September 19, 2023, at 4:00 PM

Original link

The meeting is called to order at 4:02 PM; it being noted that Councillors P. Van Meerbergen, E. Peloza (after 7:10 PM) and S. Hillier were in remote attendance

1.   Disclosures of Pecuniary Interest

That it BE NOTED that no pecuniary interests were disclosed.

Moved by A. Hopkins

Seconded by E. Peloza

That, pursuant to section 27.6 of the Council Procedure By-law, a change in order of the Strategic Priorities and Policy Committee Agenda BE APPROVED, to provide for Item 5.1 in Stage 5, Appointment to the London Hydro Board of Directors, to be considered after Stage 6, Confidential.

Motion Passed (13 to 0)

2.   Consent

2.1   Development Charge Exemptions and Discounts

2023-09-19 Staff Report - Development Charge Exemptions and Discounts

That, on the recommendation of the Deputy City Manager, Finance Supports the following actions be taken:

a)    the report, entitled, ‘Development Charge Exemptions and Discounts BE RECEIVED for information;

b)    the Civic Administration BE DIRECTED to incorporate funding requirements associated with statutory development charge exemptions and discounts into the 2024-2027 Multi-Year Budget, it being noted that adjustments may be made through the Annual Budget Update process as more experience is gained, including adjusting for any Provincial funding should it be received; and

c)    the Mayor and Councillor Hopkins will continue advocacy on this matter through both AMO and OBCM.

it being noted that the communication as appended to the Added Agenda, from C. Butler, with respect to this matter, was received.

Motion Passed

ADDITIONAL VOTES:

Moved by S. Trosow

Seconded by A. Hopkins

Motion to add a new part c) that the Mayor and Councillor Hopkins will continue advocacy on this matter through both AMO and OBCM.

Motion Passed (15 to 0)

Moved by S. Lewis

Seconded by E. Peloza

The recommendation as amended, BE APPROVED.

Motion Passed (15 to 0)

2.2   Municipal Accommodation Tax - Tourism London Annual Report

2023-09-19 Staff Report - MAP-Tourism London

Moved by S. Trosow

Seconded by P. Cuddy

That on the recommendation of the Deputy City Manager, Planning and Economic Developments, Tourism London’s report on the expenditures of Municipal Accommodation Tax revenues BE RECEIVED for information.

Motion Passed (15 to 0)

3.   Scheduled Items

None.

4.   Items for Direction

4.1   City Manager, Recruitment and Selection Process

2023-09-19 Staff Report - City Manager Recruitment and Selection Process

Moved by C. Rahman

Seconded by P. Cuddy

That, in consultation with the Mayor, and on the recommendation of the Deputy City Manager, Enterprise Supports and Director, People Services, the following actions be taken with respect to the City Manager recruitment and selection process:

a)    the staff reported dated September 19, 2023, related to the City Manager recruitment and selection process, BE RECEIVED for information;

b)    the Recruitment and Selection Plan for the new City Manager contained in the above-noted report, BE ENDORSED; and

c)    that the following Council Members BE APPOINTED to the Recruitment and Selection Committee:

Councillor Lewis

Councillor Rahman

Councillor Pribil

Councillor Stevenson

Councillor Lehman

Mayor Morgan

it being noted that the Strategic Priorities and Policy Committee will be interviewing candidates before Council endorsement.

Motion Passed (14 to 1)

Appointment to the Recruitment and Selection Committee

Majority Winner: Shawn Lewis; Corrine Rahman; Steve Lehman; Jerry Pribil; Susan Stevenson

4.2   Consideration of Appointment to the London and Middlesex Community Housing Board of Directors (Requires 1 Member)

Moved by H. McAlister

Seconded by S. Lewis

That the following actions be taken with respect to the appointment to the London and Middlesex Community Housing Board of Directors:

a)  Kathleen Savoy BE APPOINTED to the London and Middlesex Community Housing Board of Directors as a Second Class Tenant Member for the term ending December 31, 2024; and,

b) the attached proposed by-law BE INTRODUCED at the Municipal Council meeting to be held on September 26, 2023, to ratify and confirm the Resolution of the Shareholder of the London and Middlesex Community Housing;

it being noted that the Strategic Priorities and Policy Committee received a communication dated September 1, 2023 from Councillor H. McAlister, Board of Directors, London and Middlesex Community Housing with respect to this matter.

Motion Passed (15 to 0)

6.   Confidential (Enclosed for Members only.)

Moved by P. Cuddy

Seconded by A. Hopkins

That the Strategic Priorities and Policy Committee convenes in Closed Session to consider the following:

6.1 Personal Matters/Identifiable Individual / Solicitor-Client Privileged Advice

A matter pertaining to a personal matter about an identifiable individual, including municipal or local board employees, and advice that is subject to solicitor-client privilege, including communications necessary for that purpose, related to appointments to the London Hydro Board of Directors.

6.2 Personal Matters/Identifiable Individuals

A matter pertaining to an identifiable individual(s).

6.3 Personal Matters/Identifiable Individuals

A personal matter pertaining to identifiable individuals, including municipal employees, with respect to the 2024 Mayor’s New Year’s Honour List.

Motion Passed (15 to 0)

The Strategic Priorities and Policy Committee convene in Closed Session from 5:36 PM to 6:48 PM.

Moved by E. Peloza

Seconded by D. Ferreira

That the Committee recess at this time.

Motion Passed

The Council recesses at 6:52 PM and reconvenes at 7:17 PM.

5.   Deferred Matters/Additional Business

5.1   Consideration of Appointments to the London Hydro Board of Directors (Requires 2 Members)

Moved by S. Lehman

Seconded by P. Van Meerbergen

That the following actions be taken with respect to appointments to the London Hydro Board of Directors:

a)  Tim Watson and Tracy Gustafson BE APPOINTED to the London Hydro Board of Directors as First Class Members for the term ending the close of the annual meeting of the shareholders to be held in 2025 for the financial year ending December 31, 2024; and,

b)  the attached proposed by-law BE INTRODUCED at the Municipal Council meeting to be held on September 26, 2023, to ratify and confirm the Resolution of the Shareholder of London Hydro Inc.

Motion Passed (13 to 2)

ADDITIONAL VOTES:

Moved by S. Trosow

Seconded by S. Stevenson

That the following actions be taken with respect to appointments to the London Hydro Board of Directors:

a)  Tim Watson and Cedric Gomes BE APPOINTED to the London Hydro Board of Directors as First Class Members for the term ending the close of the annual meeting of the shareholders to be held in 2025 for the financial year ending December 31, 2024; and,

b)  the attached proposed by-law BE INTRODUCED at the Municipal Council meeting to be held on September 26, 2023, to ratify and confirm the Resolution of the Shareholder of London Hydro Inc.

it being noted that the Strategic Priorities and Policy Committee made this recommendation at its meeting on July 19, 2023.

Motion Failed (4 to 11)

Moved by S. Trosow

Seconded by S. Stevenson

That the appointments to the London Hydro Board of Directors BE REFERRED to a future meeting of Strategic Priorities and Policy Committee to conduct interviews for the seven candidates as noted on the agenda.

Motion Failed (4 to 11)

5.2   (ADDED) Proposed London Hydro and Newco Affiliate

2023-09-19 Staff Report - Proposed London Hydro and Newco Affiliate

Moved by P. Cuddy

Seconded by A. Hopkins

That, on the recommendation of the City Manager with the concurrence of the Deputy City Manager, Finance Supports and the Deputy City Manager, Legal Services, the following actions be taken:

a)    the report dated September 19, 2023, titled “Proposed London Hydro and Newco Affiliate” BE RECEIVED; and,

b)    no further steps BE TAKEN with respect to the incorporation of a retail affiliate for London Hydro Inc.

Motion Passed (15 to 0)

5.3   (ADDED) 5th Report of the Governance Working Group

2023-09-19 Staff Report - GWG Report 5

Moved by S. Lewis

Seconded by J. Morgan

That the following actions be taken with respect to the 5th Report of the Governance Working Group from its meeting held on September 11, 2023:

a) the following actions be taken with respect to the 2023 Ward Boundary Review Process:

i) the report dated September 11, 2023, entitled “2023 Ward Boundary Review Process – Terms of Reference”, BE RECEIVED for information;

ii) the Civic Administration BE DIRECTED to bring forward the amended Terms of Reference, with the inclusion of a target to strive for no greater than 15% population variance and consideration of ward naming conventions, for adoption at the October 17, 2023 Council meeting;

iii) the Civic Administration BE DIRECTED to undertake a competitive procurement process to retain an independent third-party consultant to initiate Option 1 as the preferred option of Municipal Council and under the adopted Terms of Reference for the City of London;

iv) that matters regarding governance and compensation be referred back to a future Governance Working Group (GWG), as related to deferred items; Remuneration of Elected Officials and Appointed Citizen Members, Training and Onboarding Process for New Council, Selection Process Policy for Appointing Members to Committees, Civic Boards, and Commissions (as it relates to Council), and it being noted that as previously directed by GWG Chair Lewis & Vice Chair Franke have been collecting data on workloads and council job description reflecting the workload, as appended to the agenda, for further deliberation and discussion; and

b) clause 1.1 BE RECEIVED for information.

Motion Passed

ADDITIONAL VOTES:

Moved by S. Lewis

Seconded by J. Morgan

Motion TO APPROVE Governance Working Group recommendation, except part a ii) and iii).

Motion Passed (14 to 0)

Moved by S. Lewis

Seconded by J. Morgan

Motion TO APPROVE Governance Working Group recommendation parts a ii) and iii).

Motion Passed (11 to 3)

5.4   (ADDED) 7th Report of the Diversity, Inclusion and Anti-Oppression Community Advisory Committee

2023-09-14 - DIACAC Report 7

Moved by P. Cuddy

Seconded by H. McAlister

That the 7th Report of the Diversity, Inclusion and Anti-Oppression Community Advisory Committee from its meeting held on September 14, 2023 BE RECEIVED.

Motion Passed (13 to 0)

7.   Adjournment

Moved by S. Stevenson

Seconded by C. Rahman

That the meeting BE ADJOURNED.

Motion Passed

The meeting adjourned at 8:20 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 (3 hours, 16 minutes)

Okay, colleagues, I’m gonna call the 22nd meeting of the SPPC to order. I’m gonna start by reading a land acknowledgement. The City of London is situated on the traditional lands of the Anishinaabe, Haudenosaunee, Lene Peiwach, and Adewandran. We honor and respect the history languages and culture of the diverse indigenous people who call this territory home.

The City of London is currently home to many First Nation, Métis, and Inuit today. As representatives of the people of the City of London, we are grateful to have the opportunity to work and live in this territory. Further to that, I wanna let you know that the City of London is committed to making every effort to providing alternate formats and communication supports for meetings upon request. To make a request specific to this meeting, you can contact SPPC at london.ca or 519-661-2489 extension-2425.

With that, I will look for any disclosures of pecuniary interest from colleagues today. Okay, colleagues, I’m gonna ask someone to move a motion of a change of order for the business today. As you know, it would be appropriate to have the confidential session before item 5.1. So given the remaining items in the confidential session are pretty light.

I think we just could just deal with all of those. So I’m just looking for a change of order. Councillor Hopkins is willing to move. Councillor Close is willing to second.

And this requires just a simple majority vote. So we’re gonna open that change of order for voting as soon as it’s ready. And that is just to be clear, we’re moving the confidential session to before 5.1. You can ignore the title, if you flip down, you’ll see that it’s actually the change.

It just has to be pinned somewhere in these scribes. So it always, the title always looks a little odd. Councillor Trosto? Yes.

Supposing the vote, motion carries 13 to zero. Thank you for that. On the consent items, I had, I believe Councillor Trosto, you reached out. You wanted to pull 2.1 and 2.2.

You wanted those. So we’ll pull those and we’ll deal with them at the end of items or direction. That leaves 2.3 to 2.6. I’m gonna make some brief comments on 2.6.

I’m not gonna pull up ‘cause I’m not gonna have staff wait ‘til the end of the meeting. ‘Cause I’m just gonna say some nice things about them and that would not be very nice if I made them wait all the way to the end. So I’ll look to see if anybody wants to pull anything else between 2.3 to 2.6. And then I’ll look for a motion to approve that block moved by Councillor Layman, seconded by Councillor Cuddy.

And so at this time, I think I will make some comments on 2.6 and I’ll look for colleagues to see if they want to comment on anything else. But on 2.6, I just wanted to mention specifically about the London’s approved housing accelerator fund application. Colleagues know that obviously this was a big announcement ‘cause many of you were there. We’re very excited to have the opportunity to work with the federal government to bring almost 2,200 additional units that we otherwise would have done to fruition over the next three years.

And you can see the details in this report on the high level approaches that will take to this. I wanna say though, the reason why we’re in a position to have the Prime Minister in town and announcing this while the caucus was here is because of the hard and diligent work of many members of staff who worked hard on an application, pulled it together under very short timelines, ensured that we were able to submit that application very early in the process and put us in an excellent position to not only receive the funding we did, but receive it first across the nation and to do so with an announcement here. So I want on behalf of council to just pass along to Mr. Mathers and everybody else on senior leadership who worked on this as well as all of the teams and all of the support personnel.

Thank you very much. It’s quite an accomplishment, one of the largest singular investment in housing that we’ve had in our city’s history. There’s obviously a lot of work to do ahead, but I wanted to take a moment at this meeting to recognize that. I know Councillor Schuyler, who’s always very thoughtful, passed around a card.

We signed a card, you have a card that you can share, it’s giant. So, but really, if you could pass along that on behalf of council, I would greatly appreciate that. And I also will say to colleagues, you entertained a motion that I brought before this council for us to move forward with the process to move to four as of right units. I can tell you that that was instrumental in the announcement coming together in the timeframe that it did.

And so I greatly appreciate the work that council did to make this happen. And of course, again, we still have a lot of work ahead to bring those units to fruition. We’ve got not only this that we’re working on with housing, but many of the other applications and programs and commitments that we’ve made to other levels of government as well as the general support that we have for creating more housing in the city and the type of housing that allows our city to grow in a fiscal responsible and economically viable way. The Housing Accelerator Fund is all about that.

That’s just one of many programs we’ll access. So thank you to the colleagues around this horseshoe too for your commitment to the housing file, for your support of the Housing Accelerator Fund application. And of course, everything you do every each and every day. So with that, that’s all I wanted to say on Housing Accelerator Fund.

Again, a lot of the work is ahead, but you see that report start to detail. Some of the things that I was able to announce with the Prime Minister on how that funding is going to be allocated. And I do want to add one final piece that has come up that Mr. Mayser and I talked about.

One of the key components of this funding program versus others is it drives unit creation. So we will try a number of different things as a council. Mr. Mayser will bring those reports forward and the teams will do that.

But if we find something that’s working, we have the flexibility to redeploy money under the fund into things that are working well. If we try something that does not working well, we have the ability to move funds away from it. So this is a unique type of federal funding program that puts the real responsibility and opportunity at the municipal level for us to make decisions on the ground as we move through the next few years and creating units. And I think that’s a great opportunity for us to try some things that are innovative, but also make sure that we invest in the things that we know are tried and true in creating units in the city to help not only those who need housing and housing affordability, but also some of the most marginalized in our community who will benefit from some of the supportive housing pieces that we have the opportunity to fund through this investment.

So with that, I’ll leave it at that. I’ll go back to colleagues for any comments you might have on any of the other items, 2.3 to 2.6. Councillor Frank. Thank you.

I feel like this is a clapping moment. So I just was hoping we could all maybe clap for a second. Anyone else? Okay, so the block of items is moved and seconded.

We’ll open that for voting. Oh, go ahead, Councillor Hopkins. Sorry, Mr. Chair, but 2.5, I do have a quick question.

It’s around the training. I know it’s in front of us because we are going to be changing locations and training with the integrity commissioner. Just would like to know if you cannot attend in person if there’s an opportunity to meet virtually. I’ll have the quick response.

Thank you through the chair. Certainly if that is required, we can attempt to make that a combination, but I’m not aware of that facility being set up for that specific purpose. But if there are members of council that do anticipate that they won’t be able to attend, we could look into what options are available. That said, those types of sessions typically will be interactive and it may be very difficult to participate remotely.

Okay, and all that we’re doing now is approving the offsite location as per our procedure by-law. So, okay, any other questions or comments? Okay, seeing none, we’ll open 2.3 to 2.6 for voting. Opposing the vote in the motion carries 14 to zero.

Okay colleagues, the next item is the, the next item is city manager recruitment and selection process. So you’ll see a report there that seeks to receive the report and endorsement of the report. I’m gonna have Mr. Parity lead any sort of initial comments on the selection process.

I can add some context given I was consulted on the pathway forward and then we’ll look for council’s endorsement of the process. And also today, should the committee want to speed the process along? We could even, we could even nominate members for the selection committee. It would all have to be approved by council before I actually strike the committee to be populated by those members.

But rather than go to council meeting to approve, then back to SPBC, just like members, then back to council, we can actually cut a little bit of this out of the process and move a little quicker along the process if we want to entertain not only endorsing the report, but selecting some members for the committee that will narrow things down, we can do that today. So, but I’ll let Mr. Parity make some initial comments. I’ll add some context after.

Yes, through the chair, what I would like to highlight from this report is that it is anticipated that a recruitment and selection process can take up to four months, depending on the quickness of the legacy and the organization, the external executive recruiting firm can get those together for us from going through that process. The recruitment and selection committee itself will consist of five members of council as determined by the mayor. The city clerk or designate to support the committee meeting process and the consultant itself. There will be a member, an HR professional also being part of that hiring process.

The recruitment and selection plan or the following key steps that are laid out before you that are identified, the engage in external search firm. This has already been completed. The review of the current job description has already been completed. The mayor has already confirmed the recruitment plan establishing the city manager recruitment and selection committee, that’s what we’re gonna be discussing.

Advertising and active recruitment will follow recruitment and selection committee recommendations to SPPC for that preferred candidate. The mayor will meet with the preferred candidates and provide recommendations to SPPC. Council selects and endorses the candidate. Civic administration formalizes the offer to the candidate.

Successful candidate confirmed by bylaw. And successful candidate assumes the role. There is a financial consideration, which is part of the report for everyone to consider. And I would like to really highlight the conclusion that it is anticipated that the process and climbing proposed will be conducive to ensure that the attributes that the mayor and council is looking for in a new city manager are found in the successful candidate.

And it’s all geared around that of what council, mayor and council require to succeed our current city manager. Thank you. I’ll add some context for colleagues ‘cause I met with our staff on this. With the suggested process, there’s a couple of things.

First off, one thing that wasn’t highlighted in the report, but is my intention to serve as a member of the selection committee, given the role that I have in the process. So we’ll make that note. The other piece too is something that I want to just explain to colleagues. The mayor meets with the preferred candidates.

So essentially, the selection committee is meant not to make the final decision, but to take who knows, a dozen or 14 candidates and narrow it down to a manageable amount for SPPC to do the selection of. So this smaller group of councilors is only to narrow down the larger list to the viable candidates for SPPC to consider, but all of SPPC will be making that recommendation and not the selection committee. So again, it’s just from an HR practice perspective and we’ve done it before having 15 members of council try to narrow things down. Having a smaller group do that is more conducive to that first step.

But we do recognize through the process that a successful city manager is going to need to become before and be vetted by and answer questions from all members of council to be successful in their role. So that’s why this committee only makes those recommendations to SPPC of a short list, but the SPPC will interview that short list. The reason why there is an engagement with the mayor between those steps is not because I’m going to do anything successful. In fact, it’s actually advice that I’ve received from potential candidates across the province who are seeking other positions.

And I don’t mean potential candidates for our position. I mean, talking with other people who are going through this process. There’s an interest in potential CAOs and city managers in meeting with the mayor, given the new strong mayor legislation and the ability that the head of council has in the hiring and dismissing process. And so there is an interest in them getting to know a little bit more about the head of council.

And so that opportunity will be extended to them. My intention is to come back to SPPC and share how those discussions went, but to respect to SPPC’s approach once they have the short list of candidates in the discussion that we will all have together at that time. It’s also my intention to, once SPPC nominates a single candidate, is that we would not delay. Assuming the process goes smooth and we’re able to narrow it down as SPPC to a single candidate through the in-camera process, I can actually sign the appointment document that night when it’s approved by council and camera released publicly.

It’s something that I can do on the spot and my intention would be not to delay that sort of decision. So with the utmost respect for the important role that council plays in working with the city manager, that’s why we’ve taken the approach to design a process that engages council fully in this irrespective of the new legislation and what it means for heads of council. So I wanted to add that context on why you see the process outlined before you, why it was different for those who were on council from the past and how we’ve tried to approach this in a way that respects the important role that council has in selecting senior leaders in the municipality. So, Councilor McAlister.

Thank you and through the chair. Just a question in terms of the process. You noted that it could take up to four months and respecting the timeline that our current city manager has put forward and wanting to retire by year end. If it does take the maximum amount, is there a plan in place in terms of coverage who would take on that responsibility?

So through the chair, that would be a determination working with the mayor of an appointment of an acting city manager. Four months is worst case scenario as the mayor alluded to if the process goes well with the higher end of the recruitment committee through SPPC, this would go much faster and have a closer line up to the city manager’s end date and the new city manager’s start date. Okay, other questions? Councilor Stevenson and then Deputy Mayor Lewis.

Deputy Mayor Lewis and then Councilor Stevenson. Thank you, worship and through you to colleagues. I just want to share, I do believe it’s imperative that we actually get names on a selection committee tonight because we do have a short timeline and as much as we are sad to see Ms. Livingston go, I don’t think that Mr.

Parity will approve a ball and chain to keep her at her desk past December 31st. Should we not identify a candidate? So I think that we do need to move along and start working through the recruitment and the narrowing down of the candidates before they come before SPPC as a whole. So I will put that out there and I will indicate colleagues I’m prepared to let my name stand as a member of that selection committee.

Okay, so let’s do, just make sure colleagues are okay with the process, they don’t have any questions on that and then we can actually move to that sort of process of seeing who’s interested, putting names on and then we can do a selection process. Should we have more interested names than there are spots? If we have less, we’ll just do some arm twisting. Although I don’t think that’s gonna be a challenge today.

Go to Councillor Stevenson. Thank you, I’m wondering why this process is looking different than the police board. This is Council’s one and only employee and we selected the people that we were gonna interview in a certain way for the police board. This is far more important.

I don’t know why we’re deferring to a committee of five, why we don’t all get that chance to vote and select for the number of candidates that get to be interviewed. I can answer that, there’s probably some HR best practices that Mr. Parity can answer too about why you would use a smaller selection committee but I can also make some comments about the process when I start with you, Mr. Parity.

Through the chair, so the police services board, they typically lay out exactly this whole process when it comes to hiring of a police chief and they are a completely arm’s length entity suffered from city council. Mr. Parity, I think the council was talking about the council appointee to the police services board, not the selection of the police chief. Oh, okay, I’m not aware of that process.

How would that one work? Yes, so let me handle this. With the appointment process for the members of the police board, within our rules, council makes that selection. Under the legislation, I could essentially go and hire a city manager today and pick someone.

So we’re outlining a process that actually involves council and bringing it before you today for your consideration and thoughts and hopefully approval and we can move forward. The idea of using a smaller selection committee isn’t for that group to make the final decision, but simply narrow down what might be, through the search firm who will go out and recruit and find candidates who fit the job description across the country will come back and they will have a list of who knows 10 to 15 names that they might wanna bring before a committee. That committee could narrow it down to three to five names, perhaps who would come before all of council. Essentially, the committee does the step of a smaller group more efficiently, kind of weeding through the larger group of applications and then bringing forward the names.

Ultimately, SPPC could say in the process, we don’t like any of these names and then you can go back and do an additional process that would take more time. But the SPPC will make the recommendation to the mayor for approval. It won’t be the selection committee directly. It will come to SPPC and if people think there’s not a viable candidate that the selection committee has set forward, that’s a discussion that SPPC can have.

But the intention is once the short list is done by the selection committee is that there would be a full engagement and interview process with all members of council sitting as SPPC. Yeah, and so my thought is we had what 51, 52 applicants for the police board and we efficiently narrowed it down to a pool of I think five we interviewed. I personally would like to not have a smaller committee of five. I’d like all of us, we’ve done it before.

We’re quite capable of doing it. It’s a super important role. And I can’t see any reason why we wouldn’t be able to all 15 of us narrow it down. So because yes, you could just choose, but council also can.

So I’m saying let council do it or use your powers and choose, but why are we going somewhere in the middle? I will take a stab at that. So even under the old rules where council had the appointment, we did use a smaller committee to narrow it down and do the work and then make recommendations to council. For those who may have been on council and were involved in that committee, I found it quite helpful and efficient.

And I think council has made good decisions in the past. So it’s a process that we replicated. I know councilor Hopkins, you were part of that process as well. But you could add some context on the previous process without obviously divulging anything about candidates or those sorts of details.

But if it’s an advantage to some new members of council to know how we’ve done it before, and that narrowing down selection, I’m happy to let you provide some context to council. Thank you, Mr. Chair. And I just wanna make sure we have changed the rules slightly, but I do wanna make sure, given the old rules, any council member was allowed to attend the selection committee meetings and sit in attendance and listen to the conversation and the debate and be engaged.

There was really, that is open to any council member and I would like to just make sure that old rules still exist. So you’re asking the question of whether members who aren’t on the section, we can come, and I’m sure, of course, I guess. Yeah, I just wanna confirm that. Yes, of course, yeah, but the members of the section committee will do the narrowing down on the voting in the betting and the passing on to SBPC.

That’s the concept, okay, councilor Stevenson. Is the mayor open to allowing all 15 of us to sit or can we bring a motion and see what people think? What can we do to just be sure we’re all on board with that special committee? Because we did it for the police board and it seemed to work quite well, so.

Yes, so council can make any suggestion to me that they want. I think there might be some differences of opinion on that. I’m happy to hear what people think. We’re having a discussion about it now.

I can go back to the deputy mayor, which I, you know, a committee, I have to start timing people, sorry about that, but there might be others who have a difference of opinion, but I’m happy to take any thoughts that committee wants to take on this process. That’s why I brought the process before committee to get your feedback. Thank you, Your Worship, and perhaps I can help provide a little bit of clarification as well. And I think it’s first of all important to recognize that the police board appointment was an exception, not actually the rule.

We deviated from our standard appointment process to deal with what was a loggerhead at council in that round. But I think that colleagues need to consider how difficult it was in finding a single day to do one round of interviews. If my memory serves correct, and Councillor Hopkins can correct me if I’m incorrect, but with the last round of city manager hiring with double digit candidates, multiple days were required for members of even the selection committee, let alone visiting members to be available for multiple interviews on multiple days. And then there were multiple rounds.

So the first round of if memory serves correctly, the first round of applications was reviewed by the selection committee. That list was shortened to a slightly smaller list, which again, without talking about particular candidates, I believe was eight. And then from that shorter list of eight, we got down to the three that were ultimately brought, or three or four that were ultimately brought to SPPC. So it was multiple rounds of interviews on multiple days of quite a number of candidates.

So to schedule this to make it happen in a four month window, to say that all 15 members are going to be available and voting members of a selection committee, I just, I respectfully don’t think it’s realistic, given people’s schedules and other commitments and other boards, agencies and commissions that we’re gonna find days to make that work. So if Councillor Hopkins, if I said anything incorrect in terms of the last process in general terms, I’d welcome the correction, I’m working for memory. So, but that’s my recollection, that there were multiple rounds, and actually the list was shortened twice before the final short list came to SPPC. I have Councillor Ploza next, Councillor Hopkins, I’ll add you back after Councillor Ploza.

Thank you, Your Worship. Not sure if there’s an easy way of just asking for a quick show of hands or asking who would be interested, we might be even talking about something that’s really, maybe we already have five people who are super keen, who have time to go through this process, and we can just see who’s actually interested before we get too far down this. Perks says straw pools are usually not advisable or a problem, but people can certainly indicate through the debate that they would be interested in serving in such a way. Yeah, maybe we could just kind of do that now, and you have an idea of how far we need to keep going, if you already have those who are interested in serving.

Yes, yeah, I understand what you’re saying, not everybody may want to sit on the selection committee, which might be multiple days over multiple weeks for narrowing it down. Yeah, we know we have, it sounds like two can’ts for sure, not sure if there’s how many more is interested. Sure, okay, I’ll go to Councillor Hopkins next. Yeah, I just would like to follow up on the Deputy Mayor’s comments.

It went quite smoothly. The Corporate Committee, in fact, was given the mandate to do the selection process, and there were concerns at that time, if you weren’t on the Corporate Committee, that you would sort of at arms lengthen and removed from the selection process, but it was open to any Councillor to attend. You were able to hear the debate and see and read up on the candidates. There was nothing at all stopping any Councillor from doing that, and then the list was shortened, and then it was given to SBPC, and we went through the interview process and came up with a great candidate, but it did go smoothly, it was a little bit, again, there was a desire for a lot of Councillors to be part of the process, but it’s still open to having input even and making comments at the selection committee.

Councillor Trostoff first. Yes, thank you through the chair. I fully agree with what the Deputy Mayor said. I don’t think we need to have the full Council on there.

I would be honored to serve on that committee, and if I’m not selected, I’ll certainly attend the meetings and watch carefully what’s going on, but it would be fine with me to watch the other five members make the thing. I just think this would be burdensome, and I think we really are working under a very, very constrained time issue here, so I don’t think opening this up to the whole Council to be part of the winnelling committee is a good idea, so I’ll just leave it there. I have Councillor Stevenson. Oh, you want me to go to someone else for it?

Okay, Councillor ramen first, and then Councillor Ferrara, and then I can put you back on the list. Thank you, and through you. So I am supportive of this process. I think that we have very limited time to make a decision, and I am interested in moving forward with that decision in a swift manner, having participated in not only the conversations that we’ve had around this committee when we’ve been selecting candidates, but also in previous roles.

I do have an interest in being a part of the selection committee, and I do think that there is an opportunity for all Councillors to participate throughout the process and be part of it, so I hope that they will take that opportunity as well. I just want to clarify something, though, within the outline process. Just when I’m reading it, and just so I’m clear, there was, in the summary that was provided, a little bit of background on how the candidate would be, candidates prefer, suggested candidates, would be put forward to SPPC. And I’m just wondering if, on top of going through an interview with the selection committee, if they also go through another interview with the whole of SPPC.

So, do you want me to clarify? Yes, I do. Okay, sorry. I’m reading it is under five.

Recruitment and selection committee recommends to SPPC in May or the preferred candidates. So, is that prior, is that after an interview has taken place, or is that to be interviewed? Yes, so, the selection committee may determine to do some interviews to narrow it down. They may also do an initial narrowing down simply from the applications and the advice of the external consultation firm about who to do them.

They may even do some of those interviews digitally or in person. But the intent is, the reason why it says candidates, is it’s my expectation based on previous experience that you usually end up having a number of viable candidates. And that they would be simply then recommending here are the candidates we’ve narrowed down to SPPC. And then SPPC would like absolutely, I would say, do interviews and discussions with them.

Because there is an advantage to the candidates getting to experience the glory of all of us all at once, because that’s who they get to work with, all of us all at once, right? And so, it’s to me important in the process that that piece happens. So, I know it doesn’t say it exclusively, but when it says recommends preferred candidates, it’s at that point that SPPC can ultimately choose the process to interview or anything else that they wanna do. That would come to all of us for that decision making.

And so, it doesn’t explicitly say interviews, but interviews would certainly be something that SPPC has done in the past. And I would expect more to do with a narrow down list of candidates. Just to follow up. So, I would suggest that we explicitly state the steps in how we are going about those interviews, just so there isn’t confusion amongst this committee as to who is conducting the interviews and how those interviews will be conducted.

‘Cause I do think there’s a little bit of Agnes there that perhaps we can just sort out with tonight even, or send back to the committee to work on to then get approval, just so that we’re all on the same page. Well, I’ll give you my opinion. And SPPC should conduct interviews of the shortlist of candidates, for sure. Like, they work with all members of council.

That’s what’s been done in the past. And so, if it’s not explicit here, we’ll make it explicit that regardless, irrespective of what the selection committee does, their purpose is to narrow it down and make a list of candidates to the SPPC. And I would be shocked if SPPC did not want to interview them. I would strongly encourage it.

So let’s just put that in the process so that it’s clear. And we’ll just make that note and have that tidied up for council. When we endorse the plan, should we do that today? It will include an explicit reference to SPPC interviewing the candidates.

Councillor Ferrer. Thank you. I would myself would also be interested in being on the selection committee. And I do like the idea of having the five members that are voting members, selecting members, but also visiting members of council to be part of the discussion, just so we can all be a part of that.

But I’d also like to, before maybe having any nominations or selecting the selecting committee, maybe have a schedule of when we would anticipate these meetings to take place, just so anyone who wants to be on the selection committee can actually make that time before it happens. So I just wanted to put maybe that on the table just before I would ask someone to nominate me. I would like to know if I can even make it just, that would probably, that would make the determination of what my decision would be being selected for that. So I’ll answer that, Mr.

Parity, can I answer anything? That’s not gonna be possible to do at this point. Essentially how the process will work is the external affirm will be identifying a range of candidates, they’ll be bringing that to a meeting with the committee, and the committee will decide then to, we would like to interview X number of candidates, and at that time, only then would a schedule be said because you don’t know who we’re interviewing. So we’re not setting aside dates at this point, but anybody who serves on the selection committee should expect to try to be as flexible as possible.

This is the committee that is going to have, the group that’s gonna have the flexibility to meet in a more efficient way than 15 members can to do that work to narrow it down. So I don’t think we can possibly answer your question today, given the way that this process generally works, Mr. Parity can provide some additional context. You know, through the chair, for any council member that’s gonna be on the recruitment selection committee, those five candidates, if that’s the direction that the council goes with this evening to select them.

Those, part of what Deputy Mayor Lewis alluded to, having that smaller group for scheduling and whatnot, committee should expect up to four to five interviews total to finally get down to that one to make that decision. And when we’re talking that amount of interviews to select the right person, the right fit that the Mayor and Council are looking for, the scheduling around that is gonna be very, very intense to get everybody together, to get the right group. So anybody that puts their name forward should be very, very well prepared to be flexible, like the chair said, and/or if you’re gonna be part of this process. And I just wanna correct something you said, Mr.

Parity, it’s not one candidate that they would necessarily be recommending, the committee will have discretion to forward a number of candidates if they feel that there are, say, two or three viable candidates to SBPC for all of us to interview. Through the chair, correct. To get it down to that one, you should expect multiple, multiple interviews up to at least four or five of all those potential candidates that you get down to the one that you choose. Yeah, thank you for that.

So that level of flexibility, I’ve heard worst case scenario could be upwards of four months that we’re asking for. Through the chair, correct. And we were using four months as hopefully a worst case scenario, but having that smaller group, like suggested by the chair may expedite that, to get it down to a more manageable time frame, to try and align it with the current city manager’s upcoming retirement. Thank you.

Okay, with that, I would ask, ‘cause I still have interest, but I need to know if I’m able to do it. I would ask that we, and I know you wanna move the process along, but maybe, I’m not sure exactly how we’re gonna go right now, but to not necessarily nominate any candidates today, if possible, so we can actually look in to see if we can have that flexibility. That would be something personally that I would like to look into, just to see if I can actually do that flexibility, so I could deny a nomination if I were to get it, so we don’t stall the process, but that would be my concern in my comments. I think we could take your comments under advisement, but I think that there’s a number of members of the council who would like to set up the process and get going on this, given we only have four months.

I mean, the process starts as soon as we decide to start it, and if we wanted to lay starting it, we’re gonna have a city manager potentially later, so that’s up to us. I think people heard your comments, but I think there’s gonna be a will of a committee here. Not everybody may agree on that piece, but I think we appreciate your sharing your thoughts. Go ahead.

Okay, one more question then. I’m just trying to figure out, I guess, everything in the background as we go along on this, but I would assume that these dates that we would actually be doing the interviews would fall on, are you able to give me maybe the specific days that you might see it, you wouldn’t see it on Mondays and Tuesdays, I would assume, ‘cause we have committee and council usually on that, but I just wanted to know if you’re able to give that information, what do you foresee that this would fall into? Yeah, Mr. Parity, you can comment on the process, but generally, let me say generally, having experiences before, when you know that you wanna interview, say, six people, then the committee, before they interview those six people, would say, we gotta set aside five or six days that we’re gonna hold, the staff will do their best to get those people interviewed all on the same day to keep it tight together, so when you keep the interviews tight together, stuff is fresh in your head, like to not spread it over multiple days, but that’s up to the scheduling of the committee and the candidates, so we can’t possibly, I think, pick the days at this point, but there would be a lot of discretion for that committee to say, we gotta pick a day that works for everybody, so committee has to be as flexible as possible, but I don’t think we can get into suggesting specific days, if you’ve got a great candidate, and there may be a city manager somewhere else, and they need some discretion when they’re interviewing here, we may have to be a little bit flexible on when we can meet with them, and under what timeframe, if we wanna get the best possible candidate.

Mr. Parity, do you have anything to add? Through the chair, no, everything in the chair has just shared, is absolutely correct. Okay, it’s noted, understandable, thank you.

I’m back to Councillor Stevenson. Thank you, just more questions on the process. Councillor Hopkins said that the last time it was done by the corporate services committee, so why the change this time? We could do it by the corporate services committee, I just thought maybe other members of council than the current composition of the corporate services committee would like to serve, given they may not have known that there was a city manager selection process, so for me, it was an opportunity to open it up to other members of council, rather than the people who may have chosen that committee without any interest in participating in a selection process.

So in the past, we’ve just used it because it was the general HR committee of council, but I thought there might be other members of council who would like to serve, and so opening it up was the approach that I suggested. And I like that, I’m just wondering if you’d be willing to open it up to any Councillors that want to participate, ‘cause rather than five, if we have seven or eight, I don’t see it slowing it down. People can either attend or they can’t make it, and a vote doesn’t go any longer either. We’ve done this well before.

We get one employee at a critical junction point for our city. We get one employee, and to say that Councillors who want to participate will not be able to participate because we’re limiting it to five, with no precedent for this. I’m really curious as to what the opposition is to saying if Councillors want to, and they can make it, they’re not going to accommodate people’s schedules, but if they’re willing to be there and be, I’m just wondering why, or making the request, would you open it up? So I’ll go to Councillor Trossaou in a moment.

So the president is corporate services committee of six, which is five members plus the mayor. That is what we’ve used in the process in the past. All members of council through SPPC will have the ability to make the final vote. No one is being excluded, but I will say every member of the selection committee, if they’re on it, needs to attend each and every single interview, they can’t just pop in for some and then move out of the others.

It is inappropriate to not interview every candidate. So the people who want to commit to this need to commit to it through the whole process, and each and every interview, other candidates, Councillors who might want to come in and observe the process or listen in, they may come in and out, but if you’re on the selection committee, you need to be there for every single one. So I don’t think every member of council wants to commit to that. Again, I’m bringing a report before seeking your endorsement.

If your colleagues want to go a different way with that, this is the time that they can make that suggestion, but I’m looking for the endorsement of all members of council, even if there’s differences of opinion, we have to find that. But I don’t want anybody to feel they’re being excluded from a process. SPPC is going to get a go at the candidates that are shortlisted and if they don’t like the candidates that are shortlisted, they’re going to have the opportunity to say back to the committee. We don’t like any of the candidates.

So that’s my answer to the question. I’m going to go to Councillor Trois next. You said what I wanted to say, so that’s that. Councillor Sprank.

I like Councillor Skylar, but I’m just joking. Yeah, I like this process, and I’d be happy to put my name forward as well, thanks. Any other speakers? Councillor Stevenson.

Just a couple more questions on process, then. What number is the interviewing by SPPC going to happen, like on your list? Because it doesn’t specifically say. So that’s going to be clarified when the recruitment and selection committee recommends to SPPC the preferred candidates.

It’s the next step after five, kind of between five and seven, where there would be— because I think that they can meet with me if they so choose at the same time as they might— actually, it will be after six. It would be between six and seven, because then I can share with SPPC the discussions that they may have had with me or the questions they may have had. I think that would be insightful for colleagues to know that piece. So I would endeavor to make myself very available for those candidates.

And then I would give you an updated SPPC on those discussions as well. And you would do the interviews between six and seven. And just one more clarification. So you’ve said that other Councillors who may not be on the hiring committee are allowed to participate freely.

So we’re able to attend to any of them, including the interviews, or the interviews recordings would be available. Yes, that’s what we’ve done in the past. So if the committee is sitting and interviewing, and a counselor wants to show up and listen on those interviews, they can do that. Thank you.

I’d just like to indicate I’m interested. That’s our Ferra. Thank you. Just to follow up, counselors who are not on the committee would be allowed to show up and listen to the interviews.

Would they also be allowed to ask questions of the candidate as well? I think that that would be up to the discretion of the committee. The caution with that is that what Mr. Parity would— and I’ll let him speak for himself— is if you’re not there for every single candidate interview, it becomes an unfair process if a counselor shows up to one or two and asks questions of one.

And then we’re not creating consistent questions across the number of candidates. And so I’ll go to Mr. Parity for some best HR practices in the interviewing. So generally, that’s not encouraged, especially if you can’t show up to everyone.

But certainly, I think if there’s colleagues who feel that there are questions that need to be asked of the candidates, I cannot contemplate a scenario where the selection committee or members of the selection committee aren’t willing to put those questions on the floor for those candidates in any form that they want. But we have to make sure that we follow HR best practices in the interviews for consistency and fairness, Mr. Parity. So through the higher process, not just for this position, for any position, has to be pristine.

And when I mean by pristine, it has to be 100% fair for every single candidate. So like the chair said, if you came to one interview and you asked a question, that question would have to be asked every single candidate in order to make it fair. That’s why in advance, we actually have a set out, approved set of questions for every single candidate, and the feedback on the comments of what comes back from that and the risk-scoring criteria. All of this would be part of that committee.

And the people involved would all be sitting down and those questions would be brought forth. We do have HR or people services. We would already have a bank of questions, and those would be shared. And we would build that entire template together to make sure the right questions are being asked to bring out the right work we’re looking for.

And to add that there’s nothing stopping all members of council should they choose to, making suggestions of questions that should be on that template. There’s the committee may be asking the questions and maybe doing that part of the selection process, but all members of council should they feel like there’s something that should be addressed or raised in those discussions, have the ability to provide that in advance of them being asked. Correct, what the chair just shared is correct. So everything will be shared in advance so we can build out what we need to ask for those questions.

And also working with the executive hiring firm as well. Okay, you kind of answered the question that I was thinking, so we would have the possibility to give questions beforehand to the committee to formulate on the list of questions. Kind of like what we did with the police board. 100%.

  • Okay. Yeah, 100%. Council approval. Just to add to the selection committee, I believe it should be no more than six, five to six maximum.

I don’t believe that if any councilor who wouldn’t be on this committee should be able to show up in the same room. If they wanna watch it through the video or through TV, I’m perfectly fine with that. But again, we cannot have in our room 15 people one day and in other room five people. And just to add, if we are gonna go with this route, I would like to put my name forward as well.

And based on my international extensive experience with recruiting, interviewing and hiring top executive managers, I hope I’ll be a valid addition to this team. Thanks, Dr. Hopkins. I’d just like to follow up and make a comment on the previous process.

We were able to be in the same room. It wasn’t a problem. We were able to. Okay, I just don’t think it’s the fair towards the candidate that one day the candidate could be there with five people and then next day with 15.

It’s a position of city manager. I’m almost positive that if there’s a couple of members of council sitting in for one in the back and there’s like three or four or five on the other, like this is something that is at this level, not gonna be an issue, but I understand the concern that Councilor Perble has. So I think as it’s proceeded before it has worked quite well. And again, colleagues who are not on the selection committee, including the colleagues who are on the selection committee, can change their mind and ask questions and do the process at SPPC, which is like a critical part of the process.

Like the selection committee has to be thought about as doing the work to narrow it down, to make the job easier and more efficient for SPPC when we have to get 15 members of council together in a room to make some final decisions. So rather than people being involved in looking at 15 applications, you get to do two or three interviews at the end of the day and allow a group of us, which we trust with committee work all the time to vet and make recommendations, are gonna do the same thing to this group. But this group, all of us, are gonna have a chance with the candidates to participate in a full process once they are narrowed down. Okay, so if there’s someone, I think we’ll do the selection process first, if people are done asking questions, and then we can roll everything kind of into one big motion with receive the report endorsement of the approach with the modifications that we clarified on the interview of SPPC and the fact that the mayor will sit on the committee, too, and so we’ll have a selection process to select five members of the committee.

And the people I hear interested so far, Councillor Trossa, Deputy Mayor Lewis, Councillor Raman, Councillor Ferriar, Councillor Stevenson, I believe, took some of your comments as you being interested. Councillor Pribble, Councillor Frank, right? I put Councillor Skylar down, I actually wrote it down that way. That’s who I have so far, who’s interested.

Councillor Ferriar, go ahead. I would ask if you remove my name, I’m not unsure about the flexibility, I don’t think it would be fair. However, I do want to serve on the committee and be part of the selection process, but just, I just know that there’s a lot of unknown, so it would be wise to just take my name off. Okay, so we have six people for five possible spots then so far, is anybody else interested?

Go ahead, Councillor Lehman. I’ll have my name to have those, please. So no one online, I just want to make sure we have two colleagues online. I don’t want them to miss an opportunity.

No, oh, I think we got a vigorous no from Councillor Hillier. Okay, so what we can do is the same process we use for selecting member of councils for committee and that’s we can load the Councillors who are interested into the list. We can do selection. There are five members of the committee, so you actually get to pick five, right?

Yes, and then it’ll be the top five who are selected and we’ll just add their names into an actual appointment piece with the other components of the motion afterwards. Okay, I want to make sure we’re not missing anybody. Councillors, Lewis, Stevenson, Pribble, Trossaou, Ramen, Lehman, Frank, or Skyler, whichever way you want to say it. Anybody else?

So you’ll get to pick five. Question, go ahead, Councillor Ramen. Thank you and through you. So just to clarify, you’re the sixth member, gotcha.

Okay, and second, are we going to speak to it before we hear a decision? Yes, yeah. Wonderful, thank you. So through you, so I, as I mentioned, I’m putting my name forward to serve on this committee.

As many of you know, I have a background in HR. I have a hold of postgraduate certificate in it. I’ve conducted interviews at the judicial and the justice of the peace through those processes, both federally and provincially, as well as participated in director selections in the past, as well as many hiring panels with the college as well. Thank you.

Anybody else want to speak? Go ahead, Councillor Stevenson. Yeah, I’ll just say too, I have an extensive background in hiring just through my management positions in corporate and when I had my own practice for 10 years and just recently did the chief and deputy chief for the London Police Service. Anybody else want to speak?

It’s like an interview process. I like it though. No, okay. All right, I just want to make sure everybody had their chance before we opened it up.

Okay, we’ll open that up for voting. Take your time to selecting five members. It’s strongly, strongly encouraged colleagues to vote for all five. If it’s a five member selection committee, please don’t select four.

There’s five members of the committee. We need, it’s helpful if you select five. There are five members chosen. Councillor Lewis, Councillor ramen, Councillor Lehman, Councillor Pribble, Councillor Stevenson, can read the votes as well.

Councillor Lewis, 15, Councillor ramen, 14, Councillor Lehman, 13, Councillor Pribble, 11, Councillor Stevenson, 10. Okay, so we’re going to add to the main motion, which is receive the report, endorse the process with the general understanding of the changes that we’ve made to the process for clarification, and then the appointment of those individuals plus myself to the selection committee. Okay, so who’s willing to move that, everybody? Councillor ramen, seconded by Councillor Cuddy.

colleagues, that’ll just take a second to get in the system. There’s a few names that have to be typed in there. Okay, colleagues, you should be able to see a loaded motion now. You’ll see that just to clean up the comment we made, it says it being noted that SPPC will be interviewing candidates before council endorsement.

That’ll be just kind of packaged a little better for the council approval, but we just put it in there to recognize the discussion we had and I think everything’s in here now. So I just want to make sure everybody sees that before I open the vote. Everybody sees the motion, good. Okay, I’ll open that for voting.

I did have a mover and seconder, I believe it was Councillor ramen and Cuddy. Bozing the vote in the motion carries, 14 to one. Item 4.2, consideration of appointment with the London and Middlesex community housing board of directors, it requires one member. You see the full list of candidates.

You also see a letter outlining a recommendation from the board as per the process that we’ve asked them to. I might just see if a board member wants to make a comment on the selection process. I don’t know if it’s Councillor McAllister or Louis. Go ahead, Councillor McAllister.

Thank you and through the chair. So the deputy mayor took the first appointment to a board and I took the next one for London and Middlesex housing. Just to remind everyone that this is for a tenant position for the board of directors. We did four interviews and Kathleen Savoy was the unanimous member that we’re recommending.

I believe she really stood out from the other candidates, very community focused, mother cares about the community, wants to see improvements. We believe that she has the experience and the appropriate background to be an effective board member and represent the tenants very well on that board. So if you have any questions about the selection process, I’d be happy to answer those as well. Thank you.

Is there any questions that colleagues have about the selection process? If not, I’m gonna let you move the appointment of that member if you so choose. Again, Council has the full discretion to point someone else, but believe the Council from the board wants to move member of it. Yes, go ahead.

Seconder, Deputy Mayor Lewis. Discussion, Councillor ramen. Thank you, just wanted to say that thank you to the London Middlesex community housing association for putting forward this in the board of directors, sorry, for putting forward this nomination. Much appreciated the work that you’ve done to narrow down the selection and I’m supportive of the recommendation of the board.

Councillor Ferrero. Thank you, I read through the applications and I did read Kathleen’s application and I did see the letter of recommendation, but I was wondering if the two board members would be willing to give the experience and what was said on the interview just to give us a little more context for the selected or for the recommended candidate. Councillor McAllister. Yes, thank you and through the chair.

In terms of looking through the applications and the experience, I will be honest, there wasn’t a lot of board experience, but this is a tenant position. So really what we were looking for is someone who could speak on behalf of tenants. Through the interview process, we felt that Kathleen had a lot of the volunteer experience and had worked kind of in roles that would give her enough insight into the governance of the board. I think from her experience, volunteering in different, but with different organizations, I should say.

And then her experience in the community housing that she would have what we were looking for. And so the difference, I would say, is I mean, for a board of director that isn’t a tenant, you might look for other levels of experience, but for this one, we felt that she had the qualifications. Thank you. Councillor Troso.

As I thank you through the chair, as I’ve stated before, I’m very skeptical of having the management of a landlord board select the tenant representative. Having said that, particularly in deference to my two colleagues who have gone through the interview process and not seeing an alternative at this point, I’m going to support the recommendation. But I want to make it really clear that my view of this position is this person has to be an advocate for the residents of the building because they very badly need it. And I am trusting my colleagues to have made, to have factored that into their decision.

And I’m going to be very disappointed if I find out this doesn’t happen. I’ve got nothing but complaints from people in my buildings, in my ward. And I expect to see improvement in the conditions. And I will be looking to the incumbent of the tenant representative to be working with tenants in other buildings to do that.

So I just want to let you know that despite my overwhelming uncomfort with allowing the management to be part of this process, I’m going to support this because I have confidence in what the mover has said. Councilor McAllister. Thank you and through the chair. Just to add to this, in terms of the operation of the board, we do also have a tenant committee as well.

And as part of this process, the chair of the tenant committee also sat in and asked questions in the review process that were directed in terms of a tenant perspective ‘cause we wanted that insight as well. And that’s what we were looking for ‘cause this is a position on the board as a tenant. So we didn’t have that perspective. And the questions were asked specifically in terms of what they could bring to the board from a tenant perspective.

So that could be a strong advocate. Thank you. Any other comments that’s moved and seconded? Seeing none, we’re going to open the appointment of that individual for voting.

Posing the vote in the motion carries 15 to zero. Okay, colleagues. Now we’re end of items for direction, which means the two items that were pulled from consent will now deal with. So it was items 2.1 and 2.2.

We’ll deal with them separately. Item 2.1 is the development charge exemptions and discounts. Councilor Troso, you wanted this to be dealt with separately. There’s a report and recommendation from staff, but I’ll go to you first, you wanted it pulled.

Yes, thank you very much. And through the chair, I’m not opposed to this, but I just don’t really fully understand it. And I’d like to have a little bit more information. I do think that Mr.

Butler and the added made some real good, made some real good points. My concern about this is we’re getting a recommendation. Was there an option? Thank you to the chair.

So as this is a regulated change, there really isn’t an option. In the report that we brought forward in April, that was the comprehensive report of all of the specific impacts of the More Homes Faster Act that was certainly one of the directions and part of the resolution. So one of the commitments was that we were gonna continue to do some additional tracking, some monitoring, try to get a little bit better refinement on the initial projections and estimates of what this could cost. So at this point in time, this gives us what we’re still estimating at this point.

There’s still not a commitment and/or any timing of when there could be any provincial funding, if at all, that might make municipalities whole. So in the absence of that, the audits have been delayed. So those won’t be completed until the end of the year. So I anticipate we will at a minimum have 2023 that we are looking at how we’re going to continue to fund and certainly going forward what that is.

So the way exemptions work is based on the regulations, those automatically get exempted. But the way the DC Act works is that although those statutory exemptions are still there, those costs ultimately still have to be funded through the DC, through the DC background study ultimately, which means municipality has to fund it because the funding has to come from somewhere. So that’s really, this is not anything that we didn’t anticipate, it’s just that we don’t have a funding source. So in the absence of that, we need to be able to start to prepare for that.

Should provincial funding come, then that would allow council to be able to either redirect that funding or remove it from the budget if it’s no longer needed. Thank you, that’s very helpful. There is no option as the direct answer to my question. What’s still through the chair makes me very uncomfortable about this is the money has to come from somewhere.

And my worry is that the shortfall is gonna be picked up by the taxpayers. And if the shortfall is picked up by the taxpayers, that’s gonna be reflected in the tax rate that we set. And that is going to decrease the taste and the political will for this counselor and other taxpayers to engage in some of the programs that we’re all interested in engaging in. So I’m very concerned about the progress of the progress of the province’s promise to make good on this because I just, I don’t see it happen.

And I wanna be assured that we will have a point down the line where we can make further comment on that. And I’m not precluding the opportunity to discuss the implications of the province not honoring their pledge down the line. I think that was more a comment. I got other colleagues.

I will say, if it makes Council more comfortable asking something that we know we need to pass, Council wants to add a clause that says directs the mayor and say Councilor Hopkins through OBCM and AMO to continue our advocacy on making municipalities whole. I’d be happy to take that. It’s work we are doing ongoing, but if you wanna make a clear statement as part of this motion that we will continue our advocacy on that, I would welcome that and look for, I would look for that to be added to Councilor Joe. So you wanna make that?

Can I move that and put it so well? Yes, and Councilor Hopkins wants a second? Okay, I know Councilor Ferra wants to speak. So we’re gonna treat that as an amendment.

So we’ll go back to the kind of the main comments on the motion, but Councilor Rosas seconded by Councilor Hopkins is adding just a statement that says, we’re gonna continue our advocacy on this through OBCM and AMO, which is ongoing. And I mean, Councilor Hopkins and I can provide some context somewhere that’s at, but I’ll go through debate on the amendment now. Councilor Ferra, you wanna speak to the amendment? Thank you through you.

I guess I will speak to the amendment. I do like where that’s going. I feel that we should bring that to AMO into the province as well, just to especially discuss our concerns. I totally stand with Councilor Trussell on what he said.

I am concerned with the taxpayer having to flip the bill if we don’t get made whole again. I just wanted to confirm, if I can do this on the amendment, it does kind of go to the main motion, but I guess it’s an amendment on that. I just wanted to know, this is just, we’re just directing right now for a business case coming to multi-year budget. So if in the interim, we do find ourselves to be made whole, we’re not necessarily voting on funding the shortfall for the DC.

So right now we’re just building that case to be prepared ‘cause we have to. And hopefully I’m hoping that something comes up in the meantime. I’ll take that as relevant to the amendment because it’s about the advocacy to go to Ms. Barbara.

Thank you through the chairs. So that is correct. This is the direction to continue with the business case with more refined estimates than what we had when we initially brought this forward in April of this year. Certainly the budget will not be released until early mid-December.

And then deliberations will not actually occur until February. So there is plenty of time that in the interim, if there is more information that further amendments to the business case or adjustments to the budget could be made prior to Council’s approval and discussion through the budget process. So there’s plenty of time for continued advocacy and further hopefully information to come from the province as the provincial audits are done. Thank you.

So I would fully support the amendment and I understand the work that we have to do on this. So that would be my comments. Other speakers to the amendment? Councillor Hopkins, go ahead.

Yeah, I’m more than happy to bring this forward to AMO at the board meeting next week. But AMO has continued to advocate with the provincial government the importance of municipalities being kept whole. So I’m hoping, I’m very optimistic that the provincial government will have something to say in the fall about this. I’m not sure how that aligns with the audit.

And maybe this is a question I have through you Mr. Chair to staff. As we continue to fund DCs and we know there’s a lot of moving parts that can come forward, how will we be able to pivot? Or are we prepared to sort of make the changes as we come up with plans?

But how do we sort of align everything with potential announcements or not even announcements? And I’m just really concerned that we may not have the ability to really speak to the public about this if we’re not able to be kept whole. So maybe the question is, are we able to pivot? And hopefully have changes coming down from the provincial government to align with the business case.

I find not knowing what the business case is right now, not knowing what the provincial government is going to do, how do we intersect and speak to the public on these changes? Just very unclear about that. Council happens with the indulgence of council. I think I’m going to take a shot at that before I go to Ms.

Brabant. I think the business case is going to give us a refined clear estimate. If the government has not made us whole by then, we’re going to have a very clear case. The public is going to be very transparent how much this is costing us to the public.

And before we finalize the budget in February of next year, the public’s going to see that there’s a business case that costs a lot of money as a result of this legislation. And I think it will intensify and make very clear, not just in this municipalities, but others who are going through the same process, how much this is costing municipalities, what it means for our budgets and why it’s important to make that decision sooner rather than later, because otherwise, we’re going to take up space in municipal budgets for accounting for the shortfall because we have no choice but supply the infrastructure and the province needs to know that. So I think I’m not sure staff need to answer that question, but I think this will be a very transparent and clear way to show the urgency of this and the public will be engaged when they say, what’s this in the budget and why are you doing it? And we can be very clear about this is why we’re doing the advocacy we’re doing.

Yeah, I really appreciate those comments, Mr. Mayor. I think the transparency and the urgency of the challenges that we’re faced with has to be sort of made clear with the public and really appreciate the comments. Thanks.

I’m going to add just my, I’m just going to say a few words on this but the indulgence of council. So I’ll support the amendment. I think the continued advocacy on this is urgent. I know Councillor Hopkins gave an update on the AMO advocacy.

I can add that OBCM, the Ontario Big City Mayor’s, has requested a meeting with the new minister and we have had discussions at our most recent meetings which occurred here in London. We had some OBCM work done where we’re right here in our city during AMO that this is an urgent matter for us because of exactly what is happening now. We have to start to account for this money. We know that the province is doing audits but if they take a long time, it’s going to be too little too late for building it into the budgets.

And so the urgency as municipalities engage in budgets is having a very clear sense on how we’re going to be made whole either on an interim basis or on a permanent basis for these funding shortfalls because the infrastructure to support the kind of goals that the province has is critical to fund and needs to be funded by the province who made the legislative changes that are creating the shortfalls. So I’m very supportive of this. It doesn’t mean our advocacy had stopped. It has continued all the way through and we have requested a meeting at OBCM with the new minister specifically to discuss these particular issues which are growing in urgency as time passes and municipalities approach their municipal budget seasons.

So I’ll add those as my comments. Any other speakers on the amendment? Okay, then we’ll open the amendment for voting. Closing the vote motion carries 15 to zero.

I’m going to look for a mover and a second around the as amended motion with all the pieces. Deputy Mayor Lewis and Councillor Plaza. Now I’ll go back to the speaker’s list on the as amended motion which I have Councillor Frank next. Thank you, yes, and through the chair, I was hoping to ask a couple questions to staff.

So I’m just wondering this reminded me that we have the CIP review going on. I’m just wondering when that’s going to be coming to council and if the existing CIPs and the new proposed CIPs will be coming to us as we get the budget submissions as well. Through the chair, so the review of the five year review of the CIP programs concluded in June. However, there was some reports of that recommendation that had requested the committee that staff come back with a couple of new CIPs.

So that’s what we’re working on right now. We’ll be providing it further updates in the coming month as part of our 47,000 unit report. It is directly tied to our housing accelerator fund application, so that will be coming forward and we’ll give you some time line in the next month. Thank you, yes, yeah.

I noticed in the half, I’m going to call it half. I think you’re calling it half, yeah. I noticed in that 20 millions being set aside for new financial incentives for community improvement plans, which is exciting ‘cause I think a lot of the stuff that was listed on the CIP report were things that I was more interested in, so like green building, affordable housing. So I’m excited to see that.

I guess I’m wondering, given that we’re being downloaded all these costs and they’re mandated, so we have really no ability to get around some of these subsidies. I’m wondering if we are going to be able to look at the existing CIPs that we have and then have these as well to compare at the budget season because there’s some subsidies. One, I think there’s some that kind of overlap a bit, but then two, if we’re already going to have to subsidize certain developments, I might not want to continue funding others through our existing CIPs. I’m just wondering, will that be kind of presented as such for us to debate at the budget deliberation time?

Bit of a tricky question, but I’ll go to Mr. Mathers first. So through the chair, that would be absolutely up for discussion, probably as we bring forward some of the CIP work, that would be a good opportunity to say that we need to revise some of our current CIPs if that’s what Council wants to look at. Currently, we’re looking at just adding additional CIPs, but if it’s Council’s purview or a request to review the current CIPs, then we can do that at the time.

Thank you, yes, I’d very much like to do that. So if there’s a way to perhaps indicate to our budget chair and our finance team for some clarity when we’re looking at the budget cases for the CIPs to be broken down and have maybe on a same sheet with like the mandated exemptions because I personally would like to review and debate some of those as we’ve already had some debates at PEC about some of the CIPs we fund. Other speakers, okay. Seeing none, we have the as amended motion moved and seconded, it includes what we have to do and bring forward the business case as well as the direction now on continued advocacy.

There’s no more speakers, so we’re gonna open that for voting. Fosing the vote and the motion carries 15 to zero. Okay, the next item we deferred from our consent items is the Municipal Accommodation Tax which is Lenin Tourism’s annual report on their portion of the of the MAT. It’s a report to be received.

It’s an update report. I think Councillor Rossell, you wanted that pulled. So if you have some questions on that, but we’ll do our best to answer them with the staff that we have here, go ahead. Yes, thank you very much.

I’ve been studying the city side of this fund, 50% fund quite a bit in terms of understanding the bylaw and the staff reports that are in back of it. And I’d like to bring up my knowledge of a tours of London’s side of this a little. So I don’t know who I would be directing questions here today. And if they can’t be answered, I assume I can go back and ask later.

My understanding is that there’s a 50/50 split that the tourism London share and the city share go into specially allocated accounts that currently there was approximately $3 million or so in the city’s unrestricted part of the account. And according to the number I see here, there’s a similar $3.32 million closing balance in the other part of the account. Am I correct so far? Ms.

Bergone, do you want to add? There’s some questions about ours and some questions about this report. I’ll go to your first answer. So through the chair, just to confirm on the city side, which is what I can speak to, certainly from a revenue perspective, we’re about $1.6 million annually that’s coming in.

So that’s the 50% share. So we’re almost back to normal to what we saw a pre-pandemic and our reserve fund balance currently is about $3.6 million of uncommitted funds. It’s very helpful, is the— Councilor, if Deputy Marlous is on the tourism board and I think he’s willing to try to give you some context on the tourism side of your question, if you’d like that. So I’ll go to Deputy Marlous.

Yeah, so I’m just gonna and I’ll do my best as questions come up on this to help out. I know Ms. Finn wasn’t able to be here today because of a family commitment that she had to be at, but so you will see in the charts that are in the review report and the council is correct. There was about 3 million in the closing balance December 31st.

There was a portion of that that was still in a situation where it’s allocated but not spent. So there’s, you’ll note in the chart below the open board approved map initiatives. There’s about 300,000 on various bids that was not paid out in 2022 because those costs will be coming out in 2023, just the way that the bid processes fall and when the commitments of financing have to be made. So some of the math requests that come to us are rather quick in nature as Councilor Ploza can attest, we sometimes get requests for smaller events right here in the city, but some of the bigger convention bids and larger sports bids like the Briar Championships, they often get allocated but not paid out in a year, so that 3 million dollar budget does not represent full liquid assets.

Some of that is allocated and I can add to, in addition to what you see in the report, this year there are some allocated funds for bid purposes that would not be reflected in this report because this is obviously ends 2022, but some of that is confidential until the bid process is complete and the bid is awarded to the winning host municipality. Councilor Ploza, I don’t know if you have any of the ideas that are on tourism too, okay. Councilor Troso. Yes, thank you, thank you very much, that’s very helpful.

I’m trying to get a better handle on the public process that would be used to adjudicate applicants for this money and on the one hand I see paragraph six, which is a confidentiality clause. On the other hand, I would suspect that any disbursements would have to be made in a public session through your board. Go ahead, sorry, I don’t wanna cross debate or speak without the mic so that those listening in can’t hear, but through you, Chair, yes, that is correct. There is a five member adjudication committee that receives the applications for these funds and once that committee makes a recommendation in confidential session that is then forwarded to the tourism board for final approval and public session.

Thank you and again, that is very helpful. I think my last question, because some of these are technical details that I could talk to you about apparently or staff, is the criteria for being able to make a claim on this account, on the city side and on the tourism London side substantially the same in terms of what the criteria are for what is tourism related enough that one could make a claim for a disbursement here? I’ll start with Ms. Brabble.

Thank you, so through the Chair, the criteria, so tourism board manages and is responsible through their process for allocating their share on the city of London side and I believe we went through a lot of this when we talked about Bud Garden’s renovation proposal earlier this year that we’ll be coming back in very shortly. With respect to we have a reserve fund that is the Tourism Infrastructure Reserve Fund. It is a city reserve fund that was set aside by Biola that directs the funds to be used to offset the cost of capital costs that would have otherwise been within the city’s capital plan that to support incremental tourism infrastructure and there was a number of different things. So the perfect example is the potential renovation for Budweiser Gardens, but there could be other things with respect to tourism infrastructure that historically there has been some that has been spent on renovations with RBC Place, that’s recently the larger one that comes to mind, but there’s certainly some criteria that’s set out, I don’t have the biolobra in front of me, but certainly there’s a number of potential examples that are outlined in that.

Mr. Manish, you had something to add? Yes, through the Chair, on the tourism London side, there is a funding criteria document that they have that’s available that highlights what the funding can be used for or not and that’s used by that committee to be able to make those decisions or who should get the funding. Thank you and that would be available to a Councillor.

Thank you, that’s all my questions. Okay, you have your hand up, but that’s all those questions. So I don’t know if you have your Councillor had on now, but you’re next on the speakers list, so go ahead. Yes, sorry, through you, Chair, I just wanted to extend to Councillor Trussell, I’m happy to work to make sure that he’s able to review those criteria.

Primarily, the criteria focuses around new opportunities, expansion of the tourism business and/or bid funding requirements for large-scale events and tourism opportunities, but I can get this specific criteria to you. Okay, who’d like to move or see to the report? Move by Councillor Trussell, seconded by Councillor Cuddy. Any other discussion on this update report on the MAT?

Tourism side of the matter, I should say. Okay, seeing them, we’ll open that for voting. Closing the vote, motion carries 15 to zero. Okay, colleagues, this is not the point of which we referred our in-camera portion of the meeting, so I’m going to look for a motion to move into closed session now, move by Councillor Cuddy.

This is going to be for all the reasons, by the way, that I think we can just deal with all of them at once. Seconded by Councillor Hopkins. Any discussion? Okay, we’ll move, we’ll open that for voting.

Closing the vote, motion carries 15 to zero. Okay, we’re back in public session now. I’m going to look to Councillor Plaza to move a motion for— I move a motion for a 15 minute by a break. 15 minute break, Councillor Ferrara, seconds.

We’ll do this one by hand, all those in favor? Motion carries. And there are refreshments and the Councillors lounge, if you’re roaming, go that way. I’ll just have the colleagues participating online, just either flip your camera on or give a thumbs up so that we know that you’re here, and then the clerks can just record the attendance.

Thank you. Thanks for doing both. Councillor Venerberg and— Okay, colleagues, I have the Deputy Mayor report progress on our in-camera session. Thank you, Your Worship, and through you.

I will report that progress was made on the items for which we went in-camera. Thank you for that. Item 5.1 is consideration of appointments to the London Hydro Board of Directors. As colleagues know, through SPPC, we made a recommendation to Council, Council considered the recommendation, and then we passed the following motion, that the matter of consideration of appointments to London Hydro Board of Directors be referred to a future SPPC meeting, including invitation to the Board Chair to da da da da.

So the matter is now back before us. Without our committee’s recommendation, we have all of the previous information. We have the list of candidates before you. We have all of colleagues’ previous discussions.

So the way I’m approaching this is, this was referred back to us for consideration of the appointments. So it’s kind of like a clean slate here. People can move a motion. They can move a motion, and for, however, we have two appointments to make, and then we can debate that motion, make amendments to it, or defeat it, or make others.

But we’re kind of back to doing the committee from the start again, with all the options on the table for appointments. So, Councilor Trossai, you just stuck up your hand on this matter. Thank you, Chief Chair, and to the clerk. May I just clarify that there was a previous motion recommending two candidates at the meeting of what date?

I don’t know the date, but yes, there was a previous motion of this committee recommending to candidates. And that recommendation was for— I believe Cedric Gomez and Tim Watson. Okay, I’d like to make a motion then that the SPPC today recommend the appointment of Cedric Gomez and Tim Watson to the London Hydro Board of Directors. Okay, seconded by Councilor Stevenson.

Okay, so we have a movement seconded motion for the appointment of two individuals to the London Hydro Board of Directors. Before us, I’ll have a debate and discussion on that. And if colleagues are looking for a different set of candidates, I’ll just be clear. If you defeat this, you could still move another combination of candidates, which may or may not include one of the same candidates.

You just can’t make a motion for both of the same candidates again, so you could make an alternate motion with a different combination. That’s just how we’ll proceed. So, if we pass it, that’ll be the recommendation going back to Council. It’ll be Council that makes the final approval.

Okay, so this is before us. Move and second in any discussion. Councillor Stevenson, go ahead. I’d like to speak on behalf of Cedric.

So I did meet with him a couple of times, and I did find him to be very respectful and professional. And I’m looking forward to him providing a fresh view for the London Hydro. He also expressed strength in relationship building and being able to work through and create a space and a positive experience on the board. So I’m looking forward to supporting this motion.

Okay, any other speakers? Councillor Lehman, go ahead. Thank you, I will not be supporting this motion. I’ll be supporting the original recommendations that the board came through to us.

It’s been apparent from further communication that the board went through a very rigorous process to arrive at recommendations. They’re a very professional board. I would argue that this is one of the most important boards that we have in the city. I respect the board makeup, and especially the process they went through.

I think it’s why we have to have really serious reservations because we did not go through that process. We have had conversations maybe with other candidates, but I think for us, the second guess is professional board. After that process, they went through, wouldn’t be prudent. So I will not be supporting this, and if it fails, I will be putting forward the board’s recommendation of Tim Watson and Tracy Gustafson.

Okay, other speakers? Councillor Cho, stop, go ahead. Sorry, Mr. Mayor, I’m on line with my hand up.

Just go ahead. Yes, actually, I will correct that. The clerk just told me before I went to him that you had your hand up. So I’ll go to you, Councillor Palazzo first, and I’ll go to Councillor Cho, stop next.

So thank you, like Councillor Layman, I would like to support Hydro’s original recommendation as they did go through a rigorous process, and I appreciate the work that they did. Looking through you, is it easier if we, if one doesn’t want this to vote no on the slate of candidates or to call these two candidates separate, procedurally what’s viable? It’s easier just to vote no on this slate and then propose a new alternate slate, even if it includes one of the candidates. What I wouldn’t suggest is I wouldn’t, I would take two of the candidates as the exact same vote, but if I would say just easier to deal with it as, this is a slate of two candidates.

If you don’t like one of the candidates to feed it all, propose a different slate that can include one of them. Okay, so. Okay, I’ll be voting no on this, and do appreciate the vote of the work of the Hydro Board, and that they put into this and the consideration of this impact in the community, and we’ll look to colleagues to help defeat this motion. Okay, I have Councilor Trossal, and then Councilor Van Mirbergen after him.

Go ahead Councilor Trossal. The work through the chair, the work that this agency did to screen candidates, notwithstanding, this is a decision of council. Everybody understood that at the beginning. Is agency understood that at the beginning?

We have not, by statute or by by law, delegated the authority to London Hydro, as important as it is to make this determination. And I think that there is a fundamental question of Council independence here. And I think it’s important for us to recognize that in the end, everybody in all due respect to people who have finance and accounting backgrounds, everybody on the board doesn’t have to have that same set of skills. There are very other important skills that I believe in particular, Mr.

Gomez, who has a very serious success in the online world to be able to add something to this group. Having gone through all of these applications, I firmly believe that Mr. Gomez deserves to be on this board, and he would be a positive reflection of this community. And in all due respect, to the secondary process that London Hydro decided to go through, this is a council decision.

And for us to simply say, we are going to accept London Hydro Slate, because they did a lot of work on it, that’s not okay. And a lot’s been said about how important this board is, and it should get some special consideration and some special deference. Yes, it’s a very special board, but you know what? So is the library board.

So is museum London board. So is the police board. And we like to have a variety of different types of people on these boards. So I really hope that council does not backtrack on the direction that we took at the last SPPC meeting and approves of these two candidates, these two very worthy candidates for this board.

Thank you very much. I have councilor Vaymer over here next. Thank you, Mayor. The simple fact is we asked London Hydro, go through the process, hold the interviews, come back with recommendations.

They complied with that. They know their skill sets that they require. That’s the beauty of how this was set up. They came forward with two very solid candidates.

I’m happy to support the recommendation that’s coming from London Hydro. Councilor Layman wants to move the motion. I would be pleased to second that with the two recommended names that came from London Hydro. Thanks, Mayor.

Okay, just to be clear, there’s no opportunity to do that, unless this motion is defeated. So we’re considering the motion that’s before us on the floor as the first course of action. I have Councilor Cuddy next. Thank you, Your Worship, and through you, I won’t be supporting this motion.

To quote to Councilor Frank a few weeks ago, this has become a toxic situation. And despite the best efforts, this will never be corrected without a new member being appointed to the board, so I won’t be supporting it. And again, if it fails, I will be supporting Councilor Lehman’s motion for a new slate. Thank you.

Yes, it’s okay, Councillors. Councillors who are debating a motion can say they’re not supporting something because they support an alternative, that’s no problem. So it is correct that that is not on the floor at the moment. We are speaking to the current motion on the floor and colleagues can certainly talk about that, but there are no issues with someone talking about what they support as an alternative.

That’s fine if that’s the rationale for not supporting the current one. I have Councillor Hopkins next. Yeah, thank you, Mr. Chair.

I will be supporting the motion in front of us. I met with Cedric Gomez back in May. It was quite a long time ago. I understand the process.

I want to thank the Hyperboard for their intensive deliberations and interviews that they made and suggestions, but those skill requirements that the Hyperboard was looking for, we also knew what they were as well. And Mr. Gomez does meet those requirements. I did find him to be keen and very professional and will be supporting the motion in front of us.

Thank you, other speakers. The current motion. I have Councillor Raman and then I’ll go to Councillor Stevenson. Thank you and through you.

I will not be supporting the slate. We’ll be supporting the initial slate that was proposed by Lennon Hydro. I’m happy to speak to any of the candidates that were put forward by Hydro and we’ll look forward to do so if this motion is defeated. Thank you.

Councillor Stevenson. Thank you. I just wanted to follow up that although we don’t have to move forward with the initial selection, we usually do. And I think that we knew at the time that we selected the two, that they were not both recommended by Lennon Hydro, but it was a recommendation.

It is upon us to do the appointment. And I think when we, when we make, we chose, we voted for Cedric and for the other gentleman. And to switch that now creates questions and it makes me uncomfortable with what perceptions and stories might lead out from that. And I also think that this idea of if we’re gonna refer to it as toxic, I think that’s very concerning.

And I think if something is toxic, then we should be cleaning it up because I don’t want toxic. There shouldn’t be toxic. And it shouldn’t, if it’s causing so much trouble for us to not appoint the selected candidates or the recommended candidates, then I think that that should be publicly stated why. And if it isn’t, then I don’t see why we’re not free to choose two very skilled and highly qualified candidates.

I was, I have been, had bold direct questions and conversations with Cedric and I am very confident in him. And I really believe that the board needs and would benefit from an outsider, from a different opinion, from a different lens. And maybe that will help with the toxicity. Maybe this will help clean it up to have some open, honest and direct conversations.

And I believe he’s the right person to do that and to help clear up this toxicity that we’re referring to. Other speakers, I have myself on the speakers list then. I’ll be brief. I wanna say two comments.

One, I absolutely agree with what Councillor Trostoff said. Irrespective of what a board may recommend, it is fully within Council’s right, whether it’s this, the earlier decision we made on London Middlesex Community Housing, or any other time that we ask a board for an opinion, it is ultimately the decision of Council to choose who they want. That’s why each and every time we make these considerations, we get the full slate of candidates and their information before us. That being said, with the opportunity to vote again on this, I’m gonna vote the exact same way I did the first time this came up, which is to support London Hydro’s recommendations.

So I won’t be supporting the current one. I’ll be consistent with my previous vote in the past and I’ll be voting against this, but supporting an alternate motion if it comes forward. Go ahead, Councillor Frank. Thank you, yes.

I don’t remember if I said those exact words. So I just wanna throw that out there. I do remember saying that putting somebody on a board that the board is not necessarily endorsing could create some interesting dynamics. Having previously been an executive director in the nonprofit sector, the board would select the board members and then they would get the members to vote on them.

So I’m very familiar with this in a bit of a different context. But I’d say generally when the board members are supportive of who they are recommending, it does function a little bit better. I think that was somewhat along the lines of what I was saying before, but I’d have to rewatch the recording and I’m not gonna do that. But anyway, nonetheless, I would just say that we definitely have changed votes for appointments for many times with the police board.

I think that people are all over the map on that one. So I don’t think that there’s any problem with changing vote from committee to committee because we’ve done it many times before. So thanks. Okay, Councillor McAllister, go ahead.

Thank you and through you. First off, I just wanna again, take this opportunity to thank all those who applied. I think it’s endearing actually. The number of Londoners who have put their name forward to serve on these boards, and we really do appreciate them stepping forward.

Having now gone through a process, sitting on a board and wearing both caps at the same time, I feel like I have a better understanding now of the process and I wanna take this opportunity to also thank Councillor Ramen for the work she did on this. The interview process, very enlightening experience. You learn a lot, especially when you have that time to actually talk to the person from the perspective of sitting on the board. It gives you a different perspective.

And I would say throughout this process, I’ve learned a lot. And I think one of the things that I’ve gleaned from that is that the board has its own perspective and that’s part of the recommendation in terms of what they’re pitching to us and what they’re looking for. And I do think that’s something that we have to respect in terms of, to Councillor Frank’s point, the working dynamics of that board and who they’re looking for. So yeah, again, I just wanna take the opportunity to thank everyone who applied and whoever is the successful candidate, I’m sure they’ll do a good job on the board.

Thank you. Any of the speakers? Okay. What we have before us is a moved and seconded motion and that motion is to appoint Mr.

Watson and Mr. Gomez to the board. It’s duly moved and seconded. I’ll open that for voting.

Councillor Palazzo votes no. Voting the vote. Motion fails for two 11. Councillor Lehman.

I’d like to move that Tim Watson and Theresa E. Gustafson be appointed to London Hydro Board. And I think Councillor McMillan will be willing to second it. If you are, yes, I see your hand up.

Moved and seconded, we’ll have debate on this particular slate of candidates now. Councillor Troso, go ahead. To the chair, I’d like to make an amendment that this SPPC conduct interviews of the candidates because I think that it would help us understand some of the things that have said, and I’m choosing my words carefully, but I do think that at this point, it is incumbent on this board to get a better understanding of what happened because things are not adding up. And I’m very concerned about some of the things that have been said.

And I’m very concerned about the innuendo that is out there in the community right now. And I think the best way to clear it up, and we did it for the police board. And I think we can do it here. And I would be very happy to one, two, three, four, five, there are only seven.

I’d be happy to make a motion that we interview the seven and that it be done by the SPPC under the same terms as we did for the police board. Okay, so that’s a motion, that’s a referral motion. That’s not an amendment motion. And it’s referral of the appointment process to a future SPPC to interview all seven candidates.

Is there a seconder for that? Okay, so referral takes precedent seconded by Councillor Stevenson. Debate on the referral of the appointment process to a future SPPC for interview all candidates. Councillor Hopkins, go ahead.

Yeah, I do think we find ourselves in an unusual situation. And I find this a way of getting out of the dilemma that I find myself in and the interview process, I think is the only way to go. We’ve done it before for other boards, and we’ll be supporting this. Thank you, Mayor Lewis, and then Councillor Stevenson.

Thank you, Your Worship, and through you. First of all, I’m glad you clarified that it was a referral, because otherwise I was gonna have to call a point of order, ‘cause there was a duly moved and seconded motion on the floor. I will not be supporting the referral. And I wanna say this with all due respect and as diplomatically as possible.

But I am not going to continue to do this every time we disagree with a Board or Commission appointment recommendation. We vote, we make a decision. We have varied from this already a couple of times. We did it with the library board.

We did it with the police board. And frankly, if the process isn’t working, that is an item on the governance working groups deferred matters list. But you think back to the 120 or so appointments we make at the start of a term, we are not ever going to be able to do interviews. I believe the library board had 27 candidates or something like that.

The police board had 53. We’re never going to be able to interview every candidate for every Board and Commission appointment in the city. We have a process. We keep varying from it.

And frankly, and I don’t say this with any disrespect to any particular colleague, but I’m tired of varying from the process. If the process is broken, we’ve got to address the process. But the process is what we have right now. And I do appreciate everybody saying they appreciate the work that the boards have put in.

I appreciate the work that Councilor McAllister took off my plate to do the housing board interviews this time, but I think we actually do need a process that includes the input from our boards and commissions. In this case, we’ve got that. And I’m prepared to support the motion that was on the floor before the referral. So I won’t be supporting the referral.

Okay, others on the referral? Councillor Stevenson. Thank you. And while I appreciate what the deputy mayor just said, and I agree with that, this may not happen again.

So I just want to say it that I agree with everything Councillor Truss I would just said. And so we’ll just hold this moment. And I do think that there’s extenuating circumstances here. And I think we all know what they are.

And because of that, and because we talk about a fair and an equitable process and appointment process, I’m not sure how we move forward without this. Fair and equitable. I agree, I don’t want to be here again. And whatever the governance working group can do so that we don’t end up in this position again, I look forward to, but we are here.

And we do have a responsibility. And I’m asking my fellow Councillors to support this so that we can do this in a fair and equitable way. And then look forward to a cleaner process going forward. There’s speakers to the referral.

Councillor ramen, go ahead. Thank you and through you. So I won’t be supporting the referral. Excuse me, as a member of London Hydro’s board and a representative from council, I was part of that process to interview and therefore have already spent considerable time interviewing the candidates.

We’re on the referral, so I won’t speak to those candidates. But when we’re back on the candidates, I’m happy to share again my thoughts. But I do believe that we have went through this process through the process that we agreed on, sorry, for London Hydro to select their candidates. And we need to move on and give London Hydro a slate for their board, we need to point their new board members as this is also requesting of two board members that had given their notice that they were leaving the board that we have continued to have to ask them to serve in that time.

So just please take that into consideration as well that we have long serving members that we’re asking to sit continuously until the new members are pointed. So just wanted to bring that into the conversation on the referral and I will not be supporting it, thank you. On the referral, Councillor Stevenson, go ahead. Just a comment to what Councillor ramen just said.

With all due respect, the issues of the board are not our concern here and it’s because of the board that we’re in the position that we’re in. So I think that we get to do what we get to do as a council to ensure fair and equitable due process. And that’s what this referral is about. Okay, I don’t have any other speakers on the referral.

So it’s the referral on the floor. We’ll open that for voting. Councillor Klose, I’ve heard snow. Seeing the vote, motion fails, four to 11.

Okay, that means the referral fails. It’s back to the motion moved by Councillor Lehman and Councillor Vamehreber going to have Councillor ramen next on the list. Thank you and through you. So I just wanna speak to the qualifications of Ms.

Tracy Eka-Staphson. She’s a long-term CPA and she has extensive experience on local boards and I think that was pretty clear in the resume that was provided in the application. Well-versed in corporate taxation, corporate reorganization, business valuations, corporate mergers, acquisitions, sales, corporate structure, optimization. She’s worked with many private corporations, not-for-profits and regulated government-funded entities.

She brings a unique understanding of this community, having provide high-level tax accounting and advisory services to a broad range of large and medium business clients who are also London Hydro’s customers, as if you were doing business in London, you’re part of that. As well, she has a strong expertise in the technology sector, which is really something that we need more background in as well. So director of product development for a growing international IT solution provider. She was quite knowledgeable about London Hydro and presented very well during the interview process.

So I wanted to share that. Thank you, other speakers to the motion on the floor. Seeing none, I’m gonna open the motion on the floor for voting, sorry? I apologize, I was distracted.

So the motion before us now is- Is the appointment of Tim Watson and Tracy Gustafson. Okay, I was just sending an email about an amendment I wanted to add to this motion. Can we add a C that asks for a review of this specific process, not a general process, but a review and accountability thing with the board around this specific encounter? Give me one second on that.

So Councilor and Council, let me explain why I’m delaying. I’m gonna provide a suggestion if the Council would like to proceed with that motion, that I’m gonna need a few minutes to look something up. If the desire is to add an additional review of the specific London Hydro appointment process. Okay, then what is it?

It’s not the process. It’s Council Trust that’s gonna help me. Chain of events that we’ve gone through. And if it would help, I’m willing to make a motion and we go back into closed session.

So just let me finish. If it’s London Hydro process, we decided the London Hydro process. I’d say that’s a process of reconsideration to go back and do a whole new process. So I’m unclear on what you’re asking us to review as part of this.

So I just need to know the wording of your motion so I can make a determination. And I can’t just do that on the fly because what I’m gonna do is if you’re gonna ask me to review the London Hydro process, I wanna look at what we passed and then probably say that that’s- I don’t want to review the process. I want a review of want and I want accountability with the board around, help me. If you’re asking for something related to the board, it need not be tied to this board appointment but could be brought forward if you need some time to word the motion at the next SPPC.

I would like it tied to this motion though. I need to know what it is before I know whether that’s appropriate. Well, I want a lot of concerns about the board and if we’re gonna appoint, that’s fine but I’d also like a review of the current board members. The main motion is to appoint two people to the board.

If you’re asking for a review of the current board members, I don’t have before me their current terms, the shareholder agreement, the ability to withdraw the appointments. How about I want a review of the course, the interactions with the board around this specific appointment? So not the process in general but what went down around this particular two appointments? So who is reviewing that?

Like you have to make something a little more specific because that is a pretty broad thing that has no context or detail, like who is reviewing what? It sounds— It might need to be dealt aside from this motion. That’s a true sound. And then I’ve got some, give us some leeway here but like you’re getting pretty close to like, this sounds like a motion you need to work out and bring to a future committee because— I know exactly what I think the motions should say but I’m not sure I’m at liberty to utter it.

You see what my concern is? Yes, so I’m gonna say you don’t have a motion currently that fits with where we are on the floor. If you need to bring a motion, I would suggest if you work out the language and bring it at the appropriate time and you can consult with our staff about where that is. If you need to talk to them about the details of whether it’s in camera or public, like talk to our staff about that piece and get the proper advice I’d prefer not to try to shoehorn something in that you’re not even sure the wording on now.

So we can proceed with the appointment votes. It doesn’t preclude you from raising matters about an external board through the appropriate standing committee at the appropriate time in whatever way our staff advise you on. So I’m gonna leave it at that. We’ll proceed with the vote that’s on the floor.

Okay, okay, thank you. So we have a motion on the floor, moved and seconded and we’re about, don’t see anybody else. So we’ll open that for voting. Council blows the votes, yes.

On Councilor Layman’s motion to appoint two members to Hydro. Closing the vote, motion passes 13 to two. If you’re making a motion, Councilor, it better be tied to something on the agenda that is that we’re at the matter run because we’re done with the appointment of the London Hydro Board of Directors. So if you’re doing a review, bring it to future committee through a process where you can provide some context.

If I would like to open the next SPCC meeting when we’re fresh with the closed session on this item, how would I go about setting that up? Councilor, much like if you wanna raise a matter of committee, you write a communication to that committee. If the communication is related to a closed matter session, you’d be writing communication saying, I’d like to ask committee to move into closed session for the following reasons you can get advice. But like any other matter that you bring before a committee, you can write a piece of correspondence and then Council can consider that.

Our committee can consider that like they do every piece of correspondence and request that Councillors make. That would be the proper process. Thank you. Okay, we’re onto 5.2, which is the proposed London Hydro and Newco affiliate report.

I will note that the staff recommendation is to receive the report and then take no further steps with respect to the incorporation of an affiliate for London Hydro. You have the report before you. I think Mr. Cardin, Ms.

Barbong are here to answer any questions you have, but maybe I’ll see if someone’s willing to put the report motions on the floor. So I’m willing to move the staff recommended motion. Councillor Cuddy, seconded by Councillor Hopkins. Okay, we can ask some discussion.

You can ask some questions of our staff. I know this is something that may have started last council and continue on. So if you call these have any questions, this is the time. Otherwise I can proceed with the vote.

You can, of course, you can debate too if you have opinions, but this is the time to get on the speakers list. Seeing none, we’re gonna open that for voting. Also close the votes, yes? Closing the vote, motion carries 15 to zero.

5.3 is the fifth report of the governance working group. There’s some direction coming out of that particular committee. I’m gonna have, I’m gonna have the chair present the committee’s report and then put the motion. That’s the floor that you need to put on the floor.

Thank you, Your Worship. This is a great thing about chairing governance working group. It’s not presented at council, so I don’t have to stand for this one. I can report it from my seat and we had an extensive governance working group meeting.

There are some items that’ll be coming back to this SPPC at a future meeting around a number of other items, but this one is particularly related to a ward boundary review process in a terms of reference. I think it’s worth noting that there was extensive discussion about this at governance working group. This is where we landed to go ahead with a ward boundary review that other matters would be referred back to governance working group related to remuneration appointment processes, something we just dealt with with regard to civic boards and committees. And there were some attachments for you on some very preliminary work that Councillor Frank and I undertook in terms of workload responsibilities around those things.

So we’ll be continuing that work in the future. With regard to the ward boundary review, I think it’s very important to note for colleagues that one of the specific changes made in the terms of reference is we are striving to aim for no greater than a 15% population variance, which is a reduction in the previous variance, which was based on federal and provincial riding boundaries, but we felt as a governance working group within the single geographic area of the city of London that the variance was too high and that we should be aiming for a tighter variance in ward populations. So I just wanted to highlight that piece because I think it’s very important to recognize we’re trying to get the next set of ward boundaries to have a less variance so that Councillor Ramen doesn’t have to represent 15,000 more people than I do. That’s a great thing to do, I can say from experience, but I understand the concern and I recall raising it last term, unsuccessfully, I might add.

So moved by you, I need to just take a seconder for that committee recommendation. So I’ll second it if there’s no one’s putting up their hands. So that’s the committee’s matters. You can see, we’ll make sure it’s on the screen.

We’ll open any debate or discussion on the recommendations from the governance working group. Go ahead, Councillor Ramen. Thank you and through you. Would it be possible to split the bike through IP?

Which ones do you want split or do you want them all split? I want to vote on two separately, please. So you want to vote on AII separately? If you look in E-Scribe, that’s— Yes, thank you, AII separately.

Okay, so anybody want to divide it any further than that? Okay, so we’ll do one motion of everything, but AII, and then we’ll do AII as a separate motion, which is the direction on the terms of reference in the population variance piece. Yes, go ahead, because you probably want to speak to it, right? I’m just dividing up the motion, so I’ll go ahead and speak.

Thank you and through you. I won’t rehash what we discussed at governance working committee, but I will state that my reason for not supporting this at this time. So I do support the idea that we do need to rebalance wards absolutely. However, I do think at the same time that we should be looking at the size of council, and what that may look like, I think, is whether it’s more or less Councillors.

I do think we should have the opportunity to reflect on that as well and get that information from this process as well. So that’s why we’ll be supporting this motion at this time. So just a colleague’s note, the order we’re gonna do this in is everything, but AII, then we’ll do the part that Councillor Ramen wants separate. So we’ll do everything else, except for that is on the floor first.

Councillor Hopkins. Yeah, I just want to make some comments that I made at the governance working group. I am supportive of the review, but I do think we need to look at ward boundaries and then number of ward boundaries, which also relates to a council of Ramen’s suggested regarding the size. We know population is growing.

The review that is gonna take place is just going to look at balancing those numbers, and we know they’re gonna change in the next number of years. But there is an opportunity, and maybe, no, there is an opportunity that we can just add the review of the wards, the number of wards, be it more or less. That’s up to the process to determine that we can add that in this process. And I’m very supportive of doing that.

I don’t see any reason why we would not have that fulsome look, not only at the percentages of our wards, but also the numbers. And I just want to confirm, Mr. Chair, to clerk that that is AII, ‘cause I’m looking at different motions here, and I just don’t want to. So I want you to look on E-Scribe to get the motions, ‘cause that’s what appears on the screen for voting.

And so AII, which we’re not dealing with now, we’ll deal with that separate, is the civic administration be directed during Ford, and then in terms of reference with the inclusion of a target to strive for no greater than 50% population variance and consideration of ward naming conventions for adoption at the October 17th, 2023 council meeting. So that’s AII that’s been asked to be dealt with separately. But we’re dealing with that after, everything else from that report is now. Okay, Deputy Mayor Lewis.

Thank you, Your Worship, but sorry to correct you. But seems we are going to rehash everything we discussed at governance working group because AII is the direction to civic administration to undertake the third party consultant review of option one, which is to look at the ward boundaries with the existing number of wards. So if we want to start having a longer discussion about how many wards we should have, I still have my notes from governance working group. I’m happy to rehash them again tonight, but if we want to have that discussion, then AII and AII have to be called separate from AII and AIV.

Mr. Chair, and that is B and C on Monday. Yes, and I’m happy to do that. And you’re not correct to me.

I’m dividing it up as I’ve been requested by members of council. And so I’m not going to chop it up more than you ask me to ‘cause I like efficiency. So if members of council are asking to do AII and AII separate but together, you can do that. That sounds like what you’re asking, so we’ll do that.

So now we’re dealing with everything except those two pieces that the deputy mayor just mentioned, which means I want comments on the report being received and that matters regarding governance and compensation be referred back to a future group as well then the referral of everything else back and then clause B received. So that’s what we’re going to vote on now. If you got comments about the other stuff, you can do that second. So that’s moved and seconded.

Any discussion on those two pieces? Okay, let’s open that for voting. Councillor Palosa, voting the vote. Motion carries 14 to zero with Councillor Palosa absent.

Okay, so next we’ll deal with I-I, which is the 15% population variance and I-I-I, which is the independent third party to consult, to initiate option one as the preferred option. So that’s on the floor, same mover and seconder, debate on this, Councillor Trozab, and then deputy mayor, you can be next. Yeah, I don’t think there’s any disagreement about the target to strive for no greater than 15% population and a consideration of word naming conventions. So I think we could vote that, that one separately and then focus our, focus our attention on number three where there is the substantive questioning.

So could I suggest that we vote up, vote up two because I don’t think that there’s any issue there? Not I’ll take the floor back. I want to ask the deputy mayor. Is the terms of reference linked to option one or is that separate because the terms of reference are there?

So, so my interpretation and the clerks might correct me but my interpretation would be that they should be dealt with together because the terms of reference are tied to option one. If we were to bring forward option two and we revert back to the old terms of reference and then we would have to amend those to move forward option two. I do want to point out that there is an emotion we’ve been seconded on the floor so we’d have to defeat the current motion before we could entertain an alternate motion. Colleagues, let’s not have crossed the bay.

Will I do the order here? So I’m going to say no, if you defeat them then you’re going to put back a new A and a new B that’s going to refer to option two and then the terms of reference related to option two. So we could divide them but that’s just going to take longer it’s going to be more complex. So if you don’t like option one and you want to do more wards, defeat them both and then you’ll have the ability to put back on a new C and a new B that are linked together.

So we’ll deal with the motion on the floor and so you can speak for or against this and if it’s defeated an alternate motion can come up. Go ahead Councillor Troso. Okay, so I guess then I’m speaking against the motion if I understand what you just said. And the reason for that is I think when we’re drafting legislation which we’re doing here we should try to draft the legislation so it’s clear on its face without the need for people to go look up extrinsic documents that were on previous agendas.

So I think when we get into this option one option two we’re getting into some inside baseball and we all know what we’re talking about here. So why don’t we just say it? So I think the substantive disagreement that we have is not to add or subtract wards. We’re not there yet.

We may never get there. The substantive disagreement we have is whether or not that should be included in the study. And I think for purposes of the public trying to sort through this motion which is then going to go to council so it’ll be three times removed from the initial document. It might be clearer legislative drafting if we said what it was we were talking about and not frame it in terms of option one and option two.

And I think it’s okay to use the words including changing the number of wards ‘cause that’s what it is. So I’m not sure if there’s a way. We should always be striving to take out surplus language and make the intent of what we’re saying as simple as possible. And I don’t think we do that here.

So Councilor, I think that’s good advice for the future. That’s very awkward to do now. So I think in the course of the debate, you can make it clear. And I think I just had a conversation with the clerk and I think your general principle is good.

And should be clear. Can I debate the merits or should I come back and do that later? You can debate the merits of this motion now because you said you wanted to vote against it. So you can make your case on why you think your colleagues should do that.

I am timing people so just I am doing that. So go ahead and finish your time. Going to oppose this on two grounds. Number one, I think the wording could be much better.

And I don’t want to create sort of like this complex web where we’re going back to extrinsic documents from two months ago to figure out what we meant by a certain definition. So I think I want to vote this down and bring in clearer language. Number two, I think it would be premature at this point in the review. And again, I am not making an argument for any number of words.

But I think it would be premature at this point while we’re gathering data to say that we’re absolutely irrevocably going to stay at 14. And I think it would be okay to allow the consultants to consider some other data sets. And that’s why I’m going to oppose this. And I guess I’ve already said that I’m not speaking in favor of any particular number of words.

I’m very defensive about that. And I want to make it clear that I’m not doing that. But I don’t want to get data and then have to come back and start over again after the clock is run. Thank you.

I have Deputy Mayor Lewis then, Councillor Hopkins. Thank you, Your Worship and through you. I’m really, really strongly encouraging colleagues to support the motion that’s on the floor that was approved at governance working group. In your package, in addition to the attachments that on some of the extraneous work that we’re referring, the Councillor Franken I’ve done, there was also the timeline laid out by our clerks.

And we had some discussion at governance working group about the implications of just opening the doors wide, open to a review with that included options for changing word numbers with no parameters. Just looking at it, nobody picked numbers. And I will say, I support what Councillor Trust I was saying in terms of clear language. I think that that’s a valid point.

But I think that that’s something that we can address in the future. This came through a special meeting of governance working group, specifically so that timelines could be met, including leaving time for appeals with the OLT at the end, should that be required in order for the 2026 election to be run under ward boundaries that are more balanced than they are now. And we can speculate all we want on how much time it will add or how much time it will not add to the process. But every time you expand the scope of work for a third party consultant, you are adding time and you are adding cost because there is more work to be done.

So if colleagues are absolutely fine with going into the 2026 election with the current ward boundaries potentially still in place, then by all means vote no. But if you think that the principles of effective representation mean that the ward should be reasonably well balanced in terms of population, then I encourage you to support this. I don’t think any member of this horseshoe campaigned on bigger council or smaller council. I think we campaigned on being good councilors.

I think we campaigned on working hard for our communities. We have different views of what that may look like, but I think we all campaigned on that. But I think we all agree that the ward boundaries we have today are inherently unfair. And I will point out, as I did at governance working group, that in May of 2021, a year before nominations opened for the 2022 elections, the previous council refused to go ahead with some ward boundary adjustments because they didn’t feel that there was enough time with a year’s runway before the nomination day opened.

And actually the nomination day is too short because the ward boundary changes have to be in place by January of the election year. So you don’t have right up until nomination day. You only have until January 1 of 2026. So we can open the doors wide open and we can have a discussion about bigger council, smaller council, more wards, less wards, open the scope wide, or we can acknowledge that the wards as they exist, unbalanced and need to be adjusted.

And in some cases, no longer represent the communities of interest that they were intended to back when the ward boundaries were created with 14 members of council versus the old seven wards with two counselors in each ward. So it is to me, this is a question of, do we want to support the governance working groups work and move ahead with a review? Or do we want to potentially be supporting the status quo? So I’m really encouraging colleagues to support moving ahead with rebalancing the wards.

Councillor Hopkins. Yeah, first of all, I want to thank Deputy Mayor Lewis and Councillor Frank for all the work that they’re doing on the governance working group. I really want to make sure that we’re all aware of the due diligence that they are doing on this working group. I do want to make a few comments though.

One of the comments I’d like to make is, I would encourage us not to support the two motions in front of us. And the reason to defeat that is it will give us an opportunity to further have the conversation about ward boundaries as we hire an independent third party consultant to initiate not only balancing the wards, but also to look at the number of wards. It does not mean that we are going to have more or less. We may still come up with the 14, but as we go through that process to have a broader scope, it’s not option two.

Option two has a number of other items. It’s just re-looking at the number of ward boundaries. We were told at the governance working group that we do meet the timelines if we go through this process. There will be an OLT as always an appeal process through this undertaking, but we do have time to look at the number of ward boundaries as we look at balancing our wards.

Why would we not have a look at doing that? So that’s why I am not supporting the two items in front of us. Okay, that’s all the speakers I have. This is for the two pieces that are remaining.

So I’ll open that for voting. Opposing the vote, motion carries, 11 to three. Okay, the next is the seventh report of the diversity inclusion anti-oppression community advisory committee. The report is just to be received.

It’s before you in the package, I’ll look for a mover and a seconder for that. Moved by Councillor Cutty, seconded by Councillor McAllister. Any discussion on that report? Go ahead, Councillor ramen.

Yeah, thank you and through you. I just wanted to say that there was some really valuable work in that report about the discrimination experience by immigrants and racialized individuals in this community. And I hope that we all take some time to reflect on it and some of the work that we’re doing and how it aligns with our strategic plan. Thank you.

Thank you, well said, Councillor. Any other speakers? Okay, we’ll open that for voting. Motion carries, 13 to zero.

Noting Councillor Palosa and Councillor Lewis absent. That concludes the deferred matters additional business. We’ve already dealt with the confidential session, which brings us to adjournment. We’d like to move motion to adjourn.

Councillor Stevenson, seconded by Councillor ramen. All those in favor? Motion carries. All right, we’re adjourned.

Thank you very much, everyone.