation? Okay, so the strategy is to proceed through as we did before for colleagues to ask any questions, make any adjustments to the metrics as we go through. Noting that we did make some adjustments through the course, so there might be some sections where the metrics may not line up completely, but I know staff can make those corrections. I’m not sure we changed things too fundamentally that the metrics would be different, but there were adjustments we made through the previous sections.

So, colleagues just have to accept that as we go through this, obviously this piece was written under the old language, so we may just have to pause in those areas that we’ve adjusted and changed. Any, a question? Okay, all right, so we’re into the first area. So, I think we’ll do the same way.

So, you see expect to result outcome one, outcome two, the components underneath there, and all of the draft metrics. Are there questions or changes to this area? Councillor Frank. Thank you, and through the chair, I did circulate some edits to the metrics yesterday through the clerk’s office.

So, I did suggest two, and I made sure that they’re metric-y. So, the first one was one 1D, percentage of identified communities and organizations feel that their engagement with the municipality feels more inclusive, and I think they could be measured through a survey, I was trying to think of how to measure staff, and then I also had outcome three, 3.2, a C for that as well, but I don’t know if we want to deal with that separately. Let’s do them one at a time. On each of these, given our staff are going to be responsible for trying to implement the metrics.

If we’re suggesting metrics, I just want to give an opportunity to comment on any suggested changes, given what we may or may not have access to, and any flags on significant challenges with data collection, if we’re going to suggest metrics ourselves, so I’d go to our staff for any comments that they might have on this particular proposed metric. Your worship as the Councillor suggests, I think the mechanism would have to be through survey, so we would have to develop that, and then conduct it in a year-over-year manner, so we don’t have a ready collection mechanism for that, but I believe we could do it through survey. All right, is there someone willing to second this particular change to the metrics, or addition to the metrics in this area? Should have asked that first, I suppose.

Actually, what we’ll do is go to the staff or comment first in case there are flags that might cause a secondary change of mind. I see a seconder in Councillor Ferra, is there any objections to including this as a metric? So if there’s an objection, then we’d have a vote. If there are no objections, we’ll just move forward and accept Councillor DEPUTY MAYOR.

Thank you, Your Worship, and through you, I’ll just say I don’t want to object tonight. I want to absorb this a little bit more. I am concerned about how we actually measure this. Even surveys, we know that there can be low response rates, surveys don’t really reflect the reality of lived experience.

And feeling included can be so subjective from one individual to another that I’m not opposed to it for tonight, but I’m not sure that in the final draft I’ll want to leave this in. I need some time to think about it, but because feeling included can be so subjective, and not that we shouldn’t be striving to help people feel included, but how we measure that might be difficult. So just putting that out there is a comment for now, and we’ll see how I feel about it after March the 8th. Go ahead, Councillor Frank.

Thank you, and I’d say for most of these, I’m not married to any of the specific language. It’s just more I noticed that there is a lack of like qualitative evaluation. There’s a lot of quantitative, and while I appreciate that might be easier to track, I do think when we’re dealing with humans, it might be nice to qualitatively ask them questions. So again, I’m not married to the method of collection or the language, so I hear your concerns, and I’d be happy if there’s more it’s missing later on.

I’d like to propose that if we’re going to suggest new metrics, we may approve them, but I’d like to leave it fairly open if colleagues are accepting this to our staff to take the intent of a metric and suggest a new metrics at some point through the process if not tonight later, because there may be a slight modification that can be used to go through different agencies or groups who may collect this data that might not be exactly as the metric as we define, but captures the intent. And if we’re relatively open to that, I think we would be open to staff making suggestions back on alternate possible metrics at the next point in the process on this. So if we leave some in that we might have some questions about later, we also might expect that there are some suggested changes from staff. I see everybody nodding at that, so we’ll just generally know that as we make some additions that that’s an expectation we’ll have.

Okay, I don’t see anybody objecting to keeping this in then, so what’s your second suggestion? Thank you, under outcome three, under a 3.2, adding an item C percentage of respondents indicating satisfaction with how they feel included in the system that is a municipality. Again, more of a qualitative, I’m open to different interpretations, but like a qualitative evaluation of their experience. I’ll see if staff could comment on this proposed metric.

I think I would take the counselor up on the offer to look at this with the ARAO team. I’m not sure how we would come at this, but I understand the intent, so I would like to be able to take it back and work with the team a little bit. There are ways to ask questions about inclusion. It’s just the mechanism by which we do this and not over surveying groups.

So if I can have the time to go back to folks and I’m happy to do that. I’ll go to Council Roman in a second, but perhaps even we’re putting this in and it would go out for public consultation if we’re concerned about not having done kind of some throw vetting of them. Do we want to perhaps include the word, like put the word in brackets behind draft metric? Yeah, go ahead.

Sorry, I apologize. I misunderstood which one we’re talking about. If this is about city of London staff in the internship program, we’re actually doing this now after our equity inclusion audit where we ask specifically questions about belonging and inclusion. So we are doing that.

I may work with the language here a little bit, but we are doing that. Council Roman. Thank you, Three. That was going to be my point.

The only piece I had was how it connects with the internship program. ‘Cause you may not survey or hit that population when you’re surveying if they’ve completed an internship and are not currently interning. So just a thought. I think it might be, I know these are all draft metrics, but we might want to indicate if this is being put out to the public that this is, oh, it’s not, this is not being okay.

Then we can do whatever we want, perfect. So we’ll leave that in suggested wording changes will come. There’s a seconder for this particular addition. Someone who’s willing to second this change.

Okay, there’s a seconder. Is there any objection to keeping this in there, noting that there may be some wording changes to all of these metrics by staff? Okay, all right. Any other changes?

I know Councillor Frank had a suggestion in this section, anybody else have suggestions for this section? Deputy Mayor Lewis. Thank you, Your Worship. This is not so much a suggestion.

It’s just a comment and it’s, when we are talking, we’ll, for example, percentage of new hires that identify as representing an equity denied group. Well, that’s a valuable way to measure things for sure. I just want to draw to people’s attention that they’re still, even in 2023, members of the LGBTQ2+ community who do not feel comfortable being able to work, whether it is the city of London or another employer. And so when we’re measuring those, people have to be willing to identify.

And so we’re not necessarily capturing the entire result of our efforts. So, and I know that Ms. Livingston and others in the SLTR are aware of that, but just some commentary to share with colleagues that we may not be catching everybody because there are people who still today are not comfortable identifying with one of those groups. That was a comment, okay.

Any other changes to the first section? Okay, let’s move on to the next one. Okay, so we can see, is that all of outcome two? Or is there, okay, so that’s all of outcome one and outcome two with the metrics associated for housing and homelessness?

Councilor Frank? Yeah, go ahead. Sorry, I have some for each one, I think it’s up for the economic one. Under this one, under outcome two, under 2.2, C, I am suggested perhaps, again, another qualitative percentage of tenants at LMCH property soon decates satisfaction with their space.

Given we’re talking about social housing and that’s some that we kind of directly interact with. Comments on that metric, Deputy Mayor Lewis? Thank you, I feel like Councilor Frank and I should have had lunch beforehand. But my hesitancy on this metric is that not all social housing in the city is provided by LMCH.

We have other providers, Odell Jelna and Holmes Unlimited and others, so not all of whom fall under our ability to have so much influence under as LMCH, but nonetheless are providing social housing. So I’m not supportive of measuring just by LMCH and I know that somehow Mr. Dickens and his team are working away along with Mr. Felberg about new funding sustainability agreements with some of those third party providers.

So through to staff, I wonder if first of all, do we, are we able to obtain data from our third party housing providers beyond LMCH and how could we perhaps capture some of that qualitative feedback from other partner agencies? Your worship, I’ll turn it over to Mr. Dickens, but one of the principles that we were operating on under the metrics was including things where we had the sphere of influence. So that’s getting further away in our ability to do that and I don’t know if Mr.

Dickens wants to add anything. Thank you and through you, Chair. There’s 64 social housing providers in the city of London and county of Middlesex that the city as service manager is affiliated with those operating agreements. As Ms.

Livingston said, they get further away from our sphere of control. When it comes to strictly funding and operating agreements and those lifespans, the LMCH piece is the one that is strictly under the control and influence of the city more than the other 63. So that’s helpful. My concern is that we would only be capturing a portion of the picture here in terms of outcomes in social housing.

And I’m also hesitant on this one because, and I say this with all due respect and we’re gonna be talking about a tenant replacement on the board later this evening, but it’s very easy to have a dissatisfied tenant who doesn’t understand that perhaps the procurement contract for, say, an elevator replacement doesn’t happen in two or three days. It can be several months. And so you might be capturing at a moment in time where you have a very dissatisfied tenant because of a very particular problem and really skewing the outcome of the metrics that we’re trying to get back. So on this one, I’m not supportive of bringing this one forward.

I think this one is too subjective and too narrow in its focus to really provide us a metric that we can come back to and measure how we are doing on the social housing piece as a whole and the complexities that go into some of the tenant dissatisfaction. Okay, so we’ll have a vote on this one then on whether or not to include it. Councillor Frank, go ahead. Is it possible maybe then to have staff like workshop something similar?

Again, I just think like the other two are quite quantitative and I just, I would love to know how the humans feel. So if there’s a way to find that out and I don’t know how, that’s kind of what I’m looking for there. And again, it doesn’t have to be this metric but some sort of human evaluation element to it. Is that possible through staff?

Mr. Dickens. Through the chair, we can certainly look into that as staff. Off the top of my head, I’m unfamiliar of the detail that LMCH is currently collecting with their tenants, be it part of their strategic planning work or as part of their tenant engagement strategies.

They may already be collecting some element of tenant satisfaction. I just don’t have that available at my fingertips. I see, hold on. I see Councillor Ploza related to this.

Yes, okay, go ahead. Yeah, thank you. Just appreciate the conversation and the lens of trying to ask the tenants themselves for an opportunity for feedback and realizing a decent portion of them might not respond. And satisfaction could be a wide breadth like we’ve talked about.

It could be, you know, the elevator route, is it just you don’t like your neighbor? To me, realizing it’s only 2.2 and having had such so many community concerns before and realizing we’re working on upgrades is for me, it’d be the percentage of tenants within those properties or in those programs that feel safe within their space versus satisfied. So just putting that out for comments, realizing Councillor Frank already had comments on it too. I can’t, Deputy Mayor Lewis, and then I’m gonna make a comment on this too.

Yes, and actually I wanna just pick up on what Mr. Dickens was saying. There is a tenant engagement strategy at LMCH. There are of course, as we’ll be talking about later, tenants on the board, but each site also has a tenant engagement person at each of our LMCH sites.

So tenants provide some of their feedback and concerns through that person. So rather than support this one tonight, I think that it might be great for Councillor Frank or others interested and I’m happy to even send an email asking if Mr. Chisholm can provide an overview to Council on how we engage with our constituents or our residents, because I think that’d be helpful to have. And some of that work is being done.

So I’m happy to reach out and get that information before Council. So as I said, I was gonna make some comments. So I did serve on that board as well for a period of time. I don’t think I’m supportive of this particular metric, but I do think there’s an alternative to it.

I’ll tell you why I’m not, is because there’s a reason why we’re refurbishing and rebuilding 2,000 spaces within the system is because the spaces are not good. What I’m interested in is how that process is going and whether tenants are satisfied with the new and refurbished spaces and how that’s improving their quality of life. And I think the way that we could gather that and have that information reported on, rather than include as a metric in our strategic plan, is that the annual shareholder meeting of LMCH, we could engage with the board and the administration to ask them if they could provide, track and provide data to us on how that is going and how it is a changing tenant satisfaction and have that board report to us, but leave the responsibility potentially with that particular board. And as a shareholder, we would certainly have the ability to engage and ask them to track and report back on the information that we’re interested on receiving as the shareholder.

So I think we have a mechanism of accountability and a process that could work very well to gather the human data, but I would be interested in gathering how that is changing as LMCH engages in the rebuilds and refits of so many units, as well as moving people from the existing spaces into what will be their new build spaces as well and get engaged and the handle on how people are feeling with those sorts of improvements that are being made within their space. ‘Cause I think what we already know is, this would be a very low number, there’s a very big problem and action is already being taken on it. So I’m more interested in tracking whether the action is successful than getting a metric that I think we already are probably aware of what the answer is. Those are my comments, other comments.

Okay, so I think this is one that we’re gonna vote on ‘cause it’s moved and seconded, but there’s some desire maybe not to include this one in the way that it’s there. So if there’s no other discussion, I think the motion is how or it’s where it is just going to be, you know, make support that changes to, maybe you can tell me how this is gonna be worded and we will open the vote afterwards. Do you have some wording for this change? Okay, so that the strategic area of focus be amended in the draft by adding a new draft metric C.

So if you support it, you vote yes. If you don’t vote no, we’ll open that for voting no. Do you need the mover and the seconder? Oh, Councilor Frank was the mover and the seconder was Councilor Ferra.

Okay, Councilor Ferra is willing to second. Posing the vote and the motion is lost four to nine. Okay, so we won’t include that particular metric at this time. Other changes to metrics in outcome one or outcome two.

Councilor Stevenson. Thank you. In 2.4, are we looking at social housing properties in the metric? I’m just wanting to be specific there because given the outcome, it’s not gonna be any rental properties in the city, right?

It’s gonna be our social housing units. So I thought it should say a number of social housing properties, rental units involved in proactive blitzes. Go ahead, Mr. Mathers.

Mr. Chair, it’s actually all housing, so it also includes existing apartments. If we’re gonna move forward with a blitz on those apartments as well, so it could be any. May I lose?

Yes, I just wanna add a follow-up to that response from Mr. Mathers. I think it’s important that colleagues also understand that the highest percentage of complaints about property standards and maintenance often come from converted rental units. So single-family homes that have been converted and are regulated under our business license as a residential unit license.

I’ve got the acronym wrong, so I’m not gonna try and correct that right now. But so if I would concur that my recollection from our discussion, you know, meeting prior to this was that it was proactive on rental units of all types. Other questions or comments in outcome one or two? And the associated metrics?

I’m gonna move to outcome three. Any changes or adjustments to outcome three? No changes or adjustments to outcome three? We’ll go to the next section.

I think you’re gonna fit all those on. So we’ll do it in two parts. Let’s do one to five, 1.1 to 1.5 first under outcome one. Changes to this piece, this is under well-being and safety.

Go ahead, Councillor Frank. Thank you, more people’s staff. Mine’s under 1.3, I want to add a B or I guess it could be a D. But percentage of residents who indicate they’re happy are very happy and that I just wanna follow up.

I did include a link, but there’s a lot of research about using happiness as an indicator of success instead of just GDP growth. So I included a link if people wanna read it, but I would love, maybe, again, I thought maybe in the resident satisfaction survey, no, we’d start fresh, but maybe that being a question, but happy for staff to have a solution. It’s Wilcox. Thank you and through the chair.

We’ve done some preliminary research on that. So it tends to be measured at either a national level or a provincial level. It is something we could look at building an index for. However, it’d be something we don’t have budgeted for.

It’s something we’d have to newly explore and build out. Thank you. Yeah, I’d appreciate that. And I feel like, personally, I’d be happy if it was just added to the resident satisfaction survey, but that is a politician who has no idea what that would look like.

So I just don’t necessarily know if you need to do a whole lot more, but it is entirely obviously in your ball game. We can absolutely explore that. It’s my understanding they tend to be an index that roll up a number of indicators. So it’s something we can look at at the satisfaction surveys, the mechanism to do that, and we can bring that back.

Okay, as for a seconder for adding a metric or adjusted metric with this intent, Councillor Hopkins is willing to second it. Is anybody object to having this as a post-metric? Yes. Thank you and through.

I’m just, maybe it’s my understanding of happy and quality of life, but A and D seem very similar and we already have a way to measure A. So I’m just wondering why perhaps we need D as well. Councillor Frank, here was your suggestion. For sure.

So I interpret them differently, but I understand again that these are subjective words and so everyone would interpret them differently. Quality of life to me is like, do I have a job? Do I have a house? Can I buy my food?

Can I get to work? Do I, you know, whereas happiness I think is, do I have friends, do I enjoy going to work? Do I struggle to put food on the table? And I find them to be different parameters, but I hear your point.

I personally would rather use happiness as an index of success than quality of life, but that’s just me, Councillor Stevenson. I’m all about happy, but I don’t know that it falls under our strategic plan. People can have all the food, housing, job, everything and still not be very happy. So I’m not sure that’s something we want to take on.

Okay, so it sounds to me like, we’ll vote on this one too. Is there any other comments then? That was moved by Councillor Frank, seconded by Councillor Hopkins. Whenever you’re ready, you can open up for voting.

In the vote and the motion is lost, five to eight. Okay, so we won’t include that one either. Other suggestions to 1.1 to 1.5. We’re not as much fun anymore, right?

Like, please stop it. Yeah, the other changes to this block that we have on the screen. Okay, maybe we can go to the 1.6 and beyond a block. So 1.6 to 1.9, Councillor Frank.

Sorry, I feel like it’s always me. I did want to include, if we could, under 1.6, adding increase in native parental species planted and number of hectares of naturalized park land, recognizing the existing metrics are good. And I think that we should maybe include these because we are trying to move towards a more resilient city. And I think these things support that.

Did you capture the suggestion? Are you looking for them to be separate or together? It’s your suggestion, so you have to decide, unfortunately. Okay, they’re separate, yeah.

Okay, so that’s an E and an F. Is there a seconder to include these two? Or if you don’t like two, you can second just one of them. But I’ll look for someone who’s willing to second either one or two of these.

Yes, go ahead, Deputy Mayor Lewis. I will second E, I won’t second F, ‘cause I’m not gonna support F. So you got a support for E, is there anybody willing? Like we can do with these separately, but if there’s no one even willing to use did-do F, then we’ll just drop it.

Yeah, you’re willing to do F, okay. So we’re gonna do with these separately, given there’s differences of opinion. So does anybody object to, does anybody want to have a vote, I should say, on the native perennial species planted piece? Yes, go ahead, Councilor Stevenson.

My comment on F, although I love the idea, I’m wondering the effort required in measuring it, is my concern. I think we’re, so I’m not sure if we have an answer to that. Oh, go ahead, Ms. Chair.

Thank you, Your Worship. So the City of London is already embarking on a process to increase our native species planting, as well as some naturalization. It’s easy for us to measure how much we’ve done, particularly as we respect to naturalization, probably easier actually, than the number of native species planted. I think ultimately where staff needs to go with this, is the development of a native species perennial policy.

The reason that hasn’t occurred so far is, this actually is not a definition that’s accepted universally in the horticultural community. There’s about 15 different categories of native species that you could overlap that would cover the London zone, and there’s a fair bit of debate as to what those should be. There’s standardization coming, which will help advance this. In the meantime though, certainly staff can track at a sort of high level, the investment in native species and naturalized space by area.

That’s great, so it’s good to know it’s easy to measure. Did I hear a request to change that from number of native to value of, or was that just me hearing Mr. Sheer say that? If I may, Mr.

Your Worship, sorry. My suggestion would be let staff double check on the best way to count, that it might be on the only spend, it might be on the area planted. It probably won’t be on a per plant basis, because that level of granularity in terms of our plantings would be quite detailed, we generally don’t plant. Other than trees, don’t count the number of plants that we plant in that level of detail.

Go ahead. Can I just recommend that instead of number, we put quantify and allow staff to determine, determine how to quantify that? Quantify native perennial species planted. Some qualifier.

Yeah, I think this is one where we’re gonna have to have some language back on. The question is, is there, does anybody object to E, knowing that we’re gonna get some language back? Yes, go ahead. Thank you and through you.

We’re just clarifying that we’re just talking about within parks and we’re not talking about across the whole city. I believe so. It’s in the group park maintenance and garbage collection section. So I assume it would relate to— That’s great.

I’m not sure how that would be, that’s how it’s gonna be interpreted given the section it’s in, but I’ll ask Ms. Share for clarification. Thank you, Your Worship. We would interpret this as being within parks and open spaces based on the section that it’s in.

I would like to discuss the next one around boulevard plantings with perennial species separately as we do have additional concerns about that, whereas we do not with the increase within park lands and open space. Okay, so I guess objections then, is anybody object to E, where it is in this section given the answers? No? Okay, E’s fine.

F is not, I’ve heard at least one member say that they’d like to make a decision on this. So is there any further comments on F before we have a vote on F? Go ahead, Councillor Frank. Thanks, I’ll just add that I know that we already do have naturalized park lands, so there’d already be a base layer, and I’m just, I personally, I’d hope that there’d be more, but I know like directly across from my house, there is a naturalization area that I don’t know how many hectares it is, but so I just feel like we’re already doing and I just want to see it go up, so that’s why I want to include it.

Deputy Mayor Lewis. Thank you, I don’t support this one, and not that I don’t support some naturalization efforts in some of our park lands, however, there is a very qualitative piece to this one we’re talking about, just measuring based on quantity. There are locations where naturalization makes a lot of sense. There are other locations where naturalization is frankly less appropriate in some neighborhood park settings, I’m hesitant to, and there’s, in my experience over the last four years, there are neighborhoods who love it, and neighborhoods who hate it, and there can be some real challenges with naturalization in parks in certain neighborhoods, and I would, I’m hesitant to say that this is a good measure of how we’re doing an improved park maintenance.

I also wonder how we actually continue to increase our number over time when the park land that we’re acquiring through development agreements and things like that is some of the existing park land that we have that we’re not utilizing to its fullest extent right now is also in demand in our parks and recreation master plan. We know we have things like soccer fields that we need more of, I’m hearing an increasing demand from certainly residents in the East End who are interested in more cricket pitches, and things like that are not spaces that are going to be naturalized, so park land has to really be balanced between user value and environmental value in terms of the park land inventory, so I don’t wanna measure our success based on how many hectares of naturalized space we have. When it comes to improved park land maintenance, I’d like to focus more on how satisfied Londoners are with access to parks in their neighborhoods, the quality of their experience, while they’re in those parks, so I don’t see naturalization as one that by hectare that I’m supportive of. Okay, any other comments?

But I think we’re on the same page, I don’t disagree with Deputy Mayor. I think some space could be a great naturalized area, and lots of other space could be a great recreational area, and I don’t think that, again, to staff’s earlier presentation, I’m not saying a target, I’m not saying that there needs to be a target, or that every single park needs to have 10% naturalized, I’m just saying that grass is pretty much useless unless it is used for recreational purchase, like a purpose, like a soccer field, so areas that can be naturalized, I would like to see it, so that’s why I’m really keen to see this included, but I don’t think, I’m not saying it trumps recreational use in any way. Councillor McAllister. Well, just through the chair, thinking then of adding, in terms of the metric, like unused, or like adding something else in there, in terms of the metric to look at the, I’m drawing a blank on this, but I do think something could be added to specify the councilor’s intent.

I’m drawing a blank here though, but it certainly seemed late in the evening. Is there a metric we could use in terms of unused, I don’t know, I’ll leave this to the original, but maybe we could refine this metric is what I’m trying to say. Go to Mr. Chair.

Thank you Your Worship. Perhaps I can provide some help in navigating this. Generally speaking, our approach where we do naturalization is going to be in places where they’re difficult to maintain for recreational or athletic amenities. So they might be looking at a part of a park that tends to run quite wet, very difficult to mow, not suitable without a fair bit of investment to turn it into a sports field or picnic or casual play area.

So it might be well suited to a rain garden. One of the other opportunities, we do see this in quite regularly is as we start to rehabilitate stormwater ponds. Stormwater ponds built prior to about 10 years ago, 15 years ago, are generally sort of big square swimming pool type features with turf grass around them. We know that in terms of both meeting water quality and water management standards and naturalization, those spaces can actually be really beneficial.

So I think there’s always areas we can target this. We would never staff be looking to trade off, use a programmable or recreational or informal recreational or athletic space. So we can work on some language if there’s a need to have to explicit them. I’m hoping that provides a bit of clarity about where we would consider this direction to be applied in terms of our programs and projects.

Any other comments? Again, we’re gonna vote on including this one. So you’ve heard that there might be obviously adjustment to the language and approach to this, but on the concept of including it, generally we’ll have a vote on that and given there’s no more discussion, we’ll open that. Councilor Palosa, Councilor Palosa absent for this vote posing the vote and the motion is lost four to eight.

Okay, still on the piece here up to 1.9, any other suggestions? Thank you, yes. I’m tempted to remove something, which might be exciting for people. So both under 1.7, 1.6, number of grass cutting cycles per year.

Again, just based on this discussion, I personally don’t find that to be an indicator of success. I understand that some people like to have grass two millimeters above the ground. I think that is both a waste of space, opportunity, ecosystem benefits, and uses a lot of greenhouse gas emissions. So I would rather just remove that as an indicator of success personally.

Okay, so you wanna move both of those. We’ll try doing it together if you wanna deal with them separately. We can, is there someone willing to second the removal of both of those? Deputy Mayor Lewis is willing to remove both of those as indicators of success.

Does anybody object to, you know, the word you represent? And I probably understand why. So discussion then. So this won’t be unanimous, but we’ll have a decision on this.

Go ahead. Thank you, Your Worship, and through you. Well, I don’t necessarily see converting all of the areas to naturalization. I certainly think that there are spots in our parks where we could reduce the number of cuttings.

You know, maybe we’re only extending the period by two or three days, but over the course of a summer that might result in one or two less cuttings at a very negligible impact to residents’ notice. So I’m okay if we aren’t using this as a metric of success. In fact, I would love to see staff come forward with a business case in the multi-year budget that saved us a little money by cutting once or twice less a year. So we’ll have a vote on this.

So I’m going to go to comments, but just as you craft the motion, I’m just going to need to know whether it’s in the positive or the negative. So I guess the motion is going to be remove these. Is that how you’re going to craft it? Yes, it’ll say that in the strategic area of focus, well-being and safety expected result 1.6, draft metrics C be removed from the draft strategic plan.

It seems to me like we can deal with both at the same time. So if you want to add in the 1.7, I don’t know of anybody who’s asking these two to be separated. Now, okay, so you can pull that together. I’ll go to Councilor Ramin for comments.

Thank you and through you. I heard a lot about grass cutting at the doors. And I’ll say it from a concern around standards and that the grass exists already in these parks and in these boulevards, especially heard a lot about in the boulevards. And right now, you know, or what I’ve heard over the course of the election, especially when I was going around and seeing all the uncut boulevards, was concerns around the fact that people thought that there was ambiguity around who’s job it is, but also when they found out it was the cities, how many times the city is coming.

So I think having some metrics, it doesn’t mean it doesn’t impact whether or not we’re cutting it more often or less often. It tells us what the standard is. It tells us what we’ve agreed to. It then helps us to understand our pattern and the way that we are providing that service.

And I think it gives us a reasonable metric to be able to say to the homeowners and to the park users that yes, your grass according to our numbers has been cut X amount of time. So I think it gives us a metric that we can use in our conversations, but I understand the environmental cost, but these are spaces that as a city, we’ve agreed to take care of already. Thanks. Councillor Stevenson.

Thank you. And as Councillor ramen pointed out, it got me thinking I did not hear a lot about grass cutting, but I heard a lot about the concern of needles in long grass and the inability to ensure that the areas were safe for children and dogs walking. So I will support Councillor ramen in not supporting this. Is that right?

Yeah, so just so everybody’s clear, yes, vote is gonna be take it out. No vote is gonna be keeping it in this time ‘cause the motion will be to remove them as metrics. Any other comments though? Go ahead.

Part of a new campaign and it’s a war on grass. I just wanted to (laughs) Thank you. (audience laughs) So I don’t have any other comments. Just a reminder, this is a motion to take it out.

So voting yes is taking it out. Voting no is keeping it in. So we’ll open that for voting. Housing the vote and the motion is lost on a tie vote 6 to 6.

Okay, any other changes to these sections on the screen before us? Yes, go ahead. And Deputy City Manager Shear kind of alluded to this, but I was hoping to have an increase in number of boulevards planted with perennial native species under 1.7. So we wanna replicate whatever the metrics gonna be in under 1.7.

And I think Deputy City Manager Shear said she wanted to comment potentially on the inclusion here as it might have some different consequences than in the other area. So I’ll go to you. Thank you, Your Worship. So very so much to the discussion from Councilor Stevenson and Councilor Raman.

Generally speaking where we’ve naturalized boulevards it tends to be more rural areas and we still get significant complaints about the unsightly and untidy nature of that space. I would suggest that we be in a good position to pull together a policy related to future boulevard planting with native species over the life of this drought plan. We certainly have made some replacement and changes in our decorative boulevard plantings going from more annual species to more perennial or lower maintenance species. But I would have some concerns about our ability to do this.

Effectively, we certainly will need to put in order of magnitude costs because this would include replacing some existing grass boulevards potentially. Okay, so is there a seconder for the inclusion of this piece? Yes, there is, does anybody object to the inclusion of this piece? Yes, okay, does anybody need to discuss it or are we just gonna vote?

Okay, Deputy Mayor Lewis. Thank you, Your Worship and through you to our staff. I don’t know if there’s concerns or not or if there’s particular native species that might be identified. But when we’re starting to talk about boulevards and things like that, are there concerns arising from some native species plantings around sightline triangles?

You know, I think about areas along Veterans Memorial Parkway, where some native species might be appropriate, but at the same time with vehicles traveling at a high rate of speed on expressway and the sightlines of and the work that goes into maintaining these to preserve the sightlines might be prohibitive. So just wondering if staff can indicate whether that would be an issue for them potentially? Through Your Worship. So generally speaking, when we’re picking species that will be used roadside, we’ll be looking for things that we are able to maintain with respect to safe sightlines and intersections for pedestrians and vehicles and cyclists.

We would in the case where we are using native species plantings still need to mow those corners and sightline triangles, which would be part of that. I think that scoping this work would be really a good process and I’m happy to recommend that we advance coming up with a boulevard native species or native perennial species policy to define what exactly would be the desired outcome of council with respect to this action? Are we looking strictly the decorative landscaping boulevards? Are we interested in starting to convert existing grass boulevards to native species plantings?

Or is this looking at a development standards change that perhaps only a new neighborhood would be looking to integrate some projects that would perceive with native perennial species? We have done some pilot projects with respect to lids that have used a lot of native species. They have been quite difficult to maintain effectively and there has been a fair number of complaints. So as I said, as much as I’m a very big fan of perennial native species, if there’s an opportunity to convert this to developing a strategy with respectable of our planting in this style, that would probably be a better outcome from a staff perspective.

If it’s a little council, we’ll figure out a way to make this work. That’s for Ramen. Thank you, and through you, I would be supportive of not including this at this time and working on the policy. Yeah, I’m good with that.

So you wanna not do it? Okay, great, so we don’t have to worry about this one. We’re gonna work on a policy and take it out of this section. So, oh, yes, go ahead.

Your worship, what I interpreted there was, it comes out as a metric, but put it in as a strategy in terms of developing the policy just to be clear. So we will add it into the strategy side. I see not. - Yes.

Does anybody have an objection to seeing this as a strategy rather than a metric? That means, okay, good, so no objections. Okay, yes, make it so, Nick, I’m not sure how, but I know you’ll work your magic. Any other changes to the section that we’re in?

Yes, okay, I just looked to you now. So that’s one, under 1.9 under C, it currently is food bank utilization. I’m fine to leave that if we want to. I suggested a different one, so it could either replace it or it could be a D, but I was thinking percentage of lenders living in a food desert, and that’s defined as living more than two kilometers away from a fresh food location, and that, to me, speaks more to, I think, the health equity in neighborhoods, because food bank, I mean, going up and down to me, is not a strong indicator of health equity.

I might go to staff on our ability to measure, go ahead. Thank you, and through your worship, I talked to my research and policy team, and we’re not aware of any organizations currently measuring this, the proximity to food deserts. We also did reach out to the Middlesex London Food Policy Council, and they weren’t either. We did do this many years ago with Dr.

Gilliland when we started our work on poverty, and actually worked a lot on creating food hubs and in partnership with the food bank, but we currently don’t measure this, nor have a way to measure this. I can speak to the food bank on different stats that they collect, if you wish. But right now, we don’t have one that accurately measures this by neighborhood. Go ahead.

I’m okay to withdraw it. Thanks, I do think it might be a lot of work, but I will say I do know that the Middlesex London Food Policy Council, I think, does every four or five years of community food assessment, and I do think some indicators in there might satisfy what I’m hoping for from this, but I unfortunately didn’t do any leg work on that. But I do, there are some indicators, I think they would come out of that, that would reflect people’s ability to access food within their neighborhood. So, Councilor McAllister, I think this is being withdrawn, but you wanna make a comment, go ahead.

Okay, so we’re not gonna move forward with that piece. Any other changes to this section? No, okay, let’s move to the outcome two. Oh, wait, no.

Yes, Councilor McAllister, go ahead. I was hoping to include, in terms of getting a sense for, I don’t know if this is the correct, but like number of hectares of urban garden lands, specifically on like the public land that we have. Just unclear on where you were thinking. The section we were previously on, where it was, back to the food.

Go down to the food area, okay. So, do you just describe what you said again? Number of hectares devoted to urban gardening and public land. Go ahead, Councilor Roman.

Thank you, just to clarify, we’re talking about community gardens. Yes, thank you, okay. So, in an odd way, I think I might have a suggestion for this, if the goal here is to measure kind of, I think what Councilor Frank was getting at, proximity to an access to community gardens, and it’s improved how the equity access across neighborhoods, are you interested in just, are you interested in the hectares, are you interested in the diversity of geographic locations of community gardens, like that they’re generally available in different parts of the city? I mean, ideally, I’d like to know the quality of the quantity, but I’m not gonna over stuff, and I would just, in terms of how much land we have devoted to it, would be a good metric to have as well.

Okay, I don’t mind leaving it as is, I just wanted to get to your intent. Is there, so, a seconder for including this, yes. Is there, like, first off, any questions or comments, any objections to including this? One space, Deputy Mayor Lewis.

Apologies your worship, but I was just trying to give some thought to geographic dispersion as well as quantity, I’m wondering if Councilor McAllister might entertain, if we can revisit 1.9D for a moment, number of hectares, comma, and unique locations of public land devoted to community gardens, and that might speak to, even if we haven’t necessarily increased the number of hectares, if we’ve got a diversity of locations, that’s a measure of success to me as well. So I wonder if that might better encapsulate both location and total quantity. Go ahead. Thank you, and through your worship.

We could measure unique locations, or we actually measure neighborhoods, so the number of neighborhoods we’re in that aligns then with the expected result. Okay, so maybe we can adjust it to be reflective of the information that we have access to. And I mean on hectares, I believe it to happen, whether that’s the right size measure, it might be plots, it might be plots of a certain size, but whatever you think is best there, you can suggest back to us, go ahead. Sorry, and through your worship, I might suggest two separate metrics as we report separately on each of them.

Okay, we’re making that change now. I assume that we were in a second or okay with having that that way. Okay, any objections to those two additions? No?

Okay, those are in. Onto outcome two. I believe that’s all of outcome two, is it? It doesn’t go on the next page, okay.

So you see all of outcome two here, changes to outcome two. Councillor Stevenson. - Thank you, I just had a question on 2.1C, it says number of new attainable housing units. And I noticed the outcome says affordable and attainable, and just looking for clarity on what an attainable unit is.

So we’ll go into what does attainable mean, Mr. Mathers? Through the chair, the new legislation being proposed by the provincial government does set out what attainable is. However, the new regulations will provide the detail of what they mean by attainable, but it is something that’s being used by the new provincial government housing supply plan.

So that’s why we’ve used this as the metric at this time. So we have to wait for the regulations to see the exact definition, but we’re essentially aligning, aligning with where the provincial government is going. Any other questions or additions for this section, which is all of outcome two? Okay, let’s move on to the next area.

Okay, this is safe London for women girls, and gender diverse and trans people. The whole thing is on the screen. Any changes to any of the metrics or comments here? Go ahead.

Thank you. I just had one under 1.1D, number of collaborative partnerships developed and are strengthened. And I got that one from Jennifer at the London Abuse Women’s Center. So I just thought it might be good if we can track that.

Any comment from our staff on that? No, okay. Seconder for this addition. Yep, okay, there is one.

Comments or questions? Any objections to including this metric? Okay, that one’s in. Any other changes to the metrics in this section?

No, okay, let’s move to the next section. Economic growth, culture and prosperity. And I will note we made a number of changes to this in the other piece. So the metrics may adjust slightly here, but let’s just kind of open it up generally if there were additional metrics in this area that colleagues were considering, realizing that there might be some adjustments based on the changes we’ve already made that our staff will bring forward too.

Okay, so we can see outcome one. I don’t see anybody looking to make changes to that. Outcome two, again, the language is slightly different. Maybe you can see if we can fit outcome three on there too.

Is that all the three? Okay, so outcome two and three? No, okay, how about outcome four? Councillor Stevenson.

Thank you, I had a few changes or additions. I was hoping to make on this one. Under 4.2, I was hoping to add C as number of new tree plantings. And D percentage core area residential vacancy rate.

I will go to our staff first on comments on either of these and their measureability and ability to gather data. Your worship, I believe Ms. Share is on the screen? Yes, go ahead.

I looked first. Thank you, your worship hadn’t appeared yet. So that’s my fault, sorry about that. There’s always a little delay, your worship.

Thank you, your worship. With respect to measuring the number of new tree plantings, certainly that’s a measure that we’re able to manage with respect to public lands. We can tag that in with our colleagues in planning and active to measure any plantings that happen on private lands as a result of development. There are fairly limited opportunities and generally throughout the core with respect to new plantings, which is why we have made some changes to the budget largely in the downtown.

But we are often looking for spaces and we can certainly measure how well we do in those spaces. So do you think we should be specific to public spaces if you, like is it, it would be bad in accurate data on private spaces? Your worship, I would actually suggest that we, that we counted across the board because we’ve run out of a number of private public spaces. A lot of our plantings are going to be in cooperation with private property owners.

Okay, and any comments on D that staff might have, the addition of percentage of core area residential vacancy rate, Mr. Mathers? Through the chair, we do very much so suggest for the commercial vacancy rate. The residential vacancy rate, I just want to understand, are we talking about rental percentage of like availability for rental housing?

There’s another metric that we have for citywide. Are you just, I just wanted to ensure that you’re just looking at the same thing for the core? Just to make sure that we’re using the same language. If you could describe the metric that you have available and I can ask councilor if that’s what they’re going for.

So in 2.1E, we have London’s average rental rates or apartment vacancy rate. So is this just the apartment vacancy rate in the core that you’re looking for? Is that what you’d like to see, councilor? Yes.

Okay, so let’s align that metric to be the same. And there’s no issue with geographically tracking it to the core area. We can take that back. I don’t think it will be an issue, but we’ll take that back.

But I just wanted to make sure that I understood what you’re looking for, so that’s clear. So we can include that. I’ll ask if there’s a second or any objections, but noted that if it’s very difficult to track, it may be suggested to come out. Seconder for that, yes.

Oh, objection to that? Here, what? Oh, suggestion. So first officer, seconder to adding this in.

Yes, okay, there is. Go ahead, council approval. If this will be challenging to quantify how about number of residential occupants? I think what Mr.

Mather said is it’s not challenging to quantify, the only restriction he might have is tracing the geographic area of the core and getting the data in that space. So it’s symmetric that is already in another section. It’s just about whether we can track it to that piece. Are there any objections to including this?

Realizing that our staff would give some feedback on the feasibility of it. Any objection to either one, I should say, there was the tree plantings one and the core one. No? Okay, we’ll leave both those.

Councillor Stevenson. Yes, and I was hoping to add under 4.3B would be a number of new parking spaces, and that’s for commercial. Okay, question, we’re gonna have some questions. First, is there a seconder, I should say?

Yes, there is. Question, Councillor ramen. Thank you, and through you. Are we talking about net new, or are we talking about, are we talking about, let’s say, you know, a new building goes up and it decreases parking somewhere, but there’s an increase in parking somewhere else.

Is that net new? Are you looking at, I guess through you chair, I’m just trying to understand what we’re looking at here ‘cause I’m pretty sure our parking strategy isn’t to increase parking in downtown. Yes, so are you looking to find kind of the net increase in parking overall? Because again, when a building is developed, sometimes parking goes away.

Some is out in the building, it doesn’t always balance out exactly perfectly. Yeah, I was looking for net new because my understanding is it’s been hard to sign commercial leases and that people want more parking than is currently available. So in an effort to increase our commercial activity in downtown or reduce the commercial vacancy rate, I’ve been told that we need more parking spaces, thinking more parking garage or something like that or parking within a new building. Okay, Councillor Frank, and then I’ll go to Councillor Hopkins.

Thank you, yes. I won’t be supporting this just because I think we need to be reducing parking spaces and I do think we’re actually overburdened with parking spaces in the car. It’s just that people have to pay for them more if a business wants a parking lot, they’d have to pay for the parking lot. So I won’t be supporting for net new parking spaces.

Councillor Hopkins. Yeah, maybe through you to staff about the strategy, parking strategy that we already have, if staff can make a comment, go ahead. Through the chair, there is currently work and of course with the COVID and the changing environment in the downtown, we’re continuing to work on that as well because it is really something that’s changing in the short and the long term. The one thing that may be helpful that we’ve heard from the community as well, as the commercial owners as well, is that the difference between like, whether it’s a public parking spot, so it’s where anyone can take it, which I think maybe that you’re getting at here, that you’d be an increase in the number of public spots.

And then also that what we’ve been hearing about being able to have reserve parking, which is helping some of the folks downtown as well that they need to be able to reserve parking for their users. So if any of that wording would be helpful, that I just wanna just suggest that. I have Deputy Mayor Lewis and then Councillor Ferreira. Thank you, Your Worship and through you.

I will share that I’m uncomfortable with the language net new. We do have, in my opinion, parking problem downtown. We have lots that are significantly underutilized and then we have lots that are at capacity, like all hours of the day. And we’re unable to fill vacant commercial spaces.

Landlords cannot attract tenants because there’s not even room for their employees to park. And well, it may be our desire to see as many of those rides as possible on transit, it is still going to require parking for employees and for customers of some of the businesses. And if we’re going to continue to maintain the London plan, goals around downtown being the location for major office spaces. And we’ve talked and we’ve heard in the news about the province relocating WSIB.

WSIB employees are not all coming here and working out of a downtown office if they do not have spaces to park as one example. So I’m struggling with this because I don’t want a lot of surface parking lots. And, but I’m also cognizant of the fact that bit by bit, we have been removing some of our own pond street parking for other, whether it’s active transportation projects, beautification projects, we have been removing some of those. And I’m mindful of, I’m going to maybe steal Councillor Layman’s thunder here a little bit, I’m mindful of the quote that he always gives me that nobody’s going into Jill’s table and buying a slow cooker and a cast iron pot and then walking six blocks back to their car with a hundred pounds of purchase.

So we do need to have parking that’s right-sized for the core, Councillor Frank excluded ‘cause I know she’d walk all the way back to Warley Village with that purchase, but I, so I’m struggling with the metric, but I understand the intent is to make sure that our parking utilization is right-sized. I’m not sure how we capture that in a metric in the strategic plan though. And I don’t know if staff has any thoughts to the right sizing of our parking availability and utilization, but city manager’s next on the list, so I’m going to go to her. Thank you, Your Worship.

The intention of the metrics is to give a neutral unit of measure the debate about whether that should go up or down or change comes when you do and why be in target setting. So I would respectfully suggest that maybe if parking spaces are important, that new comes out and the discussion and debate about what direction that should be occurs through the MYB process. This is just strictly the unit of measure at this point in time, not setting the strategy or direction you’re trying to move in. I think so, but through you, I might ask Ms.

Livingston a follow up to her comment ‘cause I think I hear where she’s going. I’m just wondering if the, perhaps there’s a metric that says the parking utilization percentages, which I know we do measure could be the metric that we consider, but I also hear what you’re saying about the MYB and setting it in the target. So I’m amenable either way, but I do support the idea that we need to right size our parking strategy in the downtown. Go ahead.

Your Worship, our intention in developing the metrics was to support the expected result. So the expected result has increased commercial occupancy in the core area, which is why we offered the metric of what percentage is the vacancy rate. I would suggest that if parking spaces are important to that, you keep it neutral, and then we can determine through your discussion around the strategy, the review of parking that’s happening and the MYB, what direction that should go in. I know I have others on the speakers of science.

I know the downtown council wants to speak, but I know councilor Stevenson suggested this. It’s been some feedback, I wanna go back to her first. Yeah, it’s sounding like this might be better as an action item in order to increase commercial occupancy. So I’m willing to withdraw that and keep it as a way to increase the, so I’m willing to withdraw it.

Okay, so we’re not gonna include that as a metric councilor for our do you still wanna speak this? Go ahead. Thank you, through you. If it’s being withdrawn, I was gonna suggest a way to maybe quantify parking at an appropriate level.

Well, not a way to quantify, but how to look at it. But if it’s being withdrawn, then I’ll just hold those comments for when we bring it up again. Yeah, I just wanna make a comment on this. I think this is where sometimes we want to insert a metric with an intended result that we’re unsure on the actual link to the strategy.

I think what will happen is we review the downtown parking strategy, and if you’ve read the old one, there are some areas that had a surplus parking, there are some areas that had a deficiency, and it’s not equally spread. So having a general metric across the whole area probably doesn’t help us achieve what might be the goal. And given the comments, and I’ve heard the same thing, that it’s not just about public parking, but the accessing ends to reserve parking, the proximity that you can travel for reserve parking to be able to say, I know someone who wants to build high density residential tower, but they can’t, we’ll end up losing their reserve parking, needs to find some place for the reserve parking to kind of achieve our goal. So this is a complex issue, and I think if we’re not careful, we get ahead of ourselves by building a metric that may not actually be linked to the strategy that we’re trying to accomplish.

So my advice would be, keep it with removed, let the parking strategy take its course, and then we’ll see the actions that council may need to take and the linkages to core area vacancy after that point. Councilor Lehman. I’m concerned about removing it, because I think we need to measure it. However, that being said, as long as I’m comfortable with staff’s remarks that it will be looked at, the number one reason companies are not locating the core is because of concerns of parking.

You talk to commercial real estate guys and gals that they, that is what they hear. And WSIB was mentioned, and I think I’m very concerned that we might lose that business from the core. That was an opportunity if lost would be a shame. So I will not, I’ll go ahead with leaving it off the metrics ‘cause I agree with the mayor’s comments.

Well, getting the weeds, I’m also comfortable with staff’s remarks about this being looked at. Go ahead. Your worship, I’m hearing the discussion of council, and clearly there’s an intent that a strategy around parking is connected to commercial occupancy. So if you can leave it with staff to try and develop a strategy to support the outcome and expected result and not have the metric, try and serve that purpose, then we can bring that back for your March 8th discussion.

I think there’s lots of nods that yeah, that would be the proper approach that way. We make the right decisions based on the information. Okay, go ahead, Councilor Stevenson. Thank you, just two more.

Under 4.1, I was hoping to add C, net gain slash loss of business. I know LEDC recently kind of gives some data on that based on the project, but I wanna have staff comment on how we would track that across the larger core area. And if there’s any challenges to that. Through the chair, we can take that one back.

There is data available, it’s just whether it can be again, like detailed to the core area. The things that we do have measures on are business licenses and things like that, but that business licenses don’t apply to all businesses in the core either. So that’s the other challenge. So we can take that back to see what would be required to be able to track that metric.

Okay, so is there a seconder for including this, Councilor Cuddy, is there any objections to leaving this in, realizing our staff might come back and say, it’s either feasible or not. No objections to seeing if this one might work. Okay, we’ll leave it in and we’ll look forward to your feedback on that. You said he had one more?

I do, and I’m not sure how measurable it is, so I’d love staff’s opinion, but I wanted to add under 4.5C, the value of new security measures in the core area. I think my first question would be, what do you mean by value? Oh, dollar value spent. Are you talking about public or some trying to capture some of the private security investments that are happening?

I was looking for municipal dollars spent. Is that something we can measure or comment on? Certainly, we can measure municipal dollars that are spent in the core. I don’t think that is a particular challenge.

Okay, is there a seconder for including a metric like that, Councilor Cuddy? Any objections to including a measure like that? Sorry, there’s a comment first. I want to do the comment first.

Go ahead, Councilor Ferra. So thank you, and through you. So I’m concerned with that just by the municipal investment in new security, because if we are successful in what we’re trying to do moving forward, I would assume that that value would go down. And I just wanted to ask, how would we see that as a successful metric in the decrease of the spending or the increase?

It’s like, I think it was said before, it’s a neutral metric. So it would be linked to other pieces of data, but I don’t know if any of our staff have a comment on that beyond what I’ve said. Go ahead. - I suspect Mr.

Mayor, I didn’t table the metric, but I’m assuming it’s intended to try and demonstrate an association with increased safety in the core. I think that’s the intent. Yes, go ahead, Councilor. And thank you, through you.

So yeah, that’s what I’m just trying to kind of allude to. It’s just, I feel like it’s kind of distant, a little bit further than I would like to see to actually have a direct measure of what we’re trying to measure there. So that’s just the concern that I’m pointing out. Councillor Hopkins.

Yeah, I just would like a little bit more clarification because I’m not sure what the measurement is and the geography of the core area and what we’re trying to get here with the measurement, just would like a little bit more information. Thank you, I did come up with this one last minute and my intention was to tie it in with the increased safety, but I understand what Councillor Ferreira is saying. And I think again, I can tie this into an action item instead of a metric. So I’m happy to withdraw it.

All right, thanks for taking that. And I would say, I think that’s a good way to go. What we do know too is there’s organizations, private organizations who are investing in security too and probably the overall rate of that change is probably important and that would be very difficult for us to measure. Okay, and any other changes to this area?

Councillor Pribble. Proposal for 4.3 to add square footage of occupied versus vacant and to split it into the ground level and upper floor space. So square footage of occupied versus vacant and into two areas, ground level and upper floors. That’s all commercial ‘cause it’s under the commercial.

Correct, yes, all commercial. Okay, capacity to measure that sort of, Mr. Mathers, microphone, thank you. Through the chair, we would be looking at a fairly intense effort to get the core area vacancies piece, but my understanding of how we’d be calculating that we’d need some of that base information.

It’s just whether we can look at it from the different floors. So that would be the next piece. So we can take that back, the amount of square footage would be part of that vacancy calculation. It would just be whether we can geographically break it down by the floor.

So even to get this metric, it will be over and above the work we do because it’s a consultant usually that we use to be able to track that information. We have got it out of our core area vacancy study, so it would just be building on that work that we’ll be moving into the future, but I can get back on whether you can break it to that breakout. Okay, so a seconder to do that. Again, this is one of those ones where it may not be feasible, but staff will look into it.

Is there a seconder to trying to capture this? Yes, okay, there is. Are there objections to having staff look into this one? No, okay.

So again, we all note that this may not be feasible, but you’ll take a look, especially if there’s a significant cost associated with collecting it. Any other changes to outcome four area here? Okay, let’s go to mobility and transportation. Okay, we’ve got all of them on the screen.

Mobility and transportation, 1.1 through 1.7 with all the metrics, changes or comments here. Councillor Frank. Yes, thank you. I would like to add under 1.1E, percentage modal share split.

I put in quantifiers, we can delete that. So percentage of modal share split as a metric. There are comments on the capacity to gather that data from staff. Go ahead, Ms.

Chair. Thank you, Your Worship. So certainly modal share split is something staffed as track as best we can with the information we have available. To do it comprehensively, it’s a fairly long-term strategy and you use an origin destination study, which is quite expensive and takes a great deal of time.

We’re happy to track it though in the metrics we do get from our intelligent traffic systems, from cell phone data, some of the metadata we get, some of our spot counts, those sorts of things, passenger accounts, some of the counts we do for pedestrians and cyclists. But if you’re looking to do a very comprehensive one, we just wanna make sure that that’s properly budgeted and scheduled and I’ve just cautioned that progress from year to year is often quite small. These are long-term trends, but there are trends that we watch that are important. Councillor Frank.

That sounds good, the easy one, please. So the one that didn’t cost a lot, I think is the one that we’re interested in. Okay. Is there a seconder for, okay, Councillor Hopkins, questions or comments, are there objections to including this as was described by our staff?

Other changes to this section? Councillor Frank. Thank you, under 1.6 adding a B, percentage rider satisfaction with service to industrial workplaces. Yes, Councillor Hopkins.

Yeah, I just have a question, maybe I’m not sure who can answer this, but would the LTC not do these surveys themselves and just kind of wondering if maybe that’s where we should go with wanting to get this information? I think it’s good information to have, but I’m not sure if it is with us. Sorry, go ahead. Yes, the Councillor is quite right, your worship.

A number of the metrics we will work with the ABCs on, this would be a perfect example of that. With the addition of, or suggested addition of this one, we would need to talk to LTC to see if they do collect it and we can bring that information back for Margie. Okay, so is someone willing to second the addition of this? Sure, okay, you are, okay.

Any questions or comments? Any objection to this realizing our staff will have to talk to the LTC about the possibility of having this data available be very dependent upon them having collected it? Okay, so there’s no objections to doing that investigation and leaving it here for now. Other changes to this section?

Okay, next area. Climate action and sustainable growth. Probably no suggestions here, no, I’m just kidding. Councillor Frank?

You’ll be happy to know I dropped a bunch of targets. Under 1.2G, I was opening up percentage reduction sewage overflow volume annually with the work that we’re trying to do with unwanted water sources. Can I have a comment, I assume, from a share about the collectability of that? Through your worship?

No concerns with tracking and providing that information? We track it and report it provincially as well. Perfect, a seconder for that. Yes, there are any objections to including that?

Okay, that one’s in. Next, go ahead. Thank you. Under 1.2G, I was hoping to add, and I didn’t circulate this, so I’m sorry.

Grade level for watersheds from UTRCA. So every five years the upper Thames Conservation Authority does a watershed report card for all of our watersheds. And their target is to have a one grade level increase. So they track this very scientifically.

So I was just hoping to have the grade level watersheds for UTRCA, knowing that they are every five years. So it would span over the strategic plan, but I would like to see between the strat plan and our next one, our grades for watersheds to go up one. So that’s why I was hoping to include it. Any concerns with tracking that?

Given it sounds like that already being collected although the timeframe is maybe a little bit out of alignment to get multiple data points. Seconder for including that. Yes, Councillor Coney? Yeah.

Any objections to including this? Your worship, I’m sorry to interrupt. Oh, sorry, I see, I see, I see Mr. Chair.

Go ahead. My apologies, Your Worship. We have some correspondence from the upper Thames Conservation Authority that their strategy, our schedule for the grade level reporting does not align well with the strat plan, and they would not be able to deliver on this metric. Deputy Mayor Lewis.

Thank you, so that’s even more of a concern for me in including this metric. But the other concern I have is that we are downstream from other municipalities, and the health and quality of our watershed is not something that is totally within our sphere of control. We can certainly influence it, and what we do can benefit communities downstream from us, but what communities upstream from us are doing is not something that we can have direct control over, and so we’re getting graded on actions that we are not wholly responsible for. So I’m not comfortable using this as a metric in measuring the city of London’s progress on healthy watersheds.

Any comments, Councillor Frank? I also received some comments from the upper Thames Conservation Authority staff regarding this. In my understanding was they said yes, it does span five years, so you could use it, it’s just we won’t have a new number by the end of your strat plan. So I guess my bold hope in this was that we would keep it as another metric for a future strat plan use, and that’s why we’d be able to compare from the strat plan to the next one, the change in grades.

So I personally still would like to keep it, and I think UTRCA staff will, they will be tracking this every five years ‘cause it’s kind of part of their core mandate. So again, I think just recognizing we wouldn’t have any difference. We’d know what the grade is now, so I’d like to keep it personally. Okay, Councillor Cuddy.

Thank you, and through your worship, the Deputy Mayor made a good point. It’s out of our control, and for that reason, I’ll love. And while I agree with Councillor Frank, I think it’s a great metric to follow. We were sitting in the same meeting, so I do agree.

I think it is out of our control, so I’ll be withdrawing my second. Okay, is there anybody else who wants to replace the second? Councillor Hopkins, do you want to make some comments? Yeah, I know we’ve got the report card just came out today at our AGM, and it is done every five years.

I appreciate staff’s comments, but it’s good to have, I guess, numbers to reach. And it is, we do have a whole watershed system. It’s just not the city of London, so Deputy Mayor is correct when he said municipalities to the north affect what’s happening downstream, and we will affect what’s below us. But there’s lots of work in collaboration with all municipalities going forward and making sure we can meet these targets.

And I don’t think there’s anything wrong with keeping it in and supporting the plan that’s already, I’m trying to think of the word, which is the report card, to meet those targets, so I’ll be supporting it. Okay, well, we’re gonna have a vote on this one, so is there any other comments before we vote? Councillor Stevenson. Yeah, if I heard correctly, for the grade level watershed, we don’t have anything to compare it to, so there is no real measurement for this or?

It’s an every five year measure, so the comment about the strategic plan is our strategic plan is four years, so there’ll be one data point. Councillor would like to keep it in to have that data point. Others don’t see that it’s valuable, which is why we’ll have a difference of opinion in a vote and make a decision. Any other comments before we vote on whether or not to include this?

Okay, seeing none, you can open that whenever you’re ready. Seeing the vote and the motion is lost, six to seven. Okay, other changes for we’ve got to outcome one and two. Thank you, can I hop to number three?

You’ll be pleased to know this is my last edit. Given I think right at the end of the document. Oh, no, oh, actually, no, I lied. Lasted it for this section under outcome, can we skip to outcome three?

As long as it includes fun, no, sorry, I just wanna make sure Councillor Hopkins had her hand up to see if she’s got something for this section first. Go ahead. Thank you, Your Worship. And before we get to outcome number three, I do have a question for outcome number two.

I know when we were speaking to the strategy, Council added the portion around London becoming the greenest city in Canada. I know staff’s got the wording there, but as we did put it in an outcome, and maybe this is a question through you to staff, do we need to speak to that as 2.3? That London is one of the greenest and most resilient cities in Canada. And then having that measurement, which would be implemented through the policies of the London plan.

And I think I spoke to the direction number four, a couple hours ago when I was ahead of myself, but I just wanted to know, since we’ve made that change, do we need to do anything to have that measurement or just wanna get more feedback? Maybe Ms. Sheer could make a comment since she’s the one that graciously helped me out with outcome number two and putting it in there? Sure, we can do that, go ahead.

Thank you, Your Worship. I think that with the elevation of the, on the path to being the greenest and most sustainable city piece being added to outcome number two, there’s probably the metrics that are there collectively add up to delivering on that outcome, because it’s no longer listed specifically as an action. That would be my general take for staff direction that we are measuring that in a number of different ways throughout both this entire section. The council feels differently.

I’m happy to work on some wording and can submit it. Yeah, so I’m hearing that there is that measurable there by having it in outcome two. I just wanna make sure and to Ms. Sheer.

Your Your Worship, that would be my feeling about the number of metrics we have with the change. I think that we’ve well captured that we’ll be measuring this appropriately. Any other outcome two, okay, we’ll go to outcome three. Yes, go to, okay, outcome three now, go ahead.

Thank you. Under outcome three, 3.2, oh, ah, my computer is shut down. But I sent it via email and excellent. Oh, excellent, thank you, teamwork.

I just want to add a couple additional measures under 3.2b, so tracked by additional measures such as number of kilowatt hours, conserved liters of water reduced, kilograms of waste of road and greenhouse gas reduced. Those have all been provided to me as language from Jay Stanford, as they are tracking it already. And I just wanted to have greater clarity given that they’re already gonna be working on that with climate emergency action plan. Okay, seconder for that piece.

Yep, I have one. Comments on including this. Any objections to including this additional language? I would see if staff would like to comment.

I have a councilor requesting that, sorry, one second. Yes, go ahead, Mr. Chair. Thank you, Your Worship.

No concerns about the additional language providing clarification. It will reflect what we’re tracking and the diversity of projects we’ll be tracking it on as we implement the climate emergency action plan. So essentially, data we’re already tracking no issues with including it. Go ahead, Councillor Stevenson.

I’m just wondering, does it tie into the outcome of 3.2? Can’t answer that. I want to make a case for that, Councillor Frank. And then I can see there’s other comments.

Yeah, I thought it did. And staff seemed to think it did ‘cause they supplied that language. So, yeah. All right, I see nods.

So is there any objections to including this then? Or, sorry, any other questions first? Colleagues with this decision. Okay, any objections to including this language?

We’ll leave that one in, all right. Any other changes to this section? Okay, so next area. Well-run city, you can see outcome one and outcome two.

Suggested changes for this area. Let’s go, I just, there are pages flipping. I just want to make sure everybody’s okay with me moving on. Yes, okay, outcome three.

Let’s move down. Next, this is my last one. Go ahead. Okay.

And second round for happiness. Under 3.3, I was hoping to add a metric about percentage of employees who say they’re happy or very happy with their work or workplace. Right now, I think we have retention and they say they’re engaged and who are offered paid positions. And I just was hoping to, you know, again, ask the humans how the humans are feeling.

And I like using happiness as an index because it has been used in the United Nations and other global happiness index purposes. Any challenges with tracking happiness for a staff through any sort of surveying? Yes, your worship, I think so. We would need to develop that index.

What we can measure, however, and we are doing right now through our equity and inclusion audit is inclusion. That is one dimension. A couple of other dimensions because we do have a plan to have an employee engagement survey is to understand how employees may feel engaged in their work, valued, recognized. So if you can leave it with us, we might be able to bring back some language around what the metric could be here that is maybe just builds out the happiness elements.

If there’s nods on that, okay. Councillor Robin. Thank you and through you. My caution around this would be changing the way that we’re doing employee engagement and the way that we’re doing our surveying right now.

These systems to survey the metrics associated, et cetera, they cost a lot of money for a city to engage in that work and to find credible and credible places that you can use to help you to do that type of work is difficult. I just worry that it might create an additional expense, but to give us the same kind of information that we already have around engagement, inclusion, et cetera. So I understand the desire to make happiness the index, the challenges that it comes with potentially a lot of cost. Thanks.

So that sounds like there’s not a unanimous position on this. There was someone willing to second, including this though. I just want to make sure that there is. Yes, there is.

Okay, so difference of opinion. Other comments on the inclusion of this one. And we will end up having a vote on including this one. See any other comments?

So when you’re ready, you can open that for voting. Closing the vote and the motion is lost for tonight. Okay, so that won’t be included. Is there other changes to any of the areas in well-run city?

Okay, Councillor Stevenson. Not a change, just a question. I’m wondering in 3.3b, it says number of third party audits completed, and I was just curious of an example of what a third party audit would be? Thank you, through the chair.

So that would include all of the, so every, all our audits are external, internal auditors. So they have a number of studies that they do. The external audits that are done on our financial statement. So those are the kinds of examples where we have a third party come in to validate the work.

And provide those reports to council. Satisfied, Councillor? Yes. Okay, I actually have a change.

I hope colleagues don’t mind if I suggest it from the chair. It’s back in outcome one, under 1.2, which has reduced barriers to public participation in municipal government. We have two metrics related to community engagement activities on equity, denied groups, Leonard are satisfied with the accessibility municipal services. When I think about reducing barriers to public participation, I think about the opportunities to engage directly in decision making.

And I would suggest that we add a metric under that related to the number of participants in neighborhood decision making. Because this is one of our programs that allows people of any age to engage with the city. And I believe the measurement and the tracking of that program is reducing barriers, particularly for those of a young age to participate in municipal government. So I would think that reporting on that metric on the participants engaging in neighborhood decision making, which I would include, that’s both their voting as well as their submitting of ideas and as a possible metric.

So I would suggest inclusion of that as anybody willing to second my approach on that. I see some, any discussion on that? Any objections to including that as a metric? So that’ll stay.

That’s over here, Alistair. I think this would fit in this area. I’m wondering about keeping data on number of public participants digitally, like online for meetings, if there’s any value in that. But I just think that it would be maybe a good thing to have in terms of the hybrid model and knowing how many people actually, from an accessibility point of view, having that option available to the public to participate.

I’ll go to our staff for the measureability of that, right here. I will say I think like four of my staff are watching this meeting. So I’m not sure it would be all members of the public, but go ahead. Thank you through the chair.

Not sure that I understand the measurable that you’re looking for, whether it’s members of the public who would be watching the live stream or those who register to participate in a meeting, through Zoom, because those are two different things. And our ability to measure varies depending on what you’re looking for there. Councillor McAllister. Yeah, I’m looking more on the participation side.

How many people are online and requesting to participate in the meeting? Not the viewership, ‘cause they’re not really, that’s already out there. That’s something people can access. I’m more interested in whether people are actively using the option available to them to participate online.

I think if I understand the Councillor’s question, one of the new things we did through the pandemic was allowing people to do, say, public participation delegations digitally, which we still allow. So maybe tracking how that is changing over time. I’ll let you respond. The Councillor’s nodding, so go ahead.

Thank you through the chair. We can certainly track that. We have not been, but we can measure that. Yes, and we would measure that against potentially the number that would participate in person.

Mr. Chair, we need some language for our scribe. We’re trying to figure that part out. So Councillor McAllish, do you wanna take a shot at it?

Okay, I’ll do my best. Number of public participants online versus in person. I don’t know if that needs to be broken into two number of participants. Yeah, it’s the online number.

I’m more interested in to see whether, ‘cause to me, this is kind of a marker for evaluating, moving forward, whether there’s value in maintaining that or whether we turn to an in-person approach. Councillor, if I could suggest it. If you’re interested in assessing that, that may not be linked to the reducing barriers. Like, I know it is, but if you’re looking for, like a discussion at say governance working group on whether or not we should continue with the hybrid option because of the resources and the amount of participants, that may be something that need not be like a component of the strategic plan, that’s something that you could just raise to track as part of a review of our governance processes and what we offer and what we don’t.

And I think that might help with you trying to struggle how to fit it in here. I know it fits with reduced barriers to public participation in municipal government in the way that you’ve described it, but it seems to me like you’re trying to evaluate the offering of the service. And I just wonder if staff have a comment on, they feel this is the right spot or whether there’s an alternate way to pursue. Well, sorry, let me clarify.

How about like delegation status, online, okay, number of online participants requesting delegation status for council proceedings? Okay, that sounds like something much more specific. I don’t think you just mean like delegation, you actually mean participants at a public participation meeting where you don’t have to specifically request delegation status, is that correct? Okay, both.

So it’s not just if they request a delegation status, it’s also say at a PPM, people may participate without needing delegation status at a meeting. And so. I think it’s just a value, sorry, just to add to this. I think it’s a valuable metric monitor because I think moving forward, if we’re trying to gauge public participation, I mean, this is also tying into whether people feel they have the means to do it because if we’re offering the, I know that I’m not trying to get back into the service thing, but I think we need those metrics to be able to say people are participating.

I think we’ve adequately captured it. So is there a seconder to include this piece? Councilor Hopkins, yes, okay. And you have some comments, go ahead.

Yeah, if I may. And I just wanna make sure the council just once online, not the public that is here in the gallery. I just want a little bit more clarification. I’m very supportive.

I know when I’m here at committee or a council, I have no idea who’s participating unless I really look into it. And I think it’s valuable information, especially as we determine if we’re going to proceed with a hybrid, that may be a conversation down the line or it’ll be good information. But I would like a little bit more clarification. Is it just online or is it also people here in the gallery or in our committee rooms?

Councilor McAllister, I do think, sorry, through the chair, I do think there is value in tracking the in-person as well. And I know, we’re not for record-keeping purposes, it would be good to have that information. I know we don’t record obviously people’s addresses anymore, but like in terms of the number of people who are coming, if we could, I don’t know, I don’t mean recording the people, but I mean the numbers, just the raw numbers in terms of how many people we have, that would be useful for future purposes, thank you. So I think what we got here is something that captures that full intent, and I think we understand that we’re not looking for how many people are sitting in the gallery, but this is about the option to participate in person or online in the variety of ways that the public can participate directly to us in person or online.

I think we’ve captured it. So there’s support from a seconder for that. Any objections to including this, Councilor Stevenson? My concern is just similar to some of the ones I put forward that doesn’t really measure the reduced barriers because it might have nothing to do with that.

It might have to do with the topics or, I don’t know, just a thought. The only thing I will mention is that in the previous council, I did hear comments in both say a significant weather event, as well as members involved in the accessibility community that there was some value in having an online option to participate during those times. So it probably does reduce a barrier when barriers are up there, but that’s only my just initial feedback from feedback I’ve gotten. Oh, I’m 100%.

I hope we always keep the online for various reasons. I’m just not sure whether measuring it is accurate reflection of whether we’ve reduced barriers or not. We can have a vote on whether or not to include it, for sure. So we will do that, we’ll vote on this one, but other comments before we do so.

Okay, I don’t see any, so whenever that’s ready, you can open that for voting. I think we’re in the middle of a vote. Is it a problem with the voting? I was saying the vote and the motion’s passed.

11 to two. Go ahead, Councillor Stevenson. I think it’s irrelevant now that it’s passed, but I was just wondering if it was better under 2.2. Our services are designed and delivered, putting the resident business at the center and using innovative approaches.

Then as that number goes up, it shows, but it may be irrelevant now. I mean, we voted that, it doesn’t mean we can’t move it. If everybody agrees that that might be a better spot. So the suggestion is, although we’ve agreed to add this in as a metric, that perhaps it goes under our services are designed and delivered, putting residents at the center using innovative approaches and continuously improving the needs of the monitors.

We can move it later. Let’s leave it for now and we’ll decide whether or not to adjust that later. Okay, anybody else with any other changes? This is the last section for metrics, so yes, go ahead.

Go ahead, Councillor McAllister. I’m not opposed to moving in to get the results either way. We’d go ahead, Deputy Mayor Lewis. Yeah, let’s move it now so that we are giving staff that clear direction and so that what the public sees is up to me.

  • Okay. So there’s at least two Councillors willing to move this to the other section. Does anybody object to moving it? Let’s move it.

Okay, any other comments in this section? I think we’ve done it. I’m gonna hand it back to our staff. Oh, I’m gonna let you wrap up the process, but there will be a motion we’ll have to do after you’re done just kind of approving that section that we’ve done, but go ahead with the wrap up.

Thank you, Mr. Mayor. I just wanted to talk about kind of some of the immediate next steps. So of course, our engagement activities continue and that will close on March 3rd.

We will, as we did today, pull all that work together and present it for the March 8th meeting. So I just want to be very clear about what will be available to you and when for the March 8th meeting. So all of the feedback, community engagement feedback, up to March 3rd will be available for March 8th on the added agenda. So that’s March 7th.

Also, all of the changes that were made tonight, both to the strategies and to the metrics, will be pulled together for the added agenda. So you will see both those pieces of information. That’s how I feel. Both those pieces of information on March 7th.

So just to be very clear with folks, then what will happen on March 8th is the PPM. You’ll receive that information and staff. We would be looking for any final direction from council on any changes to any component of the strategic plan vision all the way down to metrics. And we would turn that around for you for March 28th.

So that’s the plan for the next meeting. This is just a pretty picture saying all of that. So you know where we are headed on both fronts. And I think thank you is the last slide.

Well, thank you and our staff tonight for all the work that you did, both in the preparation of the material for us tonight. And of course in helping us through all of our questions and adjustments through the process. There is a motion that we just need to make to tidy up the draft metrics. So it’s that the following actions be taken with respect to developing the 2023 to 2027 strategic plan, the recommendation of the city manager, report dated today entitled, the title of the report, be received and that the attached revised draft metrics be included with the draft 2020 to 2027 strategic plan.

As you know, this is basically gonna come back to us. So that’s just that what we did today is gonna be included at the next time that we meet as was just described in the process. I need a mover and a seconder for that. Council Raman, seconded by Councilor Frank.

Any discussion on that piece? Okay, we’ll open that for voting. Closing the vote and the motion is passed 13 to zero. Under 4.4, which is consideration of an appointment to the London middle sex community housing.

It requires one tenant. This for colleagues, just a reminder, under our agreement with the London middle sex community housing board of directors, there is a process that they follow to make a specific recommendation to us, which means they have gone through that. I know we have members of the board here that they can elaborate on the process that the board went through in any comments that they’d like to share. And then I would entertain a potential motion from colleagues on the appointment of a director or if you don’t wanna do it that way, an alternate process, Deputy Mayor Lewis.

Thank you, Your Worship. I will be very brief. You’ve already outlined that there is a particular process that’s followed for the filling of these tenant vacancy appointments. The board has both a scoring matrix that we use with the applications.

And then we have actually added an additional step, which is to interview the candidates who are identified by the subcommittee as the top candidates. So we have gone through both an evaluation of the applications as well as in-person meetings with the top three candidates. I will say that the subcommittee actually had no disagreement on who the top three candidates were. And after the interview process was also unanimous in its recommendation of Cara Aukkok to fill the new role, I will just share very quickly that Cara not only brings life experience as a London Middlesex housing tenant, but she is also an example of a tenant who brings some professional experience as well.

Cara has been taking the opportunity to improve her education and actually now provide some counseling services for people who are experiencing difficulties in their life and who are often tenants of Middlesex community housing as well. So it was an overwhelmingly strong recommendation by the subcommittee and then it was also unanimously supported by the board at our last board meeting. So I’m happy to put forward the nomination of Cara Aukkok to fill that position. And I’ll see if Councilor McAllister wants to perhaps second that and add any comments he might have.

Okay, that sounds like a moved and seconded motion and Councilor McAllister, you can make some comments too. Yeah, I’m in agreement with Deputy Mayor Lewis and I would also put forward that name and I’m happy to second that. Any other comments on this move and seconded appointment to the board? No, okay, we will open that for voting then.

Closing the vote and the motion is passed 13 to zero. The next item, sorry, my apologies, I just flipped my paper over. Is consideration of appointment to the community of adjustment, it requires one member and there are five applications before us, we are prepared in the system to approach this in the same way that we’ve approached all of our community appointments that don’t have a process as was defined in the previous appointment. So we can put up all of the candidates, people will be able to select one, there’s only one appointment.

That would be not an election, but a system to determine our overall preference. And then based on that, I would entertain a motion for appointment from a member of Council. So that is the process that we have defined in our policy. And so if there’s no objections, I want to proceed with that.

So we are allowed to make any comments before we actually do the preferential voting piece or make the final decision. And when the motion is moved and seconded, we obviously can debate it. But I just want to make sure that if colleagues have comments on any of the candidates that they’d like to make, they could do so now before we do that preferential voting piece. Deputy Mayor Lewis.

Thank you, Your Worship. I just want to underline again, for colleagues, having served on this committee before my own election to this chamber, that this is a quasi-judicial body that’s making, it essentially functions as, to put it in really basic terms. It functions as a junior planning committee in many ways. And it’s really important that we have individuals with a background and some experience in filling those roles.

This is not an, having looked through the applications and we’ve got two former members of Council who’ve applied. We’ve got a former member of the committee who’s applied. And I think that any of those individuals bringing their experience back to the committee bring a benefit through the roles that they’ve had before. This is really not a committee, in my personal opinion, that is a place for somebody to start dipping their toe in the water.

We have great advisory committees and other opportunities for somebody to get their first experience. I think it’s also important to underscore that this is not a housing advocacy committee or anything like that. Decisions have to be made based on principles around the Planning Act and based on the four tests of a minor variance. So it’s really important that we’ve got somebody who’s got some experience in terms of making planning decisions filling this role.

Okay, thank you for those comments. Any other comments? Okay. If we’re ready, we can open the selection process.

Closing the vote and Miriam Hamou has received the majority votes. So I’d look if someone was willing to make a motion to appoint Miriam Hamou to the committee of adjustment. Councilor Layman is willing to move that seconded by Councilor Cuddy. Any discussion on that appointment?

Seeing none, we’ll open that for voting. Closing the vote and the motion is passed 13 to zero. Thank you, colleagues. The next item we have is our final item in this section of the committee agenda we have is the second report of the diversity inclusion and anti-oppression community advisory committee.

There are a couple of actions associated with the committee’s work that come out of this. So there’s a motion prepared that both receives the committee’s report as well as the actions that are contained within the report. So I’d look for a mover and a seconder on that committee’s work. Councilor Ferrera is willing to move seconded by Councilor Cuddy.

Any discussion on this? We will open that for voting them. Closing the vote and the motion is passed 13 to zero. Deferred matters in other business.

Seeing none, before we conclude, I will let you know my son, Max, and I were cleaning the living room. And I gave him a high five saying great teamwork, to which he replied, “Now we know the dream is working,” which I thought was pretty smart. So I appreciate your teamwork today. I will let Max know that we accomplished a great deal and the dream is indeed alive.

So thank you for your work today with that. I will entertain a motion to adjourn. Councilor Stevenson, seconded by Councilor McAllister. All those in favor of adjournment.

That motion’s passed. All right, thank you very much. We’re adjourned.