March 8, 2023, at 4:00 PM

Original link

The meeting is called to order at 4:04 PM, it being noted that Councillors S. Franke, S. Hillier and P. Van Meerbergen were in remote attendance; it being further noted that Councillors S. Lewis and E. Peloza were in remote attendance after 7:39 PM and 9:41 PM respectively.

1.   Disclosures of Pecuniary Interest

That it BE NOTED that no pecuniary interests were disclosed.

2.   Consent

None.

3.   Scheduled Items

3.1   Not to be heard before 4:05 PM - Public Participation Meeting - Council’s Draft 2023-2027 Strategic Plan

That it BE NOTED that at the public participation meeting, the following individuals made submissions and oral presentations to the Strategic Priorities and Policy Committee, with respect to Council’s Draft 2023 - 2027 Strategic Plan:

  • a communication dated February 20, 2023 from V. Lubrano lll;

  • a communication dated February 21, 2023 from M. Prado;

  • a communication dated February 27, 2023 from A. McClenaghan, Owner, London Bicycle Cafe;

  • a communication dated February 27, 2023 from S. Climans, Neurologist;

  • a communication dated February 28, 2023 from M. Quinton;

  • a communication dated March 1, 2023 from C. McInnis;

  • a communication dated March 3, 2023 from B. Durham;

  • a communication dated March 3, 2023 from R. Richards;

  • a communication dated March 5, 2023 from C. Butler;

  • a communication from B. Ellis, Executive Director, Urban Roots London;

  • a communication dated March 6, from B. Samuels;

  • a communication from T. Smale, Executive Director, London Heritage Council;

  • a communication dated March 7, 2023 from L. Durham;

  • a communication dated March 6, 2023 from R. Buchal, Member, Integrated Transportation Community Advisory Committee;

it being noted at the public participation meeting associated with this matter, the following individuals made oral submissions:

  • A. Loewen;

  • M. McCann;

  • T. Smale, Executive Director, London Heritage Council;

  • N. Danczak;

  • J. Look, VP External Affairs Western University Student Council;

  • M. Cassidy, Interim CEO, Pillar Nonprofit Network;

  • P. Moore;

  • E. Yi, Executive Director, London Arts Council;

  • R. Singh, Western University Student Council;

  • T. Rutan

  • L. Patricio Project Co-Lead, Pillar Nonprofit Network;

  • M. Viczko et al., Orchard Park Bike Bus;

  • J. Ryan, Indwell Housing;

  • L. Durham;

  • J. Idsinga;

  • V. Lubrano lll;

  • A. Lei, Western University Student

  • Resident

  • C. Butler;

  • N. Judges;

  • J. Wilcox;

  • J. Spence;

  • Resident

  • B. Whitaker;

  • C. O’Neill;

  • B. Ellis, Executive Director, Urban Roots London;

  • Resident;

  • T. Smuck, Executive Director, Changing Ways;

  • M. Baobaid, Muslim Resource Centre;

  • B. Williamson;

  • S. Climans, Neurologist;

  • C. Niche et al., Girl Guides;

  • T. Collins;

  •  L. Grushka;

  • M. van Holst;

  • J. Martino, Executive Director, Crouch Neighbourhood Resource Centre; and

  • M. Wallace, Executive Director, London Development Institute (LDI).

ADDITIONAL VOTES:

Moved by P. Cuddy

Seconded by C. Rahman

Motion to open the public participation meeting.

Motion Passed (14 to 0)

Moved by P. Cuddy

Seconded by D. Ferreira

Motion to close the public participation meeting.

Motion Passed (12 to 0)

Moved by S. Stevenson

Seconded by P. Cuddy

That the Committee recess at this time.

Motion Passed

The Committee recesses at 6:34 PM and reconvenes at 7:08 PM.

4.   Items for Direction

4.1   (ADDED) Developing Council’s 2023-2027 Strategic Plan: Community Engagement Update

2023-03-08 Staff Report - Community Engagement Strat Plan

Moved by A. Hopkins

Seconded by S. Stevenson

That, on the recommendation of the City Manager, the report dated March 8, 2023 entitled “Developing the 2023-2027 Strategic Plan: Community Engagement Update” BE RECEIVED for information.

Motion Passed (12 to 0)

4.2   (ADDED) Council’s Draft 2023-2027 Strategic Plan

2023-03-08 Staff Report - Council

Moved by A. Hopkins

Seconded by D. Ferreira

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 March 8, 2023 entitled “Council’s Draft 2023-2027 Strategic Plan” BE RECEIVED for information; and

b)   that consideration of the remaining portions of the Draft Strategic Plan, BE REFERRED to the next meeting of the Strategic Priorities and Policy Committee.

Motion Passed (12 to 0)

ADDITIONAL VOTES:

At 7:47 PM, His Worship Mayor J. Morgan, places Councillor E. Peloza in the Chair.

At 7:49 PM, His Worship Mayor J. Morgan resumes the Chair.

Moved by C. Rahman

Seconded by J. Morgan

That, the Vision Statement BE AMENDED in the Draft Strategic Plan to read:

“London is a sustainable city within a thriving region, committed to a vibrant culture, innovation and providing a safe, affordable, welcoming, and healthy future for today and for the next generation.”

Motion Passed (10 to 3)

Moved by S. Stevenson

Seconded by P. Cuddy

That the strategic area of focus “Reconciliation, Equity and Inclusion” be removed from the 2023-2027 Strategic Plan, with the proposed Outcomes to be reassigned within the remaining strategic areas of focus.

Motion Failed (4 to 9)

Moved by S. Lewis

Seconded by S. Lehman

That, the Strategic Area of Focus: Housing and Homelessness, Outcome 2, Expected Result 2.4 BE REMOVED and Draft Strategy BE AMENDED to add a new part d) “Implement a program of proactive rental property compliance blitzes to protect the health and safety of tenants” under Outcome 1, Expected Result 1.1.

Motion Passed (8 to 4)

Moved by A. Hopkins

Seconded by C. Rahman

That, the Strategic Area of Focus: Wellbeing and Safety, Outcome 1, Expected Result 1.2, BE AMENDED to add a new part e) “Collaborate with volunteer-involved organizations to build on London’s history of individual and corporate volunteerism”.

Motion Passed (7 to 6)

Moved by E. Peloza

Seconded by D. Ferreira

That the Committee recess at this time.

Motion Passed

The Committee recesses at 9:13 PM and resumes at 9:35 PM.

At 9:45 PM, His Worship Mayor J. Morgan, places Councillor A. Hopkins in the Chair.

At 9:48 PM, His Worship Mayor J. Morgan resumes the Chair.

Moved by J. Pribil

Seconded by C. Rahman

That, the Strategic Area of Focus: Economic Growth, Culture, and Prosperity, Outcome 1, Expected Result 1.1, BE AMENDED in part a) “Strengthen existing and introduce new partnerships and programs that support small and growing businesses, cultural and non-profit organizations, and entrepreneurs”.

Motion Passed (8 to 5)

5.   Deferred Matters/Additional Business

None.

6.   Adjournment

Moved by P. Cuddy

Seconded by S. Stevenson

That the meeting BE ADJOURNED.

Motion Passed

The meeting adjourned at 10:38 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 (6 hours, 38 minutes)

Okay, I’m gonna call the meeting to order. This is the 11th meeting of the Strategic Priorities and Policy Committee. This is a meeting dedicated to our development of our strategic plan, including the public participation, meeting portion of that, but I’m gonna start off by reading a land acknowledgement. City of London is situated on the traditional territories of the Anishinaabe, Kaudenosaunee, Lene Peiwock, and Adawandran.

We honor and respect the history, language, and culture of the diverse indigenous people who call this territory home. City of London is currently home to many First Nation, 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. I’ll also mention 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@london.ca or 519-661-2489, extension 2425. With that, we can start the meeting. I’ll look for disclosures of peculiar interest. Seeing none, we have no consent items.

We have one scheduled item, which is the public participation meeting for the strategic plan. I’m just gonna make a few comments and then I’ll entertain a motion to open the PPM. We have both individuals who are attending here in person, as well as some online. At the start, I’m gonna flip back and forth between them.

So I’ll do it in person, then on online, until we’ve exhausted the ones online. Each person speaking has up to five minutes. I’ll time, if you get close to that five minutes, so I’ll give you around a 30-second warning to wrap up. Just to create a respectful environment, there may be people speaking who you agree with, there may be people speaking who you disagree with.

The way we approach this generally at council is we don’t want either clapping or negative comments just allow people to speak and share their opinions in a safe space where those opinions, excuse me, are welcome, even if you disagree with them. Council will certainly be listening to all of the delegations today after the public participation meeting. We will be engaging in the adjustments, modifications, updating of our working draft of the strategic plan based on both the public input that may be given today. The feedback we may have gotten from our constituents, as well as the many letters that have been written in with respect to the strategic plan, will also receive an update on the community engagement that has come in through the various platforms of the strategic plan, whether that be online or at different sessions across the city.

So with that, we will look forward to opening the PPM. Oh, one last thing, I will take a scheduled break exactly at 6 p.m., and regardless of where we are in the process, we’ll just stick pretty tight to that timeframe and we’ll take about a half an hour break at that time. So with that, I’ll look for a motion to open the public participation meeting. Moved by Councillor Cudi, seconded by Councillor Raman, any discussion?

Seeing none, we’ll open that for voting. Opposing the vote, the motion’s passed 14 to zero. Okay, we’ll start here in council chambers. There are four microphones.

If I’ll just kind of go by whoever walks up to the first one, so you’re gonna be the lucky person to go first. You’ll have five minutes, you’re welcome to state your name and share any information that you’d like to share. Again, I’ll give you a signal at about 30 seconds and then I’ll go to someone online. So welcome today and go ahead.

Thank you, hi, my name is Andrea Lowen. And together with my husband, we’ve built and run a family medical clinic that provides just over 7,000 Londoners with primary care. We live on a busy street near the core and we just participated in a LiveNet Zero competition through the Canadian Geographic magazine and we actually won, so that was exciting. London is in an unfortunate situation where suburban growth happened before we learned about the detrimental effects of building a car-centric city that we ended up with.

According to the city’s climate emergency action plan, easy to say, London’s number one contributor to greenhouse gases is the use of personal vehicles. And it looks like the main goal of that plan is to drastically reduce how much Londoners drive. And that does include electric vehicles because they have their own steep upfront carbon cost. But we’re not set up very well for driving less in London.

The city is asking its residents to do this, but we haven’t been given the infrastructure such as linked protected bike lanes nor regular maintenance such as snow removal of our main thoroughfare, the Thames Valley Parkway. And let’s look to Sweden for inspiration on how they keep their people cycling all year round in the snow. The thing is protected bike lanes, but not painted ones, do two things that will help our city. They get more people out of cars and onto bikes and they drastically reduce fatalities and injuries.

This information is supported by a growing body of research. Do you know how many Londoners on bikes have been killed by vehicle drivers in the past two years? Do you know that number? It’s four.

And do you know the number of pedestrians have been killed or hospitalized by vehicle drivers in that same time period? 22. And I think some of those people are here. People can find change difficult and wanna dig in their heels, right?

But we all have to drive less. It’s just necessary. And actually better biking infrastructure helps everybody including drivers. Our city has been designed for cars and that fails everybody.

Road widening to address vehicle congestion doesn’t solve this problem and we have lots of research to support that too. Vehicle road widening should be stopped unless it includes bike lanes. (laughs) There’s recent, sorry. I see everyday how people sit on Oxford Street, Talbot Street in front of our house idling.

I’m sitting outside, I’m breathing it in, my children are breathing it in. Designing a city with choices for people to get around so a car is less necessary. It benefits everybody. When more people choose to not use a car, those who really need to use one can get around more efficiently.

When I’m on my bike, just about everyday, experience near misses with vehicles regularly and it makes my heart pound. But it doesn’t stop me from biking. You might be surprised to learn the top reason I almost get hit by cars is actually when drivers are turning right on a red light. And I’m there, they don’t see me.

But that’s another presentation. (laughs) The second reason is people are just driving too fast and they don’t give us enough space. When people do not have the self-discipline to drive the speed limit, it’s up to city designers to build roads that make speeding impossible and use speed cameras to issue penalties. So relying on police to catch speeders does not result in an overall reduction of speed of everybody.

It’s too late to debate or even disagree with needing more bike infrastructure. It’s really just time to move faster to make active transportation much easier in the city. So we can’t keep waiting for reports or red tape like Sarnia lead into university. We just, we need you to become a team working together to expedite our active transportation network.

Please. (laughs) My sister and her teenage daughters live in Oak Ridge, big time environmentalists, they will not bike to our house from theirs. They drive everywhere and they hate it, but they feel that’s their only choice. And did you know that how comfortable women feel on bikes is essentially a report card for how well a city is doing to keep its residents safe while they move around not in a vehicle from those who move around in one?

So does this mean London gets a failing grade? I kind of think so. I’ll let you know when they bike to our house ‘cause that’ll be a day to celebrate. 30 seconds.

I’m wrapping up. My request today is that you work as a cohesive team to fast track protected bike lanes, not painted and pedestrian corridors. So your legacy as a group was that you improved London’s air quality and you made this city safer. Remember Amsterdam did not become the Amsterdam that is today until they decided to make it that way.

Thank you. Thank you. I’m gonna go online next and I’ll have the clerk identify the individual. Thank you, through the chair, we have Maria McCann.

Go ahead, Maria. Good afternoon, is my audio and visual clear? Yep, we can hear you and I can see you. So go ahead, you have five minutes.

Thank you. Good afternoon, counselors. My name is Maria McCann and I’m a resident of Ward 10. And I wanted to speak briefly today about my concerns with the London paratransit system.

The paratransit system has been in the news a lot lately for posing challenges to many of its users. And I’m one of those people who’s been facing those challenges. As a disabled Londoner, I found paratransit very difficult to use for a number of reasons, but I just wanted to highlight two reasons. First of all, the booking system is severely understaffed and very out of date.

A, an online booking system, preferably with an app option is really necessary in this digital age. Recently, I was trying to book a trip. And so I set my phone alarm for 7 a.m. So that I could start calling as soon as the times were available because you have to call right away in order to book your times.

I had to call 352 times, no exaggeration, 352 times to get through to the booking line. And by then, it was too late for me to get the times that I needed. My chronic pain affects my hands and my wrists. And some days, I’ve actually had to just give up on dialing the number repeatedly because I couldn’t do the physical action of hitting the number over and over again.

I had to wait until later in the day when I could get through to the line. But then again, by that time, the time slots I needed were taken. So online booking absolutely needs to be an option of priority in addition to the existing phone booking. The second difficulty with paratransit is that currently it does not provide transfers to its users.

Many disabled folks, myself included, can have lower incomes, especially if we rely on OVSP. And having to use two bus tickets regularly when you could just use one is a financial impediment. So we’re asking for buses where we are treated the same as other LTC users, where if we get back on within a certain time frame, we can use a transfer. It’s not asking for any special treatment.

It’s just asking for equal treatment. And the transfer system on the regular LTC buses is not a fancy machine. It just involves ripping off a transfer. So I don’t think it would be too expensive or difficult to implement this on paratransit.

Reforms to paratransit will enable more Londoners to work, shop, attend important medical appointments and enjoy recreation with their friends and family. When disabled Londoners are able to participate more fully in our city, our local economy gets a boost. And more importantly, by prioritizing accessible transportation for everyone, our city sends the message that we value the dignity of every individual and we want the flourishing of our community as a whole. So I hope that to conclude, I hope you’ll take my concerns and the concerns raised by many others into consideration as you make plans about the paratransit system, what decisions are to come, what the budget will be, and so on.

Thank you. Thank you very much for your submission. I’m going to go back to the room here and I’ll go to this side of the room next. So if you want to go ahead, you’ll have five minutes.

Good afternoon, your worship members of council and city staff. Thank you for the opportunity to participate in your strategic planning consultation process. If you want to follow along my presentation, I believe it is on page 20 of your package. My name is Terry Smill and I’m the executive director for London Heritage Council.

We are a nonprofit agency with a service agreement with the city of London. Our mission is simple, to bring Londoners together to celebrate our shared stories. And I am here today representing the heritage sector in London, which includes the following. The first has ours, four 27-wing Air Force Association of Canada, Banting House, Canadian Medical Hall of Fame, Elden House, Banchaw Pioneer Village, the Cronin Observatory, the Jet Aircraft Museum, Children’s Museum, Museum London, Museum of Ontario Archaeology, the Royal Canadian Regiment Museum, the Secrets of Radar Museum.

Yes, we have one of those. Heritage London Foundation and the London Music Hall of Fame. Our ask to you today is to ensure culture and heritage is top of mind in your strategic plan. We suggest the following for your vision statement, and I’m sorry you can’t see the slides, or the public can’t see the slides.

But London is a sustainable city within a thriving region committed to innovation, culture, and providing a safe, inclusive, affordable, welcoming, and healthy future for Londoners. As you consider the values you want represented, we suggest you add, encourage and support culture and heritage in your value set one. You will have received our feedback from our consultation sessions with the heritage sector that we hosted last week. And a highlight for our sector is this.

In your strategic area of focus in economic growth, culture, and prosperity, in outcome number two, we suggest that London is a destination of choice for film and music. But with 15 museums and heritage sites to choose from, it is also a heritage destination. We ask that you continue to support local heritage assets and to build infrastructure to support all cultural tourism. The second strategic area of focus is mobility and transportation.

And in outcome number one, many of our sites are not in the core, and getting to them can be challenging, including a strategy to provide wayfinding signage to our valuable heritage attractions and consider adding public transit access points at our heritage sites to help sustain London as a heritage destination and provide more employment opportunities. Many heritage workers are students or young adults, and public transportation to our sites would ensure we can offer valuable training and employment opportunities. Thank you so much for taking the time to listen to our issues. And I hope you will consider them in your strategic planning process.

Thank you very much for your submission. I’m going to go back online for a submission. I’ll go to the clerk for the name. Thank you.

Through the chair, it’s Natalia Danchuk. I apologize for the pronunciation. OK, Natalia, if you can check your audio, we’ll let you know if we can hear you. Are you able to hear me?

Did you try that again? Are you able to hear me? Yes, you’re very soft-spoken. So if you have any opportunity to get closer to the microphone, that would be helpful, but we can hear you.

We’re going to be whisper-quiet here so that we can hear everything you’re saying. So go ahead with your delegation. It’s up to five minutes, and I’ll let you know when you’re at about the 32nd mark. OK, thank you.

Writing at my school in London can be fulfilling and enjoyable and enjoyable experience as it allows individuals to navigate through the city in a more active and environmentally friendly way. However, despite the benefits of cycling, many people are hesitant to encourage others to take up this mode of transportation due to the incomplete infrastructure that can make cycling challenging or even dangerous. The truth is, cycling should not be limited to a select few who are brave enough to navigate the streets. Instead, the city should prioritize the development of infrastructure that is inclusive and accessible for all.

This means creating dedicated bike lanes and paths, implementing traffic calming measures, and ensuring the intersections are designed with the safety of cyclists in mind. In addition to the benefits for individuals promoting cycling can have wider benefits by reducing reliance on cars and other motorized vehicles. Cycling can help to decrease traffic congestion and air pollution. Therefore, it’s important to encourage and support initiatives that promote micro-mobility, including cycling and walking in a way that is inclusive and accessible for all.

Thank you. Thank you very much. I’m going to go over here, and I did the front row. So I’m going to go to the back row first, and then I will come to online, and then I’ll come back to the front.

So the back row up top, go ahead. You have five minutes. Thank you. Good afternoon, or almost evening, to all council members.

My name is Jessica Look, and I am the vice president of external affairs at the University of Students Council at Western University. Thank you for the opportunity to speak today. I’m thankful for the opportunity to elevate the concerns of my constituents, especially on International Women’s Day. The University Students Council, or the USC, represents just over 30,000 undergraduate students by advocating for issues important to our student body.

For many years, we have been involved in the strategic planning process, providing the student perspective through input and feedback to the city. As students contribute greatly to London’s culture, economy, and overall prosperity, I urge councils consider the student perspective in this process. Understanding that the strategic plan shapes the vision for the city of London for the next four years, I am happy to speak to how we can better integrate students into the plan. Firstly, the city’s well-run city pillar speaks to how London’s services and programs are functioning as well as a satisfaction of citizens who use these services and programs.

Overall, we believe the other pillar will contribute to a well-run city, and an underlying theme of our feedback for the city is the importance of considering student retention. It should be critical for the city to consider if and how students will be accessing these programs. I’d like to now speak on the reconciliation, equity, and inclusion part of the strategic plan. At a high level, we are supportive of this pillar, and happy to see it as one of London’s priorities.

However, there is a noticeable lack of mention of students in this pillar, especially. Our belief is that students’ satisfaction and integration is integral to the city of London being equitable and inclusive community. Furthermore, there is mention of newcomer retention as a population level indicator for this pillar, and we hope to see some more specific attention towards retention of international students and students in general in London. Finally, the USC is very happy to see London’s continued commitment to being a safe space for women, girls, gender diverse, and trans people.

This is a critical priority for students and is key to making us feel safe and welcomed in London. We’re happy to see it in the last strategic plan, but we were frankly quite disappointed to see that the previous multi-year budget did not seem to reflect this priority. Since the strategic plan has extended London’s commitment to taking meaningful action to address and eliminate all forms of violence against women and girls, gender-based violence, and sexual violence, the USC is hopeful that this priority will be accurately reflected in the upcoming multi-year budget. Thank you for your time and consideration.

Thank you very much. And I actually don’t have anybody else online. I will say to the individuals in Committee Room 5 of which we have a numbers. I’m gonna come to the Committee Room in a little bit and I’m gonna do a number of delegations.

I’ll give you a little more instruction at that time, but for now I’m gonna just do a few more in Council Chambers. So I’ll go to the front microphone, go ahead. Thank you. I’m Maureen Cassidy.

I’m representing Pillar Nonprofit Network here in London. Mr. Mayor and City Councilors, thank you for this opportunity to comment on your draft strategic plan. I know the work that goes into this plan every four years is monumental for both City staff and Council.

On behalf of Pillar Nonprofit Network, congratulations on the progress made so far. Pillar Nonprofit is a member organization that supports more than 600 nonprofits and social enterprises who are invested in positive community impact. Pillar strengthens individuals and organizations through professional development, knowledge sharing and advocacy and by facilitating collaboration through networking and partnerships. Nonprofits make up the core of our membership and as you know, they play a crucial role in London’s continued recovery and growth.

First of all, thank you for giving a place of prominence to reconciliation, equity and inclusion as your first strategic area of focus. And especially for your acknowledgement of the 13 municipal focused truth and reconciliation commission calls to action. Secondly, we’re very supportive of the presentation last week by London Chamber of Commerce CEO, Graham Henderson, recognition of culture and the creative arts in your strategic plan signals that London is a place where the arts and cultural workers can thrive in order to incubate new ideas which in turn enrich our community. I’m here before you today to make some modest suggestions on behalf of Pillar’s members and the communities they serve, as well as the broader nonprofit sector.

The Tim Hortons Briar taking place right now in London is a great opportunity to remind you of London’s rich history of volunteerism. Hosting premium events like the Briar, the Junos and the Memorial Cup wouldn’t be possible without the enthusiasm of Londoners willing to share their time and talent. Indeed, tourism London will tell you that the unparalleled reputation of London volunteers gives them a distinct advantage when bidding on these kinds of events. We know that Londoners want to get involved but we also know that the local infrastructure supporting volunteers was seriously weakened by the pandemic, especially for smaller nonprofits.

We think the city can play an important role in supporting volunteerism in our community. In strategic area of focus number three, well-being and safety under expected result 1.2, we propose the addition of strategy E, collaborate with volunteer involved organizations to build on London’s history of individual and corporate volunteerism. We appreciate that nonprofits are included in focus area number four, economic growth, culture and prosperity, under expected result 1.1. But we know that there are no specific measures targeted to supporting nonprofits among the draft strategies.

In an era of rapidly rising costs and shrinking resources, the demand for the nonprofit sector services is greater than ever. Nonprofits have been ready and able partners to the municipal and business sectors in good times and in bad. Therefore, we propose four additional strategies to strengthen London’s nonprofit sector so that together we can continue to meet the challenges facing our community, beginning with new strategies C, collaborate with nonprofits and other stakeholders to develop a local workforce strategy, and D, adjust the community grants program to allocate more funding towards core operating expenses. E, advocate to other levels of government to address the root causes that drive the demand for nonprofit services and F, collaborate with nonprofit organizations and businesses to reboot and boost local volunteering.

And all of these details were circulated by the city clerk’s office earlier today, so you should have them in an email, so you didn’t have to try to memorize everything I said. We’ve often said that full economic recovery is not possible without social recovery happening in parallel. And we applaud the city’s recent work in recognizing how these issues are connected through the whole of community systems response to the homelessness crisis. We offer these ideas for your consideration, and we look forward to future opportunities to work with the city for a better London for all.

Thank you. Thank you. I’m gonna check to see the top row on this side. If we can get the microphone adjusted, I will go there next.

Hi, my name is Penny Moore. I’m here to talk about accessibility and belonging and community. I am client and parent council. In the morning, on a day basis, I start dialing on the booking line at 658, even though it starts at seven during the week, or 758 on the weekends.

As the lines open, and at seven or eight, it usually takes 200 read dials, which sometimes within 20 minutes, and on the 14th in line, and I still cannot get a booking. I go for twice weekly medical appointments, and on a weekly basis, at least I can only get one booking one way. And with ODSP, we had to set up a account with green taxi, because I can’t get my bookings all the time, so I can get to my medical appointments. Last month, the cost to ODSP was $264 for taxi, because I cannot get a booking for paratransit.

Also, I participate in the community in different programs, arts programs, community service, advocacy, and others. And I have also other meetings, and I also have my own business, and I can’t participate in that. As of March 1st, 2023, LTC is allowing pets and pet carriers on the city buses. But when I ask paratransit drivers about this, none of them have been given information about it.

When I phone paratransit to ask information, no one has information. Finally, yesterday, I get a call saying yes, it is going to be allowed on paratransit, the same as LTC. But again, today, when I talk to drivers, they don’t know anything about it. I find there is a lack of communication between LTC, Virgo, and paratransit.

The links between them are broken. When complaints are on call, there is no follow-up with the client. So I find clients do not call with a complaint, because there is no accountability. We need to fix the system to be compliant with the Disability Act.

Also paratransit does not go to areas that all areas of the city. London has grown. I can’t go to parts of Hyde Park and Gainesville, because paratransit will not go there. They say they’re not allowed.

I don’t think this is fair. I don’t think it’s accessibility. I don’t even think I’m part of the community, because I can’t even go to Parkway Gardens for the summer to get my plants. The use, under the Disability Act, use accessible equipment and features are supposed to be safely.

Find solutions, accessible features, stop working, or if routes contain barriers such as construction, they’re supposed to find a solution. Deploy lifting devices and portable upon requests. I find some on the London City buses will not do that when I ask them to lower the ramp for me to get on the record bus. And transport passengers with medical aids.

But also under the Disability Act, booking advanced bookings must be allowed to book on a day of travel whenever possible, up to three hours before the day before. And this is not being allowed. And also must inform passengers of delays and how long those delays are. I want London to be accessible.

I want us to be long and be part of the community. Also, under the legislation, we’re supposed to be barrier free by 2025. And we have a long way to go. 30 seconds.

Oh, well, perfect, you’re done for a good time. I try to get everything I can. You got it all in in time. Thank you very much.

I’ll go to the front microphone on the side. Through the chair, thank you very much for giving me this opportunity to share the feedback on the 2023 to 2027 City of a London strategic plan on behalf of the local arts organizations. My name is Injui, I’m the Executive Director of the London Arts Council. London Arts Council is a not-for-profit arms length umbrella arts service organization dedicated to enhancing quality of life and creative vitality in London.

We work with various partners to support all artistic disciplines across the city. Over many years, London Arts Council has represented the voice of the local arts sector in a number of municipal led initiatives, including UNESCO City of a Music Designation and the development and delivery of the London community recovery network framework by employing local artists and providing artistic activations throughout the city. To support the city’s strategic planning, LAC and the City of London Culture Services within the co-hosted community consultation sessions with the local arts organizations. These sessions are facilitated by the city staff utilizing the community consultation toolkit.

Although many thoughtful recommendations were shared, given the limited time I have, I will share three major points. Please refer to the submitted communications via email to get more information and context about each recommendation. Firstly, regarding UNESCO City of a Music Designation. UNESCO is the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization.

It contributes to peace and security by promoting international cooperation. UNESCO City Creative Cities Network was established in recognition of the important role that cities play in promoting sustainable development focused on the people and human rights. For this, culture and creativity were identified as essential catalyst for actions ensuring inclusive, safe, resilient and sustainable cities. As a member of the UNESCO’s Creative Cities Network, the City of London must focus on investing in our existing arts and culture sector, fostering creativity and encouraging cultural participation in the promotion of peace and human rights.

Creativity is core to humanity. Cultural expressions and participations are recognized and agreed upon as a fundamental human rights by the international society through treaties, conventions, covenants and declarations. As the arts and culture can address the port and develop all aspects of human life, the City should work to find the best way to appreciate and utilize them for the benefit of our community. This is why we need a cohesive and updated cultural prosperity plan.

Secondly, regarding inclusion of other artistic disciplines and recognition of the local arts sector. Art encompasses all artistic disciplines, including visual art, literature, theater, dance, architecture, music and film, among others. As such, the City must recognize the importance of all artistic disciplines and strengthen all existing local arts organizations and their offerings by investing in organizations, capacity building and hiring local talent. Each arts organization play an important role in creating a vibrant community within the arts and culture ecosystem.

We cannot market our city as a destination unless we have something to market, such as diverse local arts organizations with offerings across all artistic disciplines. Lastly, regarding creation of dedicated art and culture spaces, talent retention strategies should be developed and implemented in tandem with the sector development strategies. To further develop the arts sector in London, the city should invest in creating various types of dedicated cultural spaces to accommodate specialized needs with diverse forms of artistic creation and presentation. London currently lacks such spaces that are not in bars, especially 150 and 500-seat performance spaces, artists studios and affordable rehearsal, performance development and exhibition spaces.

Without proper arts spaces, neither sector development nor talent retention will be possible. For this, we need to work with the existing local arts organizations to support the local ecosystem and we build capacity instead of simply introducing new programs or spaces that have not yet built connections within the local fabric. Okay, I need you to end now. That’s five minutes.

All right, thank you very much. If you have any questions or comments, please reach out to the London Arts Council. Thank you. - Thank you.

I’m gonna go to the upper mic and then the lower mic and then I’m gonna switch to community room five and do a number of them there. So I’ll go to the upper mic on this side first. All right, good afternoon counselors and city staff. My name is Rohen Singh and I’m here today with the University Students Council at Western University and I’m incredibly grateful for the opportunity to speak with you all today and highlight aspects of the proposed strategic plan that can improve the experience for students living in London.

Western students continue to remain a key part of London’s economic growth and the USC is excited to see London’s focus on downtown safety, which will encourage students to visit the downtown core and the multitude of locally owned businesses. Municipal investments into safety infrastructure such as increased lighting, especially within underpasses, will go a long way in encouraging students to visit downtown. Within the economic growth culture and prosperity section of the proposed strategic plan, the mention of improving opportunities for equity deserving groups working within the arts and culture sector would allow for students from varying backgrounds to showcase and celebrate their culture within London. We’re also excited to see the opportunities for improved student employment and retention as London’s economy continues to grow and provide employment opportunities for recent graduates.

Providing metrics of student employment within London and the percentage of recent graduates who remain in London due to employment opportunities would help the city gauge its success and economic growth. The strategic plan also makes mention of rental property compliance blitzes, which will directly improve the quality of living for students within London. Due ensuring that safe and healthy living standards are maintained in student housing, we can promote students’ health and wellbeing. The USC also looks forward to seeing the city’s action on outcome three under housing and homelessness, which looks directly at intensifying housing developments and close proximity to key services such as transit.

This proposed expansion of housing would directly benefit students who continue to arrive in London and growing numbers and require affordable housing with an ease of access to their campus community. Intensification of affordable housing within the downtown core would also provide students with increased opportunities to engage with London’s economy. Overall, the USC is looking forward to seeing the city’s progress in economic development and housing as it relates to bettering students livelihood, providing increased areas of employment to increase student retention and providing well-maintained and affordable housing. Thank you so much for your time today.

Thank you, I’ll go to the front microphone on this side. Hi, this is a message to city councilor, city staff and Londoners at large. My name is Tress Root and I live in Soho. I don’t own a car, I love active transportation, so I see a lot and I meet a lot of people.

I am disheartened by the lack of affordable housing, the people living rough, but I feel the city can do more. So a couple of, I did submit this by the way, if I get off track and go over my time, I sent it to you. So kudos for the anonymous donor and the cooperative efforts to create 15 service hubs. I would also, if this hasn’t been considered, can you hear me?

Yeah, that’s fine. If this hasn’t been considered, I would like for you to check out Doug Terry’s plan for a comprehensive community development plan where the residents are learning life skills. He’s also connected with the Thames Valley District School Board to get young people interested in the skilled trades. So they will have opportunity to take part.

I would also like to suggest because I’ve talked to some of the addicts and they’re really hooked. I’ll give you three examples. One person, just the other day, like me and I have conversations, the other day he said, I asked him directly, why are you homeless? And he says, well, I have trauma and I have an addiction.

I had a home, I lost it because of that addiction. Another man, I helped him out. He was in a wheelchair crawling up the hill and I helped him. I contacted London Cares to help him.

He didn’t want the help because he has an addiction. He ended up in the hospital with his legs and feet amputated because of frostbite. Another, anyway, I won’t go on about the very depressing scenarios. So what I’d like you to suggest, when you create these 15 hubs, and I know you took flack for this, so, but do a trial study where some of these hubs are away from their sources of addiction and patterns.

Patterns, change of behavior is really difficult. So please locate some of them away from sources of addiction and give them something to develop their skill sets so that they feel proud of their day and accomplishments. Okay, second, there’s a tiny home show in Ancaster. I went last year, there’s another one coming up, I hope you will attend.

And it’s all in the information packet, it’s in July. Phenomenal, small businesses, providing tiny homes that are affordable. I’m gonna talk about two of my favorites. One is aloft, they make, and I’m sure he, I spoke to the owner of this company, and Josh, I believe he sent you an email as well.

What they build is our tiny homes that are on stilts that can be multi-purposes and used over top parking spaces. In Soho, there’s a habitat apartment complex that realize many of their residents don’t own cars. So kudos to them, they made raised garden beds. There is space there for housing on top of stilts and multi-purpose.

And Keith Gownes, who owns the company said, and these are furnished with appliances, furniture, $175,000 per unit. That’s something that is already built, it’s supporting innovation in alternative housing. Our government says they put together more homes built faster, act in 2022, but it’s not easy. There’s all sorts of restrictions.

Another one that I liked, at this tiny home show, by the way, huge frustration. There were hundreds of people there, wanting affordable housing, wanting affordable land, and there were creative solutions. Many people are leaving city areas and going to unorganized communities to set up tiny home communities. 30 seconds.

Oh shit. Anyway, some of these businesses are, please check this. The other one is, I would disagree with licensing of apartments. My personal experience, 2018, I bought a duplex.

It was a duplex since 1986, providing safe housing. I charged my tenants 700 a month. I was hit three times with a complaint to get a license, and I tried, and there were mistakes made. The by-law enforcement, and this is all in here, by-law, I probably had 20 conversations with city staff.

Today, it was inspected, and I was given a license. I’m gonna have you, and the delegation, you have submitted this to us, so we got that. You may not be busy. Okay, last, can I do one?

I can’t let you do one more, ‘cause then I gotta let everyone do one more, and there’s lots of people who want to speak, so. Oh, I hope someone talks about the police budget. Anyway, thank you. I’m sure they will.

Thank you very much. I’m gonna go to committee room five, so I see a number of people in committee room five. And I will come back if you’re not ready yet, but I’ll see if there’s anyone from that committee room who would like to speak if they would. You can come up to the microphone, and we will turn it on so we can hear you here.

I see someone approaching, so, okay. If you could just test the microphone so I can ensure we can hear you. Can you hear me? We sure can.

You have five minutes. Thank you. So thank you for the opportunity to comment on the strategic plan. My name is Luis Patricio, SEG City’s Program Manager at Pillar Nonprofit Network.

Our CEO already spoke about the broader issues, so I’m gonna talk specifically about one of our partnerships, that’s the Vision Zero Hamilton Road Project, and we will address mobility and transportation from a systems thinking perspective. Congratulations to Council and staff for the tremendous amount of work you put into our plan. The priorities you propose are what our city needs. With my suggestions, I’m simply trying to advance what is already stated as our goals, as a community.

So first, let me illustrate my point with a couple of stories. First, meet Sarah. She’s a single mom, 24/7, with two jobs. When Sarah’s not working, she’s either with the kids at home or driving them somewhere.

School, play dates, swim practice, doctor appointments, and everything else that is not walking distance. She wished her kids could have more autonomy coming and going places so she could have some time to rest. Only a car costs a big chunk of her hard-earned money. She thought about selling the car, but she feels trapped.

She would love to be able to do everything by bus or bike. But if she took the bus, it would be impossible to be on time with such a busy schedule that she has. Cycling is also out of the question. Sarah is terrified of riding bikes in London unless they’re using the TVP.

But that is very limited since they can use it at night or in the winter anyway. Meet Carlos. He moved to Canada with his family three years ago from Latin America. He always pictured Canada as an example of a country with advanced urban infrastructure that provides opportunities for those who want to make sustainable choices.

He was confused when we learned that transit and cycling are not convenient and without a car will be very hard to get around. Carlos decided to get a car, but first he needed a driver’s license. Carlos didn’t speak English very well and it took him a long time to master the courage to take the driving test, which he failed a few times. It was quite a nuisance since getting to the driver’s centre in London is not that easy without a car, which he couldn’t drive even if he had one.

Eventually he got his driver’s license, a car in a few extra pounds. He had some savings when he moved to London, but with the delay to get things going and the unplanned cost of owning a car, Carlos had to go into considerable debt to help pay for his studies that cost him four times more as an international student. So I want to put things a little bit in perspective. A third of single-parent families live below the poverty line in London.

One out of five families in London are single-parent families. Most of them are women. Single parents were less likely to be employed and more likely to be working on occupations that require lower levels of education. There are many seras out there.

One out of five residents are immigrants with permanent status. This figure doesn’t include refugees, people with student visas or work permits. The majority of them are below the poverty line. So are over a third or visible minority groups, indigenous people, immigrants that arrived in Canada between six to 10 years ago.

And we also have unemployed, underemployed, students, students, people with disability and all of them are disproportionately represented in mobility poverty. There are many Carlos’s out there. So the mobility master plan is making a fantastic progress using the equity tool that shows they were ready to include mobility poverty in our plan. Mobility poverty is a topic that is getting more and more attention doing to mobilizing justice.

This is a multi-sector research partnership committed to solving transportation and equities in Canadian cities, working with government, academics, transportation and nonprofit agencies. Members including the Canadian Institute of Urban Planners, Federation of Canadian Municipalities, University of Toronto, McMaster, McGill, Simon Fraser, and the Canadian Mortgage and Housing Corporation, among many others. So my proposal is very specific and as I said, very pleased to see that it’s already represented in our current draft and making language and goals more clear, I think will be helpful. So for the strategic priority mobility and transportation, item 1.1, adding two other items.

C, apply the equity tool considering mobility poverty in all transportation projects. And D, develop and implement a vision zero strategy. And as an intersectional— - 30 seconds left. 30 seconds left.

  • Thank you. As an intersectional issue, there are additional recommendations for equity and inclusion, housing, well being safety and economic growth priority. One way to address them all at once and this goes a little bit beyond the scope of the strategic plan, but including mobility poverty as an equity deserving group in item five of part one of the equity tool. Thank you for time and thanks for the opportunity.

Thank you very much. I’m gonna stick with community room five ‘cause there’s a number of people there for a few more. So I’ll have the next person in the community room come up to the microphone. We are part of the Orchard Park bike bus, a group of kids and parents who ride bikes to school every Friday and the spring and fall.

We all ride together along a route with stops where anyone can join, like a bus. We ride on the streets so that there is enough room for all of us and we practice riding safely and sharing the road with cars. The bike bus started with a few parents getting together and organizing for kids to get to school. We wanted to travel together.

We do it in our community because the streets are safe. We have relatively low traffic. We know safe routes make a difference and we also know that the city has the capacity to make that happen for other kids too. So the strategic plan makes commitments and the bike bus kids wanna talk to you about them.

So we just want the kids to be able to say in their own words how much it means to them and we hope that you bear in mind that this could potentially help kids in other communities. So in the spirits of the United Nations rights of the child for young people to be able to speak to leaders and have their voices listened to on issues that relate to them here are the children. The bike bus is environmental friendly and it helps London that way. And the city of London could help by putting in more sidewalks or making the roads a little bit safer and donating bikes to children who might need them.

The city is planning for active transportation and kids need safe roads and bike paths for that to happen. Bike bus has also helped London get noticed across the world when NBC today in the US made a story about our bike bus. It’s a way for other people around the world to know that our city supports healthy living. Bus because you get lots of energy before school, it’s great exercise.

Even my little sister can join even though she can’t ride her own bike yet. She goes on my dad’s bike. I used to ride, I used to ride in the chair with my mom but now I ride on my scooter with my best friend Alex and Vila and we’re always at this at first. Because it doesn’t cause pollution and I like to do it because I have my friends.

Bus because anybody can join. Bus because I like riding my bike and it’s a really fun way to get to school with my friend, bike bus because it doesn’t give you pollution or like staff, the energy is bad for you. And if you don’t end cars, you’ll do this. We won’t get a better life than this.

We thank you for your time. We know that your plan can make a difference and we know that your plan can make it safe for all of us to ride and we’re counting on you. Thank you very much and I wanna say thank you for not going over five minutes. I didn’t wanna cut that off.

That’s a sure-five way to be a one-term mayor I think. But thank you very much for the submission, particularly to the youth. Thank you very much for your bravery of public speaking. I can tell you many adults including myself once upon a time, there’s no way that we could do what you did.

So I’m very proud of you sharing your views with us today. I’m gonna see if there’s anybody else in community room five and then I’m gonna come back to council chambers. So I’ll go to one more person in community room five. Hello, my name is Julie Ryan.

I’m the community engagement coordinator with Indwell. Indwell is a Christian charity that creates affordable housing communities that support people seeking health, wellness and belonging. We were really encouraged by the inclusion of affordable and supportive housing in the strategic plan. We know that supportive housing offers a permanent solution to homelessness where people can live in dignity and be part of a community.

Housing for all also improves our community, making it safer and more welcoming. I recognize that this plan is about setting the city’s values and priorities. It’s not necessarily about how these will be, priorities will be implemented. That being said, your measurements will help set the how.

So to that end, we suggest adding several measurements that might direct the outcomes. In section 1.1, we encourage you to separate out the goals for supportive housing versus other affordable, types of affordable housing. And secondly, we would encourage you to set goals around processing affordable housing planning applications in order to speed the development process. Prioritizing approval of housing projects is mentioned as a priority in the outcomes in outcome 2.1, but it is not reflected in the metrics.

So again, I thank you for the opportunity and wish you the best as you continue to set the strategic plan. Thank you very much. I’m going to go over to this side, backing council chambers. And if you want to go ahead, do you have five minutes?

My name is Lawrence Durham. I’m from a resident of Ward 7, high degree. I want to commend the city on their transparency, their consultation with the public and their sharing of such comprehensive documentation. I was excited when I read such documents as the London Plan, the transportation master plan, the London’s complete street design manual, the climate emergency action plan, the 2016 London cycling master plan.

Yeah, I’ve read them all, and the appendices and the maps. And I appreciate the city saying in its numerous reports that the present car culture is unsustainable that we need to do better, that as a city, we must do better, we will do better. And you’re to be commended for setting specific and measurable goals and putting action plans in place. Today, I’d like to talk about three things, active transportation, multi-use pathways and alternatives for commuters.

Under active transportation, I’m 63 years old and I own a car. I also ride my Dutch style upright bicycle in my everyday clothes for most of my daily errands, just as your reports recommend that we all do. Most trips taken in London are less than three kilometers and can be done without a car. If you put your mind to it, that is.

For those who say it can’t be done, I say, get out of the way of those who are doing it. People over 60 all around the world are cycling around town all the time, all year round, it’s normal. But we shouldn’t have to risk our lives to do what your studies and reports recommend we do. That’s get out of your cars and stay as active.

What we need from the city is protected bicycle infrastructure to shield vulnerable cyclists from interactions with much heavier vehicles. I came down Richmond Road to the way to here today with my life in my hands. And as our population ages, we want and you want the growing cohort of aging baby boomers to be engaged in active transportation because it’s good for us, good for our physical and mental health and good for the environment, but only if you can safely get about town. Multi-use pathways.

For me, riding my bike brings me great joy. It’s my happy place. And I absolutely love what you’ve done with the Thames Valley Parkway. You’ve done a great job.

And I can’t wait to see the improvements you’re making to make the connections with major roads so we can avoid having to cross busy streets. And I love the multi-use pathways that snake through our neighborhoods. They wind through neighborhoods that brings joy to the residents, mobility for everyone, and creates a sense of community that can’t be experienced from the confines of your car. However, what is frustrating is that often these multi-use pathways are not connected to each other.

I know that’s one of your goals is to connect them, but it seems like a hard problem to fix once the streets and the roads are already in place. In new developments, the time to create pathways to people is in the design stage. It seems like a no-brainer that the city should demand that developers ensure that their designs include cut-throughs to connect neighborhoods and multi-use pathways that connect with other multi-use pathways in other neighborhoods. At an early design stage, even a child could join the pathways from one neighborhood to another if given a map and a set of crayons.

However, once the streets, houses, and fences go in, crayons just won’t do anymore. It takes money and bulldozers and lots of anguish to retrofit a neighborhood after the fact. So to the city councilors and city staff, I urge you to please hold developers accountable for making walkable and bicycle-friendly, connected neighborhoods that are delight to live in and ensure that new neighborhoods are designed for people, not just cars. Alternatives for commuters is a third topic.

I’m encouraged that the city is a long-term plan to gradually create a network of bicycle paths that connects our city and makes it easy to traverse without needing a car. Of course, if we are to replace car travel with active transportation alternatives, we need to see them in the plans and that’s where I have a challenge. I went through the maps you provided, but I couldn’t see forecast future cycle tracks and transit infrastructure in the east side of London. And that’s where a lot of people who work in the industrial areas live and work.

So how can workers, many of who are earning lower wages, get back and forth to work each day, often by car, if there aren’t any transit lines and multi-use pathways or cycle tracks, surely we can do better as a city. Participation in society should not be predicated on being able to afford a car. People shouldn’t be killed riding their bicycles home from work in eastern London because they are no separate pathways protecting them from traffic. 30 seconds.

But we all know that is exactly what happened recently last year, one night on Hamilton Road. So if we want to achieve the Vision Zero principles eliminating all traffic fatalities, we just have to do better. So as you craft your strategic plan and master mobility plan, I implore you to include alternative transportation for all Londoners in all areas of the city. Thank you.

Thank you. Just on this side, I see someone standing up with the mic beside Penny. I want to make sure that you’re there to speak. Or if you’re not, that’s okay.

You are? Okay, I’ll go right up there, perfect. Thank you. Good afternoon, Honorable Mayor and Councillors.

My name is Julie Edzinga. I’ve kept my speaking about paratransit pretty short today because I brought with me a list of 91 Londoners in favor of improvements to London paratransit as presented to the Civic Works Committee on February 22nd of this year by Dr. Jeff Preston. The list of 91 Londoners are mostly people who were unable to attend this meeting but wanted their support of greatly needed improvements to paratransit noted.

One organization that put their name forward was Hutton House and for the 91 individuals. I have Jeremy McCall, Jeanette Dutto, Kim Nebo, Lisa Havens, Kate Minick, Fatima Abbas, Caitlyn Green, Joe Gonzalez, Abigail Reed, Stuart Rexworthy, Janet Ackland, Dell Ackland, Gail Simpson, Daphne Fazell, Amanda Weitzel, Paul Mayling, Chris Swartson, Theresa Cooperthwaite, Melinda Lightborn, Deborah Kusson, Shelby Fuhr, Elizabeth Hardy, Amanda Graton, Christine Jewell, Anna Stekar, Lindsey VanderSpank, Shannon Taylor, Damian Taylor, Lauren Mackenzie, Beth Donchai, Rachel Crow, Philip Enchin, Sarah Lee, Dan and Leslie Zinga, Carson Zinga, Alex Marsh, Corey and Andrew Duhasky, Colleen Jamison, Matt Brown, Bonnie Godry, Louise Gaudet, McCake, Nicole Shepard and Jake Fuller, Tessa and Ross Shepard, Christopher Rafflinghouse, Tammy McCloud, Steve and Lisa Worsfold, Kristina Dent, Leila Gazempor, Suzanne Ytma and Doug Williams, Arco and Lorraine Ytma, Rickensu Van Dyenovin, Anne Troyer, Linda Baldwin, Michelle Baldwin, Shauna Lucowitz, Bill and Marianne Tucker, Billy Jo Wilkinson, Wes Feenstra, Arlene Thompson, Angie Wilson, Gary Williams, Medjid Redha, Nancy Needham, Janima Song, Leanna Zile, Brian Darnell, Ron Lee Porter, Fiona and Michael Curtis, Polly Kupapridi, Kupapridi, Logan Priti, Nicky Burdick, Shirley Burdick, Carolyn Brown, Paula Mackenzie, Jean Salter, Manjut Singh, Wendy Lau, Corey and Aslam Khan, Jamie Wareham, Crystal Easton and Melanie Braseby. These are only the people that I was able to hear back from within 24 hours. These are not just paratransit users.

These are family members of paratransit users. These are people who work with people with disabilities. All Londoners are affected in one way or another by those of us with physical disabilities not being able to get around the city. I thank you so much for your attention to an action for improving our paratransit system.

Thank you. What I’m gonna do is I’m gonna do the top microphone, then the lower microphone, then I’m gonna go back to Committee Room 5, where I know at least one person is waiting there. So I’ll go to the top microphone first. Okay, hi everybody.

My name is Vincent Lopral III, and I live in Old South with my wife, Chris. I wanna start by thanking the city council and the mayor for giving me the opportunity to speak today. I’m here to speak to the mobility section of the strategic plan, specifically on active transportation and cycling. Although I speak to you today as an individual, I did wanna point out that I am a member of the Integrated Transportation and Cycling Advisory Committee, and on that committee I serve as our chair of the Active Transportation Subcommittee.

I’m also a member of London CycleLink, where I am an instructor in our educational program for ride to thrive. When I came here four years ago with Chris in my retirement, I had two goals to continue to lead a purposeful life by volunteering in the community, and I also wanted to ride my bike. And here in London, I’ve been able to do both. So London is a great place for me as a recreational cyclist, where I get to ride on the TVP, a jewel that I believe is like no other in any community in Ontario.

And also I applaud the infrastructure that’s put in place and the improvements that are planned and the continual additions that go to it. But it’s to that infrastructure that I wanna talk to about today. And that’s because what we have in infrastructure is so disconnected that it almost makes it unusable. And the reason why this is critical is there are many people in our community for whom the bike is their single mode of transport.

Some people do this for environmental reasons, some people do it to be healthy, but a large number do it based on socioeconomic need. And it is for them that we need to complete the infrastructure today, not next year, not the year after, not five years from now. If we had a safe, secure cycling network in place, Londoners, for whom biking is a necessity, would be able to access a wider variety of services. It also make themselves available to a wider variety of job opportunities.

And are also by using the vehicle that they choose. Further, it would give those who choose to ride as a lifestyle choice, a safe, secure way of doing that. In addition, usage would be exponential because studies from the city of Portland that have been replicated, the results of which have been replicated in other cities show that 60% of people who own bicycles would do more biking if there was a safe, secure way of doing so. So by completing the infrastructure, we would create even more people who commute via their bike for short errands or just short trips.

Also, if you’re interested in lessening traffic congestion, every bike ride is one less car on the road. Another important aspect to remember is that under Ontario law, the bike is defined as a vehicle, just like a car, just like a truck. So just like those vehicles, the bike needs to be accommodated on our roads. And the only way to accommodate a bike is with designated protected bike lanes.

I think we can all agree that this cuts right to the outcome of the mobility and transportation section of the strategic plan. That Londoners of all identities, abilities and means can move throughout the city safely and efficiently. But for this to happen, we need a quicker process for implementing the cycling plan. We cannot wait on a capital project three years from now that’s going to close a 500 meter gap.

So it’s clearly cycling infrastructure is clearly build it and they will come. Now, a lot of people will roll their eyes at me when I say that. They’ll say, well, right out here on Coldboard Vince, we have a cycle track. I don’t see anybody on it.

First off, that’s inaccurate. Usage of the cycle tracks on Dundas and Coldborne, sometimes number between three and 500 a day. But more importantly, the reason we don’t see greater usage of Dundas, we don’t see greater usage of Coldborne is you can’t get there. For me to get to the Coldborne cycle track from my house in Old South, I’d have to ride two kilometers over very busy roads with no other cycling infrastructure.

And even though I’m an avid cyclist, I’m just not going to do that. Also, Chris wouldn’t let me, so my solution to this is simple. Let’s just take a map of the existing infrastructure. Identify the gaps in it like the one on Sarnia.

30 seconds. That prevents thousands of students and hospital workers from riding their bikes safely to get to the university or the hospital. Fill those gaps with a standalone plan separate from other infrastructure plans. This type of strategy has been used in cities such as Montreal, Calgary, so why not here?

Thank you all for your time. Thank you. I will go to the microphone in the front now. Thank you.

Good afternoon, your worship and city councilors. My name is Anlay and I am the associate vice president of external affairs at the university students council at Western University. In addition to my part time job at the USC, I’m also a full time student and I wanted to start off by thanking all of you for the opportunity to speak today. So I’m gonna be speaking specifically in support of the strategic plan sections on wellbeing and safety and mobility and transportation.

The metrics as outlined in the strat plan. First on wellbeing and safety. In addition to the recommendations, Jessica outlined regarding safety for women, girls, trans individuals and gender diverse individuals, the USC supports the city’s goals to improve pedestrian safety. This starts with installing more streetlights in alignment with the safe cities London scoping study and a gap throughout the city is the need for adequate lighting at night.

This is specifically a cause for concern for women who are more likely to feel unsafe after dark. The 2014 general social survey by Statistics Canada found that only 38% of women felt safe walking after dark in their neighborhood compared to 64% of men. The safe city scoping study suggests that increased lighting is one of many protective factors that can help people feel safer after night. Increased lighting at night helps to improve overall visibility which has two major benefits.

The first is that pedestrians can better identify potential risks such as obstructions on walkways or if there are other people around them. And the second benefit is that people operating vehicles can see pedestrians much clearer as well. Second as part of the strat plan is improve walkability. Student mobility throughout the city is dependent on safe accessible pedestrian walkways whether they walk or bus to school to work to buy groceries and overall around London.

The USC recommends that the city of London should commit to further prioritizing store removal on sidewalks around campus and leading up to bus stops that are frequently used by students. As someone who uses the LTC every day to get to and from class to go get groceries and to go hang out around London, I can speak to the mobility and transportation priorities as well. It’s very important to the USC that the city of London builds infrastructure that provides safe, integrated, connected, reliable and efficient transportation choices. This includes accessible transit, especially for students who maybe have accessibility needs or are using wheelchair.

We urge the city of London to build, maintain and enhance more infrastructure for walking and cycling as well. The USC supports outcome 1.2C in the strat plan that the city of London will continue to transition the bus fleet to zero emissions. Sustainable transit is key for the long-term growth of the city and something that the USC would love to see the city of London do. The USC would like to thank all of the counselors and your worship for your time and support today.

Thank you very much. I’m going to now go back to the committee room where I know there’s at least one person waiting. We’ll just make sure the microphone gets turned on. And then if you just check the microphone for me so I can make sure we can hear you.

Hello. Perfect, we can hear you. So I’ll let you go with your delegation. You have up to five minutes.

I’m sorry for my previous interruptions. My name is Melanie Brady. I’m speaking about paratransit. Paratransit is an integral part and very necessary for the transportation of all disabled persons in the city.

So I’d rather often not clear and getting down them with a walker or a wheelchair or other mobility issues is impossible. I tried to take a bus earlier this afternoon and three number 17s went by me without stopping. I don’t know. I think they just don’t want to tether me.

I was clearly out there. I don’t know what to say about that. I also think there are issues with paratransit booking. It is very difficult and people are very intimidated by it.

So often we have lists of wider numbers for one person to call but that’s no longer allowed either. I would think that would be beneficial for paratransit but no, no longer allowed. Also often by the time you get called in the times are no longer available to get you where you need to go. Big problem if it’s a doctor’s appointment, booking ahead three days also a problem.

If normal people had to book three days ahead, they’d never get anywhere. The world would come to a stop. It definitely can’t wait four years to be fixed. Please fix it now.

If they need more money, they need a little bit more money. Please fix it. Thank you for your time. Thank you very much for your delegation.

If I could ask you, if there’s someone else, just kind of wave your hand in the back if you’re looking to speak to, yep. We’ll have you go next. In fact, I’m gonna give you some time to get to the microphone there. I’m gonna go to one person in the room here and I’ll come back to you right after.

So I’ll go to the lower microphone on this side. Thank you Mayor Morgan and council. That’s good to have a welcome Matt to come here and talk about things. And I think a shadow too, it’s missing from some people here to Director Wilcox who I don’t even know what it looks like.

But to recognize that this is a milestone that needs a public meeting and I can tell just from looking around this far exceeds the billion dollar budget meeting that we just had. I’m gonna touch on three areas that you call focus. I call pillars. One is the mobility plan with respect to transportation.

Our own customer satisfaction index that calls 1200 people in the fall is now scoring about 20, 28%, 30% that says we’re stuck in gridlock. Your own information from Ms. Wilcox is showing this is scoring an N19 or 20 every meeting that you have. So I think that we need to put a more robust outcome into this area.

And what I was gonna suggest is that we throw in something like improved traffic throughput. This is all traffic, including transit and the bus drivers, et cetera. In truth, improved traffic throughput capacity by 15% reduce our trip timing by 15% and reduce our current consumer situation in terms of the robustness down from 30% to 15%. I think if you put that outcome in and then draft some action plans for that, it’ll be very clear.

And I think that’s gonna take Doug McCray and probably Jay to work together with Ms. Wilcox to sort of sort out for counsel. But I think that badly needs to be done. So that’s my first one.

We could talk Tim’s project, all kinds of things. We can chug on my walk. We don’t have to work for the master. We don’t have to wait for the master and ability plan to get done here.

Okay, that was one. The second area of focus was the climate change situation and sustainable growth. I call that a pillar as well. This is kind of snuck out from it involved London without a budget and then dropped in council’s lap for us to start working.

And I’ve seen the dollar signs aligned with it in terms of what has been provided for rough order magnitude. And it would shock people in this room right now. So I’d like to suggest a compromise. But right now, just adding up the dollar signs, I’m looking at about $8 million a year in off budget increase.

And I’m looking at someplace between $80 and $90 million in capital costs just over the next four years. This is the term of this strategic plan to get her done, to get it started actually. Many cities are up into half a billion dollars. So what I was gonna suggest is don’t take that away from the strategic plan.

But there needs to be a massive set of public meetings to go through on a granular basis, run by the department with Jay and his people and various other people so that we’re able to look as a community at what we’re getting for what money and what benefits we’re having, line by line. That shouldn’t be up to council and up to the financial team to drop into an army of us budget at the end of the year. We need to look at this. And I suggest the two can run concurrently.

Concurred development is what we need to do here. And if that requires another outcome statement under that, I think it’s a viable thing to do. And it’s gonna, I guess the word to put it is the way us country guys go, it’s gonna save a come to Jesus moment next budget. It really is.

Okay, a couple of things under well-run city pillar. One is to add a very strong robust action item or replace the one that’s there for I think it’s 2.2 now with respect to the continuous improvement program. This program hasn’t moved in eight years in terms of what its target is. Its target under by a lot of right now is 0.25% or $1 million a year.

That’s all it is. In that eight years, our ops budget has grown from $450 million a year to currently about 650. Just think what a target of 1% would do. Industrial targets are usually 3% for continuous improvement.

All I’m suggesting would be put in a very strong outcome in terms of a statement that says, take our continuous improvement by law. 30 seconds. Up to 1.5% and 6 million a year. That’s pretty much it.

I’ll talk to my counselor Sam when he’s back about a pillar in terms of what we got. And I just thank for the opportunity to talk. Take care. Thank you very much.

What I’m gonna do is go back to community room five for the next individual who was waiting there. You just wanna test the microphone for me? That’d be great. Oh, good afternoon.

Yeah, and that’s great, we can hear you. I don’t know if we can boost volume a bit on that or not, but that’d be great. And you can go ahead with your five minute delegation. Hi, good afternoon, everybody.

Thanks for taking the time to listen to our concerns. I like myself and other members that have joined us tonight are here to discuss the issues with paratransit. I’d also like to recommend or to say last Saturday, it took me 973 degree dials to get through on the paratransit lines. That’s an hour and a half of wasted time in the morning just to call in and make a booking.

I mean, we have PSW’s that come in to help us. We have a life figure going as well. And to sit on the phone constantly redialing for 973 times is absolutely ridiculous. The system needs to re-rebound.

We also need to see same day options, like maybe 10% of the available rides. So we as disabled people can live a normal happy life going out for a coffee with my friend, going to see a movie or just living a normal everyday life. We are humans too, and we deserve to be treated equally. I’d also like to address the issues of no shows, of being at an address where a driver has not been able to find us and we left at the curbside in the dark alone.

And as a female, I consider that very dangerous that we are just left, hoping that there’s a bus available, hoping that we can get a ride home. If our chair breaks down, we are toast and we have no way to get home. I think these issues should be paramount to any funding that’s addressed for the city of London. That’s pretty well all I wanted to say I’m regarding a repair transit, but it’s an issue that should be addressed.

And we hope that there’s some kind of conclusion to this meeting. Thank you. Thank you very much. I’m gonna go back to this side at the top, microphone.

Hello, my name is Jody Goldhock, and I’m here as a parent of a paratransit user. I would like to see cancel, ensure that the strategic plan supports paratransit and all the recommendations that were made to the Civil Works Committee. As you’ve heard from some other paratransit users, the booking system is much to be desired. I have tried myself.

I have called for 40 minutes straight, 1,200 calls, and my phone has actually overheated and died. So it’s just not available for our paratransit users to do it. My daughter doesn’t have the fine motor skills to actually dial herself. She would never have any chance of getting through on the line.

We like to foster independence. My daughter’s 25. She has a job, working a good life. She’s a vital part of our community, and she just has no way to get to work, especially in the winter.

So the online booking system is a problem, but even if we fix that system, we need to know that within 17 minutes of the online booking system open and up, the rides are gone. So even if we fix the system, we still need to address the need for more rides for our users. We need to address the need to have more efficiencies for these rides. These users have to add in hours to their days to try to get to work.

So it’s impossible to work full time when you’re adding in two to three hours per day in transportation time also. We need more efficiencies in that riders are not left stranded. Riders know when their buses are coming. So a tracking system for the buses.

The regular transportation has a tracking system. I can look on the app. I know where a bus is. I know when a bus is coming.

Paratransit users are left vulnerable on a curb at nighttime in the dark as females have no idea when the bus is coming and are just waiting. And it’s just not a great situation for our most vulnerable population. So people with disabilities need to feel safe on the transportation further everyday lives and to get to places that everyone else takes for granted. The other thing is our system has fallen severely behind other cities, much smaller cities, much larger cities.

But if you look at, there’s a lot of cities like Peel and Hamilton and Ottawa who have revamped their systems and serve their public much better than we are in London here. So we need to be more creative in how we offer these rides. We have a lot of full size paratransit buses that are having one rider go across the city. So is that the most efficient way to get as many riders as possible as many rides as possible.

We need to look at maybe accessible taxis. We need to look at accessible maybe vans to be handling some riders that are in walkers instead of wheelchairs. So again, there’s a lot of different parts to this and I really hope the city is gonna take the time to fix this issue that has been around for over 10 years in our city. And our people with disabilities deserve to be able to live life the way everybody else in the city can.

Thank you for your time. Thank you. I’m gonna go to the top over here and then I’ll go to the bottom microphone next. So top on this side.

My name’s Jack Spence. I’m a resident of Ward 6. I would like to speak because I would like to see London grow up, not out. I think growing up as a city not only means intensification instead of sprawl, it also means making well reasoned, mature decisions about transportation, decisions that take into account not just the most privileged.

I think as we grow into a larger city, we should embrace that and we should look at transportation networks that take into account everybody in a communal way because we are a community. The more I look at what that looks like, the more I look at what’s great and what makes cities great, the more I recognize that that’s not individuals and cars. I am a driver. I make most of my trips by car, but I’m trying to shift that to other modes of transportation for a variety of reasons.

I’ve never found public transit in London to be convenient enough for me or timely enough for me, but I have found that cycling is a way that I can get around the city safely and efficiently most of the time. I have really enjoyed the quality of life improvements that have come from cycling more and I would love to see more people being able to do that. For me, I’d like to shift more trips to cycling, but I do face barriers. London’s great for recreational cycling, but I think we have an obstacle when it comes to transportation.

Recreation can be done in a discretionary way. You can wait if it’s too dark or do it earlier. You can wait if it has snowed. You can do it where you feel safe cycling.

For transportation, you need to be able to get to your destination 24/7, 365. And I think we need to look at a way to make that possible for all residents of London. I’m able to cycle in London. I’m willing to cycle on our roads and I cycle in conditions that a lot of people, where a lot of people may not.

And I think that when I look at, I don’t blame people for not cycling on our roads. As I’m cycling, it’s not uncommon for me to be yelled at or honked at when I’m driving, when I’m biking, where I should be following the rules of the road. So it’s an intimidating thing to do. My children, I have three children, 22, 18 and 13 years old.

They would like to cycle more. They do not, because they do not feel safe cycling in London in most places. They don’t feel that painted bicycle lanes are enough to protect them from cars. I hope that we will embrace cycling as a method of transportation, not just recreation.

Within our city, I really hope that we can accept that cars are not part of our future. I hope that we will not spend any more money on improving trips for cars, but look at other means of transportation. I hope that London will choose cycling and I hope that London will grow up. Thank you.

Thank you. I’ll go to the front microphone on this side over here. Thank you for your time. This is about better public engagement.

We often hear encouraging phrases to Londoners to get involved. However, the recent municipal elections indicate that citizens feel apathetic at best and completely hopeless at worst. The turnout was only about one quarter of the city, the lowest ever in spite of a particular organization, spending time and money to aim for engagement. They failed utterly despite the meetings they held, another SDG failure.

The public survey on the strategic priorities that was put out at substantial cost we expect and printed up and made widely available was not format, was not formatted by staff in a way that made solid engagement possible. Certainly not for those whose language level was not post-secondary and not ideal even for those. Citizens complained about the lack of defined terminology, undefined terms throughout. There were also many empty word salad phrases.

The kind that seemed to use suitable words, but after reading four or five lines in secession, you get nothing, vague to the point of meaningless. The first few pages were okay, listing the eight suggested priorities and requesting comments, great, fine. The ensuing pages were a complete turn-off. Even the 250 people that replied did not fill out much on those pages.

It was obvious from the city hall meeting recently where the numbers were shown. One really important thing was also missing. When citizens are asked to vote, if they want something, there must be a price tag attached. Now, of course, one cannot know in advance the exact figures, but we have a budget, so staff must prepare a range and present it to the public.

Some things might sound fine, but then turn out to have huge costs and small benefit. In addition to the costs, there should be some mention of the expected clear benefit to all citizens not selected groups while ignoring others. Taxation is becoming alarming as inflation continues and home prices and rents remain much higher than people’s salaries. This must be a lean year with every dollar of taxpayers’ money carefully considered for benefit and not the nebulous feel-good kind.

People are hurting, people are going hungry. So as this poorly designed survey was not successful, as counselors continue with the process of making detailed plans for all eight areas, it is possible that the price ranges from these eight categories be loosely determined. Then those items can be sent out to all business associations and neighborhood associations, et cetera, who can cost free email their members and invite comments within a reasonable deadline like two weeks. At least get input from a few thousand people.

We have about half a million people living here. We have several teachers in the CKEL membership. If there is a need to consult as to an engage, and if there is a need to consult as to an engaging format and clear use of the language that would please the general public and invite better engagement. It is the job of staffers to ensure that their survey methods and style not only reach the people, but not put them off from expressing their views.

The next survey must be more accessible and use clear language that people outside of City Hall will understand. Thank you very much. Thank you. Also, I’m just gonna mention earlier in the meeting at the start, I said we’re gonna take a break at six, I actually meant 6.30.

So we’re gonna continue on until 6.30. Then we’ll take a break. I’ll go to the front microphone on this side. Hello, my name is Bonnie Whittaker.

It was great to see the children speaking today, and I guess I’m the other end of the stick. I’m from ward 13. I’ve lived in Woodfield for about 35 years. I’ve been cycling, I started cycling in my late 50s, and it’s a great, I love this sport.

I love long distance cycling. However, as you can see, my hair is quite gray, so I’m not doing big miles anymore. But I am an all year round cyclist, and I started that about 10 years ago when I was 70. So that adds up to me being 80.

And I love it, I love the challenge. When I first started cycling, to go places, get groceries or whatever, the city had not put in those bike lanes that they currently have. And I just wanted to say, keep building them, because I ride to the Y in the morning and go down Colburn Street, turn on to Dundas. What a great turn that is on the corner.

I feel safe this morning was a bit icy, but most of the time the roads are cleared. I just say one more thing. I threw my history of living in the city. I’ve seen more cyclists all the time.

I see young families with kids on their, you know, the back or they’ve got a trailer at the front, and I find that very encouraging. Cycling is great for the environment, and I’m doing that. I also don’t have to scrape my windows on my car in the wintertime because I have a bike shed. So I say to the city, keep building those bike lanes and keeping people safe.

One more thing, I did speak to a cyclist at the Y this morning, and I said, “What do you think about cycling in London?” And his comment was that it would be great if the Thames Valley was cleared in the winter, better than it is, would enable him to ride his bike to safely, to work at the University Hospital. Anyway, thank you. Thank you, upper microphone on this side, if someone would like to speak. Hello, my name’s Catherine O’Neill.

I’m speaking as an individual artist with a major in fine arts from McGill, and I’m not representing any organization. I’m gonna talk about culture, creativity, and artists in London. From the written strategic plan survey, few people said what they thought was missing. One of the higher numbers, 14 people, felt that arts and culture needed more focus.

In the tragic past few years, we have been arts deprived. I fully agree with the recent speaker from the Chamber of Commerce who pointed out there’s currently too much focus on film and music. Just because the arts have a powerful ability to bring tourism and dollars into any city well proven by studies does not mean there should be a narrow focus on some arts, excluding others. All arts are vital and to ignore some means to cut off funding and access so that some of these wither and die.

Such as what seems to have happened, for example, to the mic and us open mic poetry. It ran for eight years. My own independent artist group, Lava, London Association of Visual Artists, is also no longer, both snuffed out by the lockdowns. And with no funding, they are unlikely to revive.

But all the dollars are spoken for. Over a million dollars to the London Arts Council, they no longer even put out a monthly newsletter to artists. There’s no longer in We Blanche Arts Festival or any arts festival to replace it. Not even culture days, although that would never paid the artist so.

Why do we still not have an arts festival here? Where artists will not charge hundreds of dollars just to show their work. That’s what happens with Home County Fair. If you can afford expensive fine art but the character artist is always, well, you’ll get some exposure.

Try paying the rent with exposure. Do we make musicians pay to play? Of course not. So at the very least, let visual artists display without charge.

Showing original art is an exhibit and has cultural meaning and great appeal to the public. Lava, my former group, had a small victory. We got the fee removed for artists to show in public libraries. By the way, Lava ran for two years with a fee of $5 per member.

We even showed on Richmond Row. Now we have a new arts issue in London. Without input from the public, London was joined to the UNESCO Creative Cities Network. Sounds impressive.

But by joining cities acknowledge their commitment to support the United Nations framework, particularly the 2030 agenda. Most people don’t even know what that is. This is politics, not art. This UCCN includes only seven creative fields and we’ve had several people talk about how we need to include all the arts.

This one only includes crafts and folk art, design, film, gastronomy, literature, media arts and music. Missing are life theater, dance, fine arts, like painting and sculpture, et cetera. Now film and media arts is included because they promote the digital world. Strange at gastronomy’s in there but food’s pretty easy to monetize.

Everybody eats. Some of the language in it’s curious. Creativity as a strategic factor of sustainable development or of urban development. These descriptions are far from the goals of those actually trained in the arts.

This is the art of bureaucracy. Missing in such descriptions, things like personal expression and development of the artist’s skill to a high level. Continuing the legacy of one’s own culture, not some gray global one and creating moving or even exhilarating experiences for those who do the art form as well as for spectators. And of course as is missing from all 17 of the SDGs for those who are familiar with the full U in agenda, any aspect of the spiritual heaven forbid.

Solutions, I do hope that the coming budget will take from the existing funds, some of the spending that’s been going to the same old arts council as some of the records are not well attended. A little too preachy about social justice warrior topics. 30 seconds. Let a new model give it a try.

One that actually has a newsletter to all artists, promotes artists with their own name, not the London Arts Live brand. One that does not exclude artists because they are from a so-called privilege culture or make them want to leave the city and move to one that better respects the arts. Creativity belongs to the people who created London. It should take credit for its own development of music as well as all art forms, not plastered over with a tarnished global brand name.

Thank you. Thank you. I’m going to go to this side on the top, the upper microphone. I may be, I can’t do that.

Thank you very much for having me today. I am Becky Ellis, executive director of Urban Roots London. Urban Roots London is a nonprofit that revitalizes underused land in the city of London for agriculture. We have distributed tens of thousands of pounds of food in London in the past few years.

Through community consultations, the city of London created the Urban Agriculture Strategy, which was adopted in 2017, which was a really fantastic document. It signaled that there is a strong commitment by the city of London to urban agriculture at all scales. I would like to see the 2023, 2027 strategic plan build on and expand this commitment. There are so many benefits to urban agriculture.

Many of them are very well-documented by empirical evidence. It increases food security. It increases access to fresh seasonal food. It strengthens a local food system and can work with farmers in rural areas as well.

It increases people’s connection to food, to non-human nature and to the neighborhoods in which they live and visit. It ensures equitable access to agricultural training and education. Yes, there are urban people who want to learn how to participate in urban agriculture and agriculture more generally. And it contributes to a healthy urban ecosystem and helps to nurture biodiversity.

My PhD studied urban bees and practices such as urban beekeeping and pollinator gardening. And there’s so much scientific evidence that urban spaces like urban gardens, urban farms, and just people’s backyard spaces are wonderful places for pollinators of all kinds. Urban agriculture is also part of a plan, can be part of a really vital plan to mitigate the effects of climate change. So the food and agriculture organization of the United Nations identifies organic small-scale agriculture, which urban agriculture almost always is, as a very important aspect of mitigating climate change.

I would like to see the urban agriculture integrated into the strategic plan in various ways. So I would like to see increased access to land for urban agriculture on multiple scales, including the establishment of more urban farms like urban roots, but also people doing this in their backyards and other spaces. I would like to see the continued promotion of urban agricultural practices and operations within the city of London, which I do believe includes educational materials from the city of London to let people not involved in urban agriculture know that it is something supported by the city. I would like to see the development of clear and transparent processes for establishing urban agricultural sites and projects, especially on city-owned land.

Urban roots London has become aware that there are some groups of people from historically marginalized populations who have found it very confusing to try to figure out how to access land for urban agricultural projects in the city of London. And we’ve tried to help them, but we would like to see this be transparent and clear for people. And I would also like to see the adoption of a food justice framework, which, according to Food Secure Canada, seeks to ensure that the benefits and risks of where, what, and how food is grown, produced, transported, distributed, accessed, and eaten are shared fairly. Thank you.

Thank you. I’m gonna go to the front row of this side. So a front microphone, go ahead. Mayor Morgan, members of council hardworking staff.

Thank you for giving me this opportunity to talk about a strategic plan this evening. My name is Sharon Debra. It just reminded me my parking is expiring. So first off, I wanna say thank you for revitalizing the Black Fire Bridge and rebuilding the dike.

Those are amazing projects. And of course, I’m here today to ask that you consider the revitalization of the forks of the Thames River. I understand that the river falls on their many jurisdictions. And I’m asking that we sort of think about collaborative work with other groups and organizations to reach our end goal.

There are many benefits to conservation and revitalization, which we all know and we’ve discussed. But it contributes to economic development and it impacts economics in the area. It improves aesthetics, conservation, and revitalization efforts can improve the aesthetic value of the river, increase the wildlife diversity, protect against flooding as we know, and sustainable development around the city of London. I know that it’s an interrelated issue when we talk about the river, the number of jurisdictions that it fall under.

I recognize that we have an old sewage system that dumps sewage into the river. I recognize also that this water ends up in the NIDA conservation area and that affects the water levels of the indigenous people. So when I’m talking about collaboration, I’m asking that staff and council sort of look outside of the, I think in the bigger terms and picture to collaborate with like the upper lore, Thames River Conservation authorities, citizens group like the river group and friends of the river are interested in collaborating and making a difference in the environment. You know, collaborating with people like the urban roots and ALIS Environment Canada and trying to come up with used shared resources and the vice conservation plan for solutions moving forward.

So I’m just pleading that we think about revitalization of our natural resource that can also be viewed as economic development in terms of possibly tourism, water taxis, nature, tours on canoes or whatever that we can utilize that for and attract people into our city in terms of educating them in a conservation way. Thank you. Thank you. I’m gonna go to microphones on this side and soon I’m going to check in again with community room five, which has more people in it now, but I’m gonna do the lower microphone on this side and then the upper one first.

Go ahead. Thank you, Your Worship, members of council and hard-working staff as well. My name is Tim Smuck, I’m the executive director of Changing Ways and I’m here today with my colleague, Elias, who is the managing director for the Muslim Resource Center. We’re here today to talk on the strategic pillar around creating a safe city for women and girls.

And today is such a perfect day to work to not only to encourage council to not only continue to have that pillar, but just strategically invest in that pillar. And so today our organizations are also being represented by ANOVA and the London Abuse Women’s Center and us four agencies, somewhat of a small but mighty coalition are wanting to extend our ability and our hard work of our staff to be able to work with our city to achieve this pillar. And I also wanna take today to call this issue out in a way that this again is this, this is not a woman’s issue, this is not a woman’s problem, this is a man problem. What I mean by that is that the reason why we talk about having or working to promote a city that is safer for women and girls is because we know that those who are subjected to harm within our city are primarily those who identify as women.

And we know that that’s done at the hands primarily by those who identify as men. And so today what we want to do is to again, call this out, thank our city for having this pillar and to remind our city to invest in this pillar in a much more strategic way. And knowing that there’s agencies here that wanna lead not only within our city, but lead nationally on this issue to work towards ending gender-based violence and intimate partner violence. And I’ll consider the rest of my time to alias.

Thank you, Tim. Again, my name is Elias Faruki. I’m a managing director at the Muslim Resource Center. I do wanna just quickly say a happy international woman’s day to everyone here and outside.

And just want to echo on this day, as Tim mentioned, violence against women is a man’s issue. It’s a community’s issue, it’s a systems issue, it’s this city’s issue, and it’s the issue of decision-makers like yourself. I know this has been a decision-maker, there’s a lot of power and responsibility that comes with that. And it’s really important that we are accountable to that responsibility that we have.

In addition to just a few references to the London community coordinating committee to end of women abuse, but also I want to highlight the national domestic death review as well, domestic violence, domestic homicides, death review, a recommendation, and particularly allude to the conclusion of that death review was really focusing on a differential response to domestic violence, a different way to approach and respond to domestic violence, particularly on two key elements, two key focus areas. One, to invest in a service sector that is coordinated in collaborative way of approaching this domestic violence, but two, also ensuring programs are culturally and context-appropriate. So for us, what our, us four organizations are trying to do and what we’re trying to do and how we’re trying to do is exactly that. By coming together and really taking ownership of this issue, finding ways to do, respond to this in a collaborative and coordinate way is what we’re trying to do.

So we again, we urge the city to, you know, make this investment to, by really, paying attention or listening to the recommendations by this local coordinated bodies and national coordinate bodies and investing in the safety of women and children, women and girls as well, by investing in multi-year funding in coordinated and collaborative coordination responses as well. Thank you very much for taking the time to listen to us. Thank you everyone else as well. Thank you.

I’ll go to the upper microphone on this side. Thank you. Hello, I’m Becky Williamson. Uh-oh.

Those of us who grew up in Canada or lived here for several decades have noticed disturbing changes in our society. We have also always been welcoming people to newly arrived citizens who have gone through the normal legal processes to arrive here. But somewhere along the way, our traditional view of equality for all was twisted into a word that many people think means equality. It does not.

The very first listed strategic priority list, equity and inclusion, yet not all Canadians agree with this radical equity model, which is so far not working as well as equality did. These identity politics appear not to be solving racism, but in fact, ramping the issue up far worse than it was. The media helps as if one watches the CBC and it’s daily push to highlight racism. You’d get the impression we are drowning in it.

Identity politics is an area where spending may be of negligible benefit to Londoners. If not downright divisive and harmful. The practice of identifying individuals based on their groups, skin color or religion is essentially a racist process. It inverts definitions redefining self as anti-racism, but it’s anti-anti-racism, taking away the focus on our shared humanity and pitting group against group.

Such ideas did not begin naturally in the grassroots population. They have been deliberately spread across nations and are causing division everywhere. Number four on the priorities list is safe London for women, girls, gender diverse and trans people. What’s wrong with a safe London for everyone?

Should some people be safer than others, certain groups, but exclude others? What about men? 13.3% of men are estimated to have experienced some type of non-contact unwanted sexual experience and gender based violence during their lifetime. But of course it’s difficult to find information as research suggests that men are less likely to seek support after an experience of violence.

Highlighting gender issues within the safety concept does not appeal to our sense of inclusivity. It leaves some wondering, what about me? Am I less important? It leaves some behind.

In short, there is no place for identity politics in this strategic plan. A quote from the Canadian Human Rights Commission, the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms of 1982 is part of Canada’s constitution. The Charter protects every Canadian’s right to be treated equally under the law. The Charter guarantees broad equality rights.

Yes, equality rights, not equity rights. This is Canada, not some post-colonial nation with no core identity as the Prime Minister stated in his personal view of this nation. Thank you. Okay, I’m gonna go to committee room five.

I know there’s a number of new arrivals there to see if anyone in that committee room would like to speak at this time. There are some who have spoken, so as you looked at each other, just head up to the microphone, can you just test the microphone for me just so I can, yep, it works and we can hear you, so go ahead with your delegation. So my name is Seth Klimans, I’m not speaking on behalf of anybody but myself. Thanks for giving me this opportunity.

I’ll briefly tell you about myself. I live in Wortley Village. I’m a husband, I’m a father, I’m also a neurologist. And the main reason I wanted to talk today is to emphasize to the committee the incredible power that I believe you have to shape our future city and serve as a model for the world.

I wanted to talk about building a better city with respect to safe transit and ways that we can make our world cleaner and greener for the future. There’s a concept called a transit pyramid, which says that the base of the pyramid, the most important is pedestrian safety. People who walk and wheel around, followed by making the city better for cyclists, followed by public transit, and then the last bit of the pyramid and the least important would be auto transit. And I think it behooves this committee to realize that better pedestrian environments, better cycling environments and better transit environments can only come at the expense of car infrastructure.

And you will have to make some difficult decisions and make some of your constituents upset, but it’s the only way that we can save our planet. Thank you. Thank you. And continuing in committee room five, I’ll see if others would like to speak.

Yes, come on up. Hi, my name is Catherine Niche. I’m a unit geider for the 64th London Guides from Ward 11. And we have 16 girls here who would like to talk to you about three topics, namely mental health resources in the city, animal care and emergency services.

So the girls are going to come up in small groups and share with you some of their ideas. So Margot, do you want to come up? So there are some people that we would like to talk about. There are people who use drugs, but they’re around, but they’re like in the streets and it’s dangerous because children are there and adults too.

And it’s just very dangerous. And also they use things that they just leave in the streets and it’s dangerous because animals could die from them. And it’s just not very good to have litter all around. Just kind of thinking that if you’re drinking, I kind of have the main idea that maybe you should stay in one place because it could get a little dangerous with like, let’s say you drank and then you got drunk and then you started to travel, you could harm other people without meaning to.

And it could actually make it more dangerous. I think that we should be cleaning up drugs on probably litter circumstances because people have gotten hurt just picking up a drug or sometimes they can be disguised as things that some people might do. And it could really hurt people to find something on the ground on a specific means of maybe a child could find on the ground and not know what it is and not have a clear way of knowing what sort of thing is. So I feel a judge should be like that.

Hello, I think that we should honestly try to limit as many drugs because most of the time there’s too many people on the streets at night roaming when they’re drunk. So honestly, if we limit as many drugs as there will be, there’ll be less amount of incidents, which means you don’t need to pay for as many emergency services and stuff like that. So you can work on actually helping things that are important. I know that we are doing a great job on impacting housing and I think that we should make downtown streets a bit safer and we should limit alcohol to like only like three drinks a day.

And I definitely agree with some of the other girls that said you should stay in one spot when you’re drinking. Think that the same way with Caris and the rest of the girls that you should be like staying in one place and that you should be cleaning up a lot. I also think that there should be like maybe at bars more security and if you’re like drinking like stay like in one spot like they said and no smoking at all and banding vaping maybe. I’m here to talk about animal care.

I think that we should like put out more food and water for like the stray dogs and cats and other stray animals because we don’t have like a lot of those and so we should lower speed limits because they are getting hit and that’s bad. And we should also make more veterinarian because we don’t have a lot of those and maybe we could like make treats with vitamin A or D in them. That would be really good because they are not getting a lot of medicine and some of them are like sick from like drinking something bad or like polluted food or something. Like water and we should also have like more animal like, hold on, what are they called?

Like animal like control officers that’ll like find homes for them. We are here to talk about animal services. I’m not animal, emergency services. And I think that first there should be more nurses in hospitals and they try to stop sending people home from the hospital.

I’m here to talk about emergency services as well. I think we should have a more emergency room so that people don’t have to wait for the dog. I’m also here to talk about more, I mean emergency rooms because when they send people away from hospitals they can get more sick than getting better. That was from the 64th London Guides and we will see the floor now.

Thank you. Well, thank you very much and I will see you. I think we’re meeting in my office at 6.30 and we’ll talk a lot about some of those issues and different responsibilities that different levels of government have ‘cause I got a few people I can point you in the direction of at the provincial level too. Back in, we’ll go back to council chambers now and looks like we have another 15 minutes before we’ll break so I think I’m at the bottom over here right now so I’ll go to you.

Hello, I’m a 28 year old professional and my fiance and I own one car between the two of us. We also own two upright electric assist e-bikes to deal with London’s above average urban sprawl and an electric scooter for the fun of it but we choose to ride our bikes 85% of the time, drive 5% of the time and use public transit or other modes the rest of the time. I have real concerns about the families in London, Ontario. I’m assuming most people here drive and for those in person you probably even drove here today.

It’s the North American way except that for many reasons, it excludes many people as we’ve heard a lot about tonight and from an environmental standpoint, it’s entirely unsustainable to drive as much as we do. So imagine for a moment just in two hours from now, your circumstances change because any number of things from physical to mental to financial and suddenly like so many people, you can drive anywhere in London or anywhere. How would you get around the city? What convenient reliable options are there for you?

In the next three minutes, I just want to touch on the freedom of, or how the freedom of mobility plays into the following, which are the cost of living crisis brain drain from the city and how it increases sales and foot traffic for businesses. So part one, the lack of active transportation and public transit infrastructure disproportionately affects those of lower income when they are forced to own, operate and maintain these vehicles because they have no other choice. Since personal vehicles became the primary mode of transportation in the 1960s, it’s been the second most expensive cost of living. Since in 2017, CA reported that the average cost of vehicle ownership was between $8,600 and $13,000 per year.

And in 2023, it’s obviously more expensive. Seeing as we are in the midst of a cost of living crisis, if we can allow people to drive less, that will only help families in London and everywhere save more money. Part two, brain drain. If in, I’m the type of person who the city wants to keep, young, soon to be married and approaching my heavy spending years.

We’ve all heard the story before. Yeah, children grow up in London, but leave when they hit adulthood. Or students come here to London for post-secondary education, but then live the city, leave the city, believing that literally any wealth and where else on the planet must be more exciting than boring old London. But studies have shown that providing better cycling infrastructure and making streets for people instead of cars improves the character of a city and increases the retention of young urban professionals who eventually put down roots and raise their families in those cities.

This is especially true for those who are well traveled and realize how awesome walkable cities can be because many of those walkable cities often started making mobility changes over 50 years ago. So I’m excited that London is ramping up is active transportation infrastructure now. Part three, increased business activity. So active transportation helps build vibrant downtowns filled with prosperous business.

Remember when over in part one, I explained that owning a car costs around $10,000 a year? Yeah, people who drive less have more money to spend locally. There are countless reports out there, but let’s get local. For example, over in Toronto, a recent study reported that higher levels of spending came from those who walked and biked compared to people living by car or arriving by car or transit and merchants reported more customers per day after the construction of bike lanes.

Do you really want potential customers just driving by your store at 60 kilometers an hour in a car? Vehicles are loud, dangerous for everyone, expensive for taxpayers and expensive for businesses. Widening roads disrupts businesses and once they’re completed makes for more through traffic, which does not actually correlate to more business. So in closing, I’m excited for London’s future with the future with the Mobility Master Plan guiding its development because freedom of mobility leads to more equitable and more livable neighborhoods and tighter knit economically robust communities, yet car centricity, on the other hand, just leads to unchecked urban sprawl that divides communities.

So let’s make history and going forward, think of the hardworking people in London, Ontario. First, not just cars. Thank you. Okay, thank you.

The upper microphone on this side. Thank you. My name is Ted Collins, a resident in Councillor Preble’s ward. I’m a lifetime cyclist for the economy, the health, the environment, the economic benefits that were just mentioned.

Most of all, it’s fun, it’s exhilarating and it’s social. We live, my family lives north of Fanshawe between Richmond and Adelaide and often cycle to my mother’s home. She’s 91 years old. She’s near Thames Valley golf course.

And this is an errand, this is a chore, this isn’t recreation, this is necessary for her to be able to survive. And I do this five or seven times each week. I could drive my car, I could drive my motorcycle, but I prefer to ride one of my bicycles. If I take the shortest route, it takes me about 10 minutes longer to get to my mother’s house.

If I take the longer route using the TVP, if I’m lucky, it’ll take me two hours longer to get there. Much of what I will say here today is already underway. And please don’t underestimate the strength of my support for what’s already happened in the city versus somebody who might be disagreeing with what the city is doing, particularly in the popular press when bicycles and bicycle infrastructure is mentioned. I’ve just as much gusto for the support of this as anyone.

Anyway, I’d like to sort of talk about start, stop, and continue just as a way to sort of summarize things. So I’ll work backwards. So continue with a tremendous amount of cycling infrastructure, lanes, tracks, lockers, supportive organizations, all of it. It touches lots and lots of areas of the strategic plan.

Active mobility infrastructure boost business by real foot traffic, as was just mentioned. It actually increases the ability for people, their choices of where they might live relative to where they work. You know, I would ask you to stop questioning whether or not the investment in cycling infrastructure is worthwhile, lots of studies. The one that was just mentioned about businesses that was comparing bike lanes on Blue or West, they were installed versus bike lanes that were not installed on the Danforth in Toronto.

And overwhelmingly, it was a tremendous success for the businesses there. And there’s lots of worry that when you take parking away temporarily or permanently, but what you actually get are people that actually spend money in those neighborhoods. I would ask you to stop with a Sherro’s and signed bike routes, but to actually invest in real bike lanes, not just signs. I would ask you to, you know, again, adding with that, we can’t afford everything all at once.

There’s lots of priorities here in the city, and lots of people that need assistance. But I would ask you to start with on-street bike lanes and as many as possible and as quickly as possible. That’s really all about roads that are so wide that they can already accommodate the width of a bike lane on either side. And really all we need are a couple of strips of paint.

They’re not divided, they’re not separated, which is the gold standard, but they are safer than nothing and safer than Sherro’s. The river is a detriment to traffic flow in the city, but if we can connect to the TVP with an organized, continuous grid of bike paths, cycle tracks on-street bike paths, we can allow people to traverse the city north-south-east-west. One of the things, we have a number of bike-friendly streets are sort of the spine streets of neighborhoods, and again, they’re signed, and I would ask, those get bike lanes. I mean, give me the truck and the train crew and a couple buckets of paint, and I’ll start painting bike lanes as soon as the weather will cooperate to give people a little bit of safety here.

I mean, if you looked at what— 30 seconds. - Sure. If you looked at what Google calls bike-friendly and did those spine streets, the number of bike lanes would triple overnight. On November 5th, I got hit by a car, I had ridden over 30 kilometers that day, I had about 800 meters of open road that I had to navigate just south of Masonville Mall, but halfway there, I got hit.

An un, you know, less experienced cyclist, somebody a little less likely might not be here today. You know, I can’t implore anymore how important more cycling infrastructure and all that you’ve done is, needs to keep going. Thank you very much. Thank you.

We’re approaching the break, but I’m gonna, I have two people lined up, I’m gonna do those two people, then I’m gonna call a break, but we’ll be doing more public engagement after the break, I’ll go to the top microphone first. Thank you, Mayor Morgan. My name’s Lynn Grishka, I’m in Ward 7, as a mother of four, including one with special needs, life is hectic, and somehow, I missed something City Council did a few years ago. Though, while completing the survey for the strategic plan, I noticed the words climate emergency.

So I did a little digging and discovered that in 2019, counselors at that time with the advice of activists decided to declare a climate emergency in London. I’m wondering who the scientists that were involved in to come to this conclusion, because even among academia, we know that the science behind the so-called climate change is not settled anymore than the shots stopped the spread. With climate action and sustainable growth listed as a priority in a strategic plan, I think it’s important for the citizens of London to know what the various plans are that will roll out, decides a narrow focus on greenhouse gases. How big of a price tag does this come with?

Please don’t get me wrong, we are all wanting to have a better, cleaner environment. I know, it’s why I do the work I do for a living with so much passion. The question is more about the details and how we will go about doing this. There’s a huge difference between doing our part for a healthier environment and fear mongering using climate alarmism and pseudoscience.

Climate alarmists are linked to global corporate interests trying to pressure the entire planet into radical energy change. If you paid close attention to what’s happening around the world, you likely know that this worked poorly for the Germans as they turned to gathering wood for their forests, from their forest to heat their homes this past winter, so they wouldn’t freeze. Cold weather, by the way, is 20 times more deadly than hot weather. Climate alarmists use oversimplified graphs such as the famous hockey stick graph.

This kind of computer modeling has been shown by many experts to be too hot due to errors in the input. You might recall similar fear tactics being used three years ago when computer modeling pandemic predictions were far off the mark, as evidence showed a mortality risk well under 0.02%. Even the IPCC official Atmar Edenhofer advised, one has to free oneself from the illusion that international climate policy is environmental policy. Instead, climate change policy is about how we redistribute de facto the world’s wealth.

So in a race against time, because Greta thinks her house is on fire and says she wants us to panic, someone needs to tell chicken little that the sky is not falling. So here we have lots of expensive bike lanes Londoners rarely use in a city that experiences winter-like weather a third of the year, hurried plans for electrified buses as we are approaching a recession. How are the batteries being produced? Are they needing rare minerals mined in China where environmental standards are terrible?

When we read things in the strategic plan like implement of the climate lens framework across the city of London and implement the climate emergency action plan with a focus on actions up to 2027 that will contribute towards community milestone emission reduction 2030 target. Sorry, that’s a mouthful. We need to be concerned about the cost, the benefits and how effective the plan is for our city here. We shouldn’t be pushed into attempting impossible feats dictated by the UN’s broad stroke global SDGs to manage a planet.

It is too complex a system for one-size-fits-all approach. Are we heading towards more failure with massive price tags along the way to pay for whatever goes on behind the virtue signaling? London does not need to follow the UN’s constantly failing footsteps. Making sudden radical changes to all our vehicles would have a drastic effect on the economy while any batteries and other equipment made in lands that are still using much coal-fired energy to mine and process, that’s just greenwashing, creating pollution in other lands so we can whitewash our own GHG statistics report is unsound science and quite frankly, it’s unethical.

Our energy plans may need to be revisited and focused on what’s important locally. Installing LED lights, actually I’ll keep that for another meeting. The climate is a massively complex system. We do better to look around and manage the area of London as best we can with a local focus on all forms of pollution and excessive waste, not follow the dictates of global bodies and mega corporations salivating over the profits of a proposed switch to only EVs, a concept that will fail as we don’t even have access to enough minerals to do this all over the planet.

In closing, I’m asking city council to listen to reason and dig deeper into science again without the noise of uninformed activists and alarmists. The science is not settled and we need to do listening and we need to be listening to the non-consensus again. Please do not assume what was done in past councils to be status quo. Science, evidence, and knowledge are constantly evolving.

Please don’t accept dogma passed on by previous councils to be written in stone. I really enjoyed witnessing great collaboration discussion at the last meeting about the homelessness issue and I truly believe, or at least I want to believe that this council wants what is best for our city. We can’t achieve greatness here if we are allowing past decisions to mold our choices moving forward without re-examining what was done. It’s important to look back and with open minds and critical thinking, analyze what was right and what needs to be changed.

Please don’t fall prey to activists with personal agendas. Please listen to opinions that might challenge your beliefs so we can have open debate to move forward and do what is best for our city and our citizens locally. Our children’s futures depend on us doing what is right. I’m asking you to focus on what is best for us as a city and not what is dictated to us by selfish globalists who couldn’t care less about our children here in London.

Thank you, your time is up. Thank you very much. I’ll go to the lower mic. Sorry, Mayor Morgan, I guess a point of personal privilege.

Yes. I’ll raise it of just those in the gallery who do take an opportunity to speak of just avoiding name calling to make sure this remains a safe space for all to share open comments and dialogue. Yes, so I will reiterate generally as I did at the start of the meeting that we want everybody to speak their mind, your respective of whether you agree or disagree with their view and all of those comments are here, but we’ll do our best and absolutely not insult others or use language that is inflammatory towards others as best we can through all of our comments knowing that there is some gray area there, but I appreciate the caution counselor and I’ll expect everybody to continue to do that. So I’ll go to the next speaker on this side.

Thank you, Mr. Mayor. It’s Michael Van Holst. I’m happy to see you all here tonight and I appreciate all the hard work you’ve done on this project so far.

I was very pleased to see under a well-run city and number 1.1 B was transparency. I think that’s important because at all levels of government I see that’s where people seem to be frustrated with, they’re looking for more transparency and of course by more transparency, I don’t mean more plexiglass, but you’ve got that well covered here. But it’s how the money is spent and I wanted to point out something that the city of Edmonton had done. They did a social impact audit where they looked at their social safety net ecosystem and studied all the money coming into the city to support that system and found out it was surprisingly $7.5 billion and knowing where the money’s come from, who’s getting it, what they’re accountable for, I think it’s gonna be something that would be helpful for decision makers like yourself.

So when groups come and say we want taxpayers’ money for something you can see where the money is already coming in from other levels of government, if somebody’s saying, hey, we think that money from the police budget could go to a different group, you can compare those numbers and perhaps have a better view of how to prioritize those things. So looking at that study, I realized it might be something that would be valuable for our own city. So that’s my suggestion. Again, thanks for all the work you’ve done and best of fortune coming to final copy of the new strategic plan.

Okay, thank you with that colleagues. We’re not done in the public participation meeting, but I did wanna stick to as close to the schedule time as possible. I would look for a motion to recess for until about seven o’clock. So that’s about just under 30 minutes.

Moved by Councillor Stevenson, seconded by Councillor, sorry, is this? Okay, seconded by Councillor Cudi, question. Just through you, the gallery, some people up there have already spoken. I guess it’s just the question of how many people are still left that if they didn’t wanna stay with us, everyone can just, they’re all in the state of the night, but how many speakers do we really have left?

One, for sure, as Mr. Wallace. Okay, a few, okay, happy to second. Thank you, I think there’s a number.

And sometimes when someone speaks, they inspire others to do so. So I don’t wanna presume that there are only a few left. I think we’ve done that before and it’s led to a 20 minute thing. So moved to seconded.

I don’t see any discussion. All those in favor, we’ll do this by hand. We’ll return just after seven. Okay, I’m gonna call the meeting back to order.

I have quorum. I don’t know how your break was, but I got peppered by questions from 16 girl guides. And then I left them with Councillor Ploza, so she’s not back yet, but she should be returning soon. So, but we’ll continue on with the PPM.

I know that there are a number of other speakers left. There’s, I’ll check online, ‘cause I know at least one person’s tuning in online as well. But I’ll go up to the microphone on this side and you can start, you have five minutes. Thank you.

I’m Jennifer Martino and I’m the Executive Director of Crouch Neighborhood Resource Center. This is my first PPM. I had to look up what that meant. And that’s also why I’m one of the last to the mic, but now I know the strategy for next time.

So watch out for me. I sat down with the staff at Crouch Neighborhood Resource Center to work through your workbook on community consultations. And we had some feedback for you. First, we really, really appreciated the vision and mission, especially about improving quality of life for Londoners and building a strong, vibrant community.

At the end of the mission statement, there is an emphasis on city services being used to achieve these goals. And I wanted to mention the same thing that to Marine Cassidy mentioned from Pillar Nonprofit Network around a value of collaboration. When we looked at the list of values, thought that some you did a great job, but that value wasn’t listed there. And we really saw the value of cross-sectoral collaboration during the pandemic.

I was a part of the mayor’s economic and social impact and recovery task force. And it was really a notable example of how we can all work together to make London a better place for all of us, but especially those who are in need of some extra supports. I wanted to comment specifically on the area of well-being and safety, particularly outcome one, London has a safe, vibrant and healthy neighborhoods and communities, and the expected result, Londoners have a strong sense of belonging and a sense of place. And in terms of collaboration, just like to remind you that you can work really closely and very well with some of the community organizations that are already working on the expected results.

And particularly creating meaningful opportunities for all Londoners to contribute to the health and vibrancy of their neighborhoods, creating cultural opportunities that reflect the arts, heritage and diversity of the community, and removing barriers to participation and integration for equity denied groups within neighborhoods and across the community. All of those could be the expected results for a neighborhood resource center, and especially one in a priority neighborhood like Hamilton Road. And we would like to be a closer partner in the work rather than having to rely on the community grants process, which comes up every four years. And we’re doing really incredible work at Crouch Neighborhood Resource Center and the other four neighborhood resource centers in the community.

We served over 2,000 Londoners last year, many of whom are low income and equity deserving residents who face various barriers to participation. But in order to serve those Londoners, I had to write 22 grants. We got 21 of them, and so you’ve been able to see the impact of the work through some of our initiatives such as the Crouch Block Party, which had 800 residents come out. And we’ve also been able to meet the increase in demand for our basic needs covered.

We saw a 66% increase in the number of visits to our food covered over the last year. That’s 17% increase in unique individuals, so it means that, yes, we’re seeing more people come to our center, but those people are also coming to visit as much more often because they need more support than they used to need. And I’m really proud of our track record with getting these small grants one at a time. But in the next year, I will have to apply to both the city for community grants and United Way through their community grant program.

And if we don’t get one of those two, then Crouch Neighborhood Resource Center can’t function because we can’t pay our core staff team. So I’d just really like to highlight for you that Neighborhood Resource Centers are doing some of the most critical work in our community, especially when it comes to delivering programs and activities that foster improved physical, mental, and social well-being. And I would really like to see you be specific about food security because there is no physical, mental, or social well-being without food security. And we’re seeing that at the food bank, but we’re also seeing that at the neighborhood level.

So if we’re going to rely on organizations, such as the Neighborhood Resource Center, to serve some of our most vulnerable community members, then we need to make sure that we’re working very closely as a city council and as city staff with those organizations. And then also making sure that those organizations are resourced appropriately because I don’t think any of us would like to see a Hamilton Road neighborhood without a place like Crouch there to support residents. The other thing that I would like to mention is that we have a really good working relationship with the city when it comes to using space, especially the Hamilton Road Senior Center and also by participating with the Child and Youth Network and some other groups that bring people together to work well together. So there are things that are growing really well and we applaud the city for that, but we would just like to see us work a little bit closer together because the work is growing, the demand is growing, and we know that we can step up to meet that demand, but we need to work with you in order to do that most effectively.

Thank you. - Thank you. Next speaker, go ahead. Thank you, Mr.

Mayor. Thank you, community members for being here. I appreciate the opportunity to talk to you tonight. It’s Mike Wallace from the, I’m here representing LDI, the London Government Institute, but I will make a few personal comments.

First of all, let me thank you and I actually appreciate all the work that you as a council have done and what staff have done on the strap plan. I have the unfortunate record of eight. I did eight municipal strap plans, one because I was in a two tier system. So I was one at the region of Halton, one at City Burlington, and I was elected four times, so I had to go through this process.

Eight times, I know it’s difficult. And I know that you would like to try to solve all problems and help all people and there’s priorities that need to be made. And I think you’ve done a very good job at this through this process. It’s coming near to an end.

I think April 8th is the last night. So overall, I took this, the plan to LDI, to an LDI meeting and we had a brief discussion on your areas of focus, the potential outcomes and your expected results. And overall, I would say from our perspective, we really appreciate the focus in terms of issues of importance to you as a council going forward in the next four years and a number of areas, including the housing and homelessness area focus, the discussion of affordability and attainability that goes through a number of areas of focus and of expected results, a well-run study and also your vision and concentration on things in the core, and what could be done and should be done for the city. So overall, we are very supportive of what is in the draft now.

And if you look at last year’s or last terms, Tijik plan, a lot of the issues that we are involved with on a daily basis ended up on like basically one line in the last draft plan. So we’re very willing and able to work with you as a council and with staff on what those priorities you had, those expected results, those outcomes you’re looking for in the draft plan. And I would say, because I’ve sat through all these meetings, I thought I might add a few personal observations. I have no issue, we have no issue with your mission and the one thing that I thought you could have done, there was really a split on the value statement and some wanted statements, some wanted a list of words.

I personally think you could have worked it out that not only the public, the little input they had on the public on that piece, but the discussion and the voting that you had, that is there not a combination of the word and then a sentence after it to kind of describe it and that’s your value? I think if you thought about it a little bit, you worked on it, you could do that and it maybe might have satisfied virtually everybody. The one final piece I want to leave you with and tonight was a great example of one of the nights I wasn’t here by myself and the input you got has been great, two things. One, I think you need to look at where you got it in the well-run city part, you’ve got it in the inclusivity piece about engagement with the public on civic administration, civic matters and so on.

I think there’s opportunities there in there and including opportunities for improvements on how the public interacts with council and committee. You use PPMs differently than most municipalities, most of them just use them for planning act applications, you use them for other things, but there’s other ways that you can, so those are great, you’re way ahead of the curve on that, but there’s other areas I think you could improve on that. So the only, the last thing I would say, as tonight was a great example, you hear from the usual suspects or the ones who have a specific thing they like to advocate for cycling for one, me for the industry. So what you need to do in my view as a council is in which you experience when you knock on the door during election is you need to get outside the usual suspects, the usual advocates, yeah.

So I would encourage you to use, maybe too late for this round on this, but maybe future, maybe for the mobility study, the use of focus groups, you pay people to come who aren’t normally coming to these microphones or not normally going to public meetings. They give you input, there’s 15 of them in a round that you give them a little advance on notice on what they’re gonna be talking about, you give us some information and you get unbiased or not, they’re biased, but unsolicited information through these focus groups to help you with your decision making going forward. Thank you very much for your time and thank you and I am working on three hours sleep, so I’m going home, I’m not saying for the rest of the meeting. Thank you very much.

Thank you for being one of the usual suspects as well. (laughing) Self-identified, I should say. I don’t know if there’s anyone else in council chambers who are looking to participate in the public participation meeting who haven’t already. I don’t believe there’s anyone in committee room five.

I just want to double check online to see if there’s anybody online who’s looking, there’s not. Okay, so this is the last chance for feedback. Seeing none, I’m gonna look for a motion to close the BPM, moved by Councillor Cuddy, seconded by Councillor Ferrera. We will, any discussion?

Okay, seeing none, that’ll be voted on in the system. My scribe’s malfunctioning, I’ll manually vote yes. Closing the vote and the motion is passed. Okay, that completes item 3.1, which was the public participation meeting on the strategic plan.

We’re now into items for direction. There are two items in that area. The first is developing council’s strategic plan and the community engagement update and also council’s draft strategic plan of which staff is looking for the integration of any adjustments that we might want to make based on what we’ve heard today and provide them with some direction as they try to craft a final version of the document. To start us off and to help out, I’m gonna hand it over to Ms.

Smith who will lead us through the next section. Thank you and through your worship, Ms. Wilcox is going to start us off by taking council through the community engagement update presentation that’s before you today. Through you, Mr.

Mayor. So we’ll take you through a presentation. I think it’s the deck, go, go. Okay, so some of these, many of these slides you’ve seen before, but I’ll just quickly cover these and then we’ll dive into the community engagement update.

So of course, the purpose of council’s strategic plan and its connection to our multi-year budget and technology investment strategy and the guiding principles that we’ve used to develop the plan and bring anything in front of you and that has guided the work to date. As a reminder, when you look ahead, once the strategic plan is finalized, and again, that’s right now tracking for approval at the April 4th council meeting, the multi-year budget process will begin. That begins with the target setting meeting and then looking out to that implementation plan, which gets to that more granular level of actions that will come in November. So we are here in terms of the meeting schedule and looking for final direction on the plan and any updates this evening and then those would come back in front of you at the March 28th SPPC meeting.

And just flagging, again, you’ve seen the slide before, but this is an overview of the engagement process. And so this is concluding and the PPM concludes the phase three of the community engagement component of the development of the plan. In the structure, we’ve seen many times and of course the example of what that looks like in practice. So in terms of the community engagement update, I’ll take you through an overview and I would note that this update this evening builds on what we provided to you at the February 28th meeting.

So rather than doing two separate components of that engagement, this provides an overview and the themes of any feedback we received between February 8th and March 3rd. So on the third, our surveys closed and to allow us time to roll this up for you. And I would note, again, the end that you see throughout the slide deck is used to identify the number of times a response was provided across all of our data collection methods. So it’s not an individual, it’s the number of times that we’ve heard a theme.

And given the nature of the options to participate, you weren’t required to complete all questions in the survey or comment on every aspect of the plan if you perhaps attended award meetings. So you may see that the end is low and that represents the themes we’ve heard. So I won’t go through these in detail, but of course this is, again, building on what we heard the last time, so you do see an adjustment to the end in many places throughout the plan. Just what we heard about vision mission values in terms of what could be added, in terms of additional words, again, general sentiment that the three components have improved.

And also, we asked two sets of questions. So across all questions within the survey, what was missing or could be added and then just an open text format where you could provide any general feedback. So here’s what we heard about what was missing from these strategic areas of focus. Again, many of these are similar themes from last time with a few additional ones that were added based on feedback received.

And I should have noted too that we’ve, right now we’re at over 350 Londoners weighed in and that’s the basis of this feedback. In terms of overall on the areas of focus, again, this is building on what we heard last time and adding any new themes that arose in the past week. So I’ll take you through now, each of the areas of focus can two questions for each around what could be added or what broad feedback was shared. So in terms of reconciliation, equity and inclusion, this is what we heard overall about the area of focus.

Housing and homelessness, there are a number of things that could be added that are before you. And again, many of these you would have seen the last time, a largely an adjustment here to the number of times we heard the theme. And overall, about this area of focus, there were a number of themes identified here as well. And they range from adding specific issues to being more clear in the definitions, et cetera.

While being in safety, when we look at what could be added, the primary here being addressing issues related to safety. And in terms of what overall we heard about this area of focus, there were a range of themes that we identified and they are before you. Safe London for women and girls, gender diverse and trans people, these are similar to what you saw the last time. And then overall feedback on the area of focus.

Again, there’s a notation here and we’ve seen that a few times of the need to have definitions within the plan to help with understanding of the terms that are being used. Economic growth, culture and prosperity, a number of things that could be added. Again, a common theme I would say throughout is around having clarity of language that’s being used using plain language wherever we can. And there were some other aspects that could be added to this area of focus.

And overall, and these continue on second slide here. And again, this feedback started following the February 7th SPPC meeting. So early time in the process and that takes us all the way through to last Friday. Overall, in this area of focus, here is what we heard.

And again, ranging from ensuring access to more and diverse arts and culture activities, for example, and a number of other aspects and themes. Mobility and transportation, this is what we heard across all of our engagement mechanisms around what could be added. And again, some many themes identified under this area in terms of what might be missing. And overall, for this area of focus, there were two themes that stood out.

Climate action and sustainable growth. What we heard that could be added, again, you’ll see the common theme of clarifying language and providing definitions. And overall, the two themes here around this area of focus. Lastly is well-run city.

So similar themes to the last time we were before you in terms of what could be added and also overall about the area of focus. And we’ve also included in the deck for you tonight an update on the core area strategy and the engagement component. So this has been a parallel process. It’s been outside of the strategic plan engagement.

But we wanted to add it as another piece of information for Council to consider because the core area features is such a prominent area and priority within your plan. So just briefly, of course, this is the boundary for the core area. And what’s included within that in the preliminary consultation results, approximately 1,200 respondents. And on the right of the screen, you see the connection to the core.

And so that’s the breakdown of those who participated in the surveys. They’re connection. So break these down. This gives you a sense of the top issues or challenges that were identified by each area.

So these are the top issues and challenges that downtown London faces. And so they’re listed here. And similarly, these are the issues or challenges that all these village identified. And lastly, the issues and challenges related to midtown.

So there’s a lot of commonality across all of these. And again, just wanting to provide this as another piece of information for you to consider in your discussions and deliberations. And that concludes the update on the engagement. I’d be happy to answer any questions related to that, if there are any.

Thank you. Yes, I’m not sure if there’ll be any questions related to that. But I’ll just put it a call to see if there are. Go ahead, Councillor McAllister.

Thank you. And through you, I was wondering with the core area results you showed, I only had 18% as living in the core. Was there any barrier in terms of being able to reach out to residents in the core? Or what was the rationale for that?

Thank you. Through the chair, we actually had a very good— because we had over 1,200 people. And a lot of people even outside the core, we did a very comprehensive strategy for being able to get all of the monitors to try to participate in it. Because we know that they are three very specific communities.

They have a very different nature to them. And we were successful in both getting people within the core, living there, working there, and visiting the core. So we really didn’t see that there was a limiter on the number of people that were living in the core that responded. It was really that we also got people outside the core responding, which is also very much a positive tip.

Any other questions? I need a motion to receive the report for the site of Councillor Hopkins, seconded by Councillor Stevenson. Is there any questions on the motion? OK, we’ll open that for voting before we move to the next item.

Councillor Frank. I vote yes. It’s not letting me. I’m going to refresh.

Using the vote and the motion is passed 12 to 0. OK, the next item is 4.2, which is the current draft of the strategic plan that we’ll be working through today. And I’m going to turn it over to Ms. Smith to give us a little preview on how we’re going to approach this.

And then guide us through the process. Thank you. And through your Your Worship, the draft strategic plan that’s before you today reflects the direction from Council from, excuse me, the February 28th SPPC meeting. At this meeting, Council directed civic administration to confirm any proposed changes to the strategies in the metric.

So the plan you’re going to see in a few minutes before you today highlights these proposed changes. And civic administration has also included rationale for any of these proposed changes that we’d be happy to discuss with you. So we are looking today for your final direction on the draft strategic plan before you, which we will then, as Ms. Wilcox said, bring back to you on March 28.

So Ms. Wilcox, Mr. Steinberg, and I will take you through the draft plan page by page, similar to what we did at the last SPPC meeting. I think that worked very well.

So we’ll look at what’s on each screen. Please feel free to ask questions, make any edits. My colleagues here are here to help me and take you through the process. Yes, I just want to add one comment.

If you look at the report that is related to this item, it’s not just receiving this, but a request of us to provide what is described as the final direction on the 2023 to 2027 strategic plan. So just for clarity, we’ve been working on this a while. We’ve got public feedback. This is an opportunity for us to get it as close as we possibly can so that staff can go take whatever feedback we give them today, if there’s a couple of additional metrics or anything that needs to be done, get us back a document that we can still change, but as close as we possibly can get to finalizing it, would be ideal for where we are in the timeline of the process.

So I just draw your attention to that, is the intention. Obviously, if we don’t feel we can get there for some reason, we can see what else is a possibility on how to approach this, but that’s really the intent for today. So before we go through each of the sections, that means you will have heard suggestions from the public. You have seen suggestions in the correspondence.

You may have thought about this yourself. You may have engaged with constituents. Now is the time to make very specific motions and changes to the plan, if you think that there should be things in there. Move a motion and I’ll look for a seconder and then I’m gonna approach this for speed in the same way I approached the last time I went through this and that’s if nobody objects, we’re not gonna have to type it into the system and open it as a vote.

If someone does though, we will do it as a formal motion with a vote. So I’ll kind of go by consensus first, but then I’ll vote afterwards. If you think something should be taken out of the strategic plan. Again, this is the time to make the motion to say I’d like to remove a component of it.

And if you wanna change the language in the section, I would just ask that you make as a specific emotion as you can. So if you’re thinking you’ve got some notes, I would advise start trying to craft those into something that we can actually work with as language so that we can be as smooth as possible through the process. If colleagues need a break or something else, we may be at this for a while. I’ll certainly try to schedule that at a reasonable time, but I’m optimistic that hopefully we can consolidate the feedback that public has given us into some adjustments that we feel is appropriate and hopefully provide some clear direction to civic administration to get us to the next step.

I did wanna make up one other comment from the chair and that is components of the process that are left ‘cause I know a number of colleagues have asked me about this. So we will finalize a strategic plan and that strategic plan will have a cost to it. And we don’t know the final cost of the breakdown between capital and operating. We don’t even know the pieces of it that have opportunities for federal and provincial funding.

That will all be driven later in the process through the multi-year budget and the business cases that will be before us that staff will develop in detail. There will also be a target setting exercise for the multi-year budget that we will engage in in the next couple of months. So we’ll have a strategic plan. We’ll collectively come up with a general target for the multi-year budget.

Staff will take those two pieces of information and try to craft a multi-year budget for us that achieves as much of the strategic plan as we possibly can, recognizing that if we put a very tight target on this, the pacing and timing of some items may have to be pushed out into the future, perhaps even beyond the length of this strategic plan. It’s what has been happened in previous councils and it’s essentially where we’re tracking to now. In the multi-year budget, we’ll have a chance to then vote on components of the strategic plan converted into very specific and funded action items. If we vote them down at that point, those will be components of the strategic plan that we be unfunded and not pursued at that time.

So there’s a number of processes in how we get to that collective vision for where we’re gonna go for the next four years. The strategic plan is a very important first piece. So if we get this as close as possible to our intentions, it will help with the next components of the process, that being the target setting and the budget and the business cases that we’ll have to decide on later this year. I don’t know if staff have anything to add to that.

I know I’m integrating a couple of pieces in the puzzle here, but I know that a number of colleagues have asked, well, what if the strategic plan is very expensive? What do we do? Well, you can take some stuff out tonight. When we set a target, we’ll be limiting kind of the options that staff bring forward, and ultimately we’ll be voting yes or no to funding specific areas of the strategic plan.

Any comments from staff on that? Thank you, and through year worship, you’re correct. After the target setting, this will guide civic administration to prepare for the 2024 to 2027 multi-year budget. This will allow us to bring back business cases and to meet the parameters of your target setting.

And these business cases will outline what we can implement, the pacing of the implementation, and the scaling of what we can implement. And I’m gonna turn it over to Ms. Arbonne because I may have forgotten something important. Go ahead.

Thank you, Ms. Smith captured most of it. So essentially putting it in the strategic plan will then allow us to do the work under the guidance of what council wishes to set the parameters around. So based on that direction, which we would be bringing forward, we’re targeting in April to bring that report forward.

We’ll be able to incorporate in because the strategic plan and some of the new investments is only one component. There’s also the component of what it costs to deliver our existing services and noting there have been inflationary pressures. So that will give council an opportunity to see the big picture, to be able to give us the parameters, and then that will guide the work in terms of the business cases that we bring forward. So having it in the strat plan doesn’t guarantee it will be funded.

Those decisions will ultimately be made through the budget. And throughout this process, we’ll have future reports that if civic administration is guided further with other direction that we would be able to incorporate. I’ll just maybe take any questions on that ‘cause I know colleagues had a few questions. I see Councillor Frank has a question online.

No, sorry, I was jumping the queue. I have no questions about this. Oh, I see what you’re doing. So we’re not quite there yet, but a good strategy.

If there’s no questions on what was just said, I think I’ll go back to our staff to lead us through the process. And if you switch to that screen, you’ll be able to see the same things that our staff are seeing and guiding us through. So if you wanna look at the alternate screen than the voting screen for those of you sitting here and for those at home, if you’re on the live stream, you’ll be able to see exactly what staff is presenting in the public season. Thank you, entry year worship.

So before you today on the screen is the draft vision statement, the draft mission statement and the draft values. So as we’ve done before, Mr. Steinberg’s ready to make any edits that you would like to suggest. Councillor ramen.

Thank you and through you. I would like to change the draft vision statement to read London as a sustainable city within a thriving region committed to a vibrant culture, comma, innovation and providing a safe, affordable, welcoming and healthy future for today and for the next generation. Having heard the feedback specifically from the culture sector, I think it’s really important that we reflect on what we’ve heard. And that is that we need to include culture within the mission or sorry, within the vision and then throughout the document, thank you.

Sure, I’ll second that so that you have a seconder. So that’s a change to the draft vision statement. Is there any objection to changing it this way? If there is, we can have a vote and a discussion but I’ll look to see if anybody has an objection to the way that it’s worded on the screen now.

Yes, I’m gonna wanna vote on that in your worship. Okay, so we’ll have a discussion then, it’s moved and seconded. I’ll go to colleagues who want to talk about this and I have Deputy Mayor Lewis first. Thank you, Your Worship.

And through you, I said this earlier in the crafting of the vision statement. I’m gonna say it again. A vision statement is not to be a laundry list of things. It is the vision for the city.

We have some cultural pieces referenced in our expected outcomes and strategies. I am quite comfortable with that. You know, I appreciate the comments from Councilor Raman about reflecting on what we’ve heard from some folks from the sector today and in a previous message and in a previous communications. Hearing from it doesn’t mean we need to include it.

I am going to say and follow up to your comments as well. I am already of the mind that the strategic plan is far too large. I’m gonna be sharpening my virtual pencil on things that I think we need to be removing. I think we’re setting up false expectations when we create a list of things that are far too diverse and expensive for us to accomplish within our four year term.

So I’m not gonna be supporting any changes to the vision, mission and value statements. Certainly when it comes to outcomes, metrics, strategies. I’m all ears, but I am comfortable with where we’ve landed already. And from the engagement we’ve heard from Londoners as a whole, not just the folks who came tonight or some of the emails we’ve had but all of the pop ups, word meetings, et cetera.

There’s a general consensus that the vision statement is fine and I’m gonna support the original one. Other speakers to this, Councilor Hopkins, go ahead. Yeah, thank you. You know, I think it’s fair to say that we all heard loud and clear tonight that culture is missing and it is important.

My thoughts were around putting it through the pillars and I’m not sure if we need to put it in the vision statement or not, I could go either way but I’m sort of open to hearing other comments from my colleagues. I do think it is important and it definitely should be within our strat plan that missing link when it comes to culture. Okay, other speakers. I’ll speak, so I’m just gonna turn the chair to Councilor Palosa.

Recognizing Mayor Morgan? Yeah, so I seconded the motion. I listened to the delegations we had and I generally agree with the statement that Deputy Mayor Lewis said about the size of the strategic plan and that we’ve gotta really make sure that we don’t create something that sets up something that perhaps is unachievable or unfundable when we get to the multi-year budget. That being said, I think culture is within the components of the strategic plan and I was quite fond of our previous vision of the current strategic plan which is a leader in commerce, culture and innovation, our region’s connection to the world.

Now, we didn’t quite go the same way as last time but it’s certainly nothing new to be mentioning culture as a strategy at a component of a high level. I think it’s already contained within there and I think it speaks to listening to some of the feedback as well as looking at the modifications that we’ve already made to the plan to boost that. And I would say too, irrespective of the challenges we’ll have through the process, we have decided to focus as a council and as previous councils on a film office and investing resources there on our commitment to the UNESCO City of Music designation. And I think from an outside perspective, if I look at the vision of our city, culture is something that we are striving for and should be reflected.

Again, I echo and support a number of the comments that Deputy Mayor made but I think you can be true to those and also include culture in the way that is being suggested to be included. Thank you, returning the chair to Mayor Morgan. Other speakers, I don’t have any. So this is moved and seconded.

We’ll open this piece, this change for voting. Your worship, I’ve asked the clerk to re-send me the link for eScribe, I’m having trouble logging in so I will vote manually, no. Seeing the vote, the motion passes, 10 to three. So we’re still on the, I’m just switching my screen here, very slow to pop up.

We’re still on that first. Three worship, that’s correct. We’re on still for any other edits to the vision, draft, vision, draft, vision and draft files. I’m not sure why I can’t see it but I’ve got the hard copy here too.

So any other questions or changes? Go ahead, Councillor Ramen. Thank you and through you and I promise I won’t do this all night. Okay, I did hear quite clearly from those in the gallery but also if you look at through some of the results that we received from the feedback that there was a desire to see the word collaboration and I’m just wondering teamwork and collaboration, very similar words, just wondering if members of committee would consider using collaboration in the draft values.

Are you suggesting? Either removing teamwork or teamwork and? Okay, so maybe do you need to hear from people? ‘Cause I prefer like pitch something and then we’ll see how that goes to see if there’s a seconder.

I’ll pitch teamwork and collaboration. Okay, so is there a seconder? Okay, there’s a number of seconders. Is there consensus to change the draft values to be teamwork and collaboration?

See no objections, if you want to object now is the time. Okay, that change will stand then and we’ll leave that there. Other changes to the mission, vision and values. Back to you, I think we’ve got that part done.

Go ahead. Thank you and through your worship, we’ll go on to the first strategic area focus. Excuse me, the reconciliation, equity and inclusion before you, 1.1 to 3.2. Okay, you can see that section on the screen, that’s the entire reconciliation, equity and inclusion section.

I know it might be a little bit small on the screen but hopefully you’ve got hard copies. You can also pull it up digitally within the East Grab if you want to actually open the document where you can zoom in and get you to see things a little closer. I will look for any suggested changes or adjustments to this entire section. Councillor ramen.

Thank you. I did ask the clerk earlier to circulate some communication from YCCI, that’s the youth coalition combating Islamophobia. So that communication was shared. They have suggested a change to an outcome in 3.2.

3.2 reads increase participation in city of London internship programs and employment opportunities for equity denied groups. They are asking for a C to this outcome and that is to create a youth fellowship program. And in the original language circulated, it said racialized, but I did speak to them and they were comfortable with equity denied groups. So that would include LGBTQIA+ as well.

Youth in the city of London. So it would read create a youth fellowship program for equity denied groups. Those can be specified if we want to get specific but I think they’ve said specifically Muslim indigenous black and LGBTQIA+ youth in the city of London. So you can see what’s being changed on the screen.

Are you looking to actually include that in the piece? Yes. - Okay. I’ll just wait ‘til it’s on the screen.

Is that a question, Councilor Hopkins? Yeah, thank you. I’m just looking for the email that was sent to us on this. I’m gonna have the clerk talk about the emails that were sent and that the councilor go ahead.

Thank you through the chair. I believe that this was sent out yesterday, yes. Yesterday morning and it was sent by Ms. Rofuna on behalf of Councilor ramen.

It would be about, I can recirculate it though. So that was a question but what I want to do is see if there’s a seconder for this particular change, Councilor Ferreira’s willing to second it. So I’ll go through the process to see if there’s anybody looking to have a vote on this particular item, Councilor Layman. You know, I’m concerned that we might be excluding equity denied groups and one that comes to mind is our South Asian community.

That’s a growing community in London. I think we should include that in this and for listing groups I think South Asian community should be included. Councilor Palosa. Thank you, my Morgan.

I reviewed this item prior. My questions through you to the mover and our seconder was that their part C was created youth fellowship program but they also asked that the youth fellowship program take place that it’s I believe a paid position in addition that they’re mentored by a city councilor and that they have training and civic engagement and leadership. So just wondering is your intention to move all those things as it has budget implications and maybe some HR stuff and then mentorship by city councilor? I don’t believe can actually be forced as we currently.

So just wondering to see how comprehensive of actually what this means. So it speaks to the intent from the mover. So I’ll go to you. Thank you and through you.

So within the outcome would be C and then the how I believe is something that can be worked out in more detail. For instance, they included the designation of paid position but what they were looking at was really some sort of honorarium that could be available to those from equity denied groups that would help with encouraging participation which I think is really critical to think about right now. A lot of organizations are looking at this as well. If we look at the commitment and the time that would be associated with being part of an advisory committee, it could be two hours, two and a half hours a month that we’re asking of a time commitment.

So it wouldn’t be a paid position. It would be something where if needed we could look at potentially if needed an honorarium. But again, I believe those are things that can be fleshed out. So creating the opportunity I think is important and I think what that could look like is that there be one spot on each of our advisory committees for a youth and it would bring youth voice to the table.

I believe that’s essential and I can share from my own personal experience. I got my start, I’ll call it that, in municipal politics because there was a youth spot created in the city of Windsor on a city center revitalization task force. Had it not been for that opportunity and my guidance counselor in high school saying, “Hey, Corinne, I know you’re really “interested in politics and there’s this opportunity “for you to apply and would you consider it? “Had I not had that opportunity?

“I probably wouldn’t be sitting at this table right now.” So when I met with YCCI and they discussed this potential program, I thought it was a great way to get different people into our advisory committees, different voices. We just heard from LDI similarly, we’re hearing from the same voices. This isn’t a chance to bring youth voices to the table. I think it would be nominal in terms of cost if it were to be an honorarium and I think it can make a real difference.

Thank you. Councilor Palosa. Thank you, I appreciate the comments and obviously the letter and the engagement. I think I would have preferred to see such an ask realizing it has, it’s not like a pilot, permanent budget implications in looking at how we would do a paid position or an honorarium in realizing that other people in some of these committees who are marginalized themselves aren’t currently given one in realizing, yes, it’s a different lens with youth.

But wanting to have a full plan in realizing that Councilor Robinson seems to be the only person who currently has those conversations and the feedback. For me, I would have preferred to see this come through committee to actually have a full discussion with them or connecting them with staff of like, what’s an appropriate honorarium? Is it $50 per meeting? Is it just giving you bus passes?

Is it a hundred per meeting? How long, like, isn’t an hourly one you’re looking for? And then realizing with the mentorship component of what that would look like to them and what they’re hoping to get out of it to feel that they have meaningful engagement with the city as well. So those are my main concerns.

Councilor Hopkins, she had your hand up. Oh, sorry, was that out? I would like Councilor Hopkins go first, I’ll put you back in the list. Thank you, and my apologies for being late here to the game, but I do appreciate the adjustment.

I think youth are very important. I do have a question through the chair to staff. Maybe, I did think, don’t we have a youth advisory group or is that no longer in existence? I have staff answer that.

Through the chair, I’m gonna turn it over to Ms. Morris to speak to. And also through the city of London community grants program, we do provide through our multi-year stream funding to Young London, which is an outside organization that has supported youth engagement throughout the city, but it’s a separate than the city of London and we provide funds to support their work. Go ahead.

Thank you, and through you, I just wanna clarify the recommendation that the YCCI has asked for has actually already been approved by Council through the Action Plan to Disrupt Islamophobia. It was one of the recommendations from NCCM, and you may recall that when we approved, when you approved the Action Plan to Disrupt Islamophobia, all of the NCCM recommendations from municipal government were included in that. So this is already in the works, the Youth Fellowship Program, and we are planning to broaden it beyond just Muslim youth, and it will really be an action item really related to the one above that speaks to implementing the recommendations of the Action Plan. So I don’t want you to think that it’s lost.

The other thing I wanna just flag is that it’s not, my understanding is from NCCM is that it’s not for advisory committees, although that is something that I think we really do need to explore, but this is really an internship with yourselves. It’s an op, and it is a paid position for my understanding. Toronto has already implemented this, and they did it with a joint sort of venture between the clerk’s office, and they had a grant as well, and it was sort of a joint funding for the position. So we’re still in the early stages of researching what that looks like, but there would be a budget implication, you’re correct, but I just wanna flag, it has already been approved through the previous council through that Action Plan to Disrupt Islamophobia.

Councillor Hopkins. Okay, Councillor Roman. Thank you, and thanks for providing that clarification. So this would make it part of our strategic plan, which I think was the step that they were trying to take, so that it continues to live as something in this council terms strategic plan.

Okay, other speakers. Councillor Lehman. I had requested that South Asian be added, that I haven’t seen that added, so I’m starting where that stands. I have to go to the mover and seconder to see if they’re willing to add some language there.

Go ahead, and then I’ll go to Deputy Mayor Lewis after that. Let me check with the mover first on the councilor’s request. Thank you, and through you. Yes, I’m fine with any changes that are included in that.

Equity Denied Groups does cover majority of groups, and I was just trying to reflect the language that they provided, thank you. Okay, so that’s in there now. I’m gonna go to Deputy Mayor Lewis. Thank you, worship, and through you, I guess my first comment would be, I’m always cautious about listing specific groups.

I would be more comfortable if it just said Equity Denied Groups ended there. I know I certainly spoke with Councilor Raman about ensuring that the LGBTQ+ community was included, I’m glad to see there was willingness to do that. But we’re invariably gonna leave somebody out, feels that they should have been included and specifically mentioned too. So I will leave that up to the mover and seconder.

I am not opposed to the creation of a fellowship position. In fact, I actually think that this would be more valuable than the London Youth Council, which honestly, I know we’ve set aside funding for, but in four and a half years on Council, I have not seen value for dollar coming out of that. I will say when it comes to specific pieces of what this looks like, I am not going to be supportive of it being a paid position, especially if we’re talking about postings on advisory committees, because once we start paying one member of an advisory committee and auditor area, no matter the size of it, then we need to be considering doing that for everyone. So, and I’m absolutely not prepared to start doing that.

People wanna come and participate in an advisory committee. It’s a volunteer opportunity, and I think it needs to be a volunteer opportunity for all those involved. So I’m not objecting to the addition, but when it comes to what it looks like, I am not supportive of moving it to a paid position. I’m also really cautious about Council mentorship and the capacity that each of us has in terms of being able to provide adequate supervision to a youth mentee.

I’ve, Councilor Lehman and I are actually sharing a student who’s completing some practicum hours right now. It is certainly been a challenge to find appropriate time to follow up with good feedback and supervision. Excuse me, worship. That’s with two of us both working with the student together.

So I like the idea, but in terms of executing it in a meaningful way, I am not sure how we’re going to get there. And when we start talking about budget implications, I’m gonna be very tight on that. I will not support auditoriums for a youth representative if we’re not providing auditoriums to other members of the advisory committees. Okay, so maybe I’ll go back to the mover.

I did see a number of people nod with the idea of trying not to list specific groups at risk of excluding individuals. So I don’t know, although I know that was the language that was asked for, given the risk that that has, I wonder if there’s a willingness to make a change to that piece. Thank you, through you. So that would read Create a Youth Fellowship Program for Equity Denied Groups.

I think if I might go to Ms. Morrison to see if that terminology is the best terminology. Yeah, go ahead. Thank you and through you.

I would agree that that is the most inclusive term. And as I mentioned, the intention was to have these groups that you’ve represented here be primary, but certainly an opportunity to broaden that. So Equity Denied Groups in and of itself would be all encompassing, I agree. So we’re okay not listing specific groups.

Thank you, yep. Okay, seconder’s good, yes. Okay, so we’re not gonna list specific groups, not because we don’t think that those are incredibly valuable groups, but there’s some concern about not listing someone in this case, this is the more inclusive way and approach to it. Other discussion on this piece.

So it’s a moved and seconded addition to this section. I guess I can ask, does anybody want to vote on this? Is anybody object to this change? Okay, no one does.

So as it stands and reads now is how we’ll keep it in. I’ll look to see if there’s other changes to this section of the strategic plan. Councillor Stevenson. I’ve heard through quite a bit of the public participation a desire to reduce the number of strategic focus areas.

So I’m wanting to put forward the motion that we ask staff to find another place for these three outcomes. Maybe within well-run city or well-being and safety. So you wanna move a motion to ask staff in the final version to take these outcomes and find a spot to put them elsewhere in the strategic plan to collapse this pillar somewhere else. So I think that is a direction that can be made.

I would need to look for a seconder to see if there’s a willingness for anybody to support that for us to discuss it. Councillor Cady, you’re willing to support that? Okay, so we’re gonna have discussion on, oh, first off, does anybody object to this approach? Yep, okay.

So we’ll have discussion on this about the idea of collapsing the reconciliation, equity, and inclusion outcomes into another area of the strategic plan speakers list. Councillor Palosa, go ahead. Thank you, so just for clarification, the mover and seconder want, and they’re desire to get less strategic pillars. They want to remove and bury reconciliation, equity, and inclusion.

That I’ll go to the mover and seconder. I’m not gonna put words in someone’s mouth. Yeah, I’m not looking to bury anything, but I think it does fall under a well-run city, although potentially one of them might be well-being and safety, so that’s why I just thought, rather than deliberate now where they should go, the motion is just to have staff. We allocate, there’s just three outcomes.

Councillor Palosa. I would argue then that there could just be one pillar of well-run city and everything can flow under it. So for me, I’m gonna know on this one, that it’s a standalone piece, realized we have a lot of work to do in the city, realizing there’s been a lot of racism, reconciliation has a long ways to go amongst just so much work to be done, and that we’ve heard from so many groups, and so much hatred that we’ve seen throughout the pandemic in things seem to be getting worse and not better. So for me, this deserves a highlight and to be a standalone piece.

Okay, other speakers to the suggestion. Are you looking? Go ahead, Councillor Purple. I do think that if I look at the other areas of focus, the pillars, I do think that it would be a better fit under the well-being than well-run city.

Other comments on the Councillor’s suggested motion? Go ahead, Councillor Ferrer. Thank you and through you. I guess just kind of co-tailing off of Councillor Palazzo’s comments, I believe that not only should it be its own strategic pillar, but it should also be the first strategic pillar that we have, just considering the state that we’re in the city and just in society at the moment.

So it does speak to what we’re trying to do as a city. So I would be against that motion, and I would think that we should keep that as a strategic pillar as number one as well. Councillor Hopkins. I think I’m gonna take a very deep breath for a speaker.

I agree, totally, that it should be its own pillar, if not the first pillar. We’ve come a long way, even talking about reconciliation. And now we are thinking about putting it within another pillar, not on its own, when there’s so much work still to be done. I am just not even sure why would we even do that?

There’s not even an explanation why we would do that, other than just to put it into another pillar. So I am not convinced that we should put it in another pillar. It has taken us a long time to get where we are here. I think if we do that, we are going backwards as a city.

So I will not be supporting that. Okay, and we’re gonna speak through the chair on these matters, of course. I’ll look for other speakers, Councillor Stevenson. Thank you, this was just a suggestion.

It’s feeling like it’s a pretty hot topic. If it wasn’t clear on my reasons, it’s because I’ve heard a lot of feedback to narrow down the focuses. And I do believe that it can fit under the other sections. So those are the reasons.

Okay, I don’t have any other speakers. So I just wanna get the final wording, I’m just gonna switch to this. So I just wanted the council to move in the seconder ‘cause they haven’t seen the final wording, just to take a look at the wording, if you refresh your E-Scribe, to make sure you’re comfortable with it ‘cause that’s what we’ll be voting on. I’ll read it out where you’re just looking at it yourself.

That the strategic area of focus, reconciliation, equity, and inclusion outcomes one to three, be amended to be placed under false alarm. That’s not the one I’m supposed to be reading. That’s why we have so many screens. That the strategic area focus, reconciliation, equity, and inclusion be removed from the 2023 to 2027 strategic plan with the proposed outcomes to be reassigned within the remaining strategic areas of focus.

So that wording’s fine. It’s moved and seconded, we’ve had debate, so I’m gonna open that for voting. Closing the vote and the motion is lost, four to nine. Okay, so that change won’t happen.

Other suggested changes to this section. Anything from our friends online. So I think we’re ready to move to the next area then. Okay, we’ll go to the next area.

Thank you, and through your worship, before you use the strategic area of focus, housing and homelessness, outcomes one and two. Okay, so we’re just dealing with the sections on the screen before us, which is outcomes one and two. There’s more to this section, it fits on other pages, but we’ll deal with it kind of on the screen at a time. I’ll go to Councillor Stevenson for changes to this part of the housing and homelessness section.

Thank you. I was hoping under 2.1E that in the second half, it would say and bylaws to create accountability and opportunities. So it’s just adding accountability and between create and opportunities. Okay, so that’s colleagues to see the words highlighted in the changes.

Is there someone who’s willing to second that addition? Councillor Layman is willing to. I’ll ask first, is there any objections to including this as a change within the strategic plan? Councillor Palosa, is that an objection or a question?

Thank you. Just looking for clarification and bylaws to create accountability. What kind of accountability we’re looking for out of bylaws? Go to the mover.

Thank you. It says review of policies, procedures and bylaws. So I’m assuming it would relate more to policies and procedures rather than bylaws. Okay, a question for followup then through you to staff.

If that’s for appropriate, that lands of just looking to staff, we’re talking about like, you know, program of continuous review of policies. Of in what timeframe do we currently review all our policies? I know it’s one of our agency boards and commissions. Within four year term, you’ve had the great joy of reviewing all the policies.

What are we hoping for policy review at the city level? Yes, so I might have to go to a couple of staff on that ‘cause there are council policies and then there are other policies. So I see everybody nodding, which means lots of people could jump in on this. So if you make eye contact with me, you’re probably speaking first.

Okay, you can go first, go ahead. Thank you and through your worship. Council policies are a bi-annual review. So for example, we are undertaking those right now.

So council policies are bi-annual. And I will turn it to Mr. Mathers regarding his bylaws and his area and then Mr. Dickens.

Mr. Mathers, you’re next, go ahead. Through the chair. So just reflecting on the, on what we’re actually expected result we’re speaking to.

So this is related to individuals and families at risk of experiencing homelessness. So through that health and homelessness work that we’re doing, we are planning to do a review of our bylaws that are associated with anything health and homelessness related. So that is something that we will be undertaking over the next year. Mr.

Dickens, you have anything to add? Thank you, your worship and through you. We’re actually in the midst of currently reviewing all of our policies as relates to specific guidelines. And we have just brought forward a new template agreement.

The last cycle for council to endorse in terms of our new funding agreement templates, which also has accountabilities and fulfillment requirements baked into it. Outside of that, we fall into a semi-regular policy review schedule based on funding agreements and changes of the province. Councillor Palosa, all good? Okay, Councillor Stevenson.

Yeah, just to provide context, I have been saying about how the Ontario and the federal government have said that we’re lacking metrics to show that we are moving the needle forward in terms of homelessness and families at risk. So it’s really about addressing that issue that has been highlighted by both governments. Councillor Palosa. Thank you, just for clarification.

I don’t believe that they said London specifically is lacking those metrics. There was overall for municipalities. So just for clarification, do they call out London specifically? No, there was just found that not a single city that they reviewed had it.

Okay, so that sounds like maybe not specifically general other comments or questions on this particular change. Moved and seconded. Now that we have a discussion, I guess I didn’t get a clear answer. Is anybody object to it?

Do they want to have a vote on this? Or do we want to have a vote? Sorry, does anybody object to this change? Change will stay.

Other changes to this section that we have on the screen? Go ahead, Councillor Ramen. Thank you, it’s just a suggestion at this point. I noticed that in the feedback we were hearing that this focus on affordability of housing.

We do have a wording of market housing, but I’m just wondering if people are maybe not understanding the term and maybe it’s, we need to say like market rate or is there another term that maybe people would resonate with around affordability piece a little bit better so that it feels like it’s reflected better? Thanks. Are you referring to a specific line or just generally? Sorry about that, in 1.1B.

Is it possible for us to adjust the little zoom screen up because it’s blocking that part of 1.1B? I don’t know if we can tuck it up in the corner more. Excellent, that’s why you’re our guide to solve the problems, so thank you. Just for those who, for those who didn’t know, the exact wording that Councillor Ramen was suggesting was under the little view of council chambers so people couldn’t see.

So I see where you’re suggesting that. That was more of a comment, but I do have the deputy mayor who has his hand up related to this. Then I’ll go to Councillor Hopkins. Go ahead, Deputy Mayor Lewis.

No, my hand is up to indicate that I have a change I wish to make, so let’s deal with Councillor Ramen’s first piece. Sure, I’ll go to Councillor Hopkins. Yes, I just want to follow up with Councillor Ramen’s comments about, I think we did hear from the public that we need to sort of define affordable housing and maybe have it separate. I’m not sure if it’s in 1.1B, maybe it should be in the outcome one when we speak about a built partnerships to increase quality affordable and supportive housing ‘cause it’s already defined in B, the separation of affordable housing.

But I think we heard loud and clear when we speak about affordable housing, where is that social housing or the even rentals? Where is that component when we speak about affordable housing? ‘Cause I know residents in my ward speak about affordable housing being buying a house. So can we do a better job?

Maybe it’s in the outcome one when we speak about affordable housing, sort of having a broader definition to understand exactly what we mean. ‘Cause in B, it’s already defined as community, which is social housing, supportive housing, and then affordable and market housing. That word affordable, I think, is not sure what that means. So let me just interject.

So what I think we’re hearing is, we’re a little uncomfortable with the language without better understanding what that’s going to mean and be able to go out and talk to the public about what we’re actually targeting here. So I’ll see if our staff can help us out with either some suggested changes or some clearer explanation about what these components mean. Thank you and through your worship. Thank you for the comments.

And I think we started when we heard about equity denied groups and we heard affordable housing versus in well-being safety housing that is affordable. So this will tie to the need, I think, for definitions. So we will build this into the strategic plan. So that is you talk about the strategic plan and as people read this strategic plan, they will have an understanding of some common words and common definitions throughout the plan.

Did I base anything on that, Mr. Mathers? I know you had talked about the definition of affordable housing last time. Mr.

Mathers, do you have something to add or? Through the chair, so there’s a couple of things I think that are coming together within this item B. So does speak to those varying supportive styles of housing and then it talks about market housing and market housing is also covered in other items as well. Where we talk about attainable housing, which was the other definition that we had that we spoke to at the last meeting.

So we’re in Council’s hands as far as exactly what you want this slide to include. If this line is only talking about the housing that does have some type of financial support to it, then you could actually just remove the market housing piece or if you want to be more specific, you could say that that was a private market housing or something like that as well. But there’s could maybe a couple of options for you there. But for the most part, I think this is really focused on having those types of different styles of supportive housing.

Okay, I appreciate the information. I’m not sure that’s going to work. Can you put me on the speaker’s list for this now, please? Good news is you’re on right now.

So go ahead. Okay, well, I’m not sure why this is honestly, I know that affordable housing has come to be an umbrella term that a lot of things get lumped under in the last decade. But the way this is written, I actually think it’s very clear to me, transitional supportive community. And I absolutely agree with Councilor Hopkins assessment, community or social, those two words are interchangeable to me.

Affordable is the 80% of AMR as defined by Canadian Housing and Mortgage Corporation from my perspective. And those are those agreements that we used to get through the old bonusing regime that in some cases we can still get through special area provisions and then market housing, which is what is available on the market. So I actually like the fact that affordable is broken out from transitional supportive community because affordable is defined by other levels of government and their agencies. And I would be very hesitant to stop start creating definitions of our own that do not align with those other levels of government’s definition of quote affordable housing.

So I think this language is actually very good in terms of what we have there now because it does cover each of the different categories of housing that are available to one of us. Okay, so we, I think we had a good discussion. There was a question. No one’s actually moved or suggested to change yet.

Hopefully people have the clarification they need. So if you’re looking to make a change, now’s the time, if you’re okay with the way it is, given the discussion, I can think we’re good. Okay, we’re good on this piece. I’ll go to you, Deputy Mayor Lewis, who you had a change to the section yourself.

So go ahead. Yes, it did, Your Worship, thank you. I am gonna suggest a change that is going to condense this section in one respect. And I’m gonna suggest that under the draft strategies in 2.4, we have one draft strategy, implement a program to proactive rental property compliance blitzes, which I would note that staff has already started to undertake.

And we saw the results of that in the media last week. I would suggest that that strategy be moved to become strategy D under 1.1. And that strategy, that outcome 2.4, simply be removed from the plan. Because I think when we talk about quality, and that’s right in the outcome language, and it’s listed in 1.1 as well, increase the access of range of quality.

Well, if it’s not matching our property standards bylaws, then it is not by definition quality housing. So I think we’ve created an additional outcome for the sake of breaking something out that actually belongs under what is defined as quality. So that’s my suggestion. I don’t know if I have a seconder for that, but or if there’s a new objections to that change, but I’m going to suggest that we make that change.

Well, let me work through that for you. So I think everybody, we can see it visually that what we’re going to do is move the single strategy from 2.4 under 1.1. And we’re just going to not have 2.4 because now it’s covered in 1.1. So it’s condensing it under one.

So is there someone willing to second that change? Yep, there’s definitely someone. So anybody who objects to that approach, Councillor McAllister? Okay, so we’ll have a discussion and we can vote on this particular change.

So I’ll start the discussion. Councillor McAllister, do you want to go first? Yeah, and through you. And I do respect what the deputy mayor said in his comments.

I just feel that in terms of what I have heard, I think we do need to call out the strong system of enforcement for tenants. I personally believe that that section should stay as it is and I don’t want it folded into the first outcome. I think it should stay as it is. Okay, other speakers on this?

Councillor Ferra. Thank you and through you. I would consider bringing it in, but as Councillor McAllister kind of pointed out, I would like to also have some language on the enforcement just to protect tenants’ rights and the health and their properties that they reside in. There are comments on this.

I’ll go back to the mover to see if there’s any adjustments based on the comments if colleagues make that, but let’s see if there’s any others first. So I’ll go back to the deputy mayor. One colleague likes keeping it there. The other colleague is okay with the adjustment if there’s some talk of enforcement in the language.

Are you looking to make any adjustments or would you like to proceed with voting on it this way? Through you, Chair. I’m not sure if Councillor Ferra was referring to language specifically in the strategy or in the outcome. Certainly, I don’t know whether it’s…

Let me find out. So Councillor Ferra, you’re looking for something like implement a program of proactive rental property, enforcement and compliance blitzes or enforcement including compliance blitzes. Is that the kind of thing you’re looking for as the change or you’re looking for something different? Thank you, Through you.

I do see that that is what’s being written there and I do want that language as well. I just don’t want to be losing the… I’m just trying to find it. 2.4 is the…

If I can suggest your worship, I think knowing, now understanding, I think a little bit better what Councillor Ferra was thinking. Perhaps if it read implement a program of proactive rental property compliance blitzes to protect the health and safety of tenants. Councillor Ferra. And through you, that is sounding better to me.

I was wondering if maybe Councillor McAllister might have something to add to that. Well, I can go to Councillor McAllister and a sec, but I have Councillor Hopkins, who’s also on the list. Yeah, just like clarification from the deputy mayor as to why we are changing it. What difference are we making here?

We’re trying to get the language to be the same. I’m just wondering what changes are you proposing here by making the change? I’m not gonna… Well, I’ll let the deputy mayor speak for himself.

So I’ll go to you on the intent of your change. It comes right back to the ample public feedback that there are too many areas of focus, too many draft strategies. We’re not going to achieve this all. And this is one way where we are condensing some of our strategies into a tighter, more focused number of outcomes that quite frankly are in my view, easier for people to follow along and understand.

It is about that being succinct and focused on what is doable and not breaking it out into micromanaging pieces, that the micromanaging comes under strategies, not under outcomes. So we have a one less outcome, but we’ve maintained the strategy in a way that it frankly respects the spirit of what I think everybody’s trying to achieve here. Councillor McAllister, there was a desire to hear your wisdom on this. So I’ll let you go ahead.

Thank you and through the chair. In terms of the wisdom, I just want to reiterate, personally, as the only tenant, I just feel that this is one of the few we actually call out in terms of enforcement and actually tenants take a prominent place on this strategy. And for me, for that reason, I actually do think it belongs on its own. I think there are other areas where we can see, some condensing, but for me personally, I think this warrants its own call out.

So for that reason, I will be not supporting this change. Okay, all right. Any other comments on this change? And now this has been adjusted.

So please check the most current wording. It’s got a little more of the language from both the expected result and the strategy built into it now. Any other comments on this? Okay, so the motion will be to make this change, as was outlined by the deputy mayor, and we’ll open that for voting.

Closing the vote, the motion is passed. Eight to four. Okay, so that change has been made. Other changes to the sections before you on the screen, which is basically outcome one and outcome two, the modified versions of those.

We can go to the next section of housing and homelessness, which is outcome three. I’ll look for changes to this section of housing and homelessness, people a little bit of time. Looks like a chance to jump in is over. So we’ll move to the next section.

Game show hosts, sorry about that. Thank you. And tree worship will turn to strategic area, focus wellbeing and safety, and we have before you, outcome number one. The first, is it 1.1, 1.1 to 1.4?

Okay, so we can see 1.1 to 1.4 under wellbeing and safety. There are other sections now. If colleagues are looking to kind of combine the sections that are not on the screen and are on the screen, and you’ve got that in your plan, just let me know ‘cause we can flip between them, after you’re looking to move stuff around like Deputy Mayor Lewis did. So I’m saying, let’s generally keep the comments of what’s on the screen, but when a pillar kind of floats put on the screen, if you’re looking to combine them, let me know and we can adjust back and forth between them.

But for now, I’ll look for changes on the sections on wellbeing and safety that are before us. I’ll go to Councillor McAllister first. Thank you and through the chair. So for 1.3, I would like to do, so F and G.

And these are based on just the feedback that I’ve received and you’ve heard some of this this evening. So I’m just echoing what was passed along to me. So for F, I have improved collaboration and communication with community resource centers and neighborhood organizations. Neighborhood organizations.

And for G implement a simplified process and increased support for community grant applications. That’s it for the section. I do have another one, but it’s in a different section. Okay, so there’s two suggestions there.

I’m just gonna deal with them one at a time because the disadvantage of making two is someone might not like one of them. So let’s just deal with F first. Is there a seconder for the change in F? Yes, is there any objections to the change made an act about collaboration with community resource centers and neighborhood organizations?

Councillor Stevenson, go ahead. Yeah, I’m just wondering if it’s more of an action step rather than the strategy. I’m gonna get you to the answer ‘cause I see our staff kind of thinking about that. We’ll go back to that in a sec.

I have Deputy Mayor Lewis while we’re weighing that comment. Whether it’s an action item or a strategy, I’d like to hear our staff’s thoughts too. But I would be generally supportive of F except that I’d like to see it specifically say improve communication and collaboration. Because I think sometimes the collaboration comes from simply from better communication.

So we’ll see if the mover and second are comfortable with that. Oh, that was what you want. Yeah, he says, the Councillor says that was part of the original way he intended on drafting it. It just got lost in translation.

So that’s a yes that we can add that in. The seconder is nodding. And I’ll go to our staff on the question that the other Councillor raised. I’m sorry, through you worship, could the Councillor repeat the question for me?

I was busy writing it down. Councillor Stevenson, go ahead. Thank you, yeah, I was just wondering if it was more of an action than a strategy. Looking for a little bit of advice on where we could land this, is it at this level or should it be down one end to the other areas of metrics?

I guess it’s more of an implementation plan. The question is, is that where it belongs? I mean, we can all ultimately decide, but there’s some seeking some advice. Through you worship, I was looking at if you jump to outcome number two, thanks, Mr.

2.2, both for this one and potentially the community grads, is if you look at 2.2b, support community-led initiatives and partnerships through grants, collaboration and community plans that promote the well-being of Londoners. I wonder if there’s some wording we could add to that or, as you mentioned, maybe these are specific actions, we could add through communication, grants, communication, collaboration and community planning. Thank you, and through the chair. The purpose was to call out, in terms of the resource centers and neighborhood organizations.

I did look at the language, it’s one thing, I also saw that, but from the feedback I received, they wanted, particularly for them, because the language for B, it’s community-led, so it could just be engaged citizens. It’s not necessarily resource center or a neighborhood organization, so I do think that there’s a difference and that’s why I called it out separately. And I thought it fit better in that section as well. Okay, so I think we got the advice, there’s a couple of suggestions.

I think it’s kind of up to us and whether we wanted it at this level or not. Councillor Frank, go ahead. Thank you, yes. I like F, but I actually personally think that the communication part, dropping down to 2.2 makes sense.

And then G, I’ve applied for many grants from the city and I actually found the process to be the simplest community grants. I think Cheryl will be happy to hear that. And the simplest grant portal and reporting tool I’ve ever used. So I’m not really sure that, like personally, I’m not sure what the simplified process and increased support means.

It does increase support mean like more funding. I’m just seeking clarity on that, I guess, from Councillor McAllister. Councillor McAllister. Yeah, I would be fine with dropping the simplified.

That’s just the way it was explained to me. The increased support, obviously the financial aspect is always going to be part of it in terms of those groups wanting that added support. But I also heard that, especially for organizations that don’t have people dedicated to grant applications, and as we heard this evening, it does take up an awful lot of their time. And from the perspective of Crouch, I mean 22 applications to find their organization and we’re asking them to spend a great deal of their time assisting the community.

This is also taking up a lot of the organization capacity. And so if we could come up with a way to even condense, I know there is obviously, we want these in place. So you show what you’re applying for, but if there was a way to even fold some of these in so they could do multiple applications and not spend as much time on the grant writing application, that was the concerns that were expressed to me. I’m gonna go to Ms.

Smith, but I do have others on the speakers list, so go ahead. Thank you, and through your worship just quickly, we are coming back to council, I believe in May, with a revised community grants policy. You’re going to see a very streamlined, you’re gonna see opportunities for submitting videos as part of the application. You’re gonna see a shorter and a longer term application depending on the amount of funding.

So you’re gonna see a totally revised community grants policy based on deep community engagement. So I think you will see both a simplified and a more streamlined process. I hope. Okay, I’ll go back to you, but then I’ve got to go back to Councillor Frank who initiated this discussion.

Okay, thank you, and through you, with that added information, I’m fine with taking it out ‘cause that’s great to hear, honestly. That’s what they were looking for. So if it’s in the works, I’m fine with removing that. Thank you.

Okay, so we’re getting right to G. So we still got F, so Councillor Frank, your hand, are you still on there for F? Okay, go ahead on F. Well, actually, now I don’t wanna lose G because I was gonna make an amendment, the suggest amendment.

Now that I understand the clarity, I have more clarity. So again, coming from my background, I understand that nonprofits get funding from the city through purchase of service agreements, through contracts like Letting Heritage Council and Earth Council, through the community grants process, through small events fund. So now that I understand what the purpose of it is, I think it would be fair for the community to have greater transparency and understanding in how to get those different things because I know that some groups would be better suited, perhaps, to a purchase of service agreement or to a permanent contract, whereas they’re never really given that opportunity and they don’t understand that that’s available, or how to ask for it, who to ask for. So they’re always kind of shuttled to the community grants as an opportunity.

And I don’t think that’s actually that fair. So I’d like to pull G back if you could, but change it instead of improving the simplification of it. It’d be more like community groups understand what funding mechanisms are available to them and how to apply for the various options. Okay, that sounds like a nice idea.

I don’t wanna talk about G or the previous or the new G that disappeared. Let’s deal with F first, and then if someone wants to make a new G, we’ll go back to G again. So on half, improve communications and collaborations with community resource centers and neighborhood organizations. Does anybody object to that one staying in?

Councillor Frank, is that a leftover hint? Okay, it’s gone now. Okay, all right, that one’s in. F is in.

Councillor Frank, you wanted the G that was there now back, but worded slightly differently? Yes, yeah. I’m trying to think of the wording. Councillor McAllister.

Thank you and through you, just to assist with the process. Are you looking for wording in terms of greater transparency in the process? More like better understanding of options. Like, I think it’s transparent to the different people once they get there, but they don’t know all the different funding mechanisms and what is available.

So more like, how can they understand that process and how can they get the funding? I wanna go to our staff because I don’t wanna presume that this isn’t happening in some way or planned to happen in some way. So we may be really struggling to find a piece in the strategic plan that may not be necessary if this is an intended or ongoing improvement that’s happening anyways. So can I go to Ms.

Smith, provide some clarity on the concept that Councillor Frank is discussing? Before we try to shoehorn it into our strategic plan with some wording changes. Sorry, I’m just looking for the best place. If I’m understanding correctly, it’s more about communicating opportunities and options to community groups and organizations.

So if you just give us a few minutes, we can look and see if there’s a place— I’m going back to a space level. Are we not doing that already? Do we need to put that in the strategic plan? So that’s the question ‘cause we don’t have to put it in the strategic plan if we’re doing it.

So we will be coming back as part of the community grants policy with a revised strategy and how we communicate information sessions, how we do it. We advertise our other neighborhood small events funds. Could we always communicate more and do better? Yes, we can and we continue to listen to our community and try to improve on that.

Okay, so I’m gonna go to Deputy Mayor Lewis, then I’m gonna go back to Councillor Frank. So your worship through you, I will share that previous iteration of civic involvement as the chair of a community association. I actually found our staff already be extremely helpful in directing the appropriate grants streams that an organization might look for support from, whether that’s community grants or whether that is the small community grants and other options we have. I think it’s also important to understand that we are not ever going to be everything to everyone and there are other resources out there, including through some of our partner agencies, boards and commissions.

There are some great folks at the library who provided help to groups in the past and others. So I’m not supportive of GE and I’m particularly not supportive if increased support is also intended to reference increased budgets. I have been consistently strongly opposed to increasing the community grants budget. If that’s an intention of this, I would like it laid out specifically that it’s looking for increased funding availability because that is something I’m not prepared to do.

In fact, I’m concerned about the number of increasing costs we are getting that don’t even fit in the community grants funding envelope because they’re too large and we cannot fund every project that everybody wants funded. So I’m not supportive of GE, I don’t think it’s clear. And I think that in many ways, our staff are already doing an excellent job of directing people to the appropriate stream when they’re approached by community associations, neighborhood groups, those sorts of organizations. There are, by the way, lots of good independent grant writers in the city who are happy to help out organizations.

And it’s not just our grants that community organizations are applying for. They’re also applying for federal and provincial and we’re not gonna simplify that process for them. So I think it’s not reasonable to expect that a change from us is going to change the support that they’re receiving in the volume of grants that we have to write. I don’t think they’re writing actually that many grants that are specific to the city of London.

Okay, I’m gonna go to Councilor McAllister and Councilor Frank. I don’t think we have the wording that you’re suggested. I just need you to get to a point of suggesting whether you feel there’s a change that’s needed here based on the commentary and what you’d like that change to be so that we can start to move to some decisions on this. So Councilor McAllister, I can go to you first, then I’ll go to Councilor Frank.

Thank you and through you. I’m okay to not have G. My issues I think are addressed in F, which will be solved through the greater, or the improved communication and collaboration with those organizations. So I’m okay with leaving it and I also think with the announcement of the improved grant process that my concerns were addressed.

So I don’t need it, thank you. Councilor Frank. I do have some wording. So I was thinking of something along line to provide a comprehensive overview of funding opportunities, including community grants, comma, and other administrative funding opportunities.

And I think what we’re perhaps getting caught up on, or maybe where we’re seeing some disagreement, is I don’t see that the only funding that comes from the city is through community grants. There again, like many nonprofits are sub-contracted, are given purchase of service agreements, are giving long-term contracts with the city to execute certain expectations and programs on behalf of the city. And I think that that is a completely different way that people get funding, and it is not very understandable for a nonprofit that doesn’t already have one of those contracts, how they get one. Okay, so right now it’s where to provide a comprehensive overview of funding opportunities, including community grants.

Do you want anything else added to that? And I don’t, like I said, in other administrative funding opportunities, but I don’t, it’s more like the, I don’t know what the word is for, but they’re like departmentally sponsored funding opportunities. Ms. Smith.

Through your worship, and maybe Ms. Barbongan, it says me, for example, purchase of service agreements. For example, that Mr. Dickens does, typically are done through a procurement policy or process, and same in my area.

And other purchase of service agreements, we do our approved through council. So they go through a council. So it’s, purchase of service agreements are either procurement or council approved. They’re not approved that I’m aware about an administration level.

So I’m not sure we have the administrative grants wording or administrative funding processes worded the way, the way that you suggested it might not apply to the way we do things. So do you want to add something else to the wording? I, could I ask a follow up to some staff? Sure.

Is, I’m, I guess I’m confused about what would trigger a purchase of service agreement. And again, coming from my background. So I do know that like there’s a lot of social services groups, culture and heritage groups, arts groups that receive these. And then my understanding from the environmental communities is this is rarely offered as a funding mechanism for environmental nonprofits.

So I guess I’m wondering from the staff perspective, what triggers the purchase of service to go this route? Cause I don’t necessarily see it being equitably applied across all of the different various community sectors. Three, we’re shut back and start, for example, we have a council approved purchase of service agreement with the London Arts Council to provide specific services on our behalf. The same, we have a council approved purchase of service agreement for London Heritage Council.

So in my area, those are the only two purchase of service agreements we have that were directed by council on behalf of the city for them to provide specific service. So it’s different than a community grant where we fund outcomes, we align them with the strategic plan that council has endorsed and we fund outcomes, purchase of service agreements or purchasing specific services through, as I mentioned, a council approved policy to support those two organizations. Councilor Frank? Yeah, I’m good.

I don’t have any great thoughts about how to improve this. So you know what, I don’t know if I’ll have support for it. So I’m happy to leave it off as well. Okay, so you’re willing to take G off.

Lots of good information shared, just ‘cause it’s not in the strategic plan, doesn’t mean council can’t always be better at something or communicate better, but shoehorning it in here maybe isn’t the best spot. So you’ll remove that, we’ll move on. The first area, one point. So we’re still an outcome one here, Councilor Hopkins.

Yes, speaking to the first outcome and I’ll just follow up with the post presentation. I know we’ve all received their recommendation under well-being and safety results. One point two, Londoners have a strong sense of belonging and a sense of place adding E, collaborate with volunteer, involved organizations to build on London’s history of individual and corporate volunteerism. I really do think, Mr.

Chair, that this should be added. We’ve had three years of a pandemic, COVID, it’s been challenging. And I know summer games 10 years ago, we did quite a lot of work in the city, creating volunteerism and supporting volunteer and having that base that we can depend on. And there are opportunities now as we come through, recovery to really add to Londoners, wanting to participate in the many activities that are throughout the city.

So hopefully I can get a seconder on that. Okay, so there’s a seconder for that. So this is collaborate with volunteer involved organizations to build on London’s history of individual and corporate volunteerism. Any objections to adding that E in, Councillor, sorry, Deputy Mayor Lewis, go ahead.

Yes, thank you, Your Worship. I gotta be honest, I’m not sure what we’re trying to accomplish with this strategy. And I will tell you, based on what is happening at Budweiser Gardens this week, volunteerism is alive and well. Neither tourism London nor currently Canada has had any difficulty with recruiting enough volunteers to make sure that the prior 2023 has been an incredible success.

Again, I feel like we’re just putting language in the strategic plan that’s making it more complicated. I am really not sure what build on London’s history is as a strategy in terms of collaborative organizations. There’s lots of collaboration going on already. There was a earlier today, I was at the Argonne Alliance, which is the Optimus Alliance Club, the BIA, the Community Association.

Communications are already happening with the four different cadet groups in the city to have volunteers for the Canada Day Security. This actually, I don’t think that this is the city’s job. And I think that other groups are doing this already. So I’m not gonna be supportive of this.

I know we heard it from some presenters tonight, but frankly, I don’t see this as a strategy that actually has some metrics that we can measure and that we’re duplicating the work of other groups within the city. So I’m a no on this one. Okay, so other speakers, it’s moved and seconded to add it in, we can have a vote. We’ll look for any other comments before we do so.

I don’t see any. So let’s open this particular change for voting. Posing the vote, the motion’s passed, seven to six. Okay, so the new E stays, seven to six.

I have Deputy Mayor Lewis with a suggested change to this section. So again, your worship, I’m looking at opportunities to condense here. And under 1.3, we have E, support and enhance resident-led programs and decision-making initiatives. I actually would like to see that get removed from there.

And the reason I think so, that should be removed is I think that in 1.2A, we have create meaningful opportunities for all Londoners to contribute to the health and vibrancy of their neighborhoods. I think that these two things are basically saying the same thing. That said, I would not, I appreciate the resident-led decision-making initiatives. So I would just alter A to read, create meaningful opportunities for all Londoners to contribute through citizen-led decision-making opportunities to the health and vibrancy of their neighborhoods and combine those two into one strategy and not two separables.

That still needs a little bit of language massaging. It doesn’t quite make sense there, it’s still not. We’re gonna, I don’t know if you can see the way that it’s being suggested to be changed, Deputy Mayor, but it’s kind of saying the same things, but they could just kind of flip the second half of the sentence to try to make it flow a little better. Can you take a look?

Yeah, I can see the changes Mr. Steinberg’s made and that’s better grammar than I would have had. So I’m comfortable with the staff’s suggested language. Okay, so this is essentially just a combination of these items, is there a seconder for this change?

Yes, there is. Is there any objections to making this a combination? Okay, I don’t see anybody objecting to that. So we will shift E up into that A in the other section and combine the two sentences and leave it that way.

Other changes to the block, I’m gonna wait till Mr. Steinberg puts it back up. Other changes to the block on the screen, Councillor McAllister. Thank you and through the chair.

I’m also endeavoring to condense things and add some clarity. So this is for 1.9B. You look at it and move it up into this area? No, no, so I wanna, if we can go to 1.9.

Okay, are we not— These are related to the 1.1 to 1.4 area, yeah. No, okay. It’s not quite there yet. So anybody with other changes to 1.1 to 1.4, going once, going twice.

Okay, we can flip to the next area, which includes 1.5 to 1.9 and we can go to Councillor McAllister for a suggested change. Okay, so with 1.9 because this is kind of going off of what the work we did previously with the metrics. So I added in some metrics and that’s why I wanted to add language to this to clarify. So with 1.9B, increase focus on addressing food insecurity and priority neighborhoods by making available public land for urban agriculture and partner with community organizations to maintain and harvest plots.

And this, the metrics, I asked for metrics to directly relate to this. So that’s why I wanted to add in this language to clarify. You just might need to give that second part of the language again. It’s not quite all right.

Sorry, you were low too fast. Increase focus on addressing food insecurity and priority neighborhoods by making available public land for urban agriculture and partner with community organizations to maintain and harvest plots. Is there someone willing to support that change? Yes, okay.

So there’s support for that change. Is that comment? Okay, make a comment now, go ahead. Sure, Chair, I just think that I really like it but this is really truly, in my opinion, 100% implementation plan.

So if we put it here in the strategy, then what are we gonna develop into the implementation plan because this should be an implementation plan with the accountability, deadline and specifics. So it’s something that I like it but I don’t think this is the right place for it. Councillor Hopkins. Yeah, I just wanna make sure it’s in the right place.

So we build it, is this building on and expanding our food insecurity plan, a strategy that we already have in place and just wanting a bit more clarification? I’m gonna let our staff respond because I think I see where everybody seems generally supportive of what you’re saying so far but there’s a little bit of a difference of opinion on whether this is more implementation or whether it belongs up here in the strategy. Mr. Mathers, are you doing that?

Now that I messed you up by saying that, go ahead. Through the chair, so this definitely could be something that would be an implementation item. However, it really is for council’s strategic plan, you can decide where to put it so this is something that I would kinda see and it could definitely be something that could be implementable. Okay, so that’s the advice back, is that, go ahead.

I’m fine to have that, I just, the metrics that were added in previously, I just felt that this needed some more teeth because it wasn’t specific enough. I felt that food insecurity was too general and I do believe that this is a strategy to address food insecurity and that’s why I added it in. I’m okay with leaving it in, but I will leave that for council just so I— Actually, I wanna speak to this, so I’m just gonna do so from the chair. I think this is one area to be careful with because you’re taking a general strategy that you already have the metrics that you’re happy with and then you’re making the strategy very specific to a couple of things that may actually restrict it from other potential focuses on addressing food insecurity in neighborhoods.

So I would suggest that this really does land as one of the implementation strategies and I would not have restricted it up here because essentially what you’re doing is you’re restricting it to a very specific approach that we’re already measuring what you’re going for. So this is one of those ones to be cautious not to make an unintended consequences of making be too restrictive when there are other strategies we can pursue. That’s my comments on this. I would leave it for implementation.

We’ve had the discussion our staff have clearly heard the comments and they know why you put the metrics in so it could come out and implementation strategy. Those are my thoughts but I’ll go back to the councilor. Through you, I’m fine to have it removed. I just wanted to call out the fact that we would be able to make public land available ‘cause with the metrics, the wording led me to believe that we were just going to tally what we currently have and that there was no wording to actually push it forward in terms of making more land available that it was essentially just a status quo implementation.

So I’ll make one, so we’ll pull it out. I’ll make a comment. This is council’s strategic plan. If at the end of the day, we do not feel as a group, the implementation is achieving what we perceive to be the goals of the plan.

We have the opportunity to make adjustments and provide direction to staff at that time to proceed with further measures of implementation. So I appreciate everything you say, I think withdrawing it is right, but if you have a concern in the future that it may be it won’t achieve the goal, we have community structures of council that we can provide some additional clarity and direction through that should it not be achieving the impacts that we’re looking for as a council. Okay, so any other changes to 1.5 to 1.9? There are currently none on the floor.

Okay, let’s go to the next section. Just a question for you, Mr. Mayor, I texted you. Yes, the answer is yes, I’d like to have a break.

When would you be merciful and let us have one? Yes, it’s been just over what has it been? Two more hours since our last break. So let’s take a 15 minute, 15 minute break.

Moved by Councillor Ploza. Seconded by Councillor Ferrera. All is in favor of a 15 minute break. Put up your hands, the clerk’s counting them.

That motion’s passed. Okay, 15 minute break. So we will return at just before 9.30. I need people to come back to their seats and let me do a forum check.

President? Okay, I have quorum. I have one colleague who’s two colleagues who are in transit to their remote locations. That sounds more mysterious than it actually is.

They’re just switching to an online platform. I’m gonna, can you put up the calendar for me? We’re going to let colleagues know that the PPM was obviously perhaps a little bit longer than anticipated, which is great news for the public weighing in. Not so great for how long we would potentially go tonight because when we complete this part, we still haven’t gone through any changes to the metrics that colleagues might wanna make.

So I suggest we continue on ‘cause we’re kind of in the middle of a section, but we do have a backup plan for all this that was built into our timeframe. And that is, there is a meeting on the 28th that we were going to report all of Council’s changes into for like a final look and final changes. We can use that meeting to continue the work that we don’t finish tonight. So at some point tonight, we could decide to refer the remaining work to the 28th.

Then we would end up using the on hold SPPC on the 17th for what would have been done on the 28th, the kind of the final, here’s the kind of final Polish draft, one last chance to make changes, but really it should be pretty solid. And that goes to the Council on the 25th. It really only changes the final approval of the strategic plan by three weeks, which is fine to be accommodated. We had this as a suggested plan if it was going to take longer.

So I just want to let colleagues know, we don’t have to go until one in the morning or anything ridiculous like that tonight. We can decide when we’re ready to stop and shift things to the next, to that other plan. And if there’s desire to do that, I would end up doing a motion where we refer the remaining components to the 28th SPPC meeting. For now, I’d like to go through this section and then we can kind of play it by ear, how many sections you want to go through before we adjust.

Because anything we do now, we don’t have to do later or anything we don’t do now, we have to do later. So there’s pros and cons to both. But I recognize that people have had a long night. I recognize there was a lot of information given from the public.

And there’s some advantage to not making decisions when you’re tired and it’s late. And we have the capacity to make some adjustments. So with that, I want to continue where we left off, but I’ll check in after the end of this section and see if people want to take me up on that option. And if we want to do another section, we can decide that as a group at the time.

I don’t anticipate there’d be any questions on that. But yes, go ahead, Councillor Ferriero. Thank you, through you. So I just want to clarify.

So you’re suggesting if we don’t finish everything today, we are going to add an SPPC meeting on the 17th? Yeah, it’s already scheduled. We’re just going to use it. So we, through the process, put a meeting on hold, not the 17th of March, the 17th of April.

Okay, so we would come and use the regular March 28th, but instead of doing the let’s look over the final changes that we approved tonight, we won’t be done tonight, so we’ll use that to continue the work. Final changes meeting will be the 17th of April. Okay, sounds good, thank you. All right, okay.

So I’ll go back to Ms. Smith to tell me where we left off. Thank you, and through your worship, we are on wellbeing and safety, the strategic area of focus wellbeing and safety, the second and final outcome, 2.1 to 2.4. Okay, so suggested changes to these areas.

This is wellbeing and safety outcome to 2.1 to 2.4. I’m just pausing ‘cause I see people shuffling through their pages, I wanna make sure I don’t go too fast. Is everybody okay? So we’re done with outcome two.

Thank you, and through your worship, we’ll now go to the strategic area focus, safe London for women girls, gender diverse and trans people, outcome number one, 1.1 to 1.3. Suggested changes to outcome 1, 1.1 to 1.3. Councilor Stevenson. Thank you, and through the chair, at the risk of offending my fellow councilors, which I don’t want to do, but to honor the people that asked us to narrow the number of strategic focus or focus items, I would like to move the motion that we move the one outcome, which there’s only one outcome for safe London for women and girls, under well-being and safety.

There’s actually… Oh, there’s only one outcome, and then there’s four parts to it. Yes, okay. So the suggestion is to take the entire outcome one and put it all under well-being and safety.

Is there someone willing to support that support? Yes. Okay, and then did you wanna speak? Okay, go ahead.

Yes, I would second it, I would support it. And again, it’s nothing to downgrade at all. In my opinion, the work still expected results, draft strategies, and the most important are the two parts that are coming up, which is the matrix, as well as the implementation plan, and I don’t feel that we were downgraded at all. This was the, again, reply to the Londoners that they asked us to narrow it down the areas of focus.

So again, it’s nothing to delete from the outcomes, from the expected results draft strategies. We would keep it all just this entire section would be an additional outcome under the well-being. I’ll look for a discussion on this. This is to, so we’ll get the language up in a second, but I think everybody understands what you’re suggesting.

I’ll look for speakers to this suggested change. Go ahead, Councillor Robin. Thank you and through you. I just had a question through you to staff.

Just, does the well-being and safety, I think the safety personally, and me, safety reflects the same in safety and safe. I mean, in terms of what we’re looking at in language are similar, do you see that there’s any issue with putting them out as putting them in the same section? I’m gonna ask Ms. Wilcox to speak to this strategic area focus as she worked with the community to develop it.

Thank you and through the chair. Well, both sections, areas of focus deal with safety. One is sort of a broad safety across the community and there are many facets to that. This one is really specific to eliminating all forms of violence against women and girls, gender-based violence and sexual violence.

So that’s, I guess, the context of safety here and there are the three expected results that speak to that. I’m gonna hand the chair to Councillor Hopkins and I’m gonna speak. You wanna speak? Go ahead and speak first, Councillor Hopkins.

Yeah, sorry, Mr. Chair, I don’t want to go at the end here, but I guess I haven’t seen the motion yet, but I will not be supporting it. I appreciate the fact that we want to reduce the pillars, but to me, this is a very important pillar. And the reason I think it is an important pillar is that we are very unique here in the city to have this pillar as it addresses the safety issues of women and girls in particular.

And many municipalities look at London having this pillar and really look up to London. We’ve been able to come a long way. And I don’t know, I feel pretty emotional about this because it is International Women’s Day. And again, I don’t think we should be going backwards as a city.

We should be, the need is great. If you look around protecting women and girls, we know if we make that a safe city for women and girls, we are a safe city. And if we keep this pillar, and it’s taken us a long time to even have this pillar, took a long time to get this right. And now I appreciate your hearing from residents that want us to reduce the pillars, but I don’t think this is the one that should be reduced.

And I think if we are concerned about the safety aspects, this strictly addresses women and girls. And there is such a need in this city to protect women and girls. So I will not be supporting this. Councillor Hopkins, I’ll hand the chair to you.

You’re worship? So I’m not gonna support the motion. I’ve spoken to this in the past. And I do think that there was very clear feedback and thoughts multiple times from the agencies working in this space.

And their consistent viewpoint was that this new pillar of the strategic plan, which was only new in the last term, needs to be built out, needs to be robust, that there is a lot more work to do in this space and to have it identified as a specific and separate pillar within the strategic plan is important to the work that’s being done. And I know that the London coordinating community to end women’s abuse just recently put out the stats of the situation as it stands in our city currently. And I’m not gonna go through and read the stats, but you can see them for yourself. And what it is very clear is that there is a significant challenge and problem that we need to address and tackle in support with our community partners.

And the development as we’ve built out the outcomes in this section, I think are important steps towards tackling this. But having it as a clear and identifiable focus in the strategic plan is something that the agencies have said is important to them and important to the women and girls that they serve. To see that their voice is being heard, to see that it’s very clearly identified as a top level, that it is not just another expected outcome in a general piece on safety. And I think, do I think one day in the next strategic plan perhaps, can we start to think about different ways to organize our strategic plan where there are pieces that are layered throughout horizontally rather than just pillars?

Yes, I do believe that there’s a place on common themes that are strewn throughout it, whether that is safety or a reconciliation or even components within this structure. But I think for now we have structured this strategic plan with pillars. We haven’t structured it horizontally, although some of the work does cross those pillars. And it’s important to keep this separate and identifiable and see at least one iteration of the build out of this pillar before we consider collapsing it or adjusting it or modifying it in different ways.

So I would suggest that I understand the intent, but now is not the time to make this particular move for all of the ways that we might provide some efficiencies to the structure of the strategic plan. I think that this one is one that will be very, very poorly received. And despite our intentions, be read as a very negative message and a huge unintended consequence to what I know the mover is trying to do with the motion. So I think there’s high risk of us creating a massive problem for ourselves, for the sake of efficiency, when there’s a lot of eyes looking for us to keep this separate and distinct.

I have Council Stevenson and then Councillor Preble and I’ll hand the chair back to you. Councillor Stevenson or Preble. Okay, Councillor Preble. I just wanna let you know what, I would like to add this and this in my opinion.

And again, for the both, for all of us and the public as well, in this perspective, doesn’t matter if it was this one or the previous one when we talked about reconciliation and we looked kind of how to make the pillars, less pillars, more narrower structure. I just feel that us by adding the implementation plan as a final step, doesn’t matter if it’s reconciliation, if it’s the safety for women is gonna be much more valuable and we will be more accountable to deliver the results to for reconciliation and for safe London women than if they have a separate pillar. But it’s not again, we looked at it in terms of how can we narrow it down and by just wanna let all of us and public know that the implementation plan, I believe is going to deliver much more better results and will be much more accountable than without it. Councillor Souss, I know you had your hand up but I do wanna let you know that there’s other colleagues who haven’t spoken.

So I’m happy to go to you but I know you just put Councillor Preble in front of you. So do you wanna speak now or do you wanna go to this? Yeah, I’d like to speak now. Go ahead.

Just like, of course, this is a super important outcome. All of this was gonna stay and I wasn’t in any way trying to say that this wasn’t important and I’m happy to withdraw the motion if it’s, you know. Okay, so Councillor Stevenson is willing to withdraw the combination of motion. So I see hands now going down.

So we’re in then back into safe city or safe London for women and girls and gender diverse and trans people outcomes one to 1.3. I’d look for any changes to that. Sorry for clarification, Mr. Mayor, as I’ve had my hand up for a while.

Just looking for clarification, is she removing it or is she potentially removing it? She’s withdrawing her motion. Okay, thank you. You have your hand up, okay, you’re good now, okay.

So outcome one, 1.1 to 1.3, any changes? Can you flip to the next area? So still under outcome, no, is that it? That’s it, three, we’re sure we’re now on.

Sorry, I had my page, I had the wrong hard copy page. Perfect, so economic growth, culture and prosperity, right? That’s correct, outcome number one, 1.1 to 1.4. Perfect.

Changes to this area, Councillor Pribble. Does 1.1A, if we could add, so currently it’s a strength and existing and introduce new partnerships and programs that support small and growing businesses, cultural and non-profit organizations and entrepreneurs. So the addition would be cultural and non-profit organizations. Okay, is there someone willing to support that particular change?

Yes, there is. So I’ll ask first, is there any objections to that change? Yes, Deputy Mayor Lewis, does that hand up an objection? Well, I need some clarification.

Okay. Are you worshiped, so I hope you’re asking. I’ll go to some discussion then, right to discussion and we can, I’ll ask for the consensus later after we’ve had some Q&A. So go ahead with your question.

So through you, we’ve heard this cultural organization, peace raised in the gallery tonight, we’ve heard it raised at all three meetings where we’ve been debating these things. I would like some clarification through you. Perhaps the mover can provide some clarification. What cultural organizations do we have that are not already either a business organization or a non-profit, you know, because, and I just wanna expand on that a little further.

I know that there are some cultural clubs in the city that have not-for-profit status. In some cases, even charitable status with Canada Revenue Agency. So I’m trying to understand why that needs to be in there when my sense is that organizations, and to me, an organization has to have a board of directors, it has to be a structured organization. What the mover sees is the difference between a cultural and a not-for-profit organization.

Councillor Pribble has his hand up so he can provide some comments and I can see if you need further after that, go ahead. Just to answer, and I think that a peer mayor was partially right that there are certain organizations that are starting and they don’t have the status yet, and there are certain ethnic organizations that are, for example, that are organizing festivals at the common garden market at other parts of London. So it is these cultural organizations that are starting, they are bringing people together, multi-cultural organizations, sorry, multi-cultural events, introducing, and they don’t have the other statuses yet. So that’s really what it was to cover this starting new group.

Deputy Mayor. Okay, so I appreciate that clarification. I’m actually really uncomfortable with the idea that we are going to introduce partnerships or provide supports to organizations that have not yet obtained their status. I know that working through the Canada revenue process can take a little bit of time from constituency work in a past federal life, but if we’re starting to talk about support, and I’m not sure what support would entail here, if it is some guidance from staff, that’s one thing, if it is starting to talk about providing funding for an event, that’s a different thing.

So I’m hesitant to support this because I think organizations need to have some sort of status before they come knocking on our door. So I’ll listen to what others have to say, but I’m inclined to not support this change. Councillor ramen. Thank you and through you.

So 1.1 starts with small and growing business sense as entrepreneurs. So I’m just wondering what level of startup are we really trying to target? So I saw that the opportunity with cultural, looking at cultural startups, basically, and finding an opportunity for some incubation with the cultural industries as well. So I think that there’s a connectivity here.

I’m definitely not an expert in this, but I will say that the chamber here has done the work, and they know that tying and being connected with business and intertwined with culture is really important. So I think that that’s the message that I know I’ve heard very clearly, and that’s why I think it’s important to include. Other speakers to this change. I’ll go, I’ll just go back to the deputy mayor, that’s the only one who spoke with some concerns.

Would you like this vote or not? My, so now actually Councillor ramen’s comments for the second concern, the language in A is now not consistent with the language in 1.1. So either cultural has to be in both or neither for me. I’ve also heard from members of the Chamber of Commerce who disagree with the presentation we received from the head of the Chamber of Commerce.

So I’m not going to take that as blanket support from Chamber of Members. So yes, I think maybe you want to vote it on. We can do that, but we don’t have to do that yet if there’s more discussion. Councillor Pribble.

Sorry, I would be then for adding culture into both, but one thing is then again, to address the issue or concern of the deputy mayor, I honestly this wasn’t thinking of just dollar signs behind it. There are really, there are certain backgrounds in London multinationalism and bringing people together and it’s not that they’re looking for money, they are looking to support in terms of the know-how, they have the willingness, they want to bring the people together, but they don’t have to know-how. So for me putting this forward, it wasn’t really just truly dollar signs. No, any other speakers?

We’re going to vote on this one. Tina, and I think we have this worded up so we can open this for money. It’s Councillor Plaza, I’ll manually vote yay. Sir Lewis.

Sorry, Your Worship, I’m having technical difficulties with E-Scribe here, I’m going to log out and log back in. I will manually vote nay on this one. Posing the vote, the motion’s passed eight to five. Okay, so that adjustment is in.

Other changes to this section, Councillor Pribble. Just 1.2a, if you look at the note from our staff, recommendation of business organizations, and I personally do agree with that, to change it to business organizations, from service partners? Yeah, I’m just going to ask if anybody has concerns with our staff note, otherwise we can make the changes that they’ve suggested there. Does anybody have any concerns with what our staff suggested in the note that they provided to us?

So we’re going to adjust the language to align with what our staff suggested as the language. Okay, other changes to this area. Councillor Hopkins. Yeah, I have a question through you.

Maybe the staff to assist as to if this is the right area or not, but it goes to the delegations that we heard this evening, and the importance of obviously culture, but culture and heritage. I’m not sure if heritage is missing in this or where it could go, or if there’s even a need for it to go, but I do feel like I should ask the question through you. Through the chair. Sorry, no, you go ahead.

Through the chair, this area is really focusing on the business organization, which absolutely is an important business that’s being done, but maybe that links more with the elements of supporting an exciting place to visit as well. So what I was hearing was that there’s an opportunity to be able to have these locations and be able to promote that to Londoners. So there might be another opportunity to put it into one of the other sections that more focuses on the tourism piece, but I’ll leave that with council to sign it. Ms.

Bitt, through your worship just quickly, and looking at her presentation, as Mr. Mather said, her priorities were, London is a heritage tourism destination. So when we look at the strategy, when we get to it around tourism, she wanted to add besides cultural tourism, and also under transportation and mobility, she’s talked about the way finding a strategy and signage to help in the location of museums across London, and also a transportation strategy to help individuals get to these museums where often public transit doesn’t reach them. Those are options.

So is this this section in economic growth, adding to, I’m not exactly sure, what area to put it in without? Through your chair, 2.2, London is a destination of choice, I’m assuming, under 2.1 or 2.2, you recognize it as center for arts, sports, culture and heritage, or 2.2, cultural activities, culture and heritage activities, goods and services, Ms. Wilcox, I give a suggestion. Thank you, and through the chair, I just wanted to note that there is a reference to heritage currently in the plan under well-being and safety.

If you look at 1.2, the expected result that Londoners have a strong sense of belonging and sense of place, be in that section deals with the strategy, create cultural opportunities that reflect the arts heritage and diversity of the community, and in our work with the agencies, boards and commissions that we’ve done collaboratively, Alden House and others have been involved in that conversation too, certainly not some of the delegations tonight in that respect, but just wanted to flag that. I’m satisfied that at least it’s in one of our pillars, it’s important, thank you. All right, thank you. Can we flip back to the, okay, so this is where we are, we’re still in outcome 1, 1.1 to 1.4 of economic growth, culture and prosperity.

Any other changes to this before we go to the next section? Okay, let’s flip to the next section. So now we have outcome two and outcome three. There are a couple of notes of advice from our staff, so I would look for some comments on that, Councilor McAllister.

Thank you, through you. I’m just trying to get a sense for scale with the first note in 2.1B in terms of new capital investments, you know, on the high scale, are we talking a new bud gardens, are we talking a new ban shell? I’m just trying to get a sense for what our ambitions are on that point, thank you. Through the chair, this is absolutely a council like a directed strategy so it could be whatever the options that council wants to consider and as part of this strategy and developing targets and implementing it, we’d want to be able to get perspective from council as far as exactly what they’re looking for.

Sorry, Councilor McAllister, okay, Councilor Pribble. I just wanted to add today, and I think that it’s a four year plan, and I think that within the four years, there will be opportunities to do new and to answer the question of councilor McAllister, I don’t think that in terms of the cultural events, potential hops, et cetera, that there is a look for another bud wise of gardens, but I really think, and especially if we have the additional meeting, if we don’t finish today, if our staff could get together and get a more understanding what the representatives of our culture, London, what they were kind of, what they are thinking of or potentially, and maybe back report to us, there’s the kind of dollar signs potentially behind it, so we can make an educated decision then, but at this stage, I really would like to leave the new in there because we don’t really have an answer to Councilor McAllister if it’s $5 or $50 million. I’m gonna say something in a second, but Councilor McAllister, you have your hand up. Thank you and through you and to the Councilor’s comments.

My issue isn’t events, it’s that we have the word assets in there and that’s why I said a physical structure because my worry is are we building new infrastructure to support arts, culture, sport and recreation ‘cause those are huge capital projects, so my concern is with new assets. I have no problem with supporting events, the infrastructure required for that is much smaller in scale, so when we do get into the costing, I think we do have to have realistic expectations as to what we will do in those 40 years, thank you. Okay, I’m gonna provide some comments just from the Chair on this and then I’ll go to the DEPUTY Mayor. I actually think staff have identified an important thing that we should consider if we include and create new assets.

Remember, this is used existing and create new assets in creative ways, well, we wouldn’t create a new asset to use it in a creative way, we would create a purpose-built asset for something that we’re trying to achieve, and I think that it’s probably best to take it out because, you know, without further direction from Council on how we would approach this, there is an endless continuum of potentially exceptionally costly options at our disposal, but gardens, it isn’t about creating a new one, but there are significant enhancements that could be made to that 20-year-old facility, which would not be cheap, creating a new significant assets would require capital, there would be a whole range of options, many of which would be mutually exclusive or have significant opportunity costs associated with them. So if those were things that we were truly considering as a Council, like we would have to find a way to have the discussion on them, but I do think we can support using our existing assets in creative ways to support London’s profile. So if we take out the create new, it doesn’t preclude us from enhancing the city’s base of assets, but I think we would wanna do that through a very separate and distinct discussion about where we might see our asset gaps as in the city, and then figure that out through a process, much like when we did the master accommodation plan work, we’re looking at our existing corporate space needs, and then determining once we know what our needs are, what are the assets that might need to go from them? So I think we can achieve a lot while taking out new, but not preclude us as a Council during this term, investigating options for new assets.

It just doesn’t have enough detail here to, I think, I have no idea how staff would develop a business case in the multi-year budget to create new assets without some clear and very specific direction on Council about what that means because the scope could be so broad. So I personally support taking this out, but I’m not afraid of having a conversation during the course of this term about ways that we might wanna enhance or add assets to the inventory to achieve the goals of our strategic priorities over the course of this term. Where opportunities might arise, and those opportunities might include federal or provincial funding envelopes that come along that we could then leverage to achieve our goals. I had Deputy Mayor Lewis on the list, and then I’ll go to Councillor Hopkins after.

Deputy Mayor’s first, over here. Thank you, Your Worship. And you said a lot of the things I was going to say, so I will just repeat Ditto on what you just said. And I will just add that, you know, again, I come back to you, this is a four-year plan and creating new assets in four years, given all of the other budgetary pressures we have.

I don’t think is realistic. If we’re looking at some enhancements to some spaces, if we’re looking at some new events within existing spaces to raise their profile, I think that that’s more reasonable. I don’t think the scope that’s required in terms of property acquisition, design, public input, all of those things for new assets is something we’re going to achieve in four years. So I support taking it out.

Councillor ramen. Thank you and through you. I do think the scale and size of an asset is really what we’re talking about, because I do see opportunities for new creative assets that perhaps are smaller in scale. For instance, we talked, or Councillor McAllister mentioned a ban shell.

And I know personally of an interest in request for a ban shell in an area that I do believe would fit into the category of a small asset and would be a tremendous enhancement in terms of our arts and culture. So I do think there is ways for us to think about and be creative. And I’d hate to box ourselves out of the idea of a new asset because we didn’t include it. And I do think it also gives some hope to groups that are, and we heard it from the London Arts Council as well today.

They’re saying, look, venue space is a problem. We know that it’s a problem. It just shows that we also acknowledge that this is a problem. And we are considering the paths towards what that might look like in both small and other scales.

Other comments? Could I suggest, is there a compromise here where we don’t use the word create? Because create is a very definitive word, but we could consider, like there’s probably another way to say it. Like I’m for taking it out because it’s definitive.

And I don’t think we have enough information or investigation to be definitive on this yet. But I don’t wanna speak too much from the chair. I have Councillor Cudi who has his hand up. Thank you, and through you, Chair.

I understand the reason for taking it out, but it would preclude if, as you said, if, you know, dollars became available federally, provincially for something, then we couldn’t act on that. And that’s, I think that’s a problem for us. Even though, as Deputy Mayor Lewis said, we are in a tight physical restraints right here with our budget, but I just think taking it out really restricts us. You know, this city has had a history of wanting to build a performing arts center, which is what a lot of people would consider.

And I see Councillor Ramen shaking your head, which I’d say this. And a lot of people would look at this and say, oh, the council wants to build a performing arts center. That’s why they have this left in here. And that would be an issue.

I can see that. So it could go either way. I’m not sure. Thank you.

Councillor Pribble and then Councillor McAllister. I was just gonna add, if you have any shoes to create, if we could put at least something like consider or evaluate opportunities for the new assets. Instead of committing to create, if we go with consider or evaluate opportunities for new assets. I’m actually way more comfortable with that language myself as someone who’s expressed a concern.

I’d look to Mr. Steinberg to kind of massage that in there so we could see what that would look like. I know it’s a bit of a complex sentence, so I’ll rely on your wisdom. I’ll go to, I can support a soften language there because I think it, I agree that we don’t wanna miss an opportunity, but I think this is a very definitive thing that gives our staff absolutely no direction on how they would create the metrics or devise the business cases.

The multi-year budget on how to do that. But Councillor McAllister. Thank you and through you, excuse me. Similar suggestion, I was going to suggest pursuing partnerships as you identified in terms of partnering with, whether it be private or other levels of government.

Yeah, I think the way that Mr. Steinberg has worded it now wouldn’t preclude that. He’s got used existing assets in creative ways and evaluate opportunities for new assets that support London’s profile as a destination for arts, culture, sports and recreation. It’s not committing us to a position, but signaling that we’re open to looking into it.

And I would hope that that considers enhancements of existing assets, which sometimes you don’t need a new one if you upgrade an existing one or enhance an existing one. But I think it just keeps a little more on the table. There are thoughts on the language that Mr. Steinberg has put before us.

These are general agreement on this adjusted language. Say we object to the adjusted language that Mr. Steinberg has put up. Okay, let’s adjust the language there based on the note from staff and the discussion we’ve had.

I would like to discuss when we’re in this section the next note from staff, Councillor ramen. Thank you, before you do that, I have just a slight modification to 2.2 where it says enhance and increased creation and distribution of, I wanted to include arts and culture activities. So that’s, is there support for adding that in? Yes, okay.

Is there any concerns from colleagues about that wording change of, I think culture was already there, but I think you just added in arts and this cultural. Yes, I get that you put that change and I just want like, I get it. Any objections to that change? It’s good.

Sorry, through you. I think it should be arts and culture, not cultural, just but. I didn’t mean to say you should change it to cultural. I meant, I don’t think it needed the yellow bar because of wording there before.

I shouldn’t, I should never mind. So part B in there. So the colleague, our staff wrote a note, the addition of throughout the cultural industries will require work and coordination with Glonomy’s office cultural services film. If included, as written further assessment will be undertaken to assess the scope of work involved.

Additional investments could be required, may result in business case to the multi-year budget. Is there any, that’s a comment there from our staff. We don’t have to make changes, but I just wanted to draw attention to that before we move too far further into the section. Does anybody have any comments on that piece?

Okay. How about general changes to the other, the sections that you see before you on the screen? Outcome two and outcome three. What is the next section?

Outcome four. Outcome four as a number of areas to it. Talked about this one quite a bit over the course of our time on the strategic plan. I’ll look for any suggestions.

There’s a couple of notes from staff in there. So if you’re referring to one of those, let me know. Councillor Stevenson, go ahead. Thank you.

In 4.3D, it currently says update the downtown parking strategy and I wanted to add and implement. So update and implement the downtown parking strategy. Okay, is there support for the addition? Is there a seconder for that addition?

Okay, there is. Okay, discussion on the addition of and implement Councillor Hopkins. Yeah, I’d just like through clarification about implementation, any concerns there? Thank you through your worship.

Implementation of the four-year plan would not be possible. This cannot be done until the mobility master plan has done the process itself will likely take in the range of 18 months plus design. So it would be an outcome of the strategy update to define an implementation plan, but it would be very unlikely we’d make substantive change in four years. Yeah, so thank you for that.

Is there a wording that we could put in that just says we’re gonna make some progress on it and not just update a strategy? Well, maybe the staff can define what happens when we update a strategy. When we update a strategy, usually there’s a discussion about the implementation timeframe that we would engage in. So I think perhaps that the council heard about the process that we would generally follow what we update a strategy like this to consider and make decisions on the implementation might be helpful.

So your worship, this would not preclude us making changes to parking in the downtown in accordance with the current plan, which was done in 2017. Largely speaking, that plan is still valid because we have not seen many spots or new demand take that away. But to update the plan proper, it takes generally speaking an entire year of data collection because you need seasonality through the whole thing to ensure that you’re actually predicting the right types of traffic demand. So if that were to start in 2024, it would be done sometime in mid to late 2025 and wouldn’t conclude an implementation plan for short term, medium term and long term.

You may potentially get to some of the short term gains at the end of this plan, but it would be very tight to make any real implementation strategies coming out of a proper updated strategy. If we’re only looking for minor adjustments or changes to maybe what’s changed since the last strategy, there might be some things we could do around that. And certainly we’re working on those pieces with Mr. Mather’s team as part of the core area vacancy study.

Go ahead. Thank you, that was me just not understanding that process. So I’ll withdraw that, it’ll go in under actions. So another thing, I was hoping to add E, I’ve given Mr.

Steinberg the wording on that, explore and implement strategies to support retention of our existing core area businesses. And the reason I was putting that in is I noticed as I was reading through it, everything was directed to attracting new business. And so I wanted something in there about retaining the existing and that would support in increasing the commercial occupancy rate if we’re not losing what we already have at the same time as we’re bringing in attraction. Is there a seconder for that addition of the E?

Yes, there is. Discussion on the addition of E? Councillor McAllister. Thank you and through you to staff, would that also fall in terms of notation, more capital investments?

Through the chair, so any kind of strategies that would be developing would be falling under number 4.3A, which is what would come out of the quarry of a vacancy reduction strategy. It’s unlikely that they would be like specific assets, but would be probably programs or other types of supports, policy changes possibly. So it would unlikely that actually be assets. Other questions about E comments?

Is there objections to the addition of E from colleagues? If there’s no objections, we can just add it in. I don’t see any, so we’ll leave that in. Other changes to the areas of outcome four that you see on the screen.

Go ahead, Councillor Stevenson. Thank you. For 4.5, I did give the changes to Mr. Steinberg.

I felt that B and E were similar enough that we could combine them. So I was recommending that we change B to support improvements to the delivery of public safety, education programs and services for core area residents, businesses, organizations and property owners. So it was really just combining B and E into one. Is there a seconder for that combination?

Yep, there is. And you just go ahead, Councillor Ferra. Oh, you just wanted, okay, thank you very much. Is there any objections to that combination that that change is made?

Okay, is that the end of the section on one more? Okay, go to the next piece. Oh, you have one more change? Oh, sorry, my mistake.

Go ahead, what’s your… That’s okay. I got two, one tiny one that 4.5 A, it says increase the number of officers in the core. And I just wanted to say in the core areas.

Is there anybody that objects to, instead of it’s just saying core, say core area areas, area, core area, which I think we’ve got identified up top, what that means. Okay, that’s fine, that change will stay. Go ahead, last one. Okay, last one, so now to replace E, I wrote down improve, and I’m open to wording changes on this, but I wrote improve the accessibility, lighting, and cleanliness of sidewalks and walkways.

That’s what you mean by accessibility? Are you talking about like an AODA accessibility or? I was thinking of like currently, there’s a lot of things blocking the sidewalks. And also, yeah, anything that just prevents walking or wheelchairs along the walkways and sidewalks.

Okay, I’ll look to see if there’s support from someone for this particular change. Yes, there is. Okay, discussion on this. Any objections to this change?

Okay, we’ll add that then. Now we’re at the end of this section, correct? Sorry, Councilor, I keep trying to just, you see what I’m trying to do, right? Councilor McAllister, go ahead.

Thank you and through you. You know, we’re always the kind of, the forgotten. So I’m just wondering with A and C, our original intention to differentiate between increased presence in the core for support and safety versus increased presence of LPS. What are we differentiating there in terms of the support and safety that we’re offering versus A?

Our staff clarify, I can’t see the metrics, but that might help some clarification. But if, I’ll just give them a second, there’s a team huddle going on. Nick, did you just flip to the metrics to see what those were? I think that, oh, that probably helps clarify for, didn’t.

Oh, okay, well, worth a try, I guess. I appreciate your frankness. Sorry, Chair, through you. Could you repeat the question now that we’ve, been able to try this now?

Okay, so there may be an easy answer to this, and the answer is there isn’t a difference, but we’re trying to determine what the difference is between 4.5 A and 4.5 C, which A is increased presence of the London Police Service officers in the core area, and C is increased presence in the core for support and safety. Councillor Ferrera. Thank you, through you. Just for you to get myself, I don’t really see a difference, so maybe we could even remove that one.

Remove C? Yeah, yes, go ahead, Mr. Dickens. Through you, Chair, my apologies for trying to track down an answer for you.

C is anything that is non-police. So looking at the presence of coordinated informed response of reach workers and the likes. So anything that’s non-police presence. Is, can I just ask, Mr.

Dickens, given we were confused by that, and it took us a period of time to figure that out. Perhaps some wording clarification in this, so that when the public reads our strategic plan, they get that. That could be suggested would probably be very helpful if we endeavor to keep this section. Through you, Chair, we could certainly entertain language to be as specific as you’d like in terms of naming CIR.

My only caution to that is that council has recently endorsed a health and homelessness plan, which looks at a coordinated outreach function, which may include coordinated informed response in this current version. It may include it in a different version, so we could increase the presence in the core for support and safety involving organizations. We could broaden it to community support services, keep it as high level as that, or chair through you. We could combine CNA to increase the presence of London Police Service officers in the core and other community support services in the core area.

I see lots of nods for that, so let’s do that and put the two together. Makes a lot more sense, and then we can delete C. Does anybody have any objections? We’ll wait for the wording, but any objections to that combination.

That’s what we’re gonna do. Just gonna get the wording finalized. Everybody can see it. It says increase presence of London Police Service officers and other community support services in the core area.

Lots of nods, no objections, that’s in. Any other changes to what we see on the screen for these sections? I believe the next section is mobility and transportation, but I’m gonna take a moment here at 10.30 to ask colleagues if we’ve reached that point where you’d like to decide to continue our work at the next SPPC meeting rather than continuing to plow through now, comments or feedback. I, yes, Councillor Hopkins.

Thank you for asking. I would be quite happy that we paused right now and move to the next meeting. Okay, Councillor Frank? No.

Okay, then let me just put a motion up that we can consider as a group. Give me one second. So if you can just turn your screen on. So I’ll look for a move and a seconder for the following motion.

That the consideration of the remaining portions of the draft strategic plan be referred to the next meeting of the strategic priorities and policy committee. So basically, we’re not gonna continue this meeting later. We’re just gonna refer the things that we didn’t do to that meeting. Councillor Hopkins willing to move.

Councillor Ferrer willing to second. Any discussion on that? Okay, we’ll open that for voting. This will be a vote in the system.

Closing the vote, the motion’s passed while to zero. Okay, colleagues. So just so you understand how this is gonna work, that’s gonna make our March 28th meeting a continuation of the work that we’re doing today. It means that we will need the April 17th meeting of SPPC to take the place of what was going to happen at March 28th.

And we will continue along the path here. Okay, so we don’t need any other motions to wrap up this section. I’m gonna, before we move from the section, I just wanna echo again our thanks to Ms. Smith, Wilcox, Steinberg, all the senior staff and everybody who supported the work that we did today with helping us work through continuing to work through sections of the strategic plan.

I know we throw a lot of questions at you and thank you very much for your timely and helpful answers. That’s it for items for direction. I have deferred matters in additional business. I’ll see any, I’m gonna, I know everybody wants to go, but indulge me for a moment.

We had a recognition yesterday of International Women’s Day because that was our council meeting closest to it. We have a committee meeting today. And so it is International Women’s Day. And so I know that there are many phenomenal women that we can draw attention to.

I spoke about our staff and many others yesterday. Today, I just wanted to draw attention to our colleagues around the horseshoe. Councilor Hopkins, Councilor Raman, Councilor Frank, Councilor Palosa, Councilor Stevenson. It is not easy to get elected in the city.

We know that there are barriers and challenges that women face, that men do not. Not only have you overcome those challenges, you serve as a role model for many others who look to achieve the success you have. And I know I speak on behalf of all of council when I say the input feedback and perspective that you provide to the work we do here is incredibly valued and celebrated. And so we may not all agree.

You may not agree with each other, but having your presence and your work here on the council is something for us to celebrate on a day such as today. So thank you for your working, your contributions. With that, I’d look for a motion to adjourn. Councilor Cuddy, seconded by Councilor Stevenson.

All those in favor of adjournment. That motion’s carried. Thank you, we’re adjourned.