Open Council

19th Special Meeting of City Council

Open Council

19th Special Meeting of City Council

November 24, 2023, at 9:00 AM

Original link

The meeting is called to order at 9:02 AM; it being noted that Councillors P. Van Meerbergen, E. Peloza, D. Ferreira, S. Hillier were in remote attendance.

1.   Disclosures of Pecuniary Interest

That is BE NOTED that no pecuniary interests were disclosed.

2.   Recognitions

None.

3.   Review of Confidential Matters to be Considered in Public

None.

4.   Council, In Closed Session

Motion made by P. Cuddy

Seconded by S. Stevenson

That Council rise and go into Council, In Closed Session, for the purpose of considering the following:

4.1 Land Acquisition / Solicitor-Client Privileged Advice / Position, Plan, Procedure, Criteria or Instruction to be Applied to Any Negotiations

A matter pertaining to the proposed or pending acquisition of land by the municipality, including communications necessary for that purpose; advice that is subject to solicitor-client privilege; commercial and financial information, that belongs to the municipality and has monetary value or potential monetary value and a position, plan, procedure, criteria or instruction to be applied to any negotiations carried on or to be carried on by or on behalf of the municipality. (6.1/20/CSC)

4.2 Land Acquisition / Solicitor-Client Privileged Advice / Position, Plan, Procedure, Criteria or Instruction to be Applied to Any Negotiations

A matter pertaining to the proposed or pending acquisition of land by the municipality, including communications necessary for that purpose; advice that is subject to solicitor-client privilege; commercial and financial information, that belongs to the municipality and has monetary value or potential monetary value and a position, plan, procedure, criteria or instruction to be applied to any negotiations carried on or to be carried on by or on behalf of the municipality. (6.2/20/CSC)

4.3 Labour Relations/Employee Negotiations

A matter pertaining to labour relations and employee negotiations in regard to the Corporation’s association or unions, advice and recommendations of officers and employees of the Corporation including communications necessary for that purpose. (6.3/20/CSC)

Motion Passed (12 to 0)

That Council convenes In Closed Session, from 9:08 AM to 9:58 AM.

5.   Confirmation and Signing of the Minutes of the Previous Meeting(s)

None.

6.   Communications and Petitions

None.

7.   Motions of Which Notice is Given

None.

8.   Reports

8.1   20th Report of the Corporate Services Committee

2023-11-13 CSC Report 20

Motion made by S. Lewis

That the 20th Report of the Corporate Services Committee BE APPROVED.

Motion Passed (12 to 0)

8.1.1   Disclosures of Pecuniary Interest

Motion made by S. Lewis

That it BE NOTED that no pecuniary interests were disclosed.

Motion Passed

8.1.2   (2.1) Authorization for Temporary Borrowing (Relates to Bill No. 414)

Motion made by S. Lewis

That, on the recommendation of the Deputy City Manager, Finance Supports, the proposed by-law as appended to the staff report dated November 13, 2023 BE INTRODUCED at the Municipal Council meeting to be held on November 24, 2023, to authorize the temporary borrowing of certain sums to meet current expenditures of The Corporation of the City of London for the year 2024.

Motion Passed

8.1.3   (2.2) Data Sharing and Services Agreement with the Municipal Property Assessment Corporation (Relates to Bill No. 415)

Motion made by S. Lewis

That, on the recommendation of the Deputy City Manager, Finance Supports, the proposed by-law as appended to the staff report dated November 13, 2023 BE INTRODUCED at the Municipal Council meeting to be held on November 24, 2023:

a)  TO AUTHORIZE and TO APPROVE a Data Sharing and Services Agreement between the Municipal Property Assessment Corporation and The Corporation of the City of London (the “Agreement”); and

b)  TO AUTHORIZE the Mayor and Clerk to execute the Agreement.

Motion Passed

8.1.4   (4.1) Application - Issuance of Proclamation - Recognizing the Salvation Army Week

Motion made by S. Lewis

That the application dated October 26, 2023 from The Salvation Army of Canada and Bermuda, December 18, 2023 BE PROCLAIMED Recognizing the Salvation Army Week.

Motion Passed

8.1.5   (4.2) Consideration of Appointment to the Animal Welfare Community Advisory Committee

Motion made by S. Lewis

That Jon Higgins BE APPOINTED to the Animal Welfare Community Advisory Committee for the term ending February 2024.

Motion Passed

9.   Added Reports

Motion made by C. Rahman

  1.    Property Acquisition – 1462 Westminster Drive

That, on the recommendation of the Deputy City Manager, Finance Supports, with the concurrence of the Deputy City Manager, Planning and Economic Development, on the advice of the Director, Realty Services, with respect to the property located at 1462 Westminster Drive, further described as Part of Lot 8, Concession 4 (Geographic Township of Westminster) as in Inst. No. 383386, in the City of London, County of Middlesex, being all of PIN 08200-0029 (LT), with an area of approximately 138.64 acres as shown on the location map attached as Appendix “B”, for the purpose of infrastructure environmental compensation, the following actions be taken:

a)     the offer submitted by 1058565 Ontario Limited (the “Vendor”), to sell the subject property to the City, for the sum of Four Million and One Hundred Thousand Dollars CDN ($4,100,000.00) BE ACCEPTED, subject to the terms and conditions set out in the agreement attached as Appendix “C”; and

b)    the financing for this acquisition BE APPROVED as set out in the Source of Financing Report attached hereto as Appendix “A”.

Motion Passed (10 to 2)

10.   Deferred Matters

None.

11.   Enquiries

None.

12.   Emergent Motions

None.

13.   By-laws

Motion made by P. Cuddy

Seconded by S. Stevenson

That Introduction and First Reading of Bill No.’s 413 to 415, BE APPROVED.

Motion Passed (12 to 0)

Motion made by S. Stevenson

Seconded by H. McAlister

That Second Reading of Bill No.’s 413 to 415, BE APPROVED.

Motion Passed (12 to 0)

Motion made by C. Rahman

Seconded by P. Cuddy

That Third Reading and Enactment of Bill No.’s 413 to 415, BE APPROVED.

Motion Passed (12 to 0)

Motion made by C. Rahman

Seconded by P. Cuddy

That Introduction and First Reading of Added Bill No. 416, BE APPROVED.

Motion Passed (10 to 2)

Motion made by P. Cuddy

Seconded by S. Lehman

That Second Reading of Added Bill No. 416, BE APPROVED.

Motion Passed (10 to 2)

Motion made by S. Lehman

Seconded by J. Pribil

That Third Reading and Enactment of Added Bill No. 416, BE APPROVED.

Motion Passed (10 to 2)

14.   Adjournment

Motion made by S. Stevenson

Seconded by P. Cuddy

That the meeting BE ADJOURNED.

Motion Passed

The meeting adjourned at 10:11 PM.

Appendix: New Bills

Full Transcript

Transcript provided by Lillian Skinner’s London Council Archive. Note: This is an automated speech-to-text transcript and may contain errors. Speaker names are not identified.

View full transcript (1 hour, 22 minutes)

[13:13] Okay, thank you, please be seated. I wanna welcome everybody to the 19th special meeting of city council. So this is a special meeting for the purposes of dealing with the corporate services committee items which from an in-camera perspective has a timely item that we have to deal with today. So we’ll proceed through that. I am gonna just read the land acknowledgement and then I am gonna make, although it’s a special meeting, one recognition today, which I’ll go through before we move to the closed sessions and the other items of the agenda.

[13:51] The city of London is situated on the traditional lands of the Anishinaabak, Haudenosaunee, Lene Peiwak, and Adewandran. We honor and respect the history languages and culture of the diverse indigenous people who call this territory home. City of London is currently home to many First Nation, Métis, and Inuit today. As representatives of the city of London, we are grateful to have the opportunity to work and live in this territory. Also, the city of London is committed to making every effort to providing alternate formats and communications supports for meetings upon request. To make a request specific to this meeting, please contact Council Agenda at Lene.ca or 519-661-2489, extension 2425.

[14:27] I’ll look for disclosures of pecuniary interest from colleagues. Yes, you wanna lead us in O Canada? We don’t have a singer, but we can rise and do the songs. I think, I don’t know if we have it playing, but I’m confident we can do it together. So, all right, we’ll lead you. You kick it off, Councillor Stevenson, we’ll follow. Great job, everyone.

[15:49] I will let you know the very first time we did this was a motion I brought to corporate services committee to add O Canada, and after it happened, we had to spontaneously everybody bust into singing right at corporate service committee, and after that, we decided we needed to bring professional singers each time to Council. So, thank you for that, Councillor Stevenson. Disclosure of pecuniary interest. Just wanna make sure no one missed one. Okay, recognition. So, I’m just gonna do a recognition here from the center. For colleagues, we’ve talked about this before, but we all know that this year marks the 150th anniversary of the city of London’s fire department.

[16:31] It’s a century and a half of proudly serving Londoners as a professional department. For those who don’t know, back in the early 1980s, London was protected by volunteers running out of the first fire station on Carling Street. From those humble beginnings and horse-drawn apparatus, it’s grown into a world-class firefighting force equipped with the latest technology staffed by highly trained professionals. In 2023, the London fire department had over 450 personnel protecting London 24 hours a day, seven days a week, responding to over 11,000 calls every year from our 14 fire stations across the city.

[17:05] Recently though, London fire department has lost one of their own. Captain Chris Burnick started with the London fire department in 2001 and moved through the ranks to captain in October of 2023. Chris was an integral part of our joint health and safety committee and strived to make that workplace safer for all employees. Captain Burnick was also known to spread kindness and light wherever he went. He was always kind work and smile for everybody who he came in contact with. His family believed in a world undivided and stood up for the underdog and spoke up when it was not the easy thing to do but the right thing to do.

[17:46] His wife, Christie and their children, will continue to promote this in honor of Chris. For those who will be joining me tonight at the lighting of the lights, Christie, his wife and his children, Miranda, Jordan, Carson, and Chris’s parents, Willam and Janie Burnick, will be joining me to flip the switch for the lighting of the lights tonight. Christie was overjoyed at the request of being able to flip the switch, not only because Chris loved Christmas and all things family, but also because she and Chris had their first date in 2007 right there in Victoria Park. She believes that flipping the switch is just one way to honor the legacy of Captain Chris Burnick.

[18:25] And I hope that you’ll just rise and join me in a moment of silence and remembrance for Captain Burnick. Thank you, please be seated. We have no review of confidential matters to be served in public.

[18:59] We have council in closed session. We have the three items of the corporate services committee to deal with. I’ll look for a motion to move into confidential session. Moved by Councilor Cuddy, seconded by Councilor Stevenson. Any discussion? Okay, we’ll open that for voting. The vote’s yes. The vote’s yes. The vote’s in the vote, motion carries 12 to zero. Okay, so we’re moving to committee room five as we normally do for council.

[19:39] For those who are on the Zoom colleagues, you’ll have to flip to the in-camera Zoom link, which you should have. If any of you don’t have it, I would say reach out to the clerk right away. But we’ll see you in the other Zoom. I’ll just get everybody to log back in for a week and restart.

[1:05:37] All of your computers would have rebooted while we were there because no one would have contemplated having a meeting on a Friday morning. So that’s when they were scheduled to. So it’ll be a couple of minutes for us to reboot everything, get the E-Scribe back up and running in the live stream. So we’re just not gonna do anything until that happens. Okay, please be seated.

[1:10:02] Okay, colleagues, that completes the closed session. We’ll report out at that later, as we normally do at the appropriate point in the agenda. Confirmation is not any minutes for previous meetings. We have none, communication is the petitions. None, notice of which motions are given. None, committee reports. We have the 20th report of the corporate services committee. I’ll have Deputy Mayor Lewis present that report. Thank you, Your Worship. There are five items from the committee report, all were supported at committee. So I’m prepared to put the whole report on the floor unless anyone wants items dealt with individually.

[1:10:36] Anyone want anything dealt with separately? All right, seeing none, the whole slate is now on the floor for consideration. Any comments or questions on the items before us? Seeing none, then we’re gonna open the 20th report of the corporate services committee. It’s an entirety for voting. Closing the vote, motion carries 12 to zero.

[1:11:30] Okay, added reports. We do now have one coming out of closed session. I’ll have Councilor Raman present that report. Thank you and through you. This is the 16th report of the Council in closed session. Your Council in closed session report is deals with item number one, property acquisition, 1462, whence Westminster Drive, that on the recommendation of the deputy city manager, finance supports with the concurrence of the deputy city manager planning and economic development on the advice of the Director Realty Service with respect to the property located at 1462 Westminster Drive, further described as part of lot eight concession for geographic township of Westminster, as in inst number 38336 in the city of London County of Middlesex being all of PEN08200-0029 LT with an area of approximately 138.64 acres as shown on the location map, excuse me, for the purpose of infrastructure, environmental compensation, the following actions be taken, A, the offer submitted by 1058565, Ontario limited the vendor to sell the subject property to the city for the sum of $4,100,000, the accepted subject to the terms and conditions set out in the agreement and B, the financing for this acquisition be approved as set out in the source of financing report.

[1:12:57] That progress was made with respect to item 6.2 and 6.3, as noted on the public agenda, 6.2-20 CSC and 6.3-20 CSC. So I’ll put that. Okay, that’s, so you’re actually presenting a motion so you’re getting still a stand. So that’s moved by Councillor Roman, any discussion on that doesn’t require a seconder. Okay, so go ahead. Looking for guidance here, but I would like to speak about what I spoke about.

[1:13:48] We had several matters in camera. I will say only one of them is being presented in public session as long as you’re absolutely sure, you know, which one, we’re talking about that property acquisition, then yes, this is where we debate things publicly on the property acquisition. So just say, be cautious ‘cause not everything we dealt with in camera is complete yet. And only one thing is being reported out so far of the matters that we went in because progress is being reported on everything else right now. I would like to be 100% sure.

[1:14:38] I wanted to speak about the specific species, the environmental, this is that one. Councillor, I’ll give you some guidance.

[1:15:17] We went in camera for property acquisition that now has been reported out and is before us for consideration. Outers of maybe policy relating to that would be separate. This is about purchasing the property or not. And so if you’re gonna make some debates and discussion, it would be around purchasing this property or not ‘cause that is what we’re considering now. Okay, I hope that’s helpful. It is helpful. And so my concern about this purchase is that we have not had a public discussion around the policy as to pre-purchasing property to meet these environmental and species related, this is not my area of expertise.

[1:16:09] But my thought is that if we are going to, as I understand it, pre-purchase the offset for the next 10 to 20 years, that we would want to have a public discussion around that and get public agreement around that so that we aren’t spending $4 million to do this without having the conversation. So that’s my concern is that it’s not an emergent provincial policy change, it’s something that’s been there. And so what I would like is to have a public discussion around the policy prior to making an asset purchase that’s gonna cover that off for 15 to 20 years.

[1:16:54] Other concern is that it then has us not discussed the consequences of environmental impact on infrastructure plans that we make because we’ve already pre-bought the offset. So it doesn’t come into the public discussion. We aren’t maybe spending the time necessary for this species. And maybe there’s something that we can do policy wise if this goes through to make sure that that is highlighted and discussed as we do the projects to alleviate any concerns there.

[1:17:32] Okay, thank you for your comments, any others? Anyone online? Okay, there are no other speakers to this. It’s been moved by the Councilor so I’m gonna open this for voting. Those in the vote, motion carries 10 to two. Okay, that completes the added reports. Thank you, Councilor Raman.

[1:18:06] We have no deferred matters and no inquiries, no emergent motions. We have three by-laws already on the agenda plus an added by-law 416 given. I just saw colleagues vote differently on that item. I’ll just call 416 separately. It’s related to the item we just talked about. So unless there’s any objections, we can deal with 413, 414, and 415 altogether. We’ll deal with 416, the new added by-law separately. Okay, so I’ll look for a mover of 413 through to 415.

[1:18:40] Councilor Cady, Councilor Stevenson, this is first reading of those by-laws, so we’ll open that for voting. Opposed in the vote, motion carries 12 to zero. Okay, I’ll need a mover and a seconder for second reading of those. Councilor Stevenson, Councilor McAllister, any discussion on second reading?

[1:19:16] Seeing none, we’ll open that for voting. Motion carries 12 to zero. Okay, third and final reading, I’ll look for a mover and a seconder. Councilor Raman, Councilor Cady seconds. There’s no debate on third reading, so we’ll open this for voting. Opposed in the vote, motion carries 12 to zero.

[1:20:04] Okay, and now we’ll do the added bill 416, which is related to the matter. They came out of our in-camera session. I’ll look for a mover and a seconder for that. Councilor Raman, seconded by Councilor Cady. This is first reading, so we’ll open first reading for voting. Opposed in the vote, motion carries 10 to two.

[1:20:49] Okay, mover and a seconder for second reading. For Councilor Cady, move second reading, seconded by Councilor Layman. I did look this way. Any debate on second reading? Okay, seeing none, we’ll open that for voting. Opposed in the vote, motion carries 10 to two. And third reading, I look for a mover and a seconder.

[1:21:25] Moved by Councilor Layman, seconded by Councilor Powell. This is third reading, so there’s no debate, so we’ll open that for voting. Opposed in the vote, motion carries 10 to two. Okay, that completes bylaws. So that brings us to the end of our meeting, which is a German.

[1:22:02] So I’ll look for a motion to adjourned. Councilor Stevenson, seconded by Councilor Cady. We’ll do this one by hand. All those in favor of adjournment. Motion carries. All right, if you celebrate American Thanksgiving, I hope you have a happy Thanksgiving weekend. And if you celebrate going Black Friday shopping, I hope you have a good time doing that today too. So thanks so much and we’ll see you next time.