Open Council

2nd Meeting of the Strategic Priorities and Policy Committee

Open Council

2nd Meeting of the Strategic Priorities and Policy Committee

December 12, 2023, at 4:00 PM

Original link

The meeting is called to order at 4:03 PM; it being noted that Councillor S. Hillier was in remote attendance.

1.   Disclosures of Pecuniary Interest

That it BE NOTED that no pecuniary interests were disclosed.

2.   Consent

Moved by H. McAlister

Seconded by S. Lewis

That Consent Items 2.2, 2.3, 2.7 and 2.8 BE APPROVED.

Motion Passed (15 to 0)

Moved by S. Trosow

Seconded by S. Stevenson

That, notwithstanding the Council Procedure By-law, a change in order of the Strategic Priorities and Policy Committee Agenda BE APPROVED, to provide for Items 2.4, 2.5, 2.6 in Stage 2, Consent, to be considered before Stage 3, Schedule Items.

Motion Passed (13 to 2)

2.2   2023 Resident Satisfaction Survey

2023-12-12 Staff Report - 2023 Resident Satisfaction Survey

Moved by H. McAlister

Seconded by S. Lewis

That on the recommendation of the City Manager, the report dated December 12, 2023, including the 2023 Resident Satisfaction Survey, BE RECEIVED for information.

2.3   December Progress Update - Health and Homelessness Whole of Community System Response

2023-12-12 Staff Report - December Progress Update

Moved by H. McAlister

Seconded by S. Lewis

That, on the recommendation of the Deputy City Manager, Social and Health Development, the December Progress Update – Health and Homelessness Whole of Community System Response Report BE RECEIVED for information.

2.7   8th Report of the Governance Working Group

2023-12-12 Submission - 8th Report of the GWG

Moved by H. McAlister

Seconded by S. Lewis

That the following actions be taken with respect to the 8th Report of the Governance Working Group from its meeting held on November 27, 2023:

a)    the following actions be taken with respect to the “Council Members’ Expense Policy”:

i)     the City Clerk’s Office BE DIRECTED to bring forward a by-law to be introduced at the Municipal Council meeting to be held on December 19, 2023 to amend By-law No. CPOL.-228-480, as amended, being “Council Members’ Expense Account” to update various provisions of the policy as indicated in the staff report dated November 27, 2023;

ii)    the Civic Administration BE DIRECTED to report back on funding travel-related expenses for the annual general conference of Federation of Canadian Municipalities (FCM) and Association of Municipalities of Ontario (AMO) for Members outside the annual expense account allotment; and

iii)    the revised “Council Members’ Expense Policy” BE REFERRED to the next meeting of Governance Working Group for consideration of community engagement expenses;

b)   on the recommendation of the City Clerk, the following actions be taken with respect to the Governance Working Group Meeting Schedule:

i)    the report dated November 27, 2023, entitled “Governance Working Group 2024 Meeting Schedule”, BE RECEIVED for information;

ii)   the following dates BE ESTABLISHED as meeting dates for Governance Working Group (GWG):

Monday, January 22, 2024;

Monday, March 25, 2024; 

Monday, May 13, 2024;

Monday, June 24, 2024; 

Monday, September 23, 2024; and 

Monday, November 25, 2024;

it being noted that the meeting times will be at 10:00 AM;

c)   clauses 1.1 and 4.1 BE RECEIVED.

2.8   11th Report of the Diversity, Inclusion and Anti-Oppression Community Advisory Committee

2023-12-12 Submisson - 11th Report of DIACAC

Moved by H. McAlister

Seconded by S. Lewis

That the 11th Report of the Diversity, Inclusion and Anti-Oppression Community Advisory Committee, from the meeting held on November 30, 2023, BE RECEIVED.

2.4   London Economic Development Corporation Purchase of Services Agreement 2024-2027

2023-12-12 Staff Report - LEDC Purchase of Services Agreement

Moved by S. Lewis

Seconded by C. Rahman

That, on the recommendation of the Deputy City Manager, in accordance with the City of London Procurement of Goods and Services Policy, Section 14.4 Single Source, the following actions be taken:

a)    the proposed by-law as appended to the staff report dated December 12, 2023 as Appendix “A”, BE INTRODUCED at the Municipal Council meeting to be held on December 19, 2023;

b)     a Purchase of Services Agreement between The Corporation of the City of London (Corporation) and the London Economic Development Corporation (LEDC) BE APPROVED;

c)     the Mayor and City Clerk BE AUTHORIZED to execute the Agreement;

d)     the Deputy City Manager, Planning and Economic Development, and their written designates, if any, BE AUTHORIZED the power to administer the Agreement; and

e)     a one-time allocation of $300,000 BE AUTHORIZED and BE APPROVED from the Economic Development Reserve Fund to LEDC for 2024 for services to implement London’s Film Strategy, as set out in section 3(g) of the Agreement as appended to the staff report, noting that additional funding beyond 2024 is subject to the City of London annual budget approval and subject to the prior written annual request of the Deputy City Manager, Planning and Economic Development as directed by Council.

Motion Passed (15 to 0)

ADDITIONAL VOTES:

Moved by J. Pribil

Seconded by S. Stevenson

That, with respect to the London Economic Development Corporation Purchase of Services Agreement 2024-2027, the following actions be taken:

c) the 2024-2027 Purchase of Services Agreement BE REFERRED to Civic Administration to negotiate the following changes:

i) all references to Deputy City Manager, Planning and Economic Development BE AMENDED to City Manager or designate within the Purchase of Services Agreement;

ii) all references to “as required” joint meetings BE AMENDED to “quarterly” joint meetings in section 4 of the Purchase of Services Agreement; 

iii) the Civic Administration BE DIRECTED to establish targets and goals for each metric and explore additional beneficial metrics to be added as appropriate;

Motion Failed (1 to 14)

Moved by J. Pribil

Seconded by S. Trosow

That pursuant to section 31.6 of the Council Procedure By-law, Councillor Pribil BE PERMITTED to speak an additional 1 minute with respect to this matter.

Motion Passed (12 to 3)

2.5   Small Business Centre 2024-2027 Grant Agreement 

2023-12-12 Staff Report - Small Business Centre Grant Agreement

Moved by E. Peloza

Seconded by C. Rahman

That, on the recommendation of the Deputy City Manager, Planning and Economic Development, the following actions be taken:

a)   the proposed by-law as appended to the staff report dated December 12, 2023 as Appendix “A”, BE INTRODUCED at the Municipal Council meeting to be held on December 19, 2023;

b)   a Grant Agreement with the London Community Small Business Centre from 2024 to 2027 BE APPROVED;

c)   the Mayor and City Clerk BE AUTHORIZED to execute the Agreement; and

d)   the Deputy City Manager, Planning and Economic Development, or written designate BE AUTHORIZED to act as the City Representative purposes of the Agreement.

Motion Passed (15 to 0)

2.6   TechAlliance 2024-2027 Grant Agreement 

2023-12-12 Staff Report - TechAlliance Grant Agreement

Moved by S. Trosow

Seconded by P. Cuddy

That, on the recommendation of the Deputy City Manager, Planning and Economic Development, the following actions be taken:

a)    the proposed by-law as appended to the staff report dated December 12, 2023 as Appendix “A”, BE INTRODUCED at the Municipal Council meeting to be held on December 19, 2023;

b)    a Grant Agreement with the TechAlliance of Southwestern Ontario from 2024 to 2027 BE APPROVED;

c)    the Mayor and City Clerk BE AUTHORITZED to sign the Agreement; and

d)    the Deputy City Manager, Planning and Economic Development, or written designate BE AUTHORIZED to act as the City Representative purposes of the Agreement.

Motion Passed (15 to 0)

ADDITIONAL VOTES:

Moved by D. Ferreira

Seconded by A. Hopkins

That the Committee recess at this time.

Motion Passed

The Committee recesses at 5:22 PM and reconvenes at 6:31 PM.

2.1   2023-2027 Implementation Plan

2023-12-12 Staff Report - 2023-2027 Implementation Plan

Moved by P. Cuddy

Seconded by S. Lewis

That on the recommendation of the City Manager, the report dated December 12, 2023, including the 2023-2027 Implementation Plan, BE RECEIVED for information.

Motion Passed (15 to 0)

MOTION WITHDRAWN:

Moved by J. Pribil

Seconded by S. Stevenson

Motion to BE AMENDED to add the following:

That Civic Administration BE DIRECTED to complete annual specific implementation plan by end of February for the upcoming fiscal year covering the period from April 1 to March 31.

Pursuant to section 33.4 of the Council Procedure By-law and at the joint request of the mover and seconder, with the permission of the standing committee, the motion is withdrawn.

3.   Scheduled Items

3.1   Not to be heard before 4:00 PM - Release of the Draft 2024 - 2027 Multi-Year Budget

2023-12-12 BUDGET - (3.1) 2024-2027 Draft Multi-Year Budget

Moved by E. Peloza

Seconded by A. Hopkins

That the following actions be taken with respect to the Draft 2024-2027 Multi-Year Budget, including the Tax-Supported Operating, Capital, Water and Wastewater Treatment Budgets:

a)      the Draft Budget documents BE REFERRED to the 2024-2027 Multi-Year Budget process; and

b)      the overview presentation by the Deputy City Manager, Finance and Supports with respect to the 2024-2027 Multi-Year Budget process BE RECEIVED;

it being noted that the following document was provided to the Members, and is available on the City website: Draft Property Tax Supported, Water and Wastewater & Treatment 2024-2027 Multi-Year Budgets.

Motion Passed (15 to 0)

4.   Items for Direction

4.1   Deputy Mayor S. Lewis and Councillor S. Franke - Submission Regarding Progress Update - Health and Homelessness Whole of Community System Response

2023-12-12 Submission - Progress Update-Lewis, Franke

Moved by S. Lewis

Seconded by S. Franke

That with respect to the matter of Health and Homelessness Whole of Community System Response the following actions be taken:

a) pursuant to section 35.2 of the Council Procedure By-law, the March 7, 2023 Council decision directing Civic Administration to report back monthly to future standing committees on Health and Homelessness Whole of Community System Response progress updates BE RECONSIDERED; and

b) pursuant to section 35.7 of the Council Procedure By-law should reconsideration pass, that Council consider the following alternate recommendation:

the Civic Administration BE DIRECTED to adjust the frequency of the overall comprehensive “Progress Update - Health & Homelessness Whole of Community System Response” to quarterly; it being noted that Council, via the Strategic Priorities and Policy Committee, will continue to receive reports on matters for it’s decision-making related to the Whole of Community System Response as necessary;

it being noted that the Strategic Priorities and Policy Committee received a communication dated December 8, 2023 from B. Brock with respect to this matter.

ADDITIONAL VOTES

Moved by S. Lewis

Seconded by S. Franke

That with respect to the matter of Health and Homelessness Whole of Community System Response the following actions be taken:

a) pursuant to section 35.2 of the Council Procedure By-law, the March 7, 2023 Council decision directing Civic Administration to report back monthly to future standing committees on Health and Homelessness Whole of Community System Response progress updates BE RECONSIDERED

Motion Passed (11 to 4)

Moved by S. Lewis

Seconded by S. Franke

b) pursuant to section 35.7 of the Council Procedure By-law that Council consider the following alternate recommendation:

the Civic Administration BE DIRECTED to adjust the frequency of the overall comprehensive “Progress Update - Health & Homelessness Whole of Community System Response” to twice annually; it being noted that Council, via the Strategic Priorities and Policy Committee, will continue to receive reports on matters for it’s decision-making related to the Whole of Community System Response as necessary;

it being noted that the Strategic Priorities and Policy Committee received a communication dated December 8, 2023 from B. Brock with respect to this matter.

Moved by A. Hopkins

Seconded by H. McAlister

That the motion BE AMENDED to reflect the frequency of the overall comprehensive “Progress Update - Health & Homelessness Whole of Community System Response” from “twice annually” to “quarterly”.

Motion Passed (13 to 2)

Moved by S. Lewis

Seconded by S. Franke

b) pursuant to section 35.7 of the Council Procedure By-law should reconsideration pass, that Council consider the following alternate recommendation:

That Civic Administration BE DIRECTED to adjust the frequency of the overall comprehensive “Progress Update - Health & Homelessness Whole of Community System Response” to quarterly; it being noted that Council, via the Strategic Priorities and Policy Committee, will continue to receive reports on matters for it’s decision-making related to the Whole of Community System Response as necessary;

it being noted that the Strategic Priorities and Policy Committee received a communication dated December 8, 2023 from B. Brock with respect to this matter.

Motion Passed (14 to 1)

5.   Deferred Matters/Additional Business

None.

6.   Confidential (Enclosed for Members only.)

Moved by C. Rahman

Seconded by S. Stevenson

That the Committee recess at this time.

Motion Passed

The Committee recesses at 9:52 PM and reconvenes at 10:00 PM.

Moved by A. Hopkins

Seconded by D. Ferreira

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

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

A matter pertaining to the proposed acquisition or disposition 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.

Motion Passed (14 to 0)

The Strategic Priorities and Policy Committee convenes In Closed Session from 10:01 PM to 10:45 PM.

7.   Adjournment

Moved by P. Van Meerbergen

Seconded by A. Hopkins

That the meeting BE ADJOURNED.

Motion Passed

The meeting adjourned at 10:52 PM.

Full Transcript

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

View full transcript (6 hours, 11 minutes)

[11:00] Okay, I’m gonna call the meeting to order. This is the SPPC committee. The city of London is situated on the traditional lands of the Anishinaabak, Haudenosaunee, Lenny Paywalk, and Adawandran. We honor and respect the history languages and culture of the diverse indigenous people who call this territory home. The city of London is currently home to many First Nations, 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. As well, the city of London is committed to making every effort to provide alternate formats and communication supports for meetings upon request.

[11:33] To make a request specific to this meeting, please contact SPPC at London.ca, or 519-661-2489, extension 2425. I’ll start with disclosures of pecuniary interest for colleagues. Okay, seeing none, we have eight consent items. Counselor Pribble was kind enough to let me know that he’d like 2.1, 2.4, 2.5, and 2.6 cold and dealt with separately. So those items will move to the end of items for direction.

[12:12] Is there other items that colleagues would like hold separately? Counselor Troso. I have some questions about the resident satisfaction survey, but it doesn’t involve changing the motion. That’s fine, we can leave it there. You can ask questions, but I really need to know that you’re not gonna change the motion ‘cause if you have any intention of, we should move it to the end. Just questions, that’s fine. Just questions is fine. Okay, everything else people are fine with? Okay, then to get things on the floor, I’ll ask for someone to make a motion for 2.2, 2.3, 2.7, and 2.8.

[12:52] Moved by Councilor McAllister, seconded by Deputy Mayor Lewis. Okay, those items are on the floor. Counselor Troso, I can start with you, and then I’ll look to other speakers on any of those items. Thank you and through the chair, and I’m not sure this is the proper place to raise it, but I’m not sure what is, because we just received this report. And I think that the agency that is at the bottom of the Satisfaction Survey is an anomaly. And that’s unusually low. That’s lower than I would suspect any agency to be. And at some point, I’d like to know when it would be appropriate for me to ask questions from people in the management of this agency, why it’s so low and what they’re going to do to improve on that.

[13:37] What’s, which agency? Councilor, I just don’t have to list in front of me. It’s London Middlesex housing authority. So I would suggest that there’s a couple of times during the year where the agency could come forward to present the council. They do an annual update in a shareholders meeting. There’s always the possibility to request the board to come forward for questions or information, but I would say probably part of the resident’s satisfaction survey now is not, they’re not here, so they can’t ask questions now, but you could inquire on that request through our staff, but the most appropriate way to move forward.

[14:14] Deputy Mayor Lewis is on that board. He has his hand up, would you like me to seek some commentary from him for you or not? Sure. Deputy Mayor Lewis. Thank you, Chair, and I appreciate the opportunity to at least hopefully provide a little bit of information for the councilor. When we’re talking about satisfaction at London Middlesex community housing, I think we need to also consider that this is a report for the current satisfaction over the course of a year.

[14:46] It’s a snapshot in time. Several steps have been taken this year, including steps by this council to start addressing some of the biggest concerns. We just recently ratified a change to the tenant placement agreement, which certainly, and I’ve certainly had meetings with Councilor Ferrer and some of his constituents about the impacts that that old formula was having on those tenants in those buildings, and so we expect to see some improvement there. We have recently just finished the completion of the new strategic plan for London Middlesex community housing. We have changed the contract service provision for things like pest control.

[15:26] So for example, we at one point had three different pest control agencies and there was not satisfaction with the level of service we were receiving from that. We have a new contractor now who is addressing that work has just started at the beginning of this month. So there are things that are going on within the Middlesex community housing portfolio that are going to be making a difference. We’ve, for example, replaced a number of elevators this year through the capital that the previous council actually funded in its multi-year budget stream.

[16:01] So there have been investments made. There are steps starting to happen. Staffing vacancies have been filled for the most part. Councilor McAllister can correct me if I’m wrong, but I believe we are now pretty close to 100% capacity at staffing. For a number of months, we had some vacancies there. So people were doing double duty on jobs. I think we have two positions left to fill, although I could be wrong on that. Obviously from the board level, we don’t get too much into the HR piece, but there are steps being taken in that regard.

[16:35] And I think that it reflects the fact that the customer satisfaction is lower because for many, many, many years, this was an agency that was not being properly funded and getting the proper attention, but there is committed funding from this council, new leadership in place, staff are being hired and work is happening. So we’re gonna continue to strive to work with that. And I think when the new strategic plan finally goes through its last processes at the board, people will say the emphasis on the tenant services, particularly around the pest control and building maintenance, replacing keyed entries with door fobs, for example, things like that to enhance security that are happening at London and Middlesex community housing.

[17:15] So obviously not a full answer, and I don’t wanna speak for the CEO. Obviously he’s not here, but I can tell you from a board perspective, those are the directions that we’re taking. Councillor Trostan. Yeah, thank you. That’s helpful. I think now is not the place for me to start going into specific responses to the elevators and the pest control. I won’t do that now. I did have a question through the chair, though, about the gap analysis. Because it just seems that that agency was so low that it should have turned up more acutely.

[17:49] And I think there’s something that happens in the gap analysis where if a particular agency is not of a lot of importance to people, it gets diluted in the gap analysis. And I would like to understand that better. ‘Cause if that’s the case, I think that that is creating some disparities in terms of people who are at the absolute lowest end of the economic stature in London. And to not see that agency. And I’m glad to hear that there are some improvements.

[18:26] I haven’t seen them yet and I haven’t heard them yet. I’m glad to hear that there are some improvements, but I just don’t understand why that is not sort of at the top even of the gap analysis. And again, I’m not going to ask for the report to be sent back, but I would like to understand how that gap analysis works a little bit better. ‘Cause there’s something about it that just doesn’t seem right to me. And I’ll leave it at that. Thanks. And I know certainly you could meet with staff to talk about the methodology behind the survey and the report and I’ll leave that to you.

[19:01] Oh, or I don’t think the counselor was asking to do it now. He was just looking to engage. Yeah, I think follow up would be good that he could ask some further questions. Okay, Councillor Hopkins. Yeah, thank you, Mr. Chair. I just want to make a comment on the residential survey. I always find them quite interesting and have read a number of them throughout the years. I do want to just make a few comments. It was surprising to me how the numbers really reflect what I’m hearing in my community as well.

[19:39] And obviously homelessness and poverty really ranks the number one as a concern for residents in London. But second to that, and a distant second is the high interest rates, which I found quite unusual to be in the survey. Obviously, we as municipal government have very little to do with the interest rates, but it really did show me how important it is to residents in the area. I do want to just also mention that what has been consistent and through you, Mr. Chair, maybe to staff how the residents contacting our city, their satisfaction is quite high and continues to be high and has been through all the challenges.

[20:25] So I just want to really underline and score the work that city staff are doing taking in these calls and dealing with all the challenges that we’ve had to deal with throughout the past year or so. So those are generally my comments, thank you. Thank you, Councillor, I have Councillor Stevenson next. Thank you, I have a few questions on the resident survey as well. I understand the statistics and the sampling when they reached out to 507 people, but it says that this is to support the commitment to measure and publicly report to council and the community on the city’s performance.

[21:09] And I was just wondering if we use anything else besides the survey. I also felt that in the executive summary, the focus was on the percentage that were satisfied, but I did notice that the ones that felt quality of life to be very poor doubled and those that felt quality of life was poor increased by 50%. And I just wondered about staff’s comments on that. Sure, go to Ms. Livingston to start. Through you, Mr. Chair, yes, there are a number of other tools and mechanisms by which we report on performance.

[21:44] In addition to this, this is a point in time survey that’s done year over year, but also allows us to look at trends and to see whether there’s a shift in some components. And it allows to understand top-of-mind issues and whether council and staff are working to address what the community considers to be most important. Another very important document that fulfills that commitment around reporting on performance is the annual performance report. That is part of the accountability and reporting cycle that is linked to council’s strategic plan.

[22:20] And so once the multi-year budget is finalized, then we’ll have a good understanding and be able to establish clearly the targets against the metrics that council identified through their strategic plan. And then each November, we report out on those metrics. So that’s also an additional tool that we use to report in terms of performance. And then there are external tools that are used. An example would be our AAA credit rating. So there are a number that contribute to being able to report on performance.

[22:55] This is one and a point in time one. Go ahead. Thank you, just to follow up there. I guess I meant resident survey. So resident information, have we done before? Is there any thought to reach out in other ways in addition to the survey, maybe through get involved or through surveys at our service centers or libraries or something like that? Go ahead. Yes, through you, Mr. Mayor, thank you for that prompt. Yes, a number of the service areas also do their specific service satisfaction.

[23:28] So for example, in recreation, we do regular evaluations and satisfaction surveys. So that’s an example. On get involved, we use that tool to engage residents on a number of initiatives that we are doing. I can’t speak to the library, but I anticipate that they also have those kind of satisfaction tools. So we have them in a number of service components. This is just the kind of overall global assessment that’s done each and every year. And I would indicate that it also reflects perception. So it may not reflect an individual’s direct experience with any particular service, but certainly the perception of that service.

[24:10] Go ahead. Thank you, last follow up was just looking for a response on the fact that those who felt that quality of life was very poor doubled and poor increased by 50%. Yes, Mr. Mayor, again, the resident satisfaction survey touches on top of mind issues and how residents are feeling overall in addition to their particular experience with services they may receive from the city. So I think there are a number of external factors that are articulated here, that are influencing how people feel about their quality of life.

[24:47] Some of those were mentioned in terms of inflation, perception of homelessness. Of course, can I have one in the truck more? I gotta go down back to you. Thanks, go ahead. Whatever I said there. (laughing) Yes, sorry, I’m back on track. So I think that it reflects how people are feeling. It’s consistent with what we’re seeing in other cities, given the external factors like homelessness, like inflation rates affect more than just the city of London, of course.

[25:21] So that would be my comment about that. The areas where we control can have some control over how people receive our services. Those are the things we pay a lot of attention to to try and turn the curve and have them be a positive experience, but this survey reflects both of those elements. Yep, that’s all ahead on 2.2. I had some on 2.3, but I don’t know if you want me to let others talk on the resident survey. It’s up to you. I’m keeping track of the time. You got lots left, so you could pause now and come back on the list.

[25:54] But I think we’re on the general thing. So if you wanna continue on, you’re welcome to. I actually don’t have anybody on the list after you yet. This is on anything, but right now we’re talking about the resident satisfaction survey. Is it on that? No, okay, then I’m gonna leave you for that. I don’t know if there’s anybody else on resident satisfaction survey, so why don’t you go to the next one? Okay, so 2.3 is the Health and Homelessness December Progress Update. And I just wanted to follow up on my question from November where I had asked about how much of the 25 million had been spent and committed to as well as how much we had spent on things like lived and living experience and that kind of thing.

[26:34] Maybe it will be coming in January. I’ll just get an answer to that, go ahead. Yes, we are working to pull that information together and it will be available for the next reporting cycle on this item. Go ahead, Councillor. Thank you, so my only other comments are when I look at, you know, as we come to the close of 2023 and we had a commitment for 100 highly supportive housing and three to five hubs, we’ve got 44 and 25s. We’ve got 69 for the highly supportive housing.

[27:11] But the 44 were already there for deeply affordable housing that we rebranded and the 25, I’m assuming those were in use by somebody at the time. So there’s nothing new there. So I just wondered, and I know there’d be an update coming in January, but that along with the fact that we had the 100 spaces offered for the Bob Hayward but no staff for this winter. So I wondered if there was just a comment or reassurance around the huge commitment we have to 531 more highly supportive housing units and three to 12 more hubs in the next two years if we didn’t have the staff for the 100 beds, just looking for some comments or reassurance there.

[27:59] I’ll start with Ms. Livingston, go ahead. Yes, Mr. Chair, I’d like to kind of comment on some of that because actually what happened with the 44 was a commitment to move forward with those as highly supportive. So it wasn’t rebranding and those units were filled in October with new people coming into them. The same with the 25, highly supportive, people weren’t housed anywhere else. Those were new units and they were filled with new people. So 69 in total. And yes, we were working towards a target when the plan was released of 100 as well as hopefully five up to five hubs this year.

[28:39] And that is the work that the community has tried to undertake with moving forward with two and the 69 units. In terms of the difference between trying to establish ongoing sustainable services versus emergent and necessary temporary services that is the challenge of staffing for the short-term services such as cold weather response. So yes, the system is extremely stretched and we’re trying to do both at the same time. But I think the big difference which allows organizations to bring on permanent staffing is when we’re looking at those permanent solutions versus trying to hire staff for a six-month period of time.

[29:21] Hiring for longer-term permanent jobs tends to be easier and you can provide people a career path versus a temporary or emergency service that is short-term. Go ahead. Thank you, just a couple of follow-ups there. I understand that the 44 are new highly supportive housing units but when we look at our housing crisis and our homelessness crisis in our city, those deeply affordable housing units were built and ready for occupancy in the spring.

[29:53] And so when I say rebranding, I mean, they were there ready for the people on our housing wait list and then we switched them to highly supportive housing. So when we look at the gamut of what is needed, those weren’t new beds. They just moved from one pile to another to one list to another. And so the same with the 25, with the new hub, yes, no, they weren’t highly supportive housing units before but presumably some Londoner was living in them and using that extended stay suite.

[30:28] So the same with the hubs. We had a commitment of 73 for the spring and unfortunately now that’s down to 43 with the withdrawn proposal. And I know there would be more coming or at least it’s anticipated there’ll be new hub proposals coming. But that only leaves, so of the 43, 28 of them were already in place for this winter because last year’s winter response had two years of at LOSA for the 18 plus 10. So again, that means only 15, the YOU are actually new beds in the city of London for our homeless population.

[31:08] And when it comes to the 100 spaces at the Bob Hayward, was there any thought to maybe use that as a training ground or to hire staff on, take advantage of the whole of community aspect to be able to bring people in, train them half-staff ready knowing that more hubs and highly supportive are coming? Mr. Jenkins. Thank you and through you, your chair, as Ms. Livingston had also indicated, I’ll reiterate that the 44 units at Thompson was not a simple switch in conversion. Yes, we used money for rapid housing initiative which was targeting affordable housing.

[31:46] However, before any units were occupied, we did seize the opportunity to create highly supportive housing units. The extended suites or the executive suites of which London Health Sciences Center and London Cares opened up 25 beds are net new. There were no Londoners living in that space. It’s a fantastic partnership funded by the hospital to create 25 highly new, highly supportive housing units. As far as the number of hubs beds, Atlosa was providing 18 indoor respite spaces. It was not 28, they were offering 18, they’ve added 10 new additional beds.

[32:24] That space as well has been converted to start to provide hub type services. So again, it wasn’t just a procurement of beds and pillows, it was a procurement of some essential services for those high acuity folks. As far as things that were contemplated at the Y or the strategies, we appreciate the suggestion to have considered it as a training grounds. That’s exactly how we proposed it to a number of organizations, looking to do some upfront hiring of their staff to provide short term temporary supports in the hopes that they could springboard that into more permanent longstanding programming.

[32:59] The challenge in that is economic a promise to an organization that we could hire a number of their staff and fund them to do something temporary without a guarantee of ongoing permanent funding for whatever that next iterative project is, be it a highly supportive housing program or a hub. So we did contemplate that with a number of service providers. And I will note that typically the service providers that are interested or able to provide short term cold by the relief are typically different than the partners that provide housing as well. Council, you got 30 seconds left.

[33:33] All right, thank you. I got to say I appreciated the LMCH update because there is a lot of concern in the social housing. And I really liked hearing that there’s positive things coming. I don’t want to belabor the 44, but those were available in the spring. They weren’t used, people needed them. And I am glad to, you know, maybe the training will happen and we’ll be able to utilize the staff that Arcade is training to be able to move to the hubs and the highly supportive housing when we get them. Okay, thank you.

[34:05] Any other speakers, Councilor Ferrer, go ahead. Thank you, Mr. Mayor. This is for item 2.1, the 2023, 2027. Okay, so 2.1 has been pulled by Councilor Pribble. Oh, okay. And so has 2.45 and six. So we deal with that as per our policy by the at the end of the items for direction. So we’ll get to that just not for a little bit. Councilor Plaza. Thank you, Bishop. Just more of a comment procedurally realized we have friends in the gallery with us that making sure they realize that anything that was pulled from consent will come after the scheduled items and the budget’s probably gonna take about an hour, just if they’re trying to manage their time.

[34:45] Yes, I’m happy to clarify that. I did mention that when it was pulled that they go to the end of the scheduled items for direction. So given a Councilor wants to make changes to, for those who are here from the LADC Small Business and Tech Alliance, given a Councilor would like to contemplate some changes when it’s pulled from consent to go to the end of items for direction, which is actually after our budget item. And I’ll also let colleagues know that we have a hard stop scheduled break from 5.30 till 6.30 tonight. Annually, we reserve time for any Councilors who’d like to go down and participate or observe the lighting of the menorah.

[35:22] And as well, I’m just gonna combine kind of the dinner break with that so that people can finish that, come back and come in and then we can conclude. So that, but that’ll be a specifically scheduled break. No matter what, the middle of something or not, we’re gonna pause at 5.30 for an hour. So hopefully that gives you some information that if you’re here for 2.4, 2.5 or 2.6, you might be here for a little while before we get to it. So apologies for that, but that’s just the kind of the way it rolls when someone wants to make some contemplated changes. Councillor Troso.

[35:57] I’m wondering if a Councilor could make a motion to alter that and allow us to accommodate the people who have come so we could do that. I don’t think these are gonna be very controversial items, but there might be questions and I’d like to not have them here until nine o’clock. So I would move that we move that up. So it would be a motion to not, basically not withstanding section 27.4 of the Councilor procedure by-law that items, you went to just 2.4, 2.5 and 2.6, the ones that the guests are here for.

[36:37] There’s also the implementation plan, but that’s— No, it’s the guest. So the answer is yes, Councillor. That motion can be made. I’m just following the procedure by-law. We can exempt ourselves. So the motion then is not withstanding the counts, relevant section of the Councilor procedure by-law. We’ll put that in the motion. That items 2.4, 2.5 and 2.6 be dealt with after the other items of consent are dealt with that we’re currently on. Seconded by Councillor Stevenson. Okay, we’re now debating that motion, comments on that. Then as soon as we get that ready, it is ready.

[37:21] We’ll open that for voting now. This is Councillor Troce’s procedural motion. We go back to the motion we had on the floor right after. Sorry, Your Worship. I don’t know if anyone has something in the problem, but eScribes is not working for several of us on this side. I’ll vainly vote yes then.

[38:01] I vote yes as well. Voting the vote motion carries 13 to two. Okay, so we’ll deal with that then. Those are three items after the other items for consent, which are on the floor, which we’re currently discussing a number of Councillors who spoke 2.3, 2.7 and 2.8. Anybody else on those items? So that’s moved and seconded.

[38:34] We’ll open those for voting. Voting the vote motion carries 15 to zero. Okay, I’m gonna look for, so we’re gonna deal with these one at a time. So 2.4 is the London Economic Development Corporation Purchase of Service Agreement. I’ll look for someone willing to put the recommendation on the floor and then we can deal with any sort of changes that Councillors wanna make.

[39:14] Go ahead, Councillor Lewis and Councillor ramen. Okay, so that’s on the floor. Councillor Pribble, you were looking to make some changes. Why don’t you go ahead and suggest that now. Just for my fellow Councillors, 2.4, five and six are actually the same proposals for amendments for the motion. And what I’m looking for is if you answer the agreements and I look actually the ones that were previously in place, and if you look at the I-123 amendments, what I’m proposing is that currently when it says the beauty city manager planning economic development to be stated what was before city manager and designate or designate.

[39:57] And the reason why I’m saying it is that we actually have, as you all know, we have only one point. My preference is you just outline your motion first rather than justify it now. I’ll look for a seconder for your motion just ‘cause you’ve circulated a test, but the public has no idea what it is. So identify what your motion is. I’ll look for a seconder, then you can make your case. Okay, then I-I all references to as required joint meetings be amended to quarterly joint meetings in section four of the purchase of service agreement. I-I-3, the civic administration be directed to establish targets and goals for each matrix and explore additional beneficial matrix to be added as appropriate.

[40:41] And the London Economic Development Corporation purchase service agreement 24 to 27 report be received. Those are my proposed amendments in my motion. Just the way that you worded your motion counselor is a little bit awkward.

[41:36] Essentially, what you’re asking for is a referral back to the civic administration to negotiate some changes. And in the meantime, extend the purchase of service agreements and authorize civic administration to undertake the acts to extend those purchase of service agreements and receive the report. So it’s actually a referral motion to do those things. So all of the things you said, it’s just the way that you circulated a worded to us kind of has to be dealt with as a referral. And then, you know, your C is essentially the main part in your A and B and D kind of fall under, fall under that referral as actions that are also taken.

[42:13] Is that okay? So we’ll word it differently, but so colleagues know that this is a motion to refer to do the things that Councillor Pribble’s suggesting, which he outlined now, and we’ll make sure this gets on the screen properly if there’s a seconder. Is there a second? Councillor Stevenson’s willing to second. Okay, so we’re gonna get that up worded in the proper way. Okay, on the advice of the clerks, we’re really just referring to the dealing with the referral part first.

[43:19] If the referral passes, then Councillor, given it was referred, then you can make the motion to extend the purchase of service agreements and authorize the acts after the referral occurs. So we’re just gonna deal with the C part of your motion now because those aren’t necessary if C doesn’t pass. You know what I mean? So we’re basically dealing with C, which is referred to civic administration, back to civic administration, negotiate the three changes you’ve suggested, and then the other parts we’ll deal with after if that referral passes. ‘Cause really those are actions that we would need to take if it was referred to deal with the mistiming of the end of the agreement.

[43:57] Okay? Okay, have that seconder’s good with that. Okay, so we’re on the referral, which is the C that Councillor Pribble circulated, which you should be able to see in East Cribe now. So I’ll open discussion or debate on the referral. Councillor Troso, go ahead. Through the chair, I’d like to know if this causes any disruption for the, any of the agencies in terms of their operations, because I would suspect they’re, they’re looking for the disbursement to be in their account by a certain time.

[44:38] How would this affect them in their operation? I’ll start with Mr. Mathers. You feel free to bring in whoever you need to address the question. Through the chair, if one of my colleagues wants to speak up, and I’ll be happy for a lot of them to do that as well. So the agreements, the current agreements for the three partners do end at the end of this year. So if we don’t have an agreement in place, we won’t be able to continue to provide them funding. And we wouldn’t have enough time, and we wouldn’t be able to bring it back to council prior to the end of this year.

[45:11] So if we were gonna bring back an alternative agreement, an alternative maybe to, if that council’s purview, you could approve this agreement and amend it in the future as well. That’s another opportunity, but it would cause it a lay if it isn’t approved at this time. I’m worried that through the chair, I’m worried that if there’s a gap in funding, it could, it could deodoriously affect other levels of funding that might be dependent on the home, the home city having an agreement. And I don’t want to get into that situation.

[45:49] Other speakers to the referral? Deputy Mayor Lewis, and then I’ll come back to you, Councillor Pribble. Thank you. So I can try and keep my comments to the referral, but I have to reference what the councilor is hoping to achieve in this referral in order to speak to it, and I will not be supporting the referral. First of all, I want the organizations to get on with the business of doing their work. We just, a number of us attended a great event hosted by LADC last week.

[46:23] We see a lot of work going on in the community that is beneficial, and I want them to be moving forward with that. I agree with Councilor Trustup. I think that a referral challenges some of the organization’s ability to seek matching funds from other levels of government, but I also can’t support the referral because the councilor is also seeking to ask civic administration to direct established targets. When we put out a purchase service agreement, it is the vendor, not civic administration, that reports back to us on what metrics they are gonna use, what targets they are going to be able to achieve.

[47:00] That’s part of bidding on the purchase of service agreement. So I’m absolutely not going to support a referral that’s going to ask our staff to do work that the proponents, when they responded to the request for a purchase of service agreement in the first place, would have included in their packages moving forward. And I’m sure that, you know, as we see our guests in the gallery, they know what metrics they can provide and measure to us far better than civic administration does. So I’m not gonna be asking our staff to undertake work that is rightly the purview of those who are providing the service to us.

[47:39] That’s why we purchase the service because we do not have the in-house expertise to do it ourselves. Councilor Perable. So just a couple of things. And one thing I forgot to mention in point A, I was actually, I know I was told to deal with C as a referral, but just so you know, I did consult this with the clerk’s office. And I did say kind of the points I wanted to bring across and this was the recommendation that I was advised to do. A couple of things.

[48:10] Yes, it’s very unfortunate that we didn’t get these agreements till now, which is a four-year agreement that we don’t get it till almost middle of December. And we have to decide within the next two weeks. I think one of the things that, and again, I will talk in terms of the referral now to those points. I really think those two points are very critical for us to go back. And I’m talking about only C right now. The Peter City Manager, as I said, we have only one staff, which is the City Manager, which we hold accountable to.

[48:42] Now we are giving all the power within these three organizations is the Peter City Manager. And we cannot hold him accountable. I don’t think that’s the wise decision. I don’t think it makes sense. The second one is as required meetings. I’ll tell you right now, we do need quarterly meetings. These three organizations are great organizations, but there are certain things. There’s a room for improvement. And they really need to get together on a regular basis with the three top executives and make the plan for us and how to maximize the investment for London.

[49:17] And the last one, we have Matrix, or they came out with Matrix, it’s true. But you want the Matrix, they’re not measured. They don’t have targets and they don’t have goals. And I think there’s a big issue. I think it’s a big issue. I don’t know if they’re board of directors, if they’re required. But I certainly think that we need to require it. Because again, if you have Matrix, you’re gonna do, you’re gonna base it on number of calls, number of companies, this. That’s great, but how many? And then I think everyone needs to be focused and accountable and this part is not there.

[49:52] And actually I’m very surprised because actually, one of my colleagues sent an article from four years ago when this was negotiated. And actually there was a delay of six months because there were actually things that were mentioned that actually has been changed. Someone changed their mind and now it’s okay. And four years ago it wasn’t. So anyway, it’s going back to it. So it has nothing to do. I think these three organizations are very positive, great for the city. I just wanna take it a step further. And I wanna make sure that we have these goals and targets in place.

[50:26] So if it’s not, again, I wasn’t advised that it would be as a referral. I was advised by the clerk’s office that we could do it this way. But certainly I really would like my colleagues to consider this because these are really, we are talking about next four years. These four years are very crucial. We need to be accountable. And I really do think if you think about it, these three points, it does make sense. So I know if there’s a suggestion to attack it in different perspective. But I don’t know if we can ask actually the agencies that are represented here.

[51:01] Maybe if they agree to it, it doesn’t have to be referred. And they just put with the next, within this timeframe by end of January, they’re a proposal. But I do believe if you have any questions, please do ask me, but these are, we are talking about the C, I, W-I, and the reply. Really three very important points. If you have any questions, please do ask me, but they are very important to be addressed. Thanks. Thanks, Councilor. And the reason why it’s a referral is in the motion you circulated, it actually says, be referred, it’s a referral.

[51:38] That’s what you asked for, it’s a referral. We just changed the order that we’re dealing with the parts of your motion, just to make it make sense procedurally. We’re not changing it any other direction that you’ve asked for, it’s a referral. I have myself next on the speakers list, so I’ll have Councilor Raman take the chair. Thank you, recognizing the mayor. Yes, so I won’t be supporting the referral. I appreciate what the Councilor is saying. And I’ll say this, and I know the LEDC, and Mr. Locote has in the audience. I have not been always, I wouldn’t wanna say a fan, I’ve been a fan of the LEDC, but I’ve definitely been a critic in previous terms of Council.

[52:17] I’ve been a critic of the purchase of service agreement, myself and former city manager, Martin Hayward, worked through a delay, updated the agreement, and it made some changes to it in partnership to it. And I will say, from my perspective, I think that the organization and the relationship between City Hall is working quite well. I’m not sure it matters if it’s the city manager or a deputy city manager. Essentially, they have a direct relationship with Council on a regular basis, and my understanding of the organization and conversations with them is that if there’s a need for them to come before Council, they’re willing to do so anytime.

[52:53] Yes, it says, you know, as required, but all we have to do is ask and say, we’d like a meeting, and given, you know, where they’re only entity that they purchase, the purchase of services from them, they’re gonna say yes, like they’re gonna come before us and they’re gonna present to us. So I don’t see that as necessary. As for the development of, you know, targets and metrics, like, listen, we just had the annual reports, like, and I’ll just speak to the LEDC ‘cause that’s the only one on the floor. Like, this is an organization that is driving and organizing the incredible interest and success that we’ve had in our industrial land development strategy, the work to recruit talent here, the workforce development piece, partnering with, in a regional level, with St. Thomas to ensure that workforce development questions for Volkswagen were answered, regularly meeting with high profile individuals.

[53:51] I have the opportunity because I sit on the board to know that, without revealing confidentiality, that there is a number of really positive irons in the fire on the economic development side of things particularly with our industrial land. And frankly, the challenge we’re gonna have is we’re gonna run out of space for all the interest that we have in our city. And so I understand the desire here, but I will say, given the previous changes we’ve made to the purchase of service agreement, given the climate that we’re in and how much activity is occurring right now, you know, my preference is, let’s just get the agreement on the plate.

[54:24] If we wanna talk to ‘em, let’s invite them to come and speak to us. But let’s kinda like get out of the way a little bit and let them do all these follow ups that they have to do to bring these jobs to our city and actually get these corporations either expanding their businesses or bringing new businesses here. And time and time again, we get to have exciting announcements. We’re just out in the advanced industrial park like last week or the, I think it was last week with Minister Fidelity talking about the Metacom’s investment, which the LEDC played a lead on.

[54:57] Like, so I understand what the council is asking. I think there’s lots of opportunities to engage. I don’t think a referral is necessary. I think we can pass the purchase of service agreement. And I think through dialogue and discussion and invitation to come here, we can engage with the LEDC in a more detailed way if we’d like. And I know they’re happy to share both successes and engage in a dialogue about what we’d like to see. So I don’t see the referrals necessary. I won’t support it, I’ll support the passing of the original purchase of service agreement. But I’ll support the council’s desire to have them come and talk more often.

[55:28] And I think that there’s a great willingness on their part to do so. Thank you. I will return the chair to the mayor with Councilor Perbal with a follow-up question. Okay, Councilor Perbal with your time. We got about 30 seconds. So I’ll try to be brief. I really think this is, first of all, I think that to receive a four-year agreement at this time with very little time to talk to the CEOs of the other organization, I think it’s very unfair in my eyes, actually totally unacceptable, point one.

[56:03] Point two, if you are changing this and I’m sorry, your worship, if you feel that there’s no change in terms of the period city manager or city manager, there’s a huge change, huge, because we have only one employee that we have. How can we hold him accountable if he’s not, if she’s not on the agreement? It does not make sense. The accountable is going totally away, okay? Not to hold him accountable to meet four times. Councilor, your time is up. You’re going to need an extension if you want to speak. Yes, please. Councilor, is there a seconder for an extension of time?

[56:37] You got a, how much time? An extension of one minute. Councilor Provost asking for a seconder by Councilor Trossau. Okay, we’re just going to vote on that. We’re going to do that in the system because I see people shaking their heads different ways, so I just want to make sure we have a record of the vote. Okay, just open it.

[57:25] Okay, we’ll open that for voting. Wosing the vote, motion carries 12 to three. Okay, continue on Councilor. Thank you, so going back to it, tremendously important agreements, all three of them. We get them displayed. If I look at, I really honestly don’t understand why they were displayed because they are almost identical.

[57:58] And actually we took out the stuff and the updates we made in my eyes are not in the benefit of our community. Very unfair timing. We are making adjustments, as I said, repeating myself. We cannot change it to the beauty city manager because how can we hold the city manager accountable, the new city manager accountable if the deputy is going to be on the agreements? And the period is not our employee. Does not make sense. Four times a year to meet for these crucial organizations to move our city forward, absolutely a must. If it’s, we all know how busy everyone gets, if it’s as required, who knows, if it’s going to be once or twice a year.

[58:37] These reorganizations, they are a great for our city, but they can be even better. There are certain services that overlap, they can drive it much more efficient and they need to be together. All three of them on these regular basis. Goals, I personally think that their board of directors should require these anyways. So actually, to be honest with you, first I was thinking of, they must have them anyways and we could have it even before the council and there doesn’t need to be- The time is up, Councilor. Still January. Please consider these points that are really important.

[59:10] Think about it where I was saying, thank you. In my fault, I gave you a little bonus time because I was listening and not looking at the clock. So sorry about cutting off abruptly, but you did get an extra 20 seconds there, sorry. Other speakers I have, Councillor Stevenson and then Councillor Caddy and then Councillor Plosa. Thank you, can I ask why these three contracts were withdrawn last month? I’ll go to the city manager. Your worship council may recall that a note went forward indicating that we were moving to this meeting because the schedule for the November 21st, SPPC was so extremely heavy and I don’t believe council to this day concluded the business of that meeting and so we were trying to be respectful.

[59:55] It was also those agreements would have been put on the added agenda and so we were trying to be respectful that council needed some time to review them and put them into a meeting where there would be time to consider them and debate them. So that was the decision that was made. That was my decision. Go ahead. Why would they be on the added agenda? I’m just wondering why last minute. The added agenda at the last meeting? Yeah, go ahead. They would have been on the added agenda for the last meeting because there were still things to be negotiated is my understanding. Were there significant changes made over the last contract?

[1:00:37] Through the chair. So a few of the things that were significant and were impacted were we looked at the financial piece to ensure that there was an appropriate inflationary increase every year. So we cleaned up that language. We also went through and as mentioned, it’s been changed to deputy city manager. That reflects the reorganization that happened in the city post the last agreement where it previously was with the city manager’s office and then it was moved to the my new role. And then also we added in the strategic plan metrics that were developed by council.

[1:01:09] That’s the first time that we’ve actually linked council strategic plan and the specific metrics developed with these agreements. So those were the most significant changes. Go ahead. Thank you. Would it be possible to get the LEDC strap plan before council the same as the other two? Would is it possible for us to get that for information purpose? Go ahead. Through the chair, I don’t see that be a problem. I can reach out to the different organizations and provide that to council on the problem.

[1:01:43] And there’s thumbs up and nodding and tapping in from LEDC in the audience. So yes. I guess the only other thing I’m wondering is if I do agree with councilor Pribble in that the agreement has metrics, but no commitment. So it’s like one or more is good. And I get that there’s been good work done in the past, but I do agree that from a place of governance or oversight, it is good to have, to know what they’re shooting for.

[1:02:19] I’m assuming that’s gonna be in the strap plan when we see them that there’ll be commitments, goals, measurable type things. Yes, and I’m getting nods up there. So I am, so in terms of the switch from city manager to deputy city manager and I understand the reorganization, I’m assuming that we will have criteria or could have criteria with our new city manager that would hold them two goals that are fulfilled by the other deputy city managers, many of those.

[1:02:59] If we can maybe get a reassurance there that just because the deputy city manager is sitting in on these meetings that the accountability will still be there. Yeah, so go to Ms. Livingston and then I’ll make a comment on that too. Yes, your worship if council recalls the structure of my performance plan, for example, there are a number of items in that performance plan that I work with DCMs to either hold them accountable to deliver on or we work together to deliver on. Yes, and I would just add to that that also, I mean, Mr. Mathers, who this falls under, is here every meeting.

[1:03:43] He’s very accountable to us. He answers all of our questions every meeting. He’s perfectly capable of being on the agreement. The idea that, and I’m just responding to some comments made before, the idea that the deputy city manager who’s sitting in front of us who is responsible for the agreement is not accountable. I just want colleagues to use some caution around that language and I’m talking not to, can you Councillor Stevenson just comments that were made before? Because all of our senior leadership staff are here to serve the will of council and implement our strategic plan in the directions of council.

[1:04:18] Whether it goes to the city manager or whether it’s them, them hearing us directly and them running it in their divisions, the delegated responsibility that’s required in this organization is immense. And so those things happen, but it’s delegated. All of the authority ultimately comes from council and is delegated through the civic administration by a lot to the city manager and various others. So there is a very clear line of accountability back to municipal council on these matters. And I just don’t want anybody to have the impression that there’s not. Every single member of the senior leadership team is accountable to city council. Councillor Stevenson, are you good?

[1:04:53] Okay. Yeah, thank you. So the one other thing that was raised here were the four meetings. I’m assuming that could be outside of the contract. Could we simply have an amendment here instead that requests for meetings a year? Or is there another way to do this rather than through a referral? ‘Cause I can see that’s not gonna be the way to go. As I mentioned in my comments, the current wording is as required. And Mr. May, as you can correct me with them wrong, but as required means city council could request a few meetings a year, however many we want, which I with LEDC, they come. Obviously it would be good to know what they’re gonna talk about at those meetings, but we can define that through the existing wording of the contract, Mr. May, there’s.

[1:05:31] Through the chair, and one of the specific pieces around that is that it’s meetings that the person who’s designated in the agreement, whether it’s a city manager or myself, would be having with the three partners and their senior leaders. So with the new language, we could have more meetings. And that really is the intent because in the short term, you’re gonna be seeing some business cases going forward and there’s some that are very specific to economic partnerships and how we need to bring forward and our plans moving forward and councils delivering on the strategic plan.

[1:06:05] So this would allow us to maybe fast track some of those meetings. Maybe it would be four, but would be in the coming months versus across the entire year. So it gives a little bit more flexibility and just allows at the direction of the city manager, if that’s the change or the deputy city manager to be able to initiate some of those meetings and get the senior folks from all those organizations at the meeting. Yeah, and I just add to that, I just wanna be clear. My interpretation, my comments were meetings with council, but you’re right, the agreement does talk about meetings with our senior leadership team. And I just wanna be clear that I should have mentioned both and not just one over the other.

[1:06:39] Councilor Stevenson. Thank you. So in a case like this, if there were counselors that were interested, they could reach out and find out what meetings were happening and get information from the deputy city managers that correctly rather than ask them to do a report in every time there’s a meeting, those who are interested could reach out and see if meetings are happening and ask questions. Is that information available to council if they wanted it? Mr. Mathers, do the chair would be happy to share whatever we discuss with counselors as well and provide them any kind of update that they’d want at the time, that’s perfectly fine.

[1:07:16] Okay, thank you. Last question, I’m kind of being a voice here for my colleague. Do dates get set in advance? Like is that gonna be set up quarterly or more… Historically, we have set them like with fixed dates. The new language allow us to have a little bit more organic meetings that are based on some of the key deliverables that are coming forward. So we’d be very open with you, it would really much depend on the multi-year budget discussions and what comes out of that process.

[1:07:48] So if we have business case that are approved, we have a lot to talk about and to be able to see like who’s gonna be providing those services and how we come up with a plan that’s cohesive across the city. And if it’s not approved, then we will have lots to talk about with just that normal everyday stuff as far as they’re included in their agreement currently. So we’d likely start initiating some of those meetings after the multi-year budget is approved. Thanks, I am no longer gonna second, or can I vote against it if I second it? I’m not sure what to do now. You can vote against it a few seconds, yes. Councillor probably your time’s up and you had an extension.

[1:08:25] So there was a comment you made and I just want to straighten it out because there was a comment you made and I don’t say that way. Okay, so the question wasn’t about, I wasn’t questioning the accountability of the deputate city manager. - Yes. What I was saying is we have one employee which is city manager and we take them out. Therefore, what kind of accountability do they have the city manager? The only one that’s responsive to us. Yes, that was the question.

[1:08:58] That was the question. I’m gonna take that as a point of personal privilege and I’m gonna respond to it. I disagree with you. Mr. May, this is appointed by By-law of London City Council. We don’t just have one employee, we have one employee. The city manager is a very important employee that we do the hiring of. There’s a different process for hiring others, but at the end of that process, pretty much every city manager, every senior leadership team member that you see before us has a by-law that has been passed by council and appointed by council on the recommendation of the city manager. So I don’t, I appreciate your point. I think we can leave it at that.

[1:09:33] We can have a discussion later if you want about this. We will thank you. But this in 13 months, there’s the first time I hear that we have more than one employee. It’s, you know what, people have different opinions on this, but I go by— - Point of order. Yes. It’s me. Go. There’s a speaker’s list if we can, and we’re running late if we can just get back to it. Yeah, that was a point of personal privilege. So I dealt with that. So the back on the speaker’s list is Councillor Cuddy. Thank you, Chair and through you. I will not be supporting this referral. We have three excellent organizations. They’re well-managed, they’re well-run.

[1:10:06] And to quote Deputy Mayor Lewis, we don’t want to see an interruption of service. I also think it’s a challenge to the credibility of these organizations if we’re questioning them at this stage. And with respect for meeting with them or hearing about what they’re doing, I said, you know, when I wanted to meet with the CEO of LEDC, I simply picked up the phone, called them and we met for a coffee. And that’s what anybody can do. And it’s a very easy, just take your questions and have a good casual conversation. So thank you and I will not be supporting this. Councillor Plaza.

[1:10:42] Thank you, Your Worship. And I will recognize that, as the city manager said, that this was to come to us November 21st and essentially we’re weeks behind in our work that needs to be done as our conversations tend to go long. I’ll spoil this prize that I won’t be supporting this referral nor the other two. Should they still come forward? I’ve taken time out. I’ve met with Tech Alliance behind the scenes. LEDC is next, I look forward to that meeting. In the contract timing is absolutely on us after their work and this falls on our shoulders. In my opinion, as per the metrics piece, absolutely interested in metrics.

[1:11:19] If anyone on council had specific metrics they wanted to see and realizing we’ve done with other groups in our own committees, asking for more comparisons. We could do apples to apples of what we’re getting for a return on investment or how things are being turned into jobs and whatnot that that could be done outside of this process. If we knew what we were looking for to just direct staff as I’m sure the service providers, I’m seeing nods in the gallery, we’d be happy to align certain wording or key metrics when we identified them. Okay, Councillor ramen.

[1:11:56] Thank you and through you and I’ll be brief. I won’t be supporting the referral first primarily based on some of the conversations that we’ve been having here. But I will say that on, I do find it easy to get in touch with not only the organization, but also the deputy city manager when I need to ask a question on this topic. I think that it’s actually streamlined to have this in planning and the economic development all under one umbrella within a city manager portfolio. I see opportunities, greater opportunities for alignment as a lot of the times I’m certain that LEDC has questions that need to come through the deputy city manager of planning and development when we’re trying to attract the right kind of companies to our city.

[1:12:44] I will say there are some questions I also had about the agreement, but that I think can be worked out. And it’s again around that reporting relationship and that wording around in part four around the primary mechanism, it’s I, for providing updates to the mayor and deputy city manager planning and economic development will be through the regular attendance of the mayor and deputy city manager at the LEDC board meetings. So this is something I know within our structure in general as we look at how we move forward and how we report.

[1:13:22] I do think that there’s an opportunity for us to do a little bit more of self-reporting back. And I appreciate Deputy Mayor Lewis just now providing an update from his committee. But I think that that’s also a really helpful mechanism for us to share information and from time to time, perhaps we can take that ownership as well, sometimes when needed to address some of those topics and to be able to provide that input, especially around things that are being discussed that are allowed to come back to council at this time to be able to help strengthen those conversations. But I won’t be supporting the referral at this time and those are my comments.

[1:13:59] Okay, thank you, I have Councillor Stevenson again. Go ahead. Thank you, I think that’s a great point. Councillor ramen just made around self-reporting. I think that’s something that we could definitely utilize over the next couple of years. I just wanted to clarify that, you know, I really want things to shift such that asking for commitments and goals and accountability is not and should not be perceived as challenging or questioning the confidence that Councillors have in staff, in boards and commissions. Absolutely the reverse, right?

[1:14:31] It’s an opportunity to celebrate success. It’s an opportunity to be able to cheer lead for us to cheer lead to residents what has been committed to. So I really want to shift that. This is not about challenging. This is not about questioning. And it is not meant to be anything derogatory. It’s meant to be a strive for excellence, a commitment to excellence. And that’s all I have to say. Okay, that exhaust speakers list on the referral. So we’re going to vote on the referral. Mr. Trossa, seeing the vote and the motion fails, one to 14.

[1:15:41] Okay, so that means we’re back to the main motion which was the version in the staff report which is moved and seconded. Any speakers to the main motion? Councillor ramen, go ahead. Thank you and through you. Thank you for the submission. And I didn’t have a chance to send this question in advance and I’m sorry about that. But on E, a one time allocation of 300,000 be authorized for the film strategy.

[1:16:15] I’m just wondering through Mayor, if we can share any successes from the 2023, 300,000 allocation just to highlight a few more. I know that we did have a little bit of that in the presentation, but I just wanted to see if there was any other things that you might build to highlight. Mr. Mathers, through the chair. So very much it was something that was highlighted by LADC about the success I can provide. That update to you folks prior to council, I can attach that to the strategic plans for the different groups as well.

[1:16:51] So that’s no problem. And then just to highlight that in the report, we do discuss about doing an assessment to see the value for money there and bring that back next year. And so it’ll be an opportunity as well as part of that process to talk about the success and moving forward with the music with the film program. Thank you. And yeah, I’d appreciate that just in time before council and I do appreciate the fact that the report does just talk about what we will look at as metrics for that and how it will be reported back to us.

[1:17:25] That was my main question around that strategy piece. I do, again, I’m not sure if maybe Mr. Mathers may be able to comment on this, but outside of the annual agreement, do we have, have we had a significant overview of our economic development strategy as a whole? And one was the last time that we did that. Go ahead. - Yeah, through the chair. So it’s a very excellent point and one of the really important reasons why there’s some strat plan strategies around developing that plan.

[1:18:06] We have submitted a business case, it’s P-46, and looking at trying to develop a more comprehensive plan, going outside of what we usually have done and work with our partners to see if we can provide a framework moving forward. So there is a definitely an opportunity and it’s been flagged in the multi-year budget. Anyone else on the main, Councillor Pribble, go ahead on the main motion. Thank you. The main motion is, right now we are talking about LEDC. Is there a specific date that we have in our bylaws or that the council passed that by when do we have to receive the proposal for the four-year contracts?

[1:18:53] Go ahead, Mr. Mathers. Through the chair, so the current contract ends at the end of this year. So and LEDC receives monthly payments. So without a contract, they wouldn’t be able to get that January monthly payment. So that would be kind of the deadline to be able to bring something forward. Done Councillor? Oh, sorry. No, I should know. My point was that per year agreement, which expires 31st of December, and we are getting it a couple of weeks before, and it’s unfair to us.

[1:19:30] It’s unfair to certainly to us, sorry. Certainly it’s unfair to us, because we don’t have a chance to sit down with the executive directors, with the CEOs of the organizations, and to go through it with them, and how can we make things better? So we really, besides the finances, we actually, in my humble opinion, we didn’t prove it whatsoever. Actually there are two points that are actually negative for our organization, but I want to ask you, is there something that we can do past the deadline so we don’t go through this in four years? Because again, I don’t see a reason why we are dealing with this style for a four-year agreement.

[1:20:07] I don’t think it’s fair about whoever. Councilor, I’ll take that as your opinion. When you said us, all members of Council can have different opinions on that, and may disagree with you, but we’ll take that as your opinion, and I’ll go to Mr. Mathers. Through the chair, so there’s the opportunity to amend at really any time. So that’s what happened previously for our film program. So probably the most logical time to do that would be after the multi-year budget process, where Council has made decisions on business cases, where there might be additional funding for additional services. So, and as well as part of that process, it’s defining what our metrics and targets will be based on the funding that’s provided through the multi-year budget process.

[1:20:44] So that will be the ideal time to revisit this, and be able to come up with any changes that are appropriate. Thank you. I have no other speakers. So this is on the motion as it is in the staff report. We’re gonna open that for voting. Closing the vote, the motion carries 15 to zero.

[1:21:28] Okay, we have now 2.5 small business center grant agreement. I’ll look for someone to move the staff. Recommendation, Councilor Plos is seconded by Councilor Raman. Any discussion on the small business center’s agreement? Councilor Preble. I’m the one who did a 2.5, and actually next one, 2.6, I’m not gonna delay it. It was actually, if anything, the first one, there was probably was the most important one for our city. So the other ones, I have no comments, and I’m gonna pull it out. Okay, well, we just have to deal with them individually now, so you don’t have to make comments.

[1:22:03] We can just, well, we’ll vote on them separately. Okay, so I see, oh, Councilor Hopkins, go ahead. Yeah, Your Worship, I will be supporting the recommendation in front of this. I just wanna confirm that the added increases throughout the next four years are inflation numbers, just through you to staff, just to do my due diligence. Mr. Mathers. Through the chair, yes, they’re inflationary increases, just with fixed values. So for the first three years, it’s 3%, and then the fourth year, it’s 2% increase.

[1:22:38] Okay, Councillor Robin. Thank you, and through you, this question pertains to both the Small Business Center and Tech Alliance. I’m not sure if we ever did, but did we ever have council members on either of those? And is it just because we didn’t have it in the original agreements? Through the chair, I don’t have all of the history on it. However, they are, because they’re grants, they’re slightly differently worded as you’ll see as part of the agreements as well.

[1:23:10] So that may be part of the rationale, but I don’t have the history on that. I’ll have a long, maybe, response or back to yourselves with all of this in the background, but I can look into that and get back to you too. Thank you, yes, I’d appreciate that. I think that there’s value in having a more integrated relationship, and I’m not sure if that’s something, again, haven’t had those discussions with either organization at this point, but just wondering as we contemplate what the future looks like in further planning, if that is an opportunity, that we might be interested in exploring, but just wanted to get some clarification of how that came about with LEDC versus the others.

[1:23:51] Thanks. Thank you, Councillor Pribble. I just want to clarify my last comment, so it doesn’t come across in any different way. By the way, small business center, both in take alliance are tremendously important for our community, and when I said, if it didn’t go through LEDC, it was meant when I said the importance of those because of the amount of funding, that’s what I meant, but certainly, all organizations are tremendously important for our community, and I really mean that. Okay, I don’t have any other speakers for the small business center grant agreement, so we’re going to open that for voting.

[1:24:49] It’s hung up, I vote yes. We’ll sing the vote, motion carries 15 to zero. Okay, and 2.6, which is the Tech Alliance Grant Agreement. I’ll look for, move on to seconder. Councillor Trostas, seconded by Councillor Cuddy. Any discussion on this one? Go ahead, Councillor Stevenson. Thank you, I saw an email that came out this afternoon, I can’t find it in my inbox, but if I could get clarity on that. Councillor, I can only comment that, ‘cause I brought it with me, ‘cause my staff were dead.

[1:25:42] I think we all received an email at about pre-27 with an attached letter from Tech Alliance addressed to council. So, I mean, I’m happy to give you a copy of it, if you’d like to see it. No, I’m just clarifying that, what is before us is the agreement that was originally like, we’re not dealing with this, is that correct? That’s correct, yes. That’s a, yeah, that’s a letter from them, and there’s some information in it, and Councillors can read it, take action on it, or engage later on it.

[1:26:17] But that’s not what is before us right now. It’s, the thing that was moved and seconded was, as you read in your council package. Go ahead, Councillor Raman. Thank you, and through you, and in light of the letter and the fact that the letter’s asking for an increase in the amount of funding, I just want to confirm that that’s a conversation that’s available, or sorry, that can be had in the future because the contract is amenable, and that is something that we’ve done in the past, and can do if needed.

[1:26:51] Mr. Mayors. Absolutely, that is something that’s likely very much need to happen based on the work that we’ve brought forward as a business case. So, any of that work that would be, make a lot of sense to have external partners to provide, then we would have to update their agreement, so that is absolutely an opportunity for council. Go ahead. Thank you, through you. And so the process by which the organization would do that would be then just circle back with your team to begin that work and that discussion around what that additional funding request would be for the metrics associated, and how that would be actioned by, or brought back to council for an amendment.

[1:27:32] Through the chair, absolutely, and we link it as well to the strategic plan goals, and the services that are required for that council approves to be able to meet those goals, so there would be all of those connections, yes. Thank you, and I welcome that opportunity to review that in the future, thank you. Okay, go ahead, Councillor Hopkins. Yeah, thank you, you worship in just as a follow-up to Councillor ramen’s question and inquiry, will that be done through the business case through the four-year multi-budget? Through the chair, just to be clear, we have a series of business cases that are economic-related.

[1:28:08] Business case P46 relates economic partnerships, has funding that would be able to provide initiatives related to economic development, and those are the initiatives we’d be looking at, look for partners to be able to provide those services, so this would be subject to approval of a business case, or a part of a business case, so that is something that would be decided through the multi-year budget process. Once that’s completed, we’ll know the dollars that we’re working with, and then we can work with the partners to figure out how we deliver those services. Thanks for that clarification.

[1:28:42] Okay, go ahead, Councillor ramen. Sorry, just to clarify though, the organization, those welcome to come back to you and your team to have that conversation outside of the multi-year budget as an amendment to this agreement, or in advance of coming to council, so that those conversations can take place. Okay, thank you. Through the chair, so we’ll have a conversation between now and the actual business case being presented, just to be able to answer any questions that might come up, as far as the service delivery for those portions of the business case, but absolutely we will be meeting with them to be able to bring forward, and if they have a separate funding assets outside of that process, then we’ll be able to facilitate that through delegations to council, maybe.

[1:29:27] Okay, that’s all the speakers I have. Okay, it’s moved and seconded. We’re gonna open that for voting. Closing the vote, the motion carries 15 to zero. Okay colleagues, the next item would have been the release of the multi-year budget, which I don’t think we should start with only eight minutes before.

[1:30:00] 2.1, council wants to make an adjustment to it, so we could put that on the floor and start that for the next eight minutes, but we probably don’t conclude it before we take our break, so if we start it, we’re gonna have to continue that when we come back. If we break now, we can start with the multi-year budget when we come back. So at this point, I think if you wanna make a break now, I’d suggest making a break now until 6.30. I see lots of nods, okay, I’m gonna ask someone to move that.

[1:30:34] Councilor Fura moving a break until 6.30. Councilor Hoppe in seconds. We’re gonna do that one by hand, okay? All those in favor? Motion carries. Okay, we back at 6.30. Okay, I’m gonna call the meeting back to order.

[2:39:49] For colleagues, where we left off is, we completed the items that through Councilor Trossa’s successful motion to move up, so that guess that we had in the gallery could go. 2.1 remains at the end of our items for directions, so we’re not dealing with that one yet, which moves us on to scheduled items, which is the draft 2024 to 2027 multi-year budget. We do have a budget committee now, which will deal with this, but this presentation in SPPC does still come to SPPC, and given Councilor Palosa is the budget chair, I’m going to turn the chair of this part of the meeting over to Councilor Palosa to lead us through the budget presentation.

[2:40:38] Thank you, Your Worship, and to yourself and members of Council for the honor of, I know there was a pause there, as we’ll see how this multi-year budget goes, but starting off, it is an honor to serve as the budget chair, and we have a big process in many hard points of decisions before us. Before us this evening, I do do time estimates. Staff will be doing roughly a 30-minute presentation, so settle in for it.

[2:41:10] You have the slide deck provided to you in advance or at your spot this evening. You have your budget books, which are not really pertinent per se at the moment. Following that, there’ll be questions and answers. I do time up to your five minutes. And the questions, hold your questions to the end and reference a slide number if you catch it while we go. And only procedural questions tonight, we’re not getting into budget deliberations, talks or favorite business cases we want to pitch, just questions procedural only.

[2:41:45] So I’m estimating that we’ll be putting an hour on this between Q&A and the staff presentation tonight. So I’m turning it over to staff to walk us through the presentation, realizing you have your handout. And as they go through, if you push that button, your screen will flip to the big screens up top. So Ms. Barbone, and thank you to budget, the whole budget team. I missed some of you over the summer as you had wonderful adventures. My adventure for the most summer was with the budget team. So this really has been a long process to get it to what we see before us and so much work spent behind the scenes.

[2:42:19] So just thank you for the team for dealing with me as I do get crispy sometimes, but now we’ve all been fed. And they laugh ‘cause they do know I get crispy. So I appreciate everyone in this room around the horseshoe and on the other side of staff to get us through this and as we move this process together as a council. Ms. Barbone. Thank you through the chair. So I’m very pleased to present to you today. Oh, is that better? Can you hear me now?

[2:42:53] I can go up there if I really need to, but I just have a short little introduction. So I’m very pleased to present the city’s multi-year budget from 2024 to 2027. This is our third multi-year budget. So first I really wanna start out and thank you, Councilor Palosa for mentioning, I think first and foremost, thank you very much to Mr. Murray and all of the staff in the finance team who have been involved in the budget process and have worked tirelessly over the last eight months to help us bring together this document that you have before you today.

[2:43:27] Also, I’d really like to thank SLT and all of the staff in their service areas as well as all of the agencies, boards and commissions as they have also done a great deal of work to contribute to the document that you see before you today. So all of you should have received copies of the budget. So there are three budgets and they are all combined into one document. So there’s the property tax, the water budget, as well as the wastewater budget. The physical documents however, because of their sheer size, we have bundled them into two volumes for ease of reference. So the budget documents are all available online at the two links that you see before you today.

[2:44:07] So they’re on the city’s website and they’re also available through our public engagement page on the Get Involved website. So Mr. Murray’s gonna walk you through the budget presentation and provide some of the key highlights. And then at the end we can take some questions with respect to process, noting that this is the official kickoff to the budget process and any discussion about specific items or business cases will take place during the budget committee meetings that will start later in January. So with that, I’ll turn it over to Mr. Murray. Thank you. Excellent, thank you very much.

[2:44:40] In terms of what I’m going to walk you through this evening, we’ll do a bit of a refresher on the multi-year budget process for those who perhaps are following it home or who have not been through a multi-year budget before, I think it’s good background. We will also do a bit of a refresher on the kickoff to the budget process from back in April of this year. I’ll then walk you through an overview of the multi-year budget and what it means in terms of an impact as well as how we compare to other municipalities.

[2:45:13] We’ll touch briefly on the water and wastewater multi-year budgets as well. And then I’ll walk you through key dates and some upcoming public engagement as well that we’re going to do throughout the budget process. We’re also going to go through a handful of requests from the budget chair. These would be administrative matters. So we will work through those and also provide a bit of an overview of the new strong mayor’s legislation as well and how that will impact this year’s budget process. So let’s start with a bit of a refresher on the process itself.

[2:45:48] Our MYB process is very much fully integrated with our strategic planning process. The strategic plan really is the foundation of the multi-year budget. It dictates what the priorities are and what strategies require resources. It really does set the direction for our multi-year budget process. Now, at the outset of a multi-year budget cycle, civic administration also does request council’s direction on an appropriate tax levy target to provide some financial parameters to help guide the multi-year budget and it provides the parameters in terms of what resources are available to implement the strategic plan.

[2:46:29] So you’ll recall that this was done back in April of this year and I’ll get into some more specifics on that shortly. So there are generally three components to our multi-year budget. There are base budgets to maintain existing service levels. There are business cases for potential new or additional or expanded services. So this is where additional resources are required and then there are business cases for potential reductions as well. So this is where fewer resources might be required. The multi-year budget really determines the pace of the implementation of the strategic plan.

[2:47:07] How fast or slow do we want to go in implementing those priorities? And then once the multi-year budget is approved, this leads into the annual budget update process, which you all would have went through last year. This is our opportunity for course corrections as needed. And this is where we can deal with things such as newer changed legislation or regulations, any new council direction that maybe has come up over the course of the year or any cost or revenue drivers that were perhaps unanticipated through the multi-year budget.

[2:47:41] Now I also want to take this opportunity very briefly to remind council and the community about our strategic financial framework. This was just approved by council back in October. And I think this umbrella document really provides a really excellent summary of the key financial principles that we rely on as a city. And they’ve really served us very well over a number of years as evidenced by our AAA credit rating. So the strategic financial framework is available on our website. And I would certainly encourage everyone to take some time to review it if you have not already done so in advance of an in preparation for budget deliberations in the coming weeks.

[2:48:24] Okay, so I mentioned the April 2023 target setting report. So let’s take a step back and recap what was previously directed by council at that point in time. So this was the resolution that was passed. And I’ve added specific emphasis related to the cost to maintain existing service levels, which we had estimated to be in the range of 2.9 to 3.9% at that point in time, as well as the additional half a percent of funding for additional investments. So to show it graphically, this is what it looks like.

[2:49:01] And I guess some important points to note on this with respect to the cost to maintain existing service levels. That 2.9 to 3.9% range really was a point in time estimate. That was based on preliminary canvassing of civic service areas, as well as our agencies, boards and commissions. Just to get a sense of no one budget pressures at that time. And that was done in February and March of this year. As we had indicated in April, there was a great deal of uncertainty underlying those estimates and assumptions.

[2:49:36] And we obviously did not have the benefit of a full budget development process at that point in time, which of course has now been completed. With respect to the business case component of this, it was very clear that in order to do everything that was identified in the strategic plan that required additional funding, that would require a lot more than half a percent per year on average. However, this was the direction that Council provided for planning purposes.

[2:50:08] And it was certainly noted and heard very clearly at that point in time that Council wished to retain full discretion and decision making over all the potential business cases that would be coming forward. Okay, so with that refresher, let’s go into some of the details of the 2024 to 2027 multi-year budget. We’ll start with the base budgets or the cost to maintain existing service levels. So the draft budget includes increases of 5.4% in 2024, 4.7% in 2025, 4.3% in 2026, and 5.3% in 2027.

[2:50:52] And that overall represents a four-year average of 4.9%. So let’s delve a little bit into what is driving those increases. And we’ll start with civic service areas, excluding capital financing budgets, and excluding other corporate revenues and expenses. So capital financing is obviously the funding that’s required to pay for our capital plan. It includes debt servicing costs. It includes contributions to our reserves and reserve funds.

[2:51:29] It would include as well capital levy to pay for our capital plan. So that is excluded from this view. Other corporate revenues and expenses is also excluded from this view. That’s a real mixed bag, I would say, of various corporate revenues and expenses. It includes things such as our investment income budgets, dividends that we receive from London Hydro, our corporate contingency budgets, and so on. So we’ve excluded those components from this view. So you can think of this really as the core operational budgets for civic service areas.

[2:52:06] So this represents a four-year average of 2.2%, a little bit of a higher increase in 2024, but certainly the subsequent years are all well below that 2.2% overall average. So now let’s layer on those capital financing and other corporate revenues and expenses pieces. And you can see that this certainly changes the pattern pretty considerably. In 2024, the increase is 2.7%, and that’s really driven by some right sizing that we’ve done in our corporate budgets, notably our investment income budgets, as well as our debt servicing budgets.

[2:52:47] So that’s helped to drive the increases for 2024 lower. But as we look into subsequent years, the increases are larger, primarily due to the cost to finance our existing capital plan. So this would be, again, projected debt servicing costs for previously approved capital projects. This would be reserve fund contributions to fund our capital plan. This would be inflationary increases in capital levy as well. And this would also include increases in our corporate contingency budget as well, including provisions for future labor costs.

[2:53:27] Okay, let’s now look at the budget submissions for our agency’s boards and commissions. And I’m including land ambulance as well, in this as an agency board or commission. It may technically not be, but I’ve grouped them in with this category. And you can see that the budget pressures from the agency’s boards and commissions are fairly significant for 2024. They do recede to some degree in the subsequent years, but the overall four year average for our agency’s boards and commissions is 5.4%. So if you combine it all together and bring the civic service areas budgets and the agency’s boards and commissions budgets together, this is how you get back to the 4.9% four year average with those 5.4, 4.7, 4.3, and 5.3% increases for 2024 to 2027.

[2:54:23] So overall, the four year budget represents a spending plan of more than 5.3 billion over the course of the four years. And of that, approximately 3.3 billion is funded through property taxes. At the bottom of this slide, you can see the impact the average taxpayer related to the cost to maintain existing service levels. So this works out to an average annual increase of $175 per year for the average taxpayer. And that average is based on an assessed value of $252,000, which is the last available assessment that we have.

[2:55:04] I’m not gonna spend a lot of time here, but this is a good graphic of kind of where we get our revenues and then how those revenues are expended. In terms of the capital budget, the capital budget is approximately $1.3 billion over the four year period and a total 10 year capital plan of about $2.8 billion. You can see at the bottom of this slide how that capital plan is split between the various categories of the capital budget. So lifecycle renewal is in green, growth is in gray, and service improvement is in blue.

[2:55:44] Okay, so before we move on from the cost to maintain existing service levels, I did just wanna take a moment to mention kind of what we’ve already done and incorporated in the budget already to limit the budget increases as much as we possibly can. Because this is a multi year budget, it does give us the opportunity to do some resetting and right sizing of budgets where possible. That right sizing can generally fall into three categories. Typically they’re either additional revenue opportunities that we can build into the budget, expenditure reduction opportunities that we can incorporate into the budget, or potential budget capacity that we can use to avoid other additional funding assets.

[2:56:26] So basically cost avoidance. So this slide summarizes the measures that we’ve already baked into the draft budget in those three categories. And in total, over the four year period, we’ve built in more than $46 million of total savings. And in particular, I’ll point your attention to the more than $10 million of ongoing annual savings that have been included. If we did not include these reductions in the budget, the average annual increase would be approximately 0.4% per year higher than it is.

[2:57:05] And you can find more details in the budget document itself in terms of these reductions. Pages 37 and 38 have those details. Okay, let’s shift away from the base budgets and we’ll move on to the business cases. And just as a reminder, business cases are prepared for any budgetary changes that go above and beyond the cost to maintain existing service levels. So I’ve listed a number of those types of scenarios on the slide. Anything from increased service levels for existing programs or services to the introduction of new programs or services or the conversion of a temporary or pilot program to permanent, you may see business cases as well for financial impacts related to changes in funding from other levels of government, significant capital project escalations, or as well reductions to programs, services, service levels or funding.

[2:58:08] So in the tax supported budget, we’ve categorized the business cases into three different categories. The first being legislative changes. So these are cases that are being brought forward in response to legislative changes that have financial impacts on the municipality. And in these cases, there’s very little if any discretion in avoiding those impacts. The second category is administratively prioritized within half a percent. And this is in keeping with the direction that council provided to us back in April.

[2:58:44] So recognizing that half a percent is a relatively limited amount of funding, we’ve narrowed down this category into a handful of business cases from civic service areas only, under the criteria of urgent corporate health and life safety needs, imminent risks to mission critical infrastructure and systems, or capital projects that are underway with significant unavoidable cost pressures and contractual obligations requiring completion in this multi-year budget. Bit of a wordy criteria, but that’s the third one.

[2:59:19] And then the third category is all other cases. So this is all the other business cases that are coming forward to reflect the additional funding identified in the strategic plan in order to implement those strategies. This is the section that also contains the cases for potential reductions as well. So there are 87 property tax business cases in all, 13 legislative changes, seven in the administratively prioritized category, and then the remaining 67 fall into the other category.

[2:59:56] Now, obviously, given the volume, I’m not gonna get into specifics on all of these cases, other than to say that summaries can be found starting on page 63 in the budget document, and the full cases start on page 307. I think the really important thing to note on this slide is that notwithstanding how we as civic administration may have categorized the business cases, council can choose to support any of the business cases that you wish.

[3:00:29] Our categorization, again, is really intended to keep with the direction that you gave us back in April. So with that, I will shift over to how London compares to other municipal comparators that we look at. So we rely on what’s called the annual BMA municipal study, which is completed by an independent third party consultant, BMA management consulting. They’re based out at Hamilton. And every year they put together a report that compares Ontario municipalities on a variety of metrics, property taxes being one of them.

[3:01:10] And we specifically look at those municipalities in Ontario with a population greater than 100,000 people. So this first comparison shows average residential property taxes. London is the green bar at $3,536 per year on average. The red bar reflects the average of these municipalities at $4,787 per year. And the median is in orange at $4,739 per year.

[3:01:46] So again, this is average residential property taxes. The next comparison is average residential property taxes as a percentage of household income. So again, London is in green. We come in at 3 1/2% of average household income. The median, again, is in red. Sorry, in orange, the average is in red. They are both at 3.9%. The next comparison is commercial property taxes. This is on a per square foot basis for commercial office space.

[3:02:24] Again, London in green at $2.99 per square foot. The average is red at 370. The median is orange at 371. And finally, industrial property taxes. London is in green, again, at $1.42 per square foot. The average comes in at $2.06 per square foot in red. And the median is at $1.93 per square foot in orange. Okay, we also wanted to include a bit of information in terms of how London compares to other municipal property tax increases for 2024 as well.

[3:03:09] So this is what we’ve been able to find as of late last week in terms of publicly available information. The municipalities that are shown in blue bars reflect draft or proposed increases. So those have not been finalized yet by those respective municipalities. The red municipalities represent those that have actually finalized their budgets and have final figures for 2024. I’ll also note as well that this is a mix of single upper and lower tier municipalities as well.

[3:03:45] So just keep in mind that for lower tier municipalities, the ultimate increase for that municipality will be a bit of a blend between the respective upper tier and the lower tier for that specific municipality. Okay, let’s change gears and we’ll go briefly through the water and wastewater, multi-year budgets. So the MYB for water reflects a four-year operating budget plan of $432 million. It’s predicated on average annual water rate increases of two and a half percent.

[3:04:23] And that two and a half percent average annual increase translates into a rate payer impact of $14 per year on average for the average residential user who consumes 200 cubic meters of water. Here’s a visual of the various revenue sources for the water budget as well as where those funds are spent on the expenditure side. About three quarters of the budget goes to fund the water capital plan as well as the purchase of water from the Huron and Elgin water systems.

[3:05:02] The capital budget for water is a four-year plan of $320 million and a 10-year capital forecast of more than $700 million. For water, the bulk of the spending plan, about 75% is in the lifecycle renewal category, which is shown in the green bars at the bottom of the slide. So flipping over to wastewater now, the four-year budget represents a plan of about $550 million and that is based on average annual wastewater rate increases of four percent per year.

[3:05:40] That average increase translates into an annual impact of approximately $29 per year for the average residential user. Very similar to water. The bulk of the wastewater budget is spent on funding the capital plan with roughly 60% of total revenues being funneled over to pay for the capital budget. Speaking of that capital budget, it’s a four-year total of about $600 million and a 10-year total of about $1.3 billion.

[3:06:18] In this case, it’s a little more evenly distributed amongst the categories of capital spending. Lifecycle renewal is still the majority, but there are pretty significant growth and service improvement components as well. So in terms of business cases for the water and wastewater budgets, we’ve classified them into two categories, legislative changes and everything else basically. When you’re reviewing those legislative changes, you will definitely notice some similarities with the property tax-supported budget.

[3:06:51] There are a number of legislative changes that impact both the property tax budgets as well as our water and wastewater budgets. So for the water budget, there are three business cases in total, two of them are legislative changes. And on the wastewater side, there are a total of 13 business cases, four of which are legislative changes, nine of which fall into the other category. I’ll just note here where you see a 0% rate impact for those other cases.

[3:07:23] That’s typically for those cases that have a funding source already in place and identified, for example, a reserve fund that doesn’t necessarily require us to increase rates to pay for it. So business case summaries can be found for water on page 140 and page 165 for wastewater and the full business cases can be found starting on page 793. Okay, I’m gonna spend a couple minutes now talking about key dates in the process and also talk about how we’re gonna engage with the public on the multi-year budget.

[3:08:01] So today’s obviously the formal budget release. Our first budget committee meeting is scheduled for January 29th. That starts at four o’clock and is our first public participation meeting. We have then up to eight days set aside in the month of February for budget deliberations as well as a second public participation meeting after the deliberations days that is scheduled for February 27th. And ultimately we’re working here towards a final approval of the budget in early March. So we have a number of public engagement events scheduled over the coming weeks.

[3:08:41] We’ve actually already held our first event. It was an online budget information session on November 25th. That was more of just an overview of the city’s budget process and municipal finances in general. That recording is up on our Get Involved page if you’re interested in reviewing it. But again, it is more background in nature more than anything else. We have a budget open house that’s scheduled for January 10th here at City Hall. That will run from four o’clock until eight o’clock. Certainly all members of the public are encouraged to come out and chat about the budget and get their questions answered.

[3:09:17] And we’ll also be out and about across the community in the month of January. We have a series of pop-up events scheduled at various city facilities in all geographic areas of the city. So those are listed on screen in terms of the specific locations, dates and times. In addition to those formal events, we have a number of other public engagement avenues to engage with the public as well. We’re always very happy as the budget team to attend counselor award meetings or town halls that you’re holding.

[3:09:51] We’ve already got a number of those scheduled in the month of January. We’re very, very happy to attend community group events as well, again, also have a few of those already scheduled. Very, very open to providing presentations to council advisory committees upon request as well. We are in the process as well of launching an online business case feedback tool, which will provide the opportunity for Londoners to go and express their priorities and preferences on the 87 property tax business cases that are included in the budget.

[3:10:28] That feedback will then be filtered back to council prior to budget deliberations. We have our online property tax breakdown calculator that is online as well. That allows a resident to enter their property tax bill and you can see where those dollars are dispersed amongst the various city services that are provided. We have our series of finance flex videos available on our Get Involved page as well. These are, I think, really good, short, kind of two to three minute overviews of various municipal finance topics that would certainly encourage you to have a look at in advance of budget deliberations as well.

[3:11:13] We’ll be doing advertising through a variety of formats as well and, of course, as always, we’ll have materials available online and at our library branches as well. So with that, I’m gonna turn it over to our budget chair who will walk through a few administrative matters. Thank you, Mr. Murray, for keeping it precisely to 30 minutes. I will note that when we begin in February, the formal budget days will start at 9.30 a.m., and we’ll roughly stop at 4.30, so your days are pretty set so you know that you’ll have a chance at night to do follow-ups and manage your time accordingly.

[3:11:56] So I’m just gonna wait for that timer to stop. Thank you. I don’t believe this slide that’s upmaded into, it wasn’t in my slide deck printed. I’m not sure if we’re gonna answer that. It will come out as well circulated in writing, ‘cause I’ll have some follow-ups for you. You’ve already been engaged about how you prefer your board engagements to go with staff. I’m gonna ask that as you review the budget cases, you have a month before we get into deliberation or a month and a half, so pace yourselves. It’s 800-some pages of goodness to go through, but looking that if you have questions in advance, by all means you can go to the Deputy City Manager and ask or give them your questions in advance so they can come prepared for you with questions.

[3:12:40] If you’re planning to declare a conflict, we’ll have that circulated in advance as well for that information to be filled out for the City Clerk as well. And please let me know for we can separate out any business cases or components of the budget in advance. So we’re not sitting here waiting for clerks to pull things apart. It just helps our time be used efficiently. If you’re preparing any budget amendments, I would say even if you’re not 100% sure you’re gonna table, ‘cause you want to see how the conversation’s gonna go and feel us out, by all means, if and when at all possible. Please have that in writing beforehand and clerked, just for the wording, you have it in your back pocket.

[3:13:18] If you know what’s gonna do it for sure, by all means circulate it, but if not, at least it’s clerked and ready to go. As well, if staff can have a look over it, it lets you know what things might be connected to it. Doesn’t mean staff, by all means, need to agree with you or support it as staff and everything here is directed by council, but at least they understand where you’re coming from and what questions you’re trying to get to or can flag some concerns for you. Should they have any? There’s these lovely info sessions that will be posted with dates to come with the finance team, gives you a chance for one-on-one questions to dive in in person and ask those questions before you get into a public forum.

[3:13:59] So by all means, feel free to take advantage of those. They’ll be set up and you can book your time spot in advance, so that’s gonna be coming. Also to be seen is in January, once you’ve had your chance to look over your business cases, there’ll be an electronic means of, we’ll say polling you to know what your priorities are of realizing there’s 87 to be discussed that can help bring these cases forward in an organized structured manner of where our interests lie, so we can really focus on the things that are your priorities.

[3:14:33] I’ll also note that what’s before you is civic administration’s budget that they were asked to prepare on behalf of council. And this time around, we have strong mayor powers that are in play and could have different implications on our process and decision-making points, which I believe is the next slide, beautifully timed. So at this point, I’m gonna hand it over to the mayor to do his few slides, and then we’ll commence our Q&A. Mayor Morgan. Okay, thank you. So as colleagues know, strong mayor legislation has been extended to now 46 municipalities across Ontario, including the city of London, and it’s that legislation that dictates that the mayor is to propose a budget by February 1st, or if I were to fail to do that, then council would have to work on and prepare a budget subsequent to that.

[3:15:25] The legislation, unlike other parts, the legislation doesn’t require or allow for, or give me a mechanism to opt out of the new process, nor can I delegate these responsibilities. And I wanna emphasize that the draft budget formerly released today is the draft budget, as the budget chair said, prepared by civic administration. It is not, it is not the mayor’s budget. This is not the tabling of a mayor’s budget. If this was the tabling of a mayor’s budget, the process would be over 30 days from now, and that’s not the intent of what’s been brought forward. And the legislature, sorry, the legislation includes the fine processes that would outline council amendments to the budget once it’s tabled, as well as the associated veto powers, then ability to overturn any sort of veto that council has, and there’s associated timeframes with that.

[3:16:17] So what have I done so far? Under strong mayor of legislation, I can issue directions and then make decisions. So back in October of 2023, I issued mayoral direction 2023 0 0 1, which directed the deputy city manager of finance supports to take what were the following actions at the time. And that was proceed with the preparation of the 2024-2027 multi-year budget in accordance with the direction previously provided by council on April 25th, 2023, and to support the implementation of strategies as part of council’s approved 2023 to 2027 strategic plan.

[3:16:54] So in other words, I directed our staff to continue as we had all agreed on with the budget process under the parameters that we agreed on as a council. I also directed that we proceed with the release of that draft budget today so that we could have the opportunity rather than table a budget and be limited to the 30 days timeframe to actually just present a draft budget under council’s parameters so that we would have lots of time for the public engagement that we’ve done in previous multi-year budgets. I also provided the direction to collaborate with a budget chair Plosa to provide further support for councilors engagement activities to their constituents so that staff know that the authority is there to go out and support councilors as they go around the city and engage with their constituents on the draft budget.

[3:17:43] And I also asked to periodically brief myself and budget chair Plosa on the progress of that draft budget as it was being presented, which was done to date and I do appreciate I think the weekly meetings that we had every week to talk about how the budget was progressing. I have issued a mayoral decision related to the budget process and that was 2023-003, that was on October 10th of 2023. That decision outlined the establishment of a new multi-year budget committee. This is a dedicated committee that will deal with the budget rather than have SPPC and all the other matters of SPPC dealt with at the same meeting.

[3:18:22] So that committee was directed and established for the purpose of overseeing the development of the budget process and alignment with the city’s strategic goals and the strategic plan. It’s at that time that I appointed Council Plosa as chair of the budget committee and that’s why you see her doing the work that you did. And I also directed that the budget committee be comprised of all members of council replicating how SPPC functioned in the past when multi-year budgets were debated. The budget committee does report to council and works closely with civic administration to facilitate a transparent and inclusive budgeting process.

[3:18:58] That is our job as the budget committee and the clerk has been designated as the support for the budget committee. And then I also clarified that the council procedure by-law, which is the rules of order that we use for all of our meetings would be the rules of order that would govern the proceedings of the budget committee. So to kind of summarize, we’ve essentially gone through the process of saying, through a strong mayor legislation, I’ve gone through the process of saying despite what other mayors have done and just brought forward their own budget and it’s over in 30 days and you take your go and make amendments.

[3:19:36] This is an extended timeframe where we have a draft, lots of ability for public consultation, lots of ability for you to go out to your wards, public participation meeting, all in advance of our budget debate, which will happen in February when we do that. So my timeframe to propose a budget based on all of that, all of that process and feedback will be before February 1st. And then at that point, there will be a 30 day period for council amendments to their proposed budget.

[3:20:10] And if nobody makes any amendments in that 30 days, that budget is deemed to have been adopted by the municipality as the budget. If there are changes made, then the mayor has the ability to essentially veto those council amendments within a 10 day period of them being made. If there’s no veto, then those amendments are deemed to have been adopted. If there is a veto, there’s a 15 day period after that for council to override the mayor’s veto with a two thirds majority of council. And if that doesn’t happen within 15 days, the budgets deemed to have been adopted and those not overrided.

[3:20:48] And essentially that’s how the process unfolds between now and then. There is some ability for both council and the mayor to shorten those timeframes. There’s my ability to shorten the timeframe for my veto. There’s council’s ability to shorten their timeframe for their override. None of those decisions have obviously been made yet, nor do they need to be. The budget timeframe or process is there to try to account for those decisions to be made. But should we run into an extended or prolonged budget discussion, we would have the ability to shorten some of those legislative timeframes to ensure that we arrive at a decision together under the appropriate time to make sure that we have a budget in place to actually run the operations of the city.

[3:21:34] So I believe those are all the slides that I had and I’ll turn it back to the budget chair. Thank you. Just looking to the budget team to see if there’s anything that was, nope, of course we didn’t miss anything. So we’ve been practicing this for the weeks. So turning now to council members, procedural questions only. I am timing for up to five minutes. It is committee so we can speak multiple times. So just sharing our space for those who aren’t familiar with how I run my committee meetings. So it’s a running tally of your time and I will start my speakers list with Deputy Mayor Lewis.

[3:22:13] Thank you, Madam Budget Chair. And I’m gonna be very brief. You’ve probably already anticipated this. I know this was a question that we shared in the last term of council around actually neighborhood decision making. On the Get Involved website for budget business case feedback. Will we be utilizing just as we’ve done for recent neighborhood decision making votes, unique voter logins so that we are getting feedback once from one person, not somebody providing 10 different pieces of feedback through the course and sort of stuffing the feedback box as it were.

[3:22:49] Yeah, Mr. Murray. Thank you and through the chair. So that is a very good question. Unfortunately, we’re challenged by the technology that we have available to us in terms of the feedback tool that we will be utilizing for the business case feedback. Due to privacy concerns which were discussed with both our clerks staff as well as our legal staff, we were advised that we are unable to collect any identifiable information that would allow us to limit or ensure that only one response was completed per person.

[3:23:30] So unfortunately, due to those constraints or concerns, we won’t be able to do that. So that certainly will be a caution that we need to put on any feedback that we receive using that tool. Deputy Mayor, follow-up? Yeah, so I’m a little confused and concerned. I don’t need personally identifiable information provided directly to council. However, even for neighborhood decision making, we require a unique username and login, so somebody has to register with an email.

[3:24:08] And then we’re able to limit the number of times a person can vote in neighborhood decision making. So through you, and I realize this may not be Mr. Murray’s question to answer, but without providing personally identifiable information, why are we not able to ensure one citizen, one vote? Staff, sorry, Madam Chair. Through to the Deputy Mayor, I think we’ll have to take that question back, sir, I don’t have the answer for you, and I need to work with our staff on.

[3:24:44] So I understand the desire, and we’ll work with our staff on what may be possible, or what the barriers are to it, so we can give you a better answer. Thank you, you’re good. Next to my speaker’s list, I have Councillor Frank, and then Councillor Stevenson. Thank you, and through the budget chair, on slide 50, so the second, last one, with the strong mayor legislation information. I just want to confirm from my understanding. So the mayor will be proposing mayor’s budget on or before February 1st, and then that’s what we will be debating.

[3:25:19] I guess I am just curious to understand, will you be selecting business cases that you want to move forward, or you put literally everything on the floor, and then we’ll debate it kind of as is as we see now. Thank you, Mayor Morgan. So yes, I will propose a budget before then. I will not put every business case in the budget, because if I did that, and we didn’t make any changes, that would be the budget, and I’m not gonna table a budget that has 9% tax increases across the board. Also the advantage of going the other way, and only putting a minimum number of business cases in, it gives Council the ability to potentially shorten the process, and that if they were all in, and you wanted to take 50 of them out, you’d have to make 50 decisions.

[3:26:07] If they were mainly out, and Council wanted to add them in, you would only be needing to debate the ones that you wanted added in. And so I think I’ll work with the Budget Chair on the best possible way to design the process, to kind of flag the budget debate for our Councilors who want to put amendments forward, of which I expect there will be a number of them, ‘cause I think colleagues will have their feedback and their discussions. But that would be my intention is to essentially table something at more of a base level, that then we would add to as a group, rather than everything in, and then have to make a large number of decisions to take it out.

[3:26:46] Councillor Frank. Thank you, and through the Budget Chair, just to follow up on that, was there any consideration just for not taping your own budget, and just letting what staff have suggested in previous processes just move along? Just curious as to your thoughts on that. I will note for any colleague, you’re never obligated to answer, but these are questions only the Mayor can answer, so Mayor Morgan. Yes, I think you, I don’t think anybody has done that yet. I think some mayors have been very aggressive in just proposing their own budget, and then aggressively vetoing Council.

[3:27:24] My desire here is to strike a balance between the intent of the legislation, which essentially could I do nothing, and just try to duck the whole question of the budget and the tax increase? Yeah, I think that would be a strategy, but it’s not reflective of what the actual legislation says. And so actually tabling the budget, I think is the appropriate way. It also gives Council the ability, if we do that, to make it an additive process through the month of February, and if Council doesn’t want to add anything, then essentially I wear the budget solely, and I give you guys a bit of cover if that’s the way you want to go.

[3:27:59] So that’s my intent is to table the budget through that way, but I also emphasize that every other decision that I’ve made associated with this is meant to engage the public, to engage Council, to have a process where we can respect each other’s views and a process where people can make the amendments and the additions to the budget that they would like to see so that we can fully debate everything, and I think that’s really what’s at the core. I see tabling the budget as a really good shortcut to us being able to setting an end date to the timeframe of the process, as well as making it an additive process where we don’t have to debate each and every case, but we can essentially go through and table and debate the amendments that Councillors would like to see made.

[3:28:44] Councillor Frank. Thank you, no more questions for the mayor, although I suspect your calendar will be quite busy in January with all of us hoping to chat with you, but one question through the chair to staff, I’m just wondering, and maybe I’m jumping ahead, but when we finalize the budget, when we mail out people’s property taxes, are we able to put a separate levy that kind of says provincial downloads or put some clarification about that kind of information? Staff, yes, thank you to the chair. So that is absolutely something that we can do.

[3:29:19] There is a legislation under the act that allows us to do separate line items to discount what that is. Certainly with the legislative business cases have been identified separately, so if it’s the will of council to proceed in that manner, that is certainly within our tools to be able to do so. And then hearing that, I would also advise then that if that is the will of a council to make sure that’s in a motion brought forward through the process, Councillor Frank. Thank you, that’s it. Thank you, still collecting my speaker’s list, and I have Councillor Stevenson next, and then Councillor Troso and Van Merberga.

[3:29:59] Thank you, my questions are about timing. So when I look at the schedule, the budget public participation meeting number one is on January 29th, and seeing that the mayor has until February 1st to reveal the mayor’s budget, is it realistic or possible for the mayor to maybe commit that the mayoral budget would be available for that first PPM, January 29th? Thank you, I’ll also note that we’ve already moved this PPM, that it was supposed to be later in the week to the Monday as well to give more time and more leeway, but looking to the mayor for an answer of when would we know?

[3:30:38] Actually, my preference is to listen to the PPM before I finalize the tabling of a mayor’s budget because I would like to hear the public feedback through that mechanism, so my intent would be to do it after that, but before the legislative deadline, but also it doesn’t preclude us from doing all of the engagement that we’d like to do through February as we participate in the budget debate, and as having gone through this process in the past, I know that there’s a fairly consistent engagement that you end up doing with public and your constituents on the budget through the process, particularly as amendments are made or not made, and as the process iterates, you can see the public feedback can change over time too to say, I like all of these things, but now I don’t like the tax rate, so it’s kind of an iterative process, but to answer your question directly after the PPM, because I would prefer to hear what the public says directly to us, I know that’s just one form of public engagement and there’ll be lots leading up to then, but I would like to hear the PPM dialogue, which is why the PPM was moved up a little bit to actually allow the timeframe to fit a little better.

[3:31:50] I’ll also note, legislatively, the Mayor can table his budget at any time and doesn’t need to call a meeting to do it and can just advise us through an email and correspondence. Councillor Stevenson. Thank you, that makes sense, I understand that now. The other question is the timing again on the 30 days for council amendments and then 10 days for the Mayor and then 15 days for the override, is that an iterative process as we’re doing amendments or are we waiting 30 days?

[3:32:24] Because if we wait 30 and then add 10 and add 15 will be far past the March 5th. I’ll say that up to 15 day and 10 day period, if the Mayor knows they’re just gonna go with it, they could just say to the clerk, like, I’m waving the rest as good council, we meet, we’re not gonna veto things. So that process can be shortened as yes, it drags out very quickly. Councillor Stevenson. Thank you, yeah, I did hear that part but I just wondered, are we waiting till all the amendments are done or will the Mayor be doing vetoes and us doing the overrides as we go along through the month of February?

[3:33:07] Procedurally, I think that’s more of a question of like, ‘cause we’re meeting as a budget committee and council hasn’t approved anything, essentially those budget days where we deliberate is one continuous meeting. We don’t end at the end of the day or it would have stopped that meeting. So just going to, the Mayor has the pleasure of the clerk next to him where I don’t. So I’ll just pass it to Mr. Shultez once he can, yeah, while they’re conversing on that, if you have another question, by all means. Yeah, just wondering how firm the March 5th date is.

[3:33:40] Is there a cut off where we absolutely have to have this finalized in terms of civic services processes or property tax? Ms. Barmon? Through the Chair, there isn’t a specific cut off, although what I would say is that, because we’re already into the first three months of the year, any delay gives uncertainty to service areas to proceed with the items that are being proposed in the budget. If the Mayor does present a Mayor’s budget, the 30 days kicks in immediately, so it could start to shorten the period, perhaps as well, depending on when that is proposed.

[3:34:21] So there would be flexibility to go further, the tax bills don’t have to be out until basically in May is when we aim for that, but I think it’s the biggest driver will be the certainty for the service areas and all of the agency boards and commissions to be able to begin spending and spend what has been approved in their budgets, because that limits the ability for them to actually do current business, knowing they don’t have a budget approved. Thank you. Are you gonna have another question? Okay, just looking into the clerk to see if there’s an answer on the veto procedural questions.

[3:34:59] If not, I’ll go to the next speaker and circle back. Okay. I’ll take a go at it and I’ll use the clerk. So the legislation essentially allows for the vetoing of a council decision. So the Budget Committee, ‘cause it reports to council, isn’t actually making the decision until the end of the process. So the veto point would be at which council approves the amendments. That being said, I think if there were substantive amendments that were to occur, which I can possibly contemplate what that would be now, again, I can by just direction shorten my timeframe to try to tighten up the process, but I can’t shorten council’s timeframe.

[3:35:44] Like only members of council can shorten that. So I think it would be something that we’d have to deal with at the time. But to answer your question about, if as the Budget Committee makes these decisions, I’m gonna say like at the end of the meeting, I’m vetoing this. No, because it’s council who has to approve the decision. And so we will go through an iterative process of building a budget together. And then at the end of that point would be when those will kick in when council actually decides. And if we have to schedule additional council meetings to accommodate that, we could. But I’m very hopeful for us to be able to just, you know, keep the timeline tight as best we can given our abilities to waive some of those timeframes.

[3:36:25] You’ll also note that if the mayor wants to take things out, council always has the veto power. Two thirds majority, which is a 10 to five vote. And if we went through the process together, we need to be a compelling case to start going back and forth with each other. Councilor Stevenson, did that prompt a follow-up question? Just a comment, that makes sense to me now that we do it on March the 5th. And that’s when the 10 days and the 15 potentially adds on. So that makes sense to me. Just a clarification on the council override. Is it 10 votes regardless of the number of councilors present? Or is it two thirds of who are present?

[3:37:02] Assuming we’re all gonna be here, but just so that we know. I don’t know why someone wouldn’t wanna be here. It’s gonna be a great time, but it’s two thirds majority. So to the clerk, just for clarification, that’s two thirds majority of council, not just who’s able to show up, to cast a vote. So the legislation says council may override the head of council’s veto if two thirds of the members of council vote to override the veto. So it’s members of council, not those present at a meeting. Thank you for that clarification.

[3:37:37] Next on my speaker’s list, I have councilor Trousile. Thank you through the presiding officer. I wanna go back to the original slide deck and ask some questions about that. On slides 18, 37, 34, maybe some other ones, there was a gray bar in the middle between the blue and the green that dealt with growth. And those are only on capital slides. May I ask why there isn’t a similar gray bar presentation for growth on the operating budget slides?

[3:38:16] Thank you, Mr. Murray. Thank you and through the chair. So we have a dedicated process to deal with growth costs as it relates to our operating budget. That is our assessment growth process, which is supported by our assessment growth policy. That is a separate process outside of the budget process. So that is a separate report that we typically bring forward after the approval of the budget. So typically either in February or March of a given year. And that report includes business cases that support growth needs for those civic service areas or agencies, boards or commissions that are experiencing growth pressures.

[3:38:57] And it is the mechanism for those service areas to request growth funding to pay for those growth costs. Now that funding comes from new additional property taxes that come from new homes, businesses that are built throughout the city. So any new property taxes that come from assessment growth are carved off separately and go to fund the costs of a growing city in the form of assessment growth business case requests that come forward and you will see through a separate committee report after the approval of the budget.

[3:39:37] Well, regardless of what it comes in later or on this chart, it seems to me, and please correct me if I’m wrong through the chair, that gray band for growth seems large. And I’m wondering how that compares with past years. Staff. So that growth component of the capital plan is entirely based on the development charges background study. So the development background study, development charges background study, sets the capital priorities as it relates to growth, what infrastructure needs it to be in place to service that growth where and when.

[3:40:16] And that then guides what is included in the growth capital budget. So the basis for the growth capital plan is entirely the development charges background study. And that will be entirely based on the work that goes into that DC background study in establishing the timing needs that serves the growth. So to answer your question, I think it varies from multi-year budget cycle to multi-year budget cycle and from DC background study to DC background study.

[3:40:50] I’m not sure that there’s necessarily any kind of trend that we can point to. Councilor. Well, I guess my next question is the blue life cycle renewal and the green service improvement. Are decisions wholly within this council in terms of what’s approved? To what extent is the gray band growth band within the decision of council or is that totally exogenous to our budget process ‘cause it’s through the planning process, which is a budget committee and a council on the budget don’t have control over.

[3:41:37] Good staff. Thank you through the chair. It is entirely within council’s control still. And so there are multiple opportunities for council to review those projects that go into that growth capital budget. The opportunity is first and foremost through the DC background study to review those projects. The next opportunity is as you go through and approve the growth capital budget as well. So you can still make adjustments to the growth capital budget through the budget process. There are of course potentially implications in doing so, but certainly council has the full ability to make adjustments to the capital plan in its entirety.

[3:42:18] Councilor Trossa. Other than running the risk of denying a project, in which case we could go to the Ontario Land Tribunal and be reversed on appeal, what policy tools does the council have to limit the size of the gray band by saying, we’re not going to support this request for growth? Or is it totally within the planning process? Do we have other policy tools? Is the question I’m asking. Ms. Barbong.

[3:42:52] Thank you through the chair. So council has a number of different tools in terms of how you’re proceeding in terms of the growth component. So you’ve received a number of reports from Mr. Mathers and the team earlier this year with respect to some of the work that we’re doing to support the growth projections, the GMIS study that looked at some of the things that are within the development charge process. And certainly all of the background studies that are currently in process, GM and P is a really good example where council will look to make decisions on that that will impact ultimately what goes forward as well into the next development charges background study and ultimately the development charge by-law.

[3:43:32] So those are really, there’s a number of different tools. So notwithstanding the capital plan, the capital plan represents the cost that council has. Council can certainly choose to defer projects and throughout some of the monitoring processes and things that have happened throughout the year, council has deferred certain programs and been able to make changes within the council approved capital plan. So that prerogative is certainly there will be impacts and decisions that council will need to understand in making those changes. But a lot of the planning tools, the support that we’re doing for housing, everything will link in terms of getting infrastructure into the ground to support the growing city.

[3:44:11] On a couple of occasions, Thank you for that answer, Ms. Barbone. Councilor Troso, floor is still yours if you wanna proceed. Yes, through the chair. On a couple of occasions, we’ve been told that it would be our prerogative to include a listing on when the tax bill that goes out, attributing certain portions of the increase to provincial mandates.

[3:44:48] At what point would it be appropriate for council to enact that and build it into the process as early as possible? ‘Cause I feel that’s very important information that we should be getting out from the beginning. Thank you. I will note, Councilor Frank asked the same question earlier. So it looks like you already have an interest and maybe a seconder on that. Ms. Barbone, what timing would need to be done specifically since they’re destined to be an interest from council? Thank you through the chair. So all of the legislative impacts have been separate.

[3:45:21] So it could occur at any point in the process prior to up to including your final budget approval. So my expectation is probably you’d wanna wait till your final budget approval and whatever that last date is when you’re getting ready to wrap up to provide that direction noting what cost specifically you’d like separately. That process then would feed into the property tax process ‘cause we’ll need that first before, ‘cause tax policy decisions will be made. So whenever that goes to final council, as long as that final recommendation is there, that will allow a sufficient time to prepare the tax bills in accordance with the direction of council.

[3:45:59] So it could be done any time from now up until the final budget approval will provide sufficient time for staff to be able to put that onto the budget. Councilor Trevesant? Yes, through the chair, if it’s the will of council to do it as soon as possible, in what form would that come? How would that be put on the table? That would be a normal motion moved and seconded. That’s ideally been clerked and brought forward. As staff has done in the past, if we approve the wording, they could always drop in that final budget number numbers once we finalize it.

[3:46:38] Just Ms. Brombrone, so that’s still your preferred method. Yes, through the chair, that’s correct. Thank you, finally, through the chair, my last question follows up Deputy Mayor Lewis’s concerns about the integrity. And I do wanna use the word integrity of the online polling if we don’t have some way of verifying it. Typically, I see that when people are asked to make submissions, it often says, right there, this is subject to FIPA, and by making this submission, you understand that you are consenting to the collection of this data.

[3:47:18] Why would that not be the situation here? Thank you, I think staff already said they’re gonna look back at it and get back to us, but just making sure that legal reference and term will come back with information to council, Ms. Livingston. Yes, Madam Chair, it may very well be the case. I just want to confirm with staff on the approach. I understand the intent. I just wanna make sure that we’re doing it correctly, and I can provide that information back to you. Thank you, Councilor Trossa. Thank you, well, I’ll let that go for now, but I will have more to say about that later, and I’ll be watching that very carefully.

[3:47:51] And I think I’ll just stop now and defer to others. Thank you. Next on my speakers list, I had Councilor Van Merbergen, and then Councilor Hopkins, and then Mayor Morgan. Councilor Van Merbergen. Thank you, Chair. And thank you to staff for the presentation. I wanted to ask a quick question. It strikes me that the 5.4% starting point is the highest that we’ve seen, I think certainly since 2004, would that be the case?

[3:48:28] I remember 2004 was my first budget, and I recall then it was maybe came in around 11%. Do you know if since then, if this is the highest? Sorry, Mr. Murray. Thank you, through the chair. I’m sorry, don’t have that information here today. I’m certainly happy to take that back, take that away, and get back to you with that information. Councilor Van Merbergen. There’s a lot of angst in the community about a budget, such as this, when it starts at 5.4, and then it can only get higher because there’s dozens and dozens and dozens of cases that will just add on top of it.

[3:49:18] So the angst is starting to build. I’m getting texts and emails, it’s already started. I had one that kind of encapsulates what’s going on out there, it says, “Hey, Paul, let me know if I have to take out a loan to pay my municipal taxes for next year.” Now, that’s the kind of thinking, because we have a community that’s just gone through roaring inflation, and in many, many cases, the wages have not kept up.

[3:49:53] So this is gonna be a hit, and we’ve got to look at this as a group. This is a must-have needs-oriented budget, not want to have nice things to have. So it’s gonna be imperative on us to do that service for the community. And because there’s gonna be lots and lots and lots of questions in commentary, I’m thinking we should give real thought to perhaps a third PPM, public participation meeting, as part of our process. Perhaps you don’t have to answer that tonight, but I think that would be something that would be appreciated by the community to let them not only learn more, but also express themselves.

[3:50:37] And I would recommend that it start at six, instead of four, for people at work, so that they can actually attend. So budget chair, I would offer that as perhaps a suggestion. Thank you. It is always up to council’s purview if they would like to add additional public participation meeting, but knowing that we’ve said in chambers in the past that a PPM is only one means to get involved, many Councillors are having their own ward meetings. And those, I’ll just mention that I don’t know if it’s how many would invite the entire public out to the ward meeting, but only the staff-hosted drop-ins are on the city’s website.

[3:51:24] Our ward meetings are left to us to spread the word on our own, to get people to them and providing feedback. Next on the speakers list, I have Councillor Hopkins, and then the Mayor, and then Councillor ramen. Yes, thank you, Presiding Chair. My question relates to the business cases. And we, by the way, thank you very much for the presentation. It was very informative and very helpful. And getting back to the business cases, there are 67 in front of us.

[3:52:01] And maybe through you to staff, I’d like to have a better understanding before we get to the public participation meeting that is scheduled for January 29th. Will we have all these business cases in front of the public as we go through the public information sessions and the ward drop-in sessions? I’d like to have a better understanding how we’re gonna deal with these business cases through this process, through you.

[3:52:35] Thank you. I’ll note that they went live on the city’s website. The entire good package that we got went live yesterday around noon on the city’s website. In addition, there’s 87 in total, just for everyone that it’s 87. Mr. Murray. Thank you, through the chair. As the budget chair noted, we found very well. All of the business cases are included in the budget package. And recognizing, of course, the volume that we’re dealing with, we have included summaries as well, as I did note in the presentation, that provide a very brief overview of each case.

[3:53:14] So that at least gives Londoners the opportunity to review the summaries, at least as a starting point. And certainly then they can delve into further details and perhaps read the full case for those particular ones that they might be most interested in. So certainly that’s a mechanism that we’ve put in place to try and streamline, I guess you’d say, the process for Londoners as they’re looking at the various options that are in front of them. We will, of course, have similar summaries as part of the materials that we bring to all of our public engagement events.

[3:53:51] Obviously with the volume, we’re somewhat limited in what we can present graphically for each case, but we will have certainly high-level summaries available and then able to refer those who are interested in more details to the relevant business cases in the budget package. Councillor Hopkins, a follow-up? Yeah, thank you, and thanks for the correction. Not 67, it is 87. But then again, we do have legislative changes that we really won’t have a choice.

[3:54:22] And I think that is really gonna be a big part of the conversation with the public. And my concern is making sure that the public and me, that we’re all aware of what we can and can’t do going forward. I’m going to really do my best to have that information available to the public so they can understand exactly where we’re going and what choices we have. I think the other part of this is I’m hearing loud and clear these business cases will all still be there.

[3:55:00] Come the end of January, beginning of February for us to then go through that debating process. So thanks for that clarification. Another quick question through the presenting chair. I know timelines were addressed. That was one of my questions, but as it relates to the ABCs and the public participation here at our budget sessions, will these ABCs sort of be coming in like on the first day of the public participation meeting?

[3:55:37] Or will they, is that being finalized yet through the chair? Yeah, I’ll comment on that one that with there being the legislative cases and 67 absolutely for our discussion that ideally as we survey counsel and see where your priorities are, that ABCs would know where they fall and when they need to come in as I was assuming that we’re gonna have questions of them and as well. But I can go to, that’s been the conversation behind the scenes so far of trying to make use of everyone’s time that they’re not with us every day for weeks, but Ms. Barbone.

[3:56:15] Thank you through the chairs. So depending on how the process unfolds with respect to the strong mayors and what his worship may choose to do, that may have some sort of an impact on the process. So we’re kind of trying to still work through how that might be done with some prioritization and we’re trying to develop a process where we can try to get some priorities from counsel to be able to guide how that discussion might be structured so that it might flow a little bit easier and people might know what to expect and schedule throughout the day.

[3:56:47] So it’s a bit of a work in progress. I think it’s going to be highly dependent on what the mayor may put forward and how that process is going to unfold, but we’re trying to see if we can try to make it a little bit more efficient and give some level of expectation so that everybody is not sitting waiting, but I don’t think we can entirely determine that quite as yet. Councillor Hopkins? Yeah, thank you for that clarification. So again, I think I’m just trying to gauge my timeline and when the heavy lifting or as we go through the process, we’re really looking at the end of January, getting a February for everything to really start moving forward.

[3:57:33] So, and I understand we’ve still got, we’re going through the process as well. So thank you for that. Thank you. And I would say that those timelines are quite accurate. So you got your word meetings coming up, focus on those and then your big heavy lifting as Councillor Hopkins pointed out really starts at the end of January. Next on my speakers list, I have Mayor Morgan, Councillor ramen, Councillor McAllister and then some people are signing up for seconds. Thank you for allowing me on the speakers list budget chair. My question is through you to Mr. Murray.

[3:58:08] It’s on slide 20, that’s related to the budget reduction measures incorporated into the 2024 to 2027 multi-year budget. So just with your indulgence budget chair, just a quick background. So if colleagues know where I’m coming from with this question, in 2016 and the first multi-year budget, we implemented a service review program. To try to, everybody says, there’s wasting government, we’ve got to find it, we’ve got to make find efficiencies. And so we developed a robust service review program to go through and carve out savings within each department and through the budget and Lean Six Sigma and governments and program reviews and all the stuff that’s part of our service review regime.

[3:58:48] It used to come that those savings came as essentially a business case that then we would accept or you would show. So in other words, when Councillor Van Mirbergen says, 5.4 sounds like a lot. Previous years, you would have said it’s 5.8, but we found 0.4 of savings through the service review process. And on this slide, you outlined that you found almost $11 million in annual savings and 3.2 in one time savings. So my question is, is there a reason it’s now embedded in the budget process?

[3:59:23] Is that because Council’s obviously accepted the savings? It’s not like we were going to say no. And then I have to follow up question after that. Thank you, Mr. Murray. Thank you, through the chair. So I think we need to differentiate between a multi-year budget process and the annual budget update process. So consistent with the most recent multi-year budget that was approved in 2020, we did a very similar approach at that point where we went through a right sizing exercise and we incorporated a number of reduction opportunities within the multi-year budget itself.

[3:59:58] That does not, though, in any way preclude us from then bringing budget amendment cases forward in an annual budget update for any further additional savings that we have found in the course of the multi-year budget process. So certainly we remain committed to doing that on an ongoing basis just because we’ve included 46 million of reductions in the multi-year budget. It does not mean we are going to stop. We are going to continue throughout the multi-year budget process to look at any and all opportunities for right sizing that may be there.

[4:00:34] I think the other important point to note about what we have included here is that they are very much budget right sizing things that do not have service or service level impacts. Certainly if there were things that have significant impacts on the services that Londoners rely on, we would bring that forward as a business case for consideration. In fact, we have done so with one of the business cases and I do not have the number unfortunately with me. 71, thank you. Actually, there are two business cases in there for reductions, but one relates to parks and roadsides and naturalization of those roadsides, which has the opportunity for ongoing operating savings.

[4:01:16] So that is an example where there are potential service impacts. We have presented that as a business case because that’s not simply just a right sizing opportunity. Mayor Morgan. Thank you. So I appreciate that and I do know because I tracked a chart since 2016 that we’ve done exactly as you said, built into the multi-year budget, business case pieces, but each and every annual update of which we do not know how much you may additionally carve out through more service review, through the iterations of the years of this multi-year budget, what more there will be.

[4:01:50] Can you, and if you don’t have this, I have it, but I’m going to ask you the question anyways. Over the course from, we started service review in 2016 to the end of this multi-year budget. How much have we carved out of the base budget in both, in basically ongoing, and then cumulatively, how much have we saved through this process all the one time, all of the cumulative total that we’ve avoided in property tax collection through service review? Thank you. I’ll note that the other business case for Parks and Rec was P32, Mr. Murray.

[4:02:26] Thank you very much for that clarification. So in terms of incremental ongoing savings, we are now to the more than $40 million mark in terms of cumulative savings from 2016, which was the start of the service review program, projecting now through to the end of 2027, being the end of this multi-year budget period. That will be a total cumulative savings of more than $240 million that we’ve identified over that 12-year span. So fairly significant total cumulative value, $243 million to be exact.

[4:03:03] Thank you. I’m just going to note that Councillor Herlyer— it’s not your turn yet, but I do see you on the speaker’s list. Mayor Morgan. Yeah, so thank you for letting the public know and council know that through the work of staff and council over the years, the budget is $40 million, less than it would be. And cumulatively, and I’m going to round up a little bit, but we’ve avoided a quarter of a billion dollars of taxes for Londoners, and I know that work will continue. So I know the budget is going to be a difficult one, but I just didn’t want it to be lost that significant work has been done to reduce this to get us to the number where we’re done.

[4:03:37] Obviously, council’s got a lot of decisions it can make to also make an impact on this, but I appreciate the ongoing work of the service review program, which I don’t want to be lost in a budget debate, because it does require a lot of ongoing work. So thank you for letting me ask those questions, budget share. Thank you. Councillor ramen is next, and then Councillor McAllister. Thank you, and through the presiding officer. I do have some questions, concerns. I’ll start it off with a comment. First, actually, I’ll start off with an initial comment, and then I’ll go to another comment.

[4:04:10] But first, thank you to the budget team for your work so far. To date, I know that it is a lot of work. Thank you to Councillor Palosa for her assistance with— or Budget Chair Palosa, sorry for her assistance with getting us organized on the input side and getting our ward meetings underway. Much appreciated for that. So I am trying to wrap my head around this process with the strong mayor’s powers, looking at what other mayors and other cities have done that have now went before us, trying to understand what looks best in terms of process.

[4:04:46] Because I’ll be honest, I think the way that we’re entertaining this process is confusing. I do think that there’s opportunity for a more streamlined process, one that flows better with the new strong mayor legislation. I think in some ways, it feels as though we’re trying to meld an old process in a new process. And the overlap is actually, I think, kind of anxiety producing to Councillor Van Meerbergen’s point for the public, because it’s as if we’re going to go through two separate debates, one on the budget that’s in front of us just draft today, and then one when the mayor presents his budget.

[4:05:29] So I want to get a couple things cleared up in terms of how the mayor intends to publicly release his budget. And I’m not trying to put you on the spot here. I’m just trying to understand the process. Because when I look at the dates that we have lined up here, I think that we need more clarity around those dates. What I’d be looking for is the date that the mayor’s looking to publicly release the budget, and then following that with a presentation of his publicly released budget. Secondly, I’ll note that, you know, Burlington having went before us.

[4:06:06] I feel like they’ve went through the process already, and they’ve put forward a process that I think makes sense. I actually like the format of the mayor’s budget letter and how that’s presented. And it kind of gives a bit of a guideline as to how to now put this into motion with the strong mayor legislation. So my first question is public release date. My second question is, will there be a presentation of the mayor’s budget? And then from there, I want to talk a little bit more about public engagement.

[4:06:40] Thank you for that. And all I can say is the process as legislative is what we’re in, and the mayor has the powers purviewed to him, and why he can answer those as you stated. So Mayor Morgan, we have the key dates on slide 41, if you know in there and how the public would become aware. Yes, so I could tell you my intent now, but I will say, Councillor, I’m open, given we are right at the first part of this process, open to some of your thoughts on improvements to the process. This is the first time we’re doing something.

[4:07:16] I always think that there’s ways that we can think about and adjust as we go. But the way that I envision the process is respecting the decisions that Council has already made to start us in the process, that Councillors have the time to engage on the multitude of business cases. The staff have done the work to prepare so that you can get the best possible feedback from the public to arm yourself for the budget discussion. That after that final PPM and shortly after, I can’t tell you whether it will be the 30th or the 31st, that there would be essentially a table budget from me with essentially a letter outlining what I have done with the draft budget that has changed it to become the Mayor’s table budget.

[4:08:08] So if I’ve done something to the base, if I’ve included certain business cases, if I’ve accepted the legislatively required changes, if I’ve accepted the administratively prioritized, essentially outlining exactly what is different from the budget that you see table today and what I would be putting forward. Happy to spend one of the first meetings going through some of that decision-making. If you’d like, but at the point I table it, it’s really about changing it, adding to it, removing stuff that I put in, which Council has the full authority and prerogative to do.

[4:08:45] So that was the intent to allow Council then to then add or remove from that piece. But I’m happy to like look at, and there may be other mayors who then do this between now and when we get there, that I’m happy to take best practices from because I think everybody’s learning as we go. So that’s my intent now. Happy to have a conversation about it and happy to take feedback from other Councillors as well as we go through this process ‘cause I certainly don’t want it to be confusing. I do support it being streamlined, but I also want it to respect a level of public engagement that is not contemplated in the legislation and respect for Council decision-making and the wards and constituents you represent in being able to influence the budget even if I table it.

[4:09:34] Councillor Roman. Thank you, I appreciate that clarification. So just to follow up, so you’re saying probably using one of the first dates after February 1st to present your table budget as presented at one of those meetings following. So I don’t have to use a meeting to table the budget. That can be done a day in advance, but I could certainly work with the Budget Chair about using a portion of that first Council, Council directed budget meeting that’s been called to do a little more detailed public presentation of that.

[4:10:19] I would anticipate though that the table and the budget would include a fairly thorough letter for myself outlining the differences between that table budget and the draft budget as you’ve seen before us today that the public will be giving consultation on. Councillor Roman. Thank you and through the presenting officer. So I know that we have a number of days and I know that in previous terms of Council, you know, that those days may fluctuate and may not all have been required for the budget deliberation, but now that the budget deliberation is made up of amendments, I’m just wondering how that, how we can be true to that process as it relates to the discussion now that it’s into amendments once the mayor has proposed the budget.

[4:11:17] I’m again, trying to wrap my head around the process. Yeah, and traditionally when we go up with the budget, it was always a mover and a seconder to do something with an item. So really no different just as the mayor’s budget and it’s a mover and a seconder. If you want to take something out, if not, our conversation flows on to adding something else in that we might be interested in. I will say it is a different process that we’ve seen in the past and I would like to think that you’ve been pleased with my communication so far.

[4:11:50] So as soon as we know the mayor’s budget, you will get out in an email in advance and meeting my intention, especially the first day of how our time and our blocks of time are gonna be spent. If it’s people wanting to have an overview from the mayor of whatever budget he will table ‘cause it sounds like you’re planning on doing that for sure. And then what order I’m gonna take us through, normally that would be the legislative pieces first as they’re mandated, administrative prioritized and then the rest of the business cases as it’s laid out in the budget binder, that’s usually trying for all that format, just that’s how it’s presented already in writing.

[4:12:27] Mayor Morgan, a comment on Councilor Romans. Yes, if I could add a comment through you, budget chair. During the presentation, I believe it was Ms. Barbong who articulated that they were looking into a clerk-approved way of gathering information on the types of amendments that counselors would be looking to make as they do their public engagement. So a number of members of Council may say, I really like, and I’m just picking one, I don’t know what one it is, business case, 74.

[4:13:03] And there may be 10 members of Council who want to entertain the idea of business case 74 being adopted. If we have a mechanism to gather that information in advance of our budget debate, then I think the budget chair would be armed with a process by which we can schedule amendments starting with the ones that most members of Council want to talk about, kind of going down to the ones where maybe only one or two want to talk about, and be able to go through the budget debate in a way where we know that 12 members of Council want to discuss these three business cases and 10 want to discuss these four.

[4:13:43] And if they’re not already in the mayor’s budget, then the budget chair could potentially start to schedule those on days. So that essentially those boards and commissions, if they’re related, would know essentially when those amendments were being made. And then Council, we would have a process by which we’re discussing the ones that Council is most interested in doing down to the ones where maybe only one or two people are willing to discuss and try to use our time as efficiently as possible as we build up the budget. That we do not have a process finalized for that yet because we want to respect any sort of closed meeting rules and have staff gathered in the right way.

[4:14:17] But the budget chair and I are contemplating a way to do that so that we can maximize the efficiency of the use of Council’s time through the process and talk about the things that most members of Council would want to talk about. And after the mayor’s budget is tabled, there may be some Councilors who say like, like maybe most of you want to take something out. I’m not going to presume that that might not be the case. So those could happen as to there could be a day dedicated to removals. And then there could be kind of a catch all day at the end to say, as we build up this budget process, you might have added and added and added and then said, whoa, I don’t really like the total number now.

[4:14:55] And you might want to undo some of those decisions or reconsider them. There might be the ability to catch all at the end. I appreciate Councilor Raman’s desire to have this streamlined as possible. Those are ongoing discussions given the restrictions that we might have to follow that the budget chair, myself and staff are having to try to figure out the Council’s priorities. And again, I think you’ll need to do your public engagement with your ward meetings and hear from people before you can really finalize that list of things that you’re interested in raising. So we’ll have to find the right timing for circulating that engagement piece.

[4:15:29] I will note as well that when we go through the budget process as always, I’ve confirmed that Mr. Murray will have his handy danny visual spreadsheet that as we may add a decision point, if we want to see how it’s going to change the tax rate, he can show that instantly in real time before we cast our votes, we have an informed decision. We used it in the budget update this year. It didn’t make too much of a difference as the decisions before us, but it was a good intro, ‘cause you’ll see that tool again. And Councilor ramen, you have about a minute and 10 seconds left.

[4:16:01] Thank you and through the presenting officer. Thank you, that does help me a little bit in understanding the process. So just as I mentally again think through this process, I’m thinking of the fact that I’ve got my ward 7, ward 8, budget meeting scheduled for January 24th. And, or 22nd, I can’t roll, one 24th or 22nd. And so then I’m thinking after, I should know that it’s my brain right now, the 24th and the next meeting, I would probably want to take strategically thinking would be a meeting with the mayor then, because I would want to then make sure that the mayor’s aware of the priorities from my ward, not that he probably doesn’t know the minority because he was the ward councilor beforehand, but making sure that he’s aware of those priorities.

[4:16:52] So then again, as I wrap my head around this process and the way we move forward, then I want to make sure that anything that didn’t make it into your budget is what, and still award priority is what I’m working to bring forward so that my constituents understand my thinking now based on the change in the process, because I think that’s also really important. So how are we going to communicate the change to the public in terms of the process as well? With the mayor, I know we’ve got it in the slide show, but outside of that, I wonder, is there more direction that we need to provide so that the public understands the change?

[4:17:34] Thank you. I’ll note that that actually slightly exceeded your time. So I’ll go to staff that, when the mayor tabled his budget, how would that explain or had this before? How would that flow through to the city’s website or other posting places for the public to follow the conversation if we know that answer yet? Mr. Murray. Thank you through the chair. I think those are still some details to be worked through. I think one of the requirements of the legislation is of course that the mayor’s proposed budget is posted publicly online, where that is specifically still being worked through, but certainly over the coming days and weeks, we will be tackling that question among many others.

[4:18:20] Certainly as well as we’re going through all of our many public engagement events that we’ve scheduled over the course of the coming weeks, we will certainly be sure to carve off some time and some attention within those events to address this change in process, because as you have certainly noted, it is very much a new process that we’re going through for the first time. So it’s definitely important that the public appreciates how this could shift the process that they might be used to in the past. So definitely we’ll be a topic of all of our public engagement events that we attend. Thank you, I have Councillor McAllister next, and then Councillor Layman.

[4:19:00] Thank you, through the presiding officer. I was wondering in terms of the process, when we get into the business cases that are at our discretion, in terms of how we can tweak it, ‘cause I mean, one of the things I’ve found, like when we look at other, when it’s even like proposals coming before us, I mean, these are business cases that others have provided and we’re making a decision on, in terms of any sort of flexibility, if we look at it and say, you know, we can’t necessarily fully fund this. Doesn’t seem like there’s a lot of time to necessarily go back and forth.

[4:19:33] Like this is a business case that they’ve clearly put together. Is it just a yes or no? Or is there any opportunity to look it over and then make adjustments as we go through this process? Thank you for that question. I’ll also note it’s gone now. That’s okay to staff. Oh, I’ll note as well through the business cases as we go. If there’s provincial and federal funding mixed into a decision that we’re making, staff will highlight that as we go.

[4:20:07] So if we decide to stop doing something or alter our plans of how we’re doing it, that if it comes down that we’ll lose funding or have to give some back, they’ll highlight that too. Just staff have already been advised that that as we go through the process, Mr. Murray. Thank you through the chair. So certainly I think it is somewhat dependent on the specific business case. Some may have more flexibility than others to adjust. In many cases, there is certainly ability to scale up or scale down. I think though the important point to reiterate is the importance of starting to dig into the budget materials as soon as possible and start formulating some of those ideas and reaching out to those respective business case owners to understand potentially what the impacts might be of scaling up or scaling down or adjusting in one way, shape, or form.

[4:20:59] What is requested in that business case? And then working of course with staff and with the clerks to ensure that any amendments that you are potentially proposing to those business cases are ready when the appropriate time comes to actually talk about that case. So certainly I guess the key point there is start looking at the cases early and start engaging with those case owners as to those potential ideas that you might have. Councillor McAllister. Thank you through presenting officer.

[4:21:32] Just as a follow up to that, I’m just wondering in terms of how we go about that, we can obviously have the conversations with groups where there might be some concern that they might not receive that amount of money, but would it be a letter, like in terms of how we go back, like we could obviously reach out to them and then if they’re willing to, they could come back to us. But my concern is I would imagine some of them would just say, I’d like this put on the floor essentially for debate to see if I can get it and if I can’t, then I would go back, right? I don’t want to get into a situation where we say no, but then after, I mean it would be decided matter, but like I’m just wondering if there is any mechanism in terms of allowing, like would they come to the PPM or what’s their best course in terms of making their case in person to us?

[4:22:20] Thank you. I’ll note some places I’ve already been reaching out and this is our multi-year budget, but there’s always the yearly budget updates as well. I just tried to avoid the let’s make a deal happening from the gallery or on the floor. We’ve done it in the past, it could be entertaining, but it takes up some time. Mr. Murray. Thank you through the chair. I would certainly start with the informal engagement with those case owners. There may be a desire on the part of that service area, agency board commission, community group, whatever the case may be, to come to the public participation meeting and provide a summary of their request and justify why they are requesting it.

[4:23:04] In many cases, whether it be the civic service areas or the agency’s boards and commissions, they are also in attendance during budget deliberations themselves, so they’re there and available to answer any questions and talk about any of those potential adjustments as they’re being deliberated by council as well. I follow up, Mr. Councilor McAllister. Thank you through the presiding officer. My next question actually has more to do with in terms of the process for the mayor. And what you would be presenting to us, is there an opportunity for you to explain why?

[4:23:40] Because what I had imagined, whatever you put before us, my first question is inevitably, how did you come to that decision? ‘Cause I would imagine cases that don’t make it through. Obviously, those are things we can advocate for, but would you have the opportunity to explain to us as a council what you prioritized and why you chose the cases you did? Thank you. I would also be mindful too of the time that we want the mayor to take up at the meetings for his justification and what he put forward. Mayor Morgan. Yes, to the councilor through the budget chair.

[4:24:16] I don’t want you to think about this the wrong way. Council still has, under the legislation, the full ability by majority vote, to add things into the budget. So it may not be that I bring you a complete budget with every single justification in it. It may be through the public engagement and dialogue that I do myself, that it may be a fairly base level budget. I’m just contemplating here. And that council can go through and add the additions through some of the debates.

[4:24:49] Like, I’m not going to presume where we go because I do my own public engagement. I will say that it’s pretty clear to me what I’m hearing is the priorities that monitors have. I mean, we just did a resident satisfaction survey. There’s top of mind issues out there. There’s investments that if we’re going to make them, you shouldn’t be surprised that I’m probably gonna make them in the space where the public is really asking for them. And that as we’ve seen with the budget pressures, there’s gonna be a lot of things that maybe would be nice to have.

[4:25:24] It’s just not the time for it. And you’re not gonna get a robust detailed explanation of that, what you’re gonna get is it just wasn’t the time to potentially make that investment. So I don’t think you should anticipate like big dramatic surprises from me. It’s going to very much align with what we’re hearing out there from Londoners, what we’ve heard all through the year, what these top priorities are in the areas that I feel we shouldn’t be investing in and where we just might not be able to this time around. Remember, the multi-year budget is all about pacing.

[4:26:00] We have, and we said during the course of the debate through the strategic plan, this is a big strategic plan, there are many counselors who said, we may not be able to do all of this under the timeframe that we might like. This is the point where that kind of rubber hits the road. And so I’m not gonna come and justify everything I didn’t put in ‘cause Council has the option to put it in. I’m gonna focus on really the core priorities to give us a base to work from. So I mean, that’s my intention now. I’m just trying to be transparent about it.

[4:26:33] I don’t anticipate that changing too much to the process except for listening to people about the priorities they have, right, I’m gonna be doing that too, just like each and every one of us are. And I’m gonna be probably engaging with all of you as well about the types of things that you’re thinking of, whether it’s me watching your award meetings or participating in some or listening or the same letters that you get, I usually get to. So yeah, that’s a little bit of probably an extended answer, but that’s my thinking on it at this moment. Thank you, Councilor McAllister.

[4:27:13] Thank you to the presiding officer. Thank you for that answer, Mayor. I understand it’s new for you as well. I just hope you have the opportunity, obviously to explain to us the budget you’re putting before us and you’re hearing I’m sure the same things as us, but I don’t expect you to go through everything but more just to be able to put on the table something you explained why. My last comment is just on what was brought up earlier. I am totally in favor of as we go through this process, ensuring that the taxpayers know who’s charging them for what. I think having a special levy that would break down in terms of legislative changes, I think that that’s highly appropriate.

[4:27:52] Any time a bill comes due, we wanna see who’s charging them what. And in terms of some of the questions I’ve already received, I think it’s very appropriate for us to call out on the property tax, what things we have control over and what things are being asked for us to put on the back of taxpayers. And I think they deserve to know who’s charging them for what. Thank you. Thank you. On my speaker’s list, I have Councillor Layman, followed by Councillor Hillier. Thank you, Chair. First of all, I wanna say thank you. We’re a billion dollar corporation and we’re charged with coming up with a four year budget plan that is quite complex.

[4:28:35] The operation is complex and you’re charged with presenting it to us. 15 people with various backgrounds and understandings and whatnot to allow us to have the tools to make decisions that we see fit coming from our own perspective as Councillors. I wanna thank the Budget Chair for her involvement in working with staff in coming up with this initial process.

[4:29:15] And from my perspective, it’s probably easy to follow document that you can get given the nature of the beast. I want to comment a bit about the new thing that’s before us and that’s with strong mayor powers. This is challenging for staff. It’s challenging for the mayor. It’s challenging for the Budget Chair and for all of us in adopting this new process. And I think I’m glad the mayor touched on this.

[4:29:50] There is the legislation but there’s also the intent of the provincial government in directing the mayor in his role and staff’s role in this process. So it is the mayor’s budget to a certain extent. He, we have the option of vetoing with his decisions but with a substantial number of Councillors. But the majority, and likewise he has the option of using his mayor powers of vetoing any amendments that he does not see fit for the direction that he wants to go.

[4:30:35] So I ask all of us to work, try to do our best to work with the mayor, the staff, and the Budget Chair to make this process as smooth as we can, ‘cause it will be evolving. I think all involved have done their best to set a course as best as possible, but any new thing, there are jigs and jigs in the road. I just want to make sure I understand the initial numbers correctly.

[4:31:09] Eight months ago, we looked at a base budget. That would be just keeping things at the same of 2.9 to 3.9% increase. Now we’re looking at a 4.9% increase. And I won’t get into that now ‘cause that’s not the form. We’ll have that discussion later. Then on top of that, there are legislative changes, 13 budget business cases. That amounts to 0.4%. Is that correct to the chair?

[4:31:49] Thank you. To staff, just to highlight those numbers in the report. That is correct. It’s approximately, actually it’s approximately 0.5. So if all of the legislative changes were approved as well, that would bump us up from 4.9 to 5.4 for your average. Councillor Layton. I’m sorry, I missed that. 4.9 is the base. And then I’m looking at page 12, legislative changes.

[4:32:20] It’s 0.4% average property tax impact. Is that correct? That is correct. Rounding comes into play here a little bit. 0.4, 0.5 is the range, yes. Thank you, thank you, Chair, sorry. So roughly 0.4, and then we’ve got administrative prioritized cases of seven, that’s 0.3. So assuming those are, you know, very probably most likely to be put forward, we’re looking at 5.6 all in. Okay, so I just wanna clarify, the legislative changes that I’ve heard talked about a number of times here is 0.4% of the total impact or total levy that we’re looking at.

[4:33:08] Thank you. Just one more area, Madam Chair. Regarding revenue impact of, again, legislative changes on not meeting our housing targets, how have you accounted for that? It’s tough to gauge the unknown of where we’re gonna go. So how is that estimated in your process? Thank you to staff. Thank you through the chair.

[4:33:42] So in terms of, I believe you’re referring to potential funding programs that have been recently announced by the province that are tied to housing targets. The short answer is those have generally not being incorporated as revenue assumptions in the budget. You will see as you work through a variety of the business cases that there are some business cases that are proposed to be funded, at least in parts, through the housing accelerator fund.

[4:34:15] However, there is greater flexibility associated with that funding as it relates to other potential funding, though, that may be available through the province, directly tied to the achievement of housing targets. We have not incorporated that as revenue into the budget. Thank you. So that would be dealt with more our annual budget updates. Thank you. Thank you, Madam Chair. Thank you.

[4:34:47] That was a nod for Mr. Murray on the annual updates piece, just for those who are following online. And Councillor Lehman finished with 30 seconds left. Councillor Hillier, you’re up next. Thank you very much. Thank you to Councillor Lehman for covering most what I wanted to ask. But I would like to ask one question. So the public understands the range in which we’re operating. If all legislative, administrative, prioritized business cases, and all of the classes were approved, what would be that high-end number, just so people understand the range that we’re working with?

[4:35:28] Are you looking for that average or per year, Mr. Hillier? Councillor Hill. The average, please. Okay, Mr. Murray. Thank you through the chair. So if all business cases were approved, in addition to the base budget, the four-year average annual increase would be 8.8%. Wow, thank you very much. Thank you. That concludes our first round of speakers. It is committee, you’re allowed to speak a second time. Deputy Mayor Lewis, you are first up for second round. I’m gonna try and be brief, because we’re very early in the process.

[4:36:07] We’ve been at this a long time already. I think people are perhaps, in some cases, getting a bit ahead of themselves on things. But I did, through you, Madam Chair, have a quick question to our staff. Aside from the legislatively prioritized cases. Are there in the additional business cases, any business cases, which are subject to an appeals process, wherein we could be having to pay the bill anyway. I know I’m thinking of the police in particular. But there may be others that I’m not aware of. So are there others in the additional business cases that could be taken to appeal that we would be paying the bill for regardless?

[4:36:45] Thank you. To our budget team. Thank you through the chair. So primarily the boards and commissions that fall into that are the police, the conservation authorities, any of those and the health unit. Those are generally the ones that if there are business cases related to those, that Council would need to strongly consider the legislative requirements for them. So I’ll just highlight that a couple of the London police are in the legislative ones as well. There’s P-28 and P-29 in our budget cases for consideration.

[4:37:20] W.M.R. Lewis. Thank you, Madam Chair. And I’m gonna take this opportunity now to say something that I should have said right out of the gate at the very first. I know we all appreciate the hard work of our staff. But I wanna thank you, Madam Chair, for the, I don’t know how many hundreds of hours you’ve put into this in this year already. But I know it’s in the hundreds. The very fact that you’re rattling off the business cases by number faster than anybody can look them up tells me how much work you have put into this.

[4:37:53] So I do wanna take this opportunity to personally say thank you for all the work you have put in on this already. And I’m just gonna conclude by saying, you know, we set a budget target earlier in the year. Councilor Lehman referenced that a little bit. The boards and commissions were all aware of what that budget target was too. And so to highlight Councilor McCallister’s point about those with business cases who maybe they wanna rethink what their valuation is. And there are 40 people watching on the YouTube stream right now.

[4:38:25] I suspect a lot of those are stakeholders with business cases in. Yes, you may not get what you wanted because you asked for more than the approved target. That’ll be a discussion we will have in the new year, of course, but I would encourage folks to really seriously consider if there’s a business case that they really strongly wanna put into this budget that they approach that board commissioner agency and have that discussion with them ahead of time too that if you’re not going to get 10%, could you make do with a partial case?

[4:39:00] And that is our homework. That’s not staff’s homework to do. The boards and commissions were given their target and they have submitted what they’ve chosen to submit regardless of that. So if there’s business cases that as we get through the holiday break and you’re doing your homework, you think really need to have a second look. I did encourage people to take the time to do that. But again, I just wanna thank you Madam Budget Chair for all the work that you have put into this this year. Thank you for your words of affirmation. I’ll note that I also count that as speaking time and you finished with 10 seconds to go.

[4:39:34] So thank you for recognizing the wrap up sign. I’ll also note to colleagues that as we just mentioned, there’s lots of different business cases in here and I’m gonna ask staff to circulate to all of us the list of what counselors service, which what the goodness, the list of counselors and what agency boards and commissions they currently serve on so you could seriously reference if you had a business case question. You could even just go to a colleague and ask for insights as we serve on those boards and see their finances as well. Next on my speaker’s list, I’m sure there’s somebody but I have nobody right now.

[4:40:06] So I’m just gonna do last call for procedural questions. Okay, I’ve certainly appreciate the conversations tonight, helps me know where it’s going and I know that the mayor heard you strongly ‘cause I would say over our hard questions and speaking time tonight was directed for questions for the mayor and strong mayor powers. So I apologize for going past my predicted time but that’s okay ‘cause we’re still hearing it’s a process. As always, I’m available to answer your questions for those who had already mentioned an email will be going out to everybody.

[4:40:42] As you have different engagement, you’re doing those nice phone boards with budget displays with the public you’re gonna be engaging with. We print those here in house. Mr. Murray will create the graphics for us and we’re gonna circulate to all colleagues to whoever wants the boards created. We can just get that going right off the bat and keep us all organized and moving forward. So thank you for your time tonight and to the budget team for tonight and all waste. Thank you for everything as we move forward through this and I’ll return control to the mayor recognizing we’ve been here for a couple hours and I’m not sure that I desire for a short stretch.

[4:41:22] Well, Chair, you could also, if you wanted to, as the chair, lead us through the staff motion, which is the draft documents we referred to the process and the overview by city manager be received. If you wanted to lead us through that, you can or if you want me to do that again. I’ll move it, you can chair it. Sure, I’ll chair it. All right, so what’s located in the staff report is essentially just that these budget documents be referred into the process that’s been outlined and that the presentation that was done today was received and it being noted about the stuff being available on the city’s website.

[4:41:56] So moved by a bunch of chair blows. I seconded by Councillor Hopkins, Lehman Hopkins. How about any kind of already had discussions and questions on this. So this is just the receiving now. So we’re just going to open this for voting. Okay, we’ll do that. Closing the vote, motion carries 15 to zero.

[4:42:42] All right, step one of 182 done on the budget, I think. So there you go. I’m sure they’ll all be unanimous probably through the whole process. Okay, so we’re on back to the agenda. We’ve completed the release of the draft budget. We’re onto items for direction and we have an item for direction that was sent in by Deputy Mayor Lewis and Councillor Frank. And then after that, we have to deal with the one that we’ve deferred from the start of the meeting 2.1.

[4:43:15] And then we have a, I believe an in-camera piece that we have to deal with as well. So I will go to, I don’t know, Deputy Mayor Lewis or Councillor Frank on your piece of correspondence. Go ahead. Thank you, worship. So colleagues, you have this correspondence. It was on the regular agenda. So you’ve all had a chance to think about it. Councillor Frank and I are seeking leave to reconsider the frequency of the reports for the whole of community system response. Janelle, Council directed these monthly.

[4:43:48] We are suggesting a move to buy annually. So I’m just curious about the language you just used there, which is slightly different from your letter. You want to reconsider the previous decision. I’m gonna give you some procedural information but this is to clarify first. So given the objection from the clerk this morning, I think we’re gonna seek leave to reconsider and see if Council will support that.

[4:44:32] Yes, so leave to reconsider. So let me just clarify the process ‘cause I understand you’re intent now. I’m glad you got advice from the clerk because we would have had to move towards reconsideration given this is directly involved with the previous decision that Council made. So at committee, we don’t actually reconsider items as per the procedure by-law. Only Council actually reconsiders an item but committees make recommendations for Council reconsider. At committee, that recommendation to reconsider requires a majority vote.

[4:45:05] When that committee report lands in Council, it requires the two thirds of the members of Council to reconsider the matter. Subsequent to when a committee recommends reconsideration to Council, they also provide a recommendation on what the alternative is. And so if you wanna do what you’re suggesting, that you’re actually moving a motion that is essentially recommending to Council that it reconsider the previous decision to have monthly updates.

[4:45:41] And then should that reconsideration then you would, we would also be obligated to send a subsequent motion to Council to say what the alternative is. And that can, you can put that on the floor, people can debate it, they can amend it, they can do whatever they like. So the first step is a recommendation to reconsider to municipal Council, the decision of having monthly updates. Yeah, so my understanding is when you forward a recommendation to Council to reconsider that you have to provide an alternate recommendation. So is it a recommendation to reconsider as a Part A and then a Part B would be the new recommendation or is it the clerk and your advice chair to handle these as two separate components?

[4:46:27] So this is the first time I think I’ve ever done this in nine years on Council. Let me just clarify that piece ‘cause you’re right, it could be an A/B. Let me just get some advice on that part. So reading the procedure by-law, I think a Part A Part B makes sense.

[4:47:26] It allows Council to vote differently. It would also allow for any sort of amendments to Part B. So Part A is essentially the motion to recommend reconsideration of a decided matter of Council made by a member who is on the winning side of that decided matter of Council. We looked at the vote, it was unanimous so anybody can move this motion except for Councillor Trostac who wasn’t there that day. Sorry about that. So that checks off, that would be the Part A. The Part B would be the alternative. Part B would be the alternative.

[4:47:58] So I want you to put that on the floor now as the A and B. Again, we can vote on them separately. We can, well, I’ll check on that piece but we’re gonna have a Part A and a Part B on this because we need to tie the reconsideration with an alternate as the procedure by-law essentially says. So move, let me know what the alternate is that you wanna put on the floor. Yes, and I always appreciate when after nine years I can come up with a new way for you to have to read through the procedural by-law. So the Part A is that a recommendation before that Council to reconsider its previous direction and the Part B would be that civic administration be directed to adjust the frequency of the overall comprehensive progress update, health and homelessness whole of community response to twice annually it being noted that Council via the Strategic Priorities and Policy Committee will continue to receive reports on matters for its decision making related to the whole of community system response as necessary.

[4:48:59] And then there’s the further being noted piece of a communication being received which is noted in e-scribe from the clerks with regard to that communication. So happy to put that in being noted on as well. What’s the question? I was getting another procedure advice now. What’s your, sorry. There wasn’t a question, just the Part A and then I read out the Part B while you were getting advice.

[4:49:31] And I believe I have a seconder and Councillor Frank. Seconder, yeah, seconder. Okay, the clerk’s just gonna look at the language just ‘cause we’ve never done one of these before in this way to make sure it’s okay. So I’m just gonna pause, I’m not gonna have debate. Well, we look at this ‘cause I don’t wanna miss something. Okay, I’m gonna have the mover and seconder and look at the language.

[4:52:18] All of Council can look at the language if you like and just make sure that looks like what you’re trying to do. It’s correct from procedural perspective, but I wanna make sure it’s your intent. Now that it’s on the floor, you can speak to the recommendations and then I’ll start a list.

[4:53:00] Okay, now that it’s on the floor, colleagues, quite simply, we have been receiving these reports for half a year now. As was indicated in our joint letter to you, there is a limited, if any, value in getting a monthly report that essentially says to us, two tables met or three tables met or four tables met in the whole of community response. Decision matters still have to come before us. And both from a perspective of the actual work that needs to be done and the amount of staff time that goes into just producing these reports, as well as the fact that really what we are getting is essentially a meeting schedule after the fact.

[4:53:46] Also given that since these reports were first requested and began being generated, we’ve made an additional change which has designated members of Council to actually participate in the accountability table. And so there’s direct elected representation at the accountability table. Getting reports back from each of these tables every month on their meetings with no decision points for us to consider really doesn’t seem to myself like a good use of our time. We spend a lot of time talking about the reports, but we’re not actually making any decisions or getting any real new information brought forward.

[4:54:26] We seem to be spending just a lot of time talking about the things that we’ve already talked about. So that’s where both myself and I’m sure Councillor Frank will have her own comments to add, but that was where we felt together that it was time to change the frequency of these reports. Councillor Hopkins, thanks. Yes, Your Worship. I appreciate the two Councillors bringing this forward. I do have a procedure, a question though. I was always under the impression that a reconsideration is not debatable and as it ties into the motion B, can we split it out and then how our amendments brought forward if passes or it doesn’t?

[4:55:16] It’s just a procedure question in my head. Okay, Councillor Hopkins, I don’t know what prize I owe you, but very good procedural question.

[4:56:06] You’re right. And this is now reconsidered our advice on putting A and B together because the motion to recommend reconsideration of a decided matter of council is permitted. The mover of the motion to recommend reconsideration may provide brief and concise statement outlining the reasons for proposing such reconsideration, but there’s no debate on the reconsideration motion, but there can be debate on the alternative what to do instead of piece.

[4:56:40] So like given that, we’re gonna pull these apart. There won’t be debate on the recommendation to reconsider. The mover’s already given that summary. We won’t have anybody else speak. We will have debate to this pass on the alternative piece, the B that can be proposed next. So thank you, Councillor Hopkins. This motion at committee to recommend reconsideration for council only requires majority.

[4:57:13] When this lands at council, it requires two thirds of councillors to support it for it to actually be reconsidered. Only if it’s reconsidered, can the alternate that we will consider after this come to the floor? And the alternate is subject to the reconsideration passing. Joe South, procedural question? Yes, is there a limitation on who can make the motion with respect on how they voted on the original motion? That’s correct. Only individuals on the winning side of the original motion can reconsider. In this case, the original motion to have monthly updates asked 14 to zero.

[4:57:51] So any member of council can make this motion to reconsider, procedural? Go ahead. Yes, so it’s the vote at council, not the vote at committee? ‘Cause the vote at committee— Yes, it’s a decided matter of council. So it’s the decided matter vote that matters. So it’s the council vote, not any previous committee votes. Okay, all right. I appreciate everybody allowing us to clarify this. So these will be pulled apart. We’re not gonna have debate on the motion to say the draft.

[4:58:28] I’ll get the wording of the motion of one second. I’ve still got the budget motion on my screen, which is not. What we have before us, not debatable.

[4:59:23] Summer has been given just the piece about the recommendation for reconsider requires a majority of councilors. We’re gonna open that for voting. Holding the vote, the motion carries 11 to four. Okay, so that recommendation to council for reconsideration is passed.

[5:00:00] Now the council could put the suggested alternate for council to consider should they pass, actually pass with two thirds of the reconsideration on the floor. I assume the second is still good for the second. This one is debatable and amenable and all sorts of stuff. So I’ll start a speaker’s list for this one. Councilor Hopkins. Yeah, I would like to provide an amendment. And I think I do appreciate the motion coming forward. I think on a monthly basis, it seems to me a lot of work goes into these monthly reports, but they’re also important to committee.

[5:00:42] I know I appreciate the reports doing it by annual. To me, I know going from monthly to by annual just seems to be a bit of a gap given that homelessness is still a priority here. Londoners really do wanna be more or less informed, but more important I as the council want to be informed. I would like to make a friendly amendment in just sort of building consensus here. And ask that we do it quarterly.

[5:01:15] And the reason I’m suggest quarterly is, to me, we still get the reporting. There are going to be a number of reports coming to us prior to this report, so we’ll be getting information on a regular basis, but the quarterly piece of it is more like a seasonal, data-driven report with information going back the previous month. So I think that can be helpful. So that is my amendment to put it quarterly as opposed to by annual.

[5:01:55] Okay, is there a seconder for that amendment, Councillor McAllister? Yeah, okay. So the motion on the floor was, I think it was twice annually that the Councillor was saying, I think bi-annually is every other year. So twice annually, moving that to quarterly. That’s the amendment. So now we’re debating the amendment, the change of the motion to quarterly. Speakers on that? Mr. Robin. Thank you and through you.

[5:02:30] So I would be more supportive of quarterly versus every six months. I appreciate the letter and the amendment that are provided. I do think that I understand where the Councillors are coming from. I appreciate the need to help to reduce workload ‘cause I can’t imagine that it is a lot of work. I do wanted to ask in those meetings, are minutes taken?

[5:03:07] Ms. Livingston. Is the question with respect to the strategy and accountability table minute meetings? Yes. Yes, yes. So there are summary notes that are provided and sent out to all members of the SAT. Thank you. So there’s summary notes provided for all the tables or just the strategy and accountability table. Go ahead, Mr. Dickens. Through your worship, our backbone team as part of this whole acuity system response works to provide summary notes for every table.

[5:03:45] Thank you. Is there any issue with sending the summary notes to Council in place of the reports? Mr. Dickens. Through your worship, we’re conducting several meetings a week with the implementation tables and different frequencies for the strategy and accountability table. And those are very operational in nature. That’s us trying to do our work. There would be a lot of content for Council. It would be my advice not to do that, but certainly in Council’s hands if there was a different direction.

[5:04:19] I would not recommend that. It’s a lot of working documents. That’s around it. Thank you. And those meetings are just made up of the attendees and not open currently to members of the public for any of those table meetings. Mr. Dickens. Through you, your worship, the attendees at those tables are those that are involved in working in the sector or contributing to the work that is happening. We don’t have general membership or general members of the public attending.

[5:04:56] No, it is people linked to post-secondary educational institutions, the businesses, the BIA’s funders or organizations that are assisting in delivering this work. Thank you. When we were establishing the reporting structure, I think part of my desire at the time to get a monthly report was linked to wanting to have more of the information from those tables at the time.

[5:05:30] I would be okay with receiving less reports if I could read minutes of meetings, if I could know when those meetings are being held and drop in or attend when they are or that other members of the public that have written to me and asked that the reporting continue, that those meetings are open to the public for them. So I understand that the reports are a lot of time and work. And again, I appreciate that.

[5:06:03] If we were to go to quarterly reports and we still had the reports that are coming forward for decision points, I think that that would be satisfactory. I think that that would give me the information I need. So I would support that, but I can, I’m kind of weighing all of that information right now as we consider this decision, thanks. Okay, thank you, Councillor Frank, go ahead. Thank you, yes. I’ll speak to this motion, which is moving towards quarterly.

[5:06:38] I don’t have a problem with that. I think the main spirit of the motion remains that we want to see less talk and more action and not necessarily from staff, but also from council. I regularly want to remind council that we actually play a governance role and I find that receiving monthly reports, being made aware of meetings, is not necessarily governance information that is very nuclear micromanaging operational information. And I think that if people want to direct staff to do things, the best way to do that is to bring motions to council with information about what direction you want to set.

[5:07:20] Otherwise staff come to us with reports whenever we need to make a decision, given that we play the governance role. And so having less reports to me allows them to spend more time focusing on getting the tasks done. As we know, we have a lot on the go with the hubs and with other homelessness responses that we have. So that is the main point. I’m okay with the quarterly meetings. That doesn’t bother me, but I think at this point, I’d rather us consolidate and save our energy and our time for making decisions and less time discussing what meetings are happening each month.

[5:07:55] Thank you. Okay, so on the amendment, any other speakers on the amendment of the change of the frequency from twice a year to quarterly? Councillor Stevenson. Thank you. We’ve gone from semi-annual to quarterly in this amendment. We’re also talking about content and the meetings to the minutes. So the format, the current format of the reports was not directed by council.

[5:08:32] The reports could be changed. I’ve been critical of them since the time I asked for them to be done is because they’re a diary of meetings that is not helpful. So I’m wondering if, like I don’t know how to put this into here, but like minutes to the meetings would be great. I go to the police board. I go to the paramedic board and I go to the old East Village BIA. And they all know way, way, way more than I do. They’re telling me what’s happening in our city. I don’t see any reason why we can’t get copies of the minutes.

[5:09:08] I haven’t understood why we’re not able to attend. There are a couple accounts, the deputy mayor and the budget chair who are attending the SCTs, but we don’t hear anything about it. So maybe that suggestion to self report might be a way to do this. I do not need a long diary of information that says nothing. So whether it’s monthly quarterly or semi-annually, doesn’t matter to me ‘cause it’s really nothing in there. I wanna know, Councilor Hopkins said about data-driven. At no point have women told how many homeless people we have. We’ve heard from deputy mayor that there were out of town and in specific numbers about out of town homeless.

[5:09:45] None of that has come before council, nor has it since in terms of updates. Councilor ramen brought up the issue of 40% of the mission is refugees and a bit of a crisis there. That has never come before us, nor has there been any update since. So I think the bigger issue here is the relevancy of the information that’s being provided. And I think it takes a lot less time to say something than to try not to say something. And so I’d like to include in here, I’m open to a change in date, but there’s got to be some direction from council as to the meaningfulness of from an oversight governance perspective, what is happening in our city?

[5:10:22] How many homeless do we have? Is it going up or down? Who are they? That information is really important. And for some reason, it is not being provided. So I’m open to whatever happens here, but I would like some direction given so that we get the information that we need or that there’s another method for that to happen. I personally would like minutes to the meetings, just add a CC, those of us who are interested, maybe it’s not everybody, but why can’t we be CC’d? Why do people that I know who are not in social services know more than I do as a representative of the city and answering to my ward?

[5:10:58] I do not like going to meetings where I don’t know what’s going on and they do. I would like a solution to that in the midst of this amendment. So there’s a question about councilors accessing if they want to without the motion, some of the summaries.

[5:12:27] I want to find out that and then I’m going to comment on what is necessary for this motion and what is different from the frequency piece. I can start with the city manager, go ahead. Mr. Mayor, I take great offense to the comments that we’re just made and I’d ask that you intervene and that we be spoken to respectfully. We have responded to the request of council with monthly reports. We indicated in those reports we would provide updates on what activities happen at the tables.

[5:13:02] That is what has happened every single month. In addition to that, we have brought forward to council clear plans for decision making. We also answer questions every single meeting. We do that and we have done that since February to suggest that we are hiding something is disrespectful and patently untrue. If there are specific questions that people wish to have answered, council has a mechanism called motions or they can ask us on the floor.

[5:13:38] I resent the implications, it is disparaging of staff, it is disparaging of our reputation and I ask that you intervene in the discussion. With respect to the other, if council wishes to receive minutes, then direct us to do so and we will provide them. Give me one sec. Okay, I’m going to say a few things here.

[5:14:22] First off, the direction that we’re reconsidering is a motion part E and it reads that civic administration be directed to report back monthly to the future standing committees on progress updates. That’s council’s direction. So I will say I agree with the city manager in our assessment that if someone is not happy with the content of what we’re receiving, that’s not on staff. Our direction has been fulfilled.

[5:14:56] Staff have reported back under the way that they said they would. We’re having a debate about frequency. So the speculation on what staff is, any sort of frustration with the content, is not on the part of our staff and what they’re fulfilling the obligation to. They are taking the council direction and they are succeeding on it. So I agree and I would ask the council to focus her remarks on the task at hand here and not on making assumptions about staff what they are doing.

[5:15:29] If we want something, we can be clear about it. If we provide a direction that is not prescriptive, then you’re gonna get what staff will bring to us, which fulfills the direction we have. I will say on the content, because remember we’re under this piece of reconsideration, or reconsideration, reconsidering the frequency and then providing the alternate frequency to council. If someone wants to change the content, we don’t need to do that as part of this reconsideration. We’re changing the frequency at this moment.

[5:16:03] We can change the content of what we’re looking to receive or receive different information through a motion of council, bring a piece of correspondence to council, we can debate it, we could talk about it. So I’m gonna try to keep this discussion tight to the frequency. Council can make motions at the next meeting if you want different information, including the suggestion about minutes or whatever. So that’s where we’re going now, the Councilor McAllister. Thank you.

[5:16:43] In terms of the amendment for us, I agree that I think quarterly, as councilor Hopkins said earlier, in terms of the seasonality, in terms of the data we’re looking for. I think in terms of what I’ve received so far, it gives me a window into what’s going on. I don’t actually have an issue with the reports. I think staff have worked hard on this. They’ve made themselves available if I need further information, in terms of things going on in my ward. I’ve never had an issue with that. And quite frankly, I’m gonna take this opportunity to stand up for staff. I think we have created an environment that’s very disrespectful.

[5:17:16] I signed up and not elected to be on a governance board. I did not sign up for an acquisition, and I think it’s incredibly disrespectful to our staff. The line of questioning that comes out of these reports. And I want to really set a tone here. I’m not trying to be aggressive, but I think it is our role as well to stand up for our staff. I’m gonna leave it there, but I think that they have been treated very poorly with these reports. And moving forward, I think we have to show a moniker of respect in this chamber.

[5:17:48] Thank you. I have Councillor Ploza next. Deputy Mayor Lewis, and then Councillor Stevenson. Thank you, Your Worship. I would say Councillor McAllister is a little bit too kind in his comments. As I’m also disheartened with the conversations that come out of some colleagues, it is definitely disrespectful to staff when they’re out and bringing back the reports that we sent them to do on the parameters that we sent and the metrics that we sent, and they complain about what they bring us back. If you’d like something else, please bring it forward.

[5:18:20] If you’re concerned, the Community and Services Committee handles many of these topics. Everyone’s always welcome. Members and non-members alike. I will note that any decision point come out of any of these tables in the accountability and the homeless hubs and the whole community system response, any decision point comes back to us as council to implement or not implement. Like you get every decision point when one is ready to be made.

[5:18:56] Serving on the accountability table, having been in that space, realizing that I respect this space that I’ve been appointed to council to serve in and the conversations that happen in that space in order for them to remain safe and fluid conversations, doing the work that the community and we need them to do, they watch, they read, they’re well aware of our conversations and the tone that we take with the work that they’re doing. And I would say that they very much well share the city manager sentiments.

[5:19:35] Personally, I’ve been doing work in those spaces at those meetings and out in the community, repairing some of the questions and damages of this council and comments that are made in here, treatment of staff and retention at a time when you need them to work harder more than ever to get this work done. Very disparaging. As for the notes coming out of the strategy and accountability table, it is just that it is, from these slides, here are the main points and takeaways. Yes, we’re endorsing Indigenous initiatives from these slide points.

[5:20:06] Unless you have the whole slide deck that those slides are referencing, that means nothing. So essentially, if you want that information, you need their entire agenda, entire slide deck to cross-reference it with the notes coming out of it and then each slide presentation from the other tables following into it. So by all means, staff report that we get, I would say you might want more details, but the details you’re asking for is, I never wanna say insurmountable ‘cause there’s the budget in front of us tonight of like 900 pages. But it is a lot of reading and at some point, you’re gonna have to either trust staff to do the work we’ve enabled them to do with the direction we’ve given or give them different direction.

[5:20:56] Councillor Stevenson. Thank you. I will come forward with emotion with details for what I’m looking for out of the report. But I think that, again, any sort of questioning or criticism is deemed disrespectful. And I really think we get to be in a place of being able to have difficult conversations.

[5:21:29] There is a crisis in our city and the heart of it is in my ward. And I am with organizations and I’m with those people and I’m telling you that there is problem. And we as city councilors are responsible and it’s been said our term may be defined by this. So to have information like the number of homeless, the fact that there’s refugees issues, the fact that there’s out of town individuals, the fact that, you know, there was 1,059 unique individuals at a service depot and we’re not talking about that.

[5:22:15] Ask questions every time and I can see the eye rolls around the horseshoe. And it saddens me that the thing that is the most important to landowners by far, nobody has an interest in and that me talking, okay, okay, take it back, okay, take it back. But the thing is, no, yeah, no. Everybody stop talking, quite a personal privilege. Go ahead. We all care about homelessness, so I’d like the member to withdraw those statements. The remark about we don’t care has been asked to be withdrawn.

[5:22:55] I would ask that you do that because it is a projection that is untrue. Thank you and I will withdraw that. Also in the motion it said that council doesn’t find them useful and council doesn’t, what is it that it says here? They’re not particularly helpful to council nor respectful of the tremendous amount of staff work in this area. And, you know, as the person who brought forward the motion for monthly reports, I do find them helpful, very helpful, although I’d like them to have a lot more detail and numbers in them.

[5:23:31] But having, I should say, I don’t find the reports helpful, but I would love to have monthly reports on this issue and to think that it’s disrespectful of staff to have them report out on the most important crisis facing the city and that there’s work being happened meeting, several meetings a week. No, let me just say one other piece. I don’t want you to interpret. This is where language causes me to have to deal with a bunch of personal privileges. I don’t want you to interpret, not getting the information that you want in a report as jumping to us saying it’s disrespectful.

[5:24:13] Like, if someone’s going to yell that out, I’m gonna stop them, I’m gonna cut it off. So I just think we are spending a lot of time and a lot of process because of the language that a number of us are using in the chamber and assumptions that we’re making about each other’s positions and things that we are projecting. And so as a governance group, we need to be very thoughtful about making clear directions, asking for things in a proper way and not jumping to each other’s conclusions.

[5:24:47] And I’m saying this not just to the council speaking, I’m saying this to council as a whole to say, we will do better if we try to debate issues with facts and not add language that can be inflammatory, disrespectful. There is something called intent and impact. You can have all the intents you want in the world, you can create tremendous impact on others. If you’re not careful with your words, whether they’re in this room or not. And so we just need to be conscious of that. Our voices speak with a magnified amplitude across the city when we speak.

[5:25:23] And I can appreciate the frustrations at different points of time that all of us on this council has had, whether it’s issues in our ward, whether it’s pressure from the public that’s been put on us, whether it’s difficult decisions, whether it’s something new that we may not understand fully, whether it’s having to make a decision without complete information, which we have to do all the time. I appreciate that that can lead to tremendous frustration. And sometimes that can just get us in a position where maybe we speak in a way that we don’t intend to and create an impact that we don’t intend. So just a general caution to councilors that I think we can pull this back and focus on what we’re looking for.

[5:26:03] Just to councilor Stevenson with respect. A number of the things you’re asking for are not contemplated at this point in the report back of the report based on the work that’s being done. I know Mr. Dickens has an outstanding direction to report back on a piece on the hyphes, I think it’s the hyphes data, which he’s indicated when he can, which will be a more comprehensive and complete review of the state of homelessness in our city. And so that direction is out there, but that is not coming in each and every one of these reports because he’s got to pull imperfect information out of a database that isn’t perfect based on people who may not want to reveal all the information and that’s coming and then we’ll be able to talk about that as soon as we get it.

[5:26:46] And I believe Mr. Dickens that is coming in January, January. So if we can return the focus to the frequency of the reports, I think we can have a subsequent discussion about what we’re looking for from information, from staff, from the data points we are to make the governance decisions we need to make. And I think we can all respect that different members of council meeting different pieces of information to make their decisions. So again, not all of that was directed at you. It’s a general kind of point just to take the temperature down a little bit.

[5:27:20] If you want to continue and go ahead, but just remember we’re on the frequency of the reports right now and the amendment that Councillor Hopkins has made. Yeah, I’ll just keep it brief. I would prefer to stick with monthly, but I’m happy to have it condensed down to just a very pertinent what we need to know from a governance perspective and oversight. Let us know where we’re at, how things are going. It could be a lot more brief. That would be my preference. Councillor Ferrera on the amendment. Thank you. So I just, I do want to say that I appreciate this council speaking up the, I’ve been watching this go on for over a year and I am also very concerned about the level of respect/disrespect.

[5:28:05] I know that I’m supposed to understand. Councillor, I just tried to reset this discussion. And so— - Okay, well let me go to the motion then. Or the— - Please speak to the motion. The motion, yeah. Yeah, I don’t want to start the whole thing over again. Okay, well, I did want to say that. And that’s something that we should do. But here is what I wanted to say. Speaking to reducing the frequency, that is extra work. And I would like to see staff be able to put work that actually will help us with what we’re trying to do. I would rather staff not work on creating reports.

[5:28:40] I’d rather staff work on doing the work that we’re directing them. So I do like the motion. I do like the direction, if it’s got to be quarterly, I’m okay with that. By annually or sorry, semi-annually is okay as well. But I do respect the fact that staff puts in a lot of work. And I would like to allow staff to be able to focus on what we have at hand. So that’s where I’m done. That’s why I guess I’m done there. So on the amendments, I don’t have any other speakers. The amendment is to change. Deputy Mayor Lewis, go ahead.

[5:29:14] Yeah, on Councillor Hopkins’ amendment, I’m happy to support this. I think that it’s a reasonable compromise in terms of moving away from monthly, but staying with a quarterly seasonal report. And I will say from a governance perspective, I think that’s a reasonable timeframe. Okay, I think everybody’s spoken on Councillor Hopkins’ amendment. Who needs to, yes, okay, we’re gonna open Councillor Hopkins’ amendment for voting. Councillor Per beau, Councillor Trostoff, posing the vote, motion carries 13 to two.

[5:30:12] Okay, so the motion is now amended. The frequency is now quarterly. And this is provide the additional consideration for Council, should Council, which still needs to happen, reconsider the previous decision. So all of this is still subject to Council actually passing a reconsideration. So any other speakers to this amended motion now? Councillor Stevenson. Thank you. I just wanna remind Council like why we said, why we all agreed to monthly at the time was because it is top of mind of Londoners.

[5:30:54] So this isn’t just about us. It’s about Londoners and it’s also us saying that, hey, this is important enough that we’re gonna hear about it. We’ve got people dying. We’re not getting the desired results. We’ve got issues that are being brought forward by various Councillors in addition to the, what we already know about. We answer to the people and we’re responsible for oversight. And I think it’s really important that we get an update. It could be very short, but I’m also happy if there’s another way to get the information that is less burdensome on staff. I reject the premise that we had a late and insufficient winter response as a result of the reports to Council.

[5:31:34] I think there’s other things that we can do if it’s a matter of staffing issue. I think staff can do both. I think we could, there’s other ways to solve that problem if that were actually true, but I’ve not heard anything indication from staff that these reports were the reason that we had the problems that we did with the cold weather response. So I prefer quarterly to six months, but I would prefer the monthly, the fact that we’re even doing a reconsideration of a decid, I’m not allowed to talk about that right, that we’re even doing this right now.

[5:32:12] What’s on the table is the, sorry, I got to Councillor, what’s on the table is the alternative direction to Council because we have passed as a committee a direction to Council to say, consider basically, consider reconsideration. So that’s gonna be considered by Council and can be considered at that time. It’s not debatable at Council, but the alternative direction is debatable here and at Council, but it’s the alternative direction that we’re debating, so, okay. I find it hard to argue or justify to Londoners as to why we would need the information less frequently now.

[5:32:49] It’s not as though even the commitments that we’ve made in the whole of community response have been going super well, we don’t know exactly where we’re going, we’ve got issues with staffing, we’ve got, we’ve had issues with our hub within terms of a proposal being withdrawn. So I’ve raised all of this on numerous occasions and I really think it’s very hard to argue that we need information less often. It’s not what I’ve heard from the community. They want more info, more details, more transparency and accountability.

[5:33:24] They want to know what the number of homeless are, what’s happening with the out-of-towners, the refugees, what are we gonna do with the staffing shortages, how did we have 1,059 unique individuals at service depots in just a matter of 60 days? Councilor, you’re straying now into additional information that you want to get in a different way? But it’s the thing of to wait quarterly or semi-annual for this kind of information. Just keep it tight to that. Yeah, it’s about the frequency. I mean, if this is the top issue for Londoners, how do we say it to them?

[5:33:58] We don’t need updates monthly. We can have them quarterly. Like I said, I’d love to find a solution where we can make it easier and still get the information that we need and still let Londoners know that this is a super important issue. With the crisis in our city, it’s important. It’s important that we have the information that we need and like I said, this motion that came before us makes some assumptions that are not anything we’ve heard about and I wonder why that is and to say that this is coming because it said many counselors felt that the winter response plan was rushed or last minute and yet staff have had to spend hours of time each month to compile update reports for us.

[5:34:46] I just, I don’t know that there’s any evidence for that. We’ve not been presented with any. So I’m opposed to the amendment. Okay, thank you. I will just note just clearly that counselors can write and we’ve seen this before. A lot of things in a preamble to emotion, but it’s the motion that is the decision council. The preamble doesn’t get attached to that. So I think colleagues have disagreed with preambles before but supported motions in the past. So I’ll go to Council Frank and then Councilor Plaza.

[5:35:21] Sorry, just exactly what’s on the floor right now is there’s no wording up here. Thank you for that. I wouldn’t see that part of the screen. It’s the as amended part B of the motion that we pulled apart.

[5:35:55] Actually, it’s not really a part B ‘cause we separated it. So it’s the, what was the part B with all the procedural pieces to it, but with the frequency that’s now been amended? It’ll come up in a second. I’m gonna let Councilor Frank debate while we get that up just to save some time. Go ahead. Thank you, yes. I just wanted to highlight as well, I’m hearing a lot of comments that people want more information.

[5:36:31] I have not had a single resident reach out to me and say, hey, I’d love some more information about homelessness. Can you just provide some quick tips and some stats? No, they want us to solve the problem. Also, there are around 2,000 people homeless. There are between 500, 700, 100 high acuity. We get these numbers in every single report. If you’d like these numbers in a chart form, you can ask for it. But like I said, people want us to solve the problem and us talking in endless circles about reports is not solving the problem. Solving the problem is bringing the motions to the floor, moving things along, getting funding for it.

[5:37:06] And if that is what people want to do, then please start doing it. To be up now, Mr. Flosa. Thank you. Having not called a point of privilege or order earlier per se on this matter, I voted against it. And I believe I did so at committee, but not at council. I know we like reports and information in reading, but for me, it’s getting out of our own way and allowing staff to do the directions that we gave them to do and authorize them to go out and do in the community.

[5:37:43] And personally, I didn’t see two extra reports solving the homelessness problem for us or saving that homeless person. It’s letting staff do their work. And for talking about homelessness and what’s happening, I get questions from residents. We answer them. We ask staff, they’re always available. Ideally, keep it to work hours, but they answer you outside of it. It’s the calls to London Cares and letting the committee members know how to deal with encampments as they show up throughout the city.

[5:38:16] So I’m still up for the motion to reconsider as I’m still happy that quarterly is better than monthly. Though I still believe staff time needs to be freed up, just knowing how many people are at a desk writing reports for us instead of actually doing the work that needs to be done. I don’t, okay. Deputy Mayor Lewis. Thank you, worship. First of all, I apologize. Now you all hear of the ringtone of one of my kids. So sorry, I didn’t have that on silent for them. So hopefully he texts for whatever it was he was calling for. But I will say with very respect to everybody having differences of opinion on this, I agree very much with what Councillor Franken, Councillor Ploza have just said.

[5:39:03] I have yet to, I do get lots of emails from constituents, but it’s what are you doing? And not one of them has said, can you please for me the monthly report? Not one of them has read the monthly report. In fact, most of them say to me, that’s your job. That’s what we hired you for as a Councillor. So give me the Coles notes in three paragraphs. Tell me what city councils do into address this problem. Because Councillor Frank is absolutely right. What they want to see is that we’re making some progress on things, you know, and I got a long list of things that I send to constituents regularly from the permanent housing that is happening.

[5:39:40] The new RGI units that are coming online to London housing to the progress we’re making on the hubs on all of those things. And I’m happy to share that with any constituent who asks, but I agree exactly with what Councillor Ploza said. I don’t see a clamoring for the monthly reports. And I don’t see where two less reports in a quarter are going to change the perception that’s out there right now of this is a problem because it is. Nothing that’s in those reports is saying to people that there’s a solution tomorrow because there isn’t.

[5:40:15] The solution is a long-term one. And it is going to take many, many years to build sufficient housing inventory. It’s going to take partners. The city is not going to solve it itself. We, I think we’ve all agreed. The province and the federal government need to be at the table as does the not-for-profit, the charitable sector, and private individuals. So very supportive of this. I appreciate working with Councillor Frank on this. And I just want to say I agree that the communication needs to come from us.

[5:40:50] Councillor Pribble on the motion. Can the motion? Just, I just want to add this. I supported the quarterly because I do think it certainly is better than twice a year. But I just want to add this that I will talk to the staff instead of taking time now because I would like to receive information more than quarterly. And just going back, I do believe that if I did see that there are no second strategy for beyond the hubs and already talking about the winter response during June, July, August, I would be questioning it.

[5:41:39] And because we didn’t have this information, it was very difficult to question it. Because you think that, again, strategy, I thought it was going to be also something behind the hubs. The wintering cabinet, I really thought it was part of it as well. So bottom line is I’m not going to take any longer. But I would love to— I will talk to the staff and see what kind of additional information I would be able to get beyond the quarterly. Thank you, Councillor Stevenson. And I’m going to ask everybody to wrap this up. I’m not sure there’s too many people being convinced right now, so we just seem to be talking to each other.

[5:42:15] And everybody may have decided. But I’ll go to Councillor Stevenson. And honestly, I’ve lost track how much times people have spoken. So I’m just going to start cutting people off when I feel like it’s been enough. Yeah, I’m just going to quickly say I’m— oh, I’m going to work on an amendment to this for Council that will clarify the information so that we are getting what we need and staff aren’t spending time doing stuff that isn’t of interest. Because I have said repeatedly the information that I’m needing isn’t there. And so I will work on that, what I need, be clear, and bring it forward as an amendment to Council.

[5:42:54] OK, I’m going to open this for voting. Councillor Ferrera, Councillor Lewis.

[5:43:56] Voting the vote, motion carries 14 to 1. OK, so that’ll go to Council. We’re now on items for direction. The item we deferred from the consent, which is 2.1, 2023, 2027, implementation plan. Councillor Pribble, you asked that to be pulled. I’m going to ask someone to put the staff motion on the floor. First, Councillor Caddy, seconded by Deputy Mayor Lewis. Councillor Pribble, you want to let the speakers, let’s go ahead.

[5:44:32] Thank you, so I put in, I’m going to read it first. So the administration be directed to complete annually, more specific implementation plan by the end of February for each upcoming fiscal year covering the period from April 1 to March 31. And I know we’ve had a long day, but I do think tremendous that it is important. I was very happy that we adopted this bottom step of the pyramid, which is the implementation plan. But the expectation was, and I mentioned it, not kind of, that majority is going to be for the four-year period and target date, quarter four, 2027.

[5:45:11] So you make the motion. I look for a seconder, then you get to make your case. So Councillor Pribble wants to move, as you circulated. Correct. Correct. That the civic administration be directed to complete the annual specific implementation plan by the end of February for the upcoming fiscal year covering the period from April 1 to March 31. Is there a seconder for that? I just want to add one more— No, you don’t get to debate unless there’s a second one. Seconded by Councillor Stevenson. Now you can debate Councillor Pribble.

[5:45:43] And I just wanted to add that there will be on annual basis and a few things that we really need the actions to be very specific. And we need, again, even the year has four quarters, 12 months, and specific target dates. And if we do them, I truly believe, just like many other major organizations, they stay on track, and they deliver the results. And I think really we need that. Because it’s not that it’s not helpful. But as I said, when we have— they really need to be specific.

[5:46:17] And I just put an example here just kind of so you know about promote programs and incentives available through the community improvement plans, Q4, 2027, right? So there should be, for example, a specific CIP by quarter to 2024. But again, this is just one example. And this is the thing that we really do need to stay on track on annual basis. And this is not anything that we are creating new. This is what major organizations do to achieve their goals. So what I’m asking for is every year, by end of February, that we get for the following 12 months from our fiscal year, from April to end of March, specific actions with specific target dates.

[5:47:01] And that’s going to be our road plan to success in delivering results. That’s what I’m asking for. We’d love to have a feedback from the staff or any of our other counselors. Any questions as well? OK, thanks, Council Provost. I’m going to give the chair to Councilor Layman. And I’m going to speak to this. Go to the mayor. So through the presiding officer, with respect to the counselor’s intent, this is the kind of motion that does extend a meeting.

[5:47:39] I don’t believe this was worked on with staff. The fiscal year is not April 1st to March 31st. That’s not the fiscal year we operate on. Reading the report, you can’t actually develop the implementation plan until we pass them all to your budget, because the pacing of this work is going to be determined by the business cases we support or not. This is way premature for the process that we’re in right now. February is not a realistic time frame for this year. The items that staff will put together for the implementation plan, as well as the reporting cycle, I think Council needs to see that first before and then make improvements to it, so they can understand how the decisions we’ve made in the multi-year budget process will implement or change the implementation of the strategic plan.

[5:48:33] We can see what the annual updates look like. And if the counselor or other members of Council feel like that’s not the information that is detailed enough or that they’re looking for, I would suggest we make changes and adjustments to those reports once we’ve seen them for the first time. But I don’t believe we should be making any changes until we get through the multi-year budget process, because we have no idea at this point how much of the strategic plan will be paced or will be even feasible on the time frame of this term of Council until we’ve made those really important budget decisions to determine the pacing and timing of it.

[5:49:08] I’m also having seen previous strategic plans. I think that we do get a significant level of detail with the reporting. I’m hoping the counselors will be satisfied when they see what that is on a regular basis. And if they feel like we need to move to another level of detail or a different type of implementation or phase planning, we could do that at that time. But again, I think this is a motion that we’re just going to lead to a lot of discussion that is a little bit ahead of itself and needs a little bit more work before it could even be considered.

[5:49:45] And I think the counselor needs to hopefully understand what is going to occur with the work that’s already going to be generated by staff before looking to make significant adjustments to it or change the workload of staff related to the strategic plan. So those are my comments. And I appreciate you listening to them. I’ll hand the chair back to her. Councillor Stevenson. I had a question about this, actually. My inclination was to refer this back to January— and I’m not saying I’m putting that forward because I know that takes precedence— just because there’s so much to it.

[5:50:20] And I really do want to go through it. And it’s the meat of our strategic plan or these action steps. Is that something that, too, is premature? Do we just receive this? And there’s another opportunity after the budget to go through this more thoroughly before we approve it? Or is there an approval process for this besides just receiving it? Yes. I’ll go to Ms. Livingston. Yes, Mr. Mayor, we’ve noted in the report that once Council passes the multi-year budget, we would be updating this document to reflect those decisions.

[5:50:57] Some actions may no longer take place because business cases weren’t supported. Others may require more detail. So that might be the appropriate time to pursue a deeper discussion of this document, because it will then reflect the decisions councils made with respect to the budget. And you’ll have a better sense of the full implementation based on those decisions. Yes, Councillor Stevenson. Perfect, that sounds good, because referring it to January really didn’t sound too great either. So is there, after budget, when those changes are done, is that sort of like a final thing where then Council approves it?

[5:51:36] Is there like an approval stage? Or is that the time when we could sort of make notes and bring forward amendments at that time? So let me then I’ll go to Ms. Livingston. So this is one of those circumstances where we’ve passed a strategic plan, staff is implementing it. Staff is not asking us to approve the implementation plan. They’re giving us a report for us to receive to say, this is our implementation plan. So after we get the update after the multi-year budget, provide some suggestions on what we might want to see implemented differently than their plan.

[5:52:12] But it’s their plan. It’s how staff is going to operationalize the execution of our direction in the strategic plan, given the budget restraints that we’ve put on ourselves in achieving those goals. So I just wanted to be clear, like at this point, we’re not actually approving anything. We’re just staff are communicating a fair deal of information about what their implementation plan looks like with a clear caveat that they’re going to come back with some adjustments to this based on the results of the multi-year budget process. Ms. Livingston, I don’t know if you have anything to add, but go ahead.

[5:52:48] Yes, Mr. Mayor, that’s correct. We anticipate, depending on the final timeline of the approval of the multi-year budget, that we would be returning the document either in late April or early May. That then leads into the first progress report. So you would receive the updated implementation plan. And then the progress report, which happens twice a year, is where we articulate what we’ve achieved on each of those actions and where we’re at, whether any of the dates need to change likely not happen at the first report, but those can happen over time.

[5:53:21] So. Okay, thank you. That’s all helpful to understand. And then is it fair to say then, if there was something, it’s maybe to talk to staff between now and then and not even do it on the floor and necessarily to just work with it that way. Yes, Mr. Chair, we welcome any questions. We did receive some prior to this meeting. Certainly they can go through myself or Mr. Steinberg or to the relevant deputy city manager or ABC that’s responsible for the actions.

[5:54:00] Perfect, that’s helpful. Okay, Councillor Preble. If I understood correctly, so when the budget is approved and then I think I heard April, May, then there will be the time that the implementation plan will be the actions and targets will be updated to more specific date lines, is that correct? Go ahead. Yes, Mr. Chair, they would, ‘cause then we’d have a clear understanding of the pacing, I would also indicate to council that if certain business cases are not approved, then the actions would be removed from the plan.

[5:54:41] Perfect, so in that case, what I would like to do is, I don’t, actually I think it still has to be, bottom line is, I can backtrack. I will wait for April, May for that first, but I do think that if you’re looking for consent to withdraw your motion, I’m pretty sure there’s a good chance you might get it if I ask. So if that’s, is that what you’re asking me to do? Yes, to withdraw it, and I’m gonna wait for April, May, and then I’ll put it up for the future years of the date. Okay, yes, it’s in the hands of committee. Is there anybody on committee objective withdrawing this motion from the floor?

[5:55:16] Okay, no one. The motion’s withdrawn, the staff recommendation, which is just to be received for information is back on the floor. Any further discussion on that, Councilor Ferra? Thank you, so good news. We had a motion on the 21st of November about looking for staff to determine the necessity of a new master plan. They have determined that we do need a new downtown master plan, sorry, I should have said that. It’s in the strategic implementation plan, and I just wanted to maybe ask some questions, I’m not gonna have any motions, I just want some clarification from staff on this one, but I just wanted to clarify a boat with the, with respect to the intention of the new downtown master plan.

[5:55:58] And I saw it as something to serve as an overarching strategy for London’s downtown. We’re crying like a holistic approach, intersecting all of the five expected results that we see under the economic growth, culture and prosperity section of the strategic plan. I did see it under 4.4, and I just, and I do see that this, the intention of the downtown master plan should include, I think everything under outcome four in the economic growth, culture and prosperity, area of focus on the strategic plan.

[5:56:37] So I just wanted to go to staff and just see if we could get some clarification on if this new downtown master plan would include everything that we see in that outcome. Mr. Bathers. Absolutely, absolutely. Through the chair, so we did have to have somewhere to locate that actual action. So as stated, it was included in 4.4A. It would, however, include all of the components, as mentioned by Councillor Ferrer, of that overarching outcome. So that outcome that it relates to is London’s core area downtown mid-down WIV, is a vibrant neighbor and an attractive destination.

[5:57:12] This of course would be focused on the downtown part, ‘cause that is the component, but that would be the overarching element, including all of those expected results. Thank you. So just confirming, it’s like the plan is supposed to encompass all those things, including that new path for that economic and cultural growth and prosperity for downtown. So that’s, I just wanted to point that out. And yeah, I’ll stop there. I just wanted to point that out. So I appreciate staff’s response on that. Okay, thank you. I don’t think I have any other speakers. Okay, seeing none, we’re gonna open this for voting. Posing the vote, motion carries 15 to zero.

[5:58:30] I just want to say thanks to Mr. Steinberg for sticking it out and being here. I know you worked a lot on this. Appreciate that. I know you love a good meeting as he leaves. Okay, colleagues, I hope you read the added agenda because you’ll know that we have an in-camera portion of the meeting as well. So I’m just gonna say there’s no deferred matters or additional business that I see anybody looking to make. We have one item which is referred to this meeting for a confidential session. I’ll look for a motion to move any confidential session.

[5:59:04] Councilor Raman, sorry. Can we take a five minute recess before we enter confidential session? Yes. Okay, motion to take a five minute recess seconded by Councillor Stevenson. My hand, all those in favor? Any opposed? - Motion carries. Okay, five minutes and then we’ll do the in-camera motion. Recording in progress.

[6:08:09] Okay, we’re still in public session. I’m looking for a motion to move into confidential session. Councillor Hopkins, seconded by Councillor Pera. We will open that vote in the system. Posing the vote, motion carries 14 to zero.

[6:10:41] Okay, we’re back in public session. I’m gonna go to Councillor Raman to report progress. Thank you, through you. Progress is made on the item in which we win camera. Okay, with that, we’ve concluded the items of our agenda. I look for a motion to adjourn. Moved by Councillor van Mirberg and seconded by Councillor Hopkins. All those in favor of adjournment? Motion carries. No one, can you even give me a chance to say opposed? All right, thanks, we’re adjourned.