March 26, 2024, at 1:00 PM

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The meeting is called to order at 1:01 PM; it being noted that Councillors P. Van Meerbergen, E. Peloza (at 4:30 PM) and S. Hillier were in remote attendance.

1.   Disclosures of Pecuniary Interest

That it BE NOTED that no pecuniary interests were disclosed.

2.   Consent

2.3   2024 Assessment Growth Funding Allocation

2024-03-26 Staff Report - 2024 Assessment Growth Funding Allocation

Moved by J. Morgan

Seconded by P. Cuddy

That, on the recommendation of the Deputy City Manager, Finance Supports, the 2024 Assessment Growth Funding Allocation report BE RECEIVED for information.

Motion Passed (11 to 2)

3.   Scheduled Items

None.

4.   Items for Direction

4.1   Consideration of Appointment to the London & Middlesex Community Housing (Requires 1 Member)

Moved by H. McAlister

Seconded by P. Cuddy

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

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

b) the attached proposed by-law BE INTRODUCED at the Municipal Council meeting to be held on April 2, 2024, to ratify and confirm the Resolution of the Shareholder of the London and Middlesex Community Housing.

Motion Passed (13 to 2)

4.2   Evaluation Framework - Health & Homelessness Whole of Community System Response

2024-03-26 Staff Report - (4.2) Evaluation Framework – Health and Homelessness

2024-03-26 Staff Report - (4.2) Evaluation Framework – Health and Homelessness-Appendix A

Moved by E. Peloza

Seconded by D. Ferreira

That, on the recommendation of the Deputy City Manager, Social and Health Development, the following actions be taken with respect to the Evaluation Framework – Health & Homelessness Whole of Community System Response report;

a)    the Evaluation Framework – Health & Homelessness Whole of Community System Response report BE RECEIVED for information;

b)    the Civic Administration BE DIRECTED to report back annually on the data and outcomes collected through this Evaluation Framework, in addition to data that is captured through the 2023-2027 City of London Strategic Plan; and

c)    the Civic Administration BE DIRECTED to report back on the metrics and the report format for the annual data sharing by the end of Q3 2024.

it being noted that the Strategic Priorities and Policy Committee received a presentation from M. Kunze, Manager, Forensic and Supportive Housing Programs, St. Leonard’s Community Services, London & Region and M. Meyer, Senior Director LHSC and Middlesex London Ontario Health Team Assistant,  Professor Western University with respect to this matter.

Motion Passed (15 to 0)

ADDITIONAL VOTES:

Moved by S. Stevenson

Seconded by J. Pribil

That the motion BE AMENDED to direct Civic Administration to report back on the metrics and the report format for the annual data sharing by the end of Q3 2024.

Motion Passed (15 to 0)

4.3   London’s Health & Homelessness Whole of Community System Response Proposed Highly Supportive Housing Plan

2023-03-26 Staff Report - Prosposed Highly Supportive Housing

Moved by S. Franke

Seconded by A. Hopkins

That, on the recommendation of the Deputy City Manager, Social and Health Development, the following actions be taken with respect to London’s Health & Homelessness Whole of Community System Response Proposed, Highly Supportive Housing Plan report;

a)    the Saving Lives, Alleviating Suffering, & Building a Healthy, Strong, & Safe Community for All - London’s Health & Homelessness Response: Highly Supportive Housing Plan as appended to the staff report dated March 26, 2024 as Schedule 1 BE ENDORSED; and

b)    the staff report BE RECEIVED for information;

it being noted that the Strategic Priorities and Policy Committee received a presentation from D. Astolfi, Director, Supportive Housing - Independent & Youth, CMHA Thames Valley Addiction & Mental Health Services and the Deputy City Manager, Social and Health Development with respect to this matter;

it being further noted that the Strategic Priorities and Policy Committee received a communication dated March 24, 2024 from Councillor S. Stevenson with respect to this matter.

Moved by S. Stevenson

Seconded by J. Pribil

That the Civic Administration BE DIRECTED to report back at a future meeting of the Strategic Priorities and Policy Committee with the following items:

b)    the cost breakdowns for this new program (to update Schedule 1, as appended to the staff report dated March 26, 2024) and/or a Draft Operating Budget (per the new Highly Supportive Housing Plan)

ADDITIONAL VOTES:

Moved by S. Franke

Seconded by A. Hopkins

That, on the recommendation of the Deputy City Manager, Social and Health Development, the following actions be taken with respect to London’s Health & Homelessness Whole of Community System Response Proposed, Highly Supportive Housing Plan report;

a)    the Saving Lives, Alleviating Suffering, & Building a Healthy, Strong, & Safe Community for All - London’s Health & Homelessness Response: Highly Supportive Housing Plan as appended to the staff report dated March 26, 2024 as Schedule 1 BE ENDORSED;

Motion Passed (14 to 1)

Moved by S. Franke

Seconded by A. Hopkins

b)    the staff report BE RECEIVED for information;

Motion Passed (15 to 0)

Moved by S. Stevenson

Seconded by J. Pribil

That the Civic Administration BE DIRECTED to report back at a future meeting of the Strategic Priorities and Policy Committee with the following items:

a)    the rationale for the switch from 15 temporary resting space beds at 448 Horton Street to 24 furnished highly supportive housing units at 362 Dundas Street;

Motion Failed (2 to 13)

Moved by S. Stevenson

Seconded by J. Pribil

That the Civic Administration BE DIRECTED to report back at a future meeting of the Strategic Priorities and Policy Committee with the following items:

b)    the cost breakdowns for this new program (to update Schedule 1, as appended to the staff report dated March 26, 2024) and/or a Draft Operating Budget (per the new Highly Supportive Housing Plan);

Motion Passed (10 to 5)

Moved by S. Stevenson

Seconded by J. Pribil

That the Civic Administration BE DIRECTED to report back at a future meeting of the Strategic Priorities and Policy Committee with the following items:

c)    recommendations to ensure that “Council-approved” funding arrangements are clear and accountable to specific outcomes; and

Motion Failed (3 to 12)

Moved by S. Stevenson

Seconded by J. Pribil

That the Civic Administration BE DIRECTED to report back at a future meeting of the Strategic Priorities and Policy Committee with the following items:

d)    expectations for sources of funding for future Highly Supportive Housing units and a list other “conversions” being considered.

Motion Failed (2 to 13)

Moved by H. McAlister

Seconded by D. Ferreira

That the committee RECESS at this time for 10 minutes.

Motion Passed

The Committee recesses at 3:44 PM and reconvenes at 3:58 PM.

4.4   Mobility Master Plan 2050 Mode Share Target

2024-03-26 Staff Report - Mobility Master Plan 2050 Mode Share Target

Moved by S. Lehman

Seconded by S. Stevenson

That the following actions be taken with respect to the Mobility Master Plan;

a)   the 2050 mode share target for the development of the Mobility Master Plan BE SET at the levels described in Option 2 (representing 32.5% Mode Share split) or greater for Transit and for Walking and Cycling; and

b)   the mode share targets for the Mobility Master Plan BE REVIEWED at least every four years and adjusted appropriately.

it being noted that the Strategic Priorities and Policy Committee heard delegations from the following individuals with respect to this matter:

M. Wallace, Executive Director, London Development Institute;

R. Buchal, Chair, Mobility Master Plan Subcommittee, Integrated Transportation Community Advisory Committee; and

M. A. Hodge, Climate Action London.

it being further noted that the Strategic Priorities and Policy Committee received communications from the following individuals:

a communication from A. McClenaghan, Co-Owner, London Bicycle Café;

a communication from J. Riedstra;

a communication from Councillor S. Franke;

a communication from M. Metson;

a communication from B. Samuels, Chair, Environmental Stewardship and Action Community Advisory Committee;

a communication from E. Febrey;

a communication from L. Blumer;

a communication from R. Buchal, Chair, Mobility Master Plan Subcommittee, Integrated Transportation Community Advisory Committee;

a communication from C. Evans;

a communication from B. Morrison and M. A. Hodge on behalf of Climate Action London;

a communication from E. Poirier, Vice President External Affairs, University Students’ Council; and 

a communication from C. Taylor.

ADDITIONAL VOTES:

Moved by S. Trosow

Seconded by P. Cuddy

That the delegation requests from M. Wallace, London Development Institute, Ralph Buchal, Chair, Mobility Master Plan Subcommittee, Integrated Transportation Community Advisory Committee and Mary Ann Hodge BE APPROVED to be heard at this time.

Motion Passed (14 to 0)

Moved by S. Lehman

Seconded by P. Van Meerbergen

That the Mobility Master Plan 2050 Mode Share Target report BE RECEIVED and REFERRED to a future meeting of the Strategic Priorities and Policy Committee at the time the Land Needs Assessment Study is complete and report back on the following:

a)    a review of Sewer and Water Servicing capacity within the Built Area Boundary;

b)    a review of policy changes within the Official Plan, the London Plan that would be needed to support increased intensification opportunities within the Urban Growth Boundaries;

c)    a review the option for different mode split targets for different areas of the City instead of a City-wide target. i.e., along the Rapid Transit Corridor and where servicing capacity exists; and

d)    public input from random focus groups.

Motion Failed (5 to 10)

Moved by S. Lehman

Seconded by P. Cuddy

That the motion be amended TO APPROVE Option 2 as the 2050 mode share target for the development of the Mobility Master Plan

Motion Passed (8 to 7)

Moved by J. Morgan

Seconded by P. Cuddy

That the motion BE AMENDED to change Option 2 to represent 32.5% Mode Share split

Motion Passed (9 to 6)

Moved by S. Lehman

Seconded by S. Stevenson

That the following actions be taken with respect to the Mobility Master Plan;

a) the 2050 mode share target for the development of the Mobility Master Plan BE SET at the levels described in Option 2 (representing 32.5% Mode Share split) or greater for Transit and for Walking and Cycling, and

Motion Passed (11 to 4)

Moved by S. Lehman

Seconded by S. Stevenson

That the following actions be taken with respect to the Mobility Master Plan;

b) the mode share targets for the Mobility Master Plan BE REVIEWED at least every four years and adjusted appropriately.

Motion Passed (15 to 0)

Moved by C. Rahman

Seconded by H. McAlister

That pursuant to section 33.8 of the Council Procedure by-law, the Committee BE PERMITTED to proceed beyond 6:00 PM.

Motion Passed (13 to 2)

4.5   Request for Proposals for External Auditor of the London Transit Commission - Deputy Mayor S. Lewis and Budget Chair E. Peloza

2024-03-26 Submission - LTC - Lewis and Peloza

Moved by E. Peloza

Seconded by S. Lewis

That the following actions be taken with respect to the London Transit Commission:

a) the Civic Administration BE DIRECTED to undertake a Request for Proposals for an external auditor to initiate a comprehensive operations and performance audit of the London Transit Commission, with the following audit scope:

i) inclusion of current routing of service in regard to best practices in major municipalities, structure of the organization, financial structuring of various passes and contracts, operational preparedness and readiness to integrate with future Rapid Transit corridors, and to other KPIs to identify strengths and weaknesses;

ii) identification of alternate service delivery model considerations and associated savings/cost implications, including but not limited to the municipality delivering the service directly; and

iii) provision of recommendations to Municipal Council at the completion of the audit with a copy of the full public report provided to the London Transit Commission; 

b) the Civic Administration BE DIRECTED to identify an appropriate source of financing;

it being noted that the Strategic Priorities and Policy Committee received communications from the following individuals with respect to this matter:

  • a communication from M. Jones;

  • a communication from M. Sheehan; and

  • a communication from W. Lau, CEO, LEADS Employment Services and J. Preston, Associate Professor, King’s University College.

Motion Passed (14 to 0)

4.6   Request for Accountability from the London Police Services Board - Mayor J. Morgan and Councillors S. Franke and C. Rahman

2024-03-26 Submission - LPSB - Morgan, Franke, Rahman

Moved by S. Franke

Seconded by J. Morgan

That the Civic Administration BE DIRECTED to request a letter as an agenda item to the London Police Service Board (LPSB) to discuss and report back to Council on the planned accountability activities including:

Potential Metrics:

Metrics as proposed by LPSB in the police budget business case:

a)    Reduction in code 2 (urgent) and code 3 (non-urgent) response times;

b)    Reduction in calls for service holding in que prior to being dispatched;

c)    Crime Severity Index as tracked by Stats Can (available annually in July);

d)    Crime Rate as tracked by Stats Can (available annually in July);

e)    Increase in proactive (preventive) policing;

f)     Increase in time spent on crime prevention and high-harm initiatives;

g)    Increased traffic enforcement;

h)    Increased police visibility;

i)     Decrease in service complaints;

j)     Increased community engagement;

k)    Decrease in shootings;

l)     Decrease in fatal motor vehicle collisions;

Other potential metrics:

m)   Overall call volume;

n)    Initiatives that address violence against women and girls;

o)    Hate crimes;

p)    Response to mental health; and

q)    Impact of body worn cameras on community and officer safety, and service complaints;

it being noted that the Strategic Priorities and Policy Committee received a communication from Councillors S. Franke and C. Rahman and Mayor J. Morgan with respect to this matter.

Motion Passed (14 to 0)

4.7   2nd Report of the Diversity, Inclusion and Anti-Oppression Community Advisory Committee

2024-03-26 Submission - DIACAC Report

Moved by C. Rahman

Seconded by D. Ferreira

That the following actions be taken with the 2nd Report of the Diversity, Inclusion and Anti-Oppression Community Advisory Committee from its meeting held on February 8, 2024:

a)  the request to reconfigure the Terms of Reference for the Diversity, Inclusion and Anti-Oppression Community Advisory Committee (DIACAC) specifically in order to better utilize the talents, efforts and viewpoints of racialized communities within the City of London BE REFERRED to the Governance Working Group for consideration; and

b)  clauses 1.1, 1.2, 2.1, 2.2, 3.1 and 4.1 BE RECEIVED.

ADDITIONAL VOTES:

Moved by J. Morgan

Seconded by A. Hopkins

That the request to reconfigure the Terms of Reference for the Diversity, Inclusion and Anti-Oppression Community Advisory Committee (DIACAC) specifically in order to better utilize the talents, efforts and viewpoints of racialized communities within the City of London BE REFERRED to the Governance Working Group for consideration

Motion Passed (14 to 0)

Moved by C. Rahman

Seconded by D. Ferreira

That the following actions be taken with the 2nd Report of the Diversity, Inclusion and Anti-Oppression Community Advisory Committee from its meeting held on February 8, 2024:

b)  clauses 1.1, 1.2, 2.1, 2.2, 3.1 and 4.1 BE RECEIVED.

Motion Passed (14 to 0)

4.8   Request for an Off-Site Meeting - Mayor J. Morgan

2024-03-26 Submission - Off-Site Meeting-J. Morgan

Moved by J. Morgan

Seconded by H. McAlister

That, the following actions be taken with respect to a change of location for a meeting of Municipal Council of the City of London on April 17, 2023, starting at 5:00 PM:

a)    pursuant to s.236(2) of the Municipal Act, 2001, a change in meeting location from Council Chambers to the Oneida Nation of the Thames in Southwold, Ontario, for the above-noted meeting BE APPROVED;

b)    pursuant to s.2.3 of the Council Procedure By-law, the speaking limitations and protocol contained in s.9.6, s.9.7, and s.9.15; and the ceremonial mace protocols contained in s.7.1 and s.7.2, BE SUSPENDED for the duration of the above-noted meeting to facilitate dialogue between the two Councils; and

c)    pursuant to s.11.10 of the Council Procedure By-law, Council BE PERMITTED to proceed beyond the hour of 6:00 PM for the above-noted meeting.

Motion Passed (14 to 0)

5.   Deferred Matters/Additional Business

5.1   (ADDED) Request for Support for the Thames Valley District School Board - Councillors C. Rahman and A. Hopkins

2024-03-26 Submission - TVDSB - Rahman and Hopkins

Moved by C. Rahman

Seconded by A. Hopkins

That the Mayor BE REQUESTED to send a further communication on behalf of London City Council with particular focus on the pressing needs for approval on the West London and Southwest London schools in order to option school blocks set to expire in the near term.

Motion Passed (13 to 0)

6.   Confidential 

None.

7.   Adjournment

Moved by S. Lewis

Seconded by J. Morgan

That the meeting BE ADJOURNED.

Motion Passed

The meeting adjourned at 6:42 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 (5 hours, 57 minutes)

Good afternoon, everyone. Welcome to the seventh meeting of the Strategic Priorities and Policy Committee. I wanna begin by acknowledging that the City of London is situated on the traditional lands of the Anishinaabek, the Haudenosaunee, the Lene Peiwak, and Adawanda in Peoples. And 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 peoples. And as representatives of the people of the City of London, we are grateful to have the opportunity to work and live in this territory. The City of London is also committed to making every effort to provide alternate formats and communication supports for meetings upon request. And to make a request specific to this meeting, you can email sppc@london.ca or phone 519-661-2489, extension 2425.

I wanna let colleagues know the counselors, Van Meerbergen and Hillier are joining us remotely. Everyone else is in chambers today. And I’m gonna start by looking for any disclosures of pecuniary interest. Seeing none, then we will move along to the consent agenda first.

I’ve got a request from Councilor Pribble to deal with 2.3 separately. So that will be pulled and moved to the end of the items for direction. We have two other items on the consent agenda. Does anyone wish those to be dealt with separately?

Seeing none, then I’m gonna look for a mover and a seconder for the consent agenda. And then we can go to any questions or comments. Moved by Councilor Ferra and seconded by Councilor Cuddy. Looking for any questions or comments on 2.1 or 2.2, Councilor McAllister.

Thank you and through the chair. I just wanted to take this opportunity to extend my thanks to the staff in terms of all the hard work for the community grants program. I’ve heard from a lot of these organizations in terms of how important this is for their funding. We’ve obviously seen an increase in a lot of these services.

Speaking just in terms of a couple that I see that impact my award, I know both Crouch and Glen Caron, this funding is very important to them in terms of providing those neighborhood resources. So I just want to again thank staff for the funding allocations on this. Thank you. Looking for any other speakers?

Councilor Raman. Thank you and through you. I just wanted to follow up. Again, I echo the words my colleagues and to Councilor McAllister’s thanks as well.

I do think that this is such important work that we’re funding in the community. But I just wanted to ask a question about funding related to fundraising, something that we’ve been discussing in other committees as well. I did notice as I was going through this that there was a submission that related more to funds to support fundraising for an organization to then be able to attract donors. And I’m just wondering if maybe I could get some more clarity on whether or not that is an allowed use.

And I think personally, I’m struggling with that one a little bit, but that was the only one that I noticed that it was explicit in its language or on fundraising strategies. Well, let’s go to Ms. Smith for some comment on that. Thank you and through the chair.

I’m wondering if the council could be specific on what organization as I’m not aware of which one off the top of my head, thanks. Councilor Raman. Sure and again, not to single let an organization, but London Food Coalition funds will support staffing to increase the growth and sustainability with the organization through capacity building activities to onboard more donors, expand membership, and implement fundraising strategies. Ms.

Smith. Thank you for the question and through the chair. This funding is to fund a staff person and part of their duties will be to identify strategies in order to raise funds for the programs that are being funded. So it doesn’t directly go to fundraising strategies, but it is going directly to funding a staff person for this organization.

Thank you. Councilor Raman. Thank you, I appreciate that. I think that in times where a lot of organizations are seeing the need to increase their fundraising expenditures and resources, I just wanna make sure that we’re not putting significant dollars towards that for any organization and just wanna continue to draw our attention to the fact that we need to be providing resources that are beneficial to the community and I don’t think onboarding fundraising is a way to do that.

Any other questions or comments? Seeing none, then I’m gonna ask the clerk to open the vote on 2.1 and 2.2 in consent. Not logged in yet. I’m gonna vote yes.

That’s noted, Councilor. Motion to vote, motion carries 15 to zero. Thank you, colleagues. We will move right along in our agenda then.

We have no scheduled items. We do have quite a number of items under items for direction. And of course, 2.3 from our consent agenda will be dealt with at the end of that list. We will start with item 4.1.

This is consideration of appointments to London and Middlesex Community Housing, the requirement for one member. Chair, Person Squire had asked to seek delegation status, but he also did have a hearing today that he was dealing with and so he indicated he may not be able to make it. I know he did provide a communication both to Councilor McAllister and myself as members of the board and we do of course have a recommendation from the London Middlesex Community Housing on their appointment recommendation. So I’m gonna look to Councilor McAllister since we don’t have the delegate here if you can speak to the LMCH recommendation.

Thank you and through the chair. Yes, unfortunately, Councilor Squire was not able to make it. He did send along some notes. So I just wanna go through kind of the points that the chair wanted to make.

So he was in attendance at all of these interviews. The committee was comprised of three board members and one outside appointee. There was broad canvassing and they received about 20 applications. They were able to narrow down the list to five people who are actually interviewed in person.

They did interview all five people and they narrowed their list further from three names to then two. In making their decision, they were looking for someone to replace Shelley Crowns who had previously served as the Vice Chair and Chair of Finance Committee. In the board’s view, Gregory Thompson had the experience both in construction and finance that is very important in terms of the board member they were looking for. He was the only candidate that had those attributes and that were comparable to the board member we were looking to replace.

So the committee did recommend and was unanimously endorsed by the board to put forward Gregory Thompson. If the Council agrees with this decision, we expect Mr. Thompson to serve on the finance audit and risk committee and hopefully serve as Chair once he has sufficient experience on the board. Although the final candidate did have experience and had the experience in housing.

They also had that experience in finance and construction. So really it hit all, it checked all the boxes that they were looking for in terms of the interview for the board member. So those are just some of the thoughts that Chair Squire had to share with Council. Thank you, Councillor McAllister.

And I’m just going to ask for the clarification for Council. When you said the hope is that he may in future service, Chair, you were speaking to the finance and risk management committee, not the board as a whole. Yes, sorry, we do have subcommittees. And so currently right now that committee is being chaired by both our Chair Squire and also Mayor Grant, the most Strathroy who serves as Vice Chair.

But we were looking for someone with that finance and construction background to chair that. So hopefully getting that experience, Mr. Thompson would step into that role. Thank you, Councillor.

And just before I move to a speaker’s list, are you moving the recommendation as submitted? Yes, I would move that. Okay, and so I’m going to look for a seconder for that. Seconded by Councillor Cuddy.

And now we’ll begin our speaker’s list. Councillor Trossau. Thank you and through the Chair. Rest assured what I’m about to say has absolutely nothing to do with this candidate who I know from past work and I have very high regard for.

I’ve settled on a couple of occasions at this council that I do not like the practice of the external boards vetting the candidates for us and telling us who they want. Council’s job to do that. We don’t even have in our packet all of the applications. So I can’t support this and I’m not going to support this.

And again, I want to make it very clear this is with all due respect to the applicant. It is the job of this council to make these appointments. Now, what we’re dealing with here is we’re dealing with an agency that has received the absolute lowest, lowest grade and satisfaction. We’re dealing with an agency where there are persistent tenant complaints that continue to come forward.

And I really think that maybe what we need is somebody who has more of a tenants rights, human rights approach. Yeah, maybe having another good finance person is always important. I hear that every time we get a recommendation. This person has a strong background in finance.

They’re not going to. So I’m not going to support this. Well, I guess we’re going to have a ballot. I’m not really sure who I’m going to vote for.

May I ask who was the runner up? So Councilor, we do not have a ballot on this. This is a Councilor has put forward the recommendation from the board, which is actually something a process that is written in to our policies around London Middlesex community housing. It is not the same as other boards and commissions.

It is actually part of their requirement to vet the candidates and submit a recommendation to us. So this varies from other board appointments. There’s no ballot on this. Okay, thank you.

Thank you for that. I will be voting now. And again, this is not a reflection on my opinion on this or other candidates. I really think that we are going to have to, not today, but we are going to have to have a broader discussion about the standards.

Maybe something similar to what we’re talking about with some of the other agencies today. We have to have this conversation. ‘Cause when I asked about raising it during the budget, I was told that’s not the time. But I cannot overemphasize the continuation of my very grave, grave and serious concerns about this particular agency.

And this is where people live. This is where very vulnerable people live. So I’ll leave it at that for today and I’ll be voting no on this. Thank you.

Thank you, Councilor. And just for Council’s information, I will make everyone aware that when the new board for LMCH was constituted, there were actually two positions created specifically for tenant representatives on the board, which was not the case prior to previous board’s dissolution and then reconstitution. Councilor McAllister. Thank you through the chair.

Recognizing, you know, obviously the concerns that the Councilor Troso has raised, I wanna give my perspective as a serving member of this board. I think this is one of the most challenging boards we have. I don’t think it’s personally fair to constantly highlight the negatives at the board. I have brought this up a number of times in terms of, they have actually made a lot of improvements.

This is something the Councilor, by all means, if you wanna meet with the CEO of Paul Chisholm, I’m sure he would be happy to highlight those. They are trying in terms of their strategic communications to get those positive stories as well. And I just wanna acknowledge in terms of what this Council has done in terms of the investment in housing. And we are starting to see the fruits of that labor.

I was happy that the Mayor, the Deputy Mayor and myself were able to attend the South Dale reimagined project. We’re seeing the first massive reinvestment in community housing in decades. Those new units will greatly improve the quality of life of the tenants in community housing. And I don’t think it’s fair to constantly hammer that board when they’re doing their job, they’re trying to make life better for their tenants.

They’re not responsible for the de-investment that they experienced in terms of what was taken away from them for decades. So I just wanna say, I appreciate the hard work of this board. Thank you, Deputy Mayor, who also serves on it. And also appreciation for the County having representation.

Speaking for the Mayor of Strathroy, I know he’s always the voice of the County in terms of trying to get them acknowledged as well, because they are part of that. And I do think sometimes we get a bit city-centric, but they also have representation on that board. I just feel it’s incumbent upon me and perhaps the Deputy Mayor wants to speak to this as well, but there’s a lot of good work that happens at this board. And I think we unfortunately focus too much on those challenges, which are being dealt with, but it’s going to take time because they have not had those investments in the long term to be able to do it.

So I’m happy to say progress is being made. And I am thankful for the support that this Council has given to community housing. Thank you. Thank you, Councilor McAllister.

And as I’m in the chair today, I won’t take you up on the offer to address any of the good work right now. I’m happy to do that with individuals offline. I will simply add a bit of statistical data. It’s important that people understand there are over 3,000 units of RGI housing managed by London Housing, both London Middlesex Housing in case Mayor Grantham is listening.

And that is going to take some time to affect the improvements in all of them. So I’ll just stop there and go to Councilor Cuddy who’s next on the speaker’s list. Thank you, Chair, through you. In defense of the board’s recommendation and picking up on what Councilor McAllister had mentioned in his earlier discussion, the board was actually looking, I think, for someone with a finance background.

And this candidate fit the bill. So I think if you have one candidate that’s outstanding, and I might also add that we haven’t vetted any of these candidates and the board has. So I think it’s unfair for us to make accusations and suggest that maybe we should be doing it, that it’s not the role of this board. Councilor Cuddy, I’m just going to pause you there for a moment.

I don’t think that Councilor Trussow in any way made an accusation. I think he expressed that. I apologize, I’ll withdraw that. But if we can just— I’ll just leave it as that.

I believe that it’s the role of the committee to do their own vetting and for us ready to take our governance role at this stage. Thank you. Thank you, Councilor Cuddy, Mayor Morgan. Yes, I just, I appreciate the discussion so far.

I just want to remind colleagues that the process that Leno Middlesex Community Housing follows to fill board vacancies is a process that was directed by Leno City Council. And so you don’t have to like that that’s the process, but it’s our process that we’ve decided that they should follow as the shareholder. And any discussions about changing that process can happen through that piece. For now, I think it’s a system that works quite well and it’s producing good quality people to serve on this board.

I’ll be supporting the recommendation. Councilor Hopkins. Yeah, thank you, Mr. Chair.

And as a former member of this board, I know we’ve had numerous changes. I’m really pleased to see that we do have a committee representing tenants as well. I am going to be supporting this, but I will be supporting it reluctantly. I would like to see a little bit more diversity on this board.

I understand from the comments and I want to thank the committee for all their hard work. As we all know, it takes a lot of time to, to vet candidates and appreciate the recommendation. But I think I believe strongly that we should, in particular with this board, have a bit more diversity on it. I was surprised to hear that finance in construction now is an important element of this board.

I can understand that as we redevelop a number of our buildings. So again, I am going to be supporting this reluctantly, though, I would like to see more diversity. Thank you, Councilor Hopkins. Any other speakers?

Seeing none, then we have a motion that’s been moved and seconded and I’ll ask the clerk to open the vote. President of the vote, motion carries 13 to two. Thank you, colleagues. Moving along to item 4.2, this is the evaluation framework, health and homelessness whole of community response.

We do have a presentation from Mr. Coons and Mr. Meyer, and we’ll just give IT a minute to get that prepared for them. Mr.

Dickens, do you wanna provide an introduction before, well, our presenters are getting ready? Thank you, Chair, and through you, absolutely. As Council’s aware, under the whole of community system response, we have a number of core pillars of that work, including hubs, highly supportive housing, but also the evaluation framework, which we have spoken about in previous committee meetings. We’re happy to share that here today.

Delivering this presentation are the two co-chairs of our system foundation’s table. So they have been stewarding and helping steer and guide that implementation table, which represents a cross-section of both academia, frontline direct service providers, and some of our community partners. So with that, Mr. Chair, we’ll hand it over to our presenters.

Thank you, Mr. Dickens, and welcome, gentlemen. Normally, this is the point where I would remind you that we allow for five minutes. I know you’ve got a lot of information here.

If you can go through it as quickly as possible, but I’ll let you take it away. Thank you very much, Mr. Chair. In five minutes, it’s just a vice.

Thank you, first of all, for having us here today. It’s a great honor to be here in front of you today and present all the amazing work that our table has been doing over the past nine months, I suppose. So my colleague Matt and I, we are the co-chairs of the system foundation’s table, which is a crucial backbone to the whole of community systems’ response to health and homelessness initiative. System foundations really has a couple of deliverables that are really important for this movement, and one of those deliverables.

Recommending guidelines and tools, including outcome measurements and reporting, will be presenting to you today. There may be a different time where we will be talking more about policies and processes, but that’s not today. So we won’t go through the details of the entire approach. We know that you have access to a lot of that, but did want to give you, in our brief time, an opportunity to go through some of the key elements of the framework that we’re proposing to you today.

As Mick said, we’ve been working through this with our membership to child review. These are very commonly used approaches and frameworks in health systems and system evaluation generally. The reason why we wanted to adopt these frameworks or these approaches, is it ensures that we’re being very systematic in the way that we’re thinking about this, because it matters so much to all of us. So the approaches that we’ve kind of melded together here and drawn on are what’s known as first and foremost a health equity-driven quadrupling or the quintuple lane.

That allows us to ensure that we’re thinking about the outcomes and experiences of the population members that we’re trying to support, and we’ll come to that in a little bit in more detail. We want to make sure that we’re thinking about the wellness of our staff and the frontline service providers. We’re evaluating the costs of the entire system, ensuring that we’re using resources efficiently, but also that we are incorporating health equity principles in everything that we do. So that’s the quintuple lane, and again, very commonly used.

We’ve also adopted a framework that’s known as Donabedians Triad. So that allows us to say, when we’re thinking about any system, we should be thinking about, yes, the outcomes that we achieve, but we should not forget about making sure that we’re evaluating the processes that we’re using to achieve those outcomes, and taking some time to reflect on the structures that we have available, the structures being the buildings, the places, the people. So wanting to make sure that we’re incorporating those pieces as well. The third piece that we’re adopting in terms of a framework is what’s referred to as the now, next, and later approach.

What this does is we’re gonna ask each of our evaluation teams to consider what are the things that we wanna know now, what are the things that are pressing in our next evolution of this, but not lose sight of the fact that we know this is gonna take some time, and we have to be thinking long-term about how we would revisit this evaluation, and consistently come back to see how we’re doing. So we’ve adopted those three core frameworks. The other piece wanted to make sure that everyone’s understanding here is, we’re not just using data numbers, we’re using mixed methods approaches here, so we’re going to be incorporating quantitative and qualitative information into our evaluation. So the way that we’ve designed this and pulled it together with the support of our system foundations tables, really blending those three things together, so that we can ask each of our evaluation teams to be thinking about how do we assess each of these areas, these domains, now, next, and later, and we’ll go through some of the team structure in just a second.

Thank you very much. There’s obviously lots of roles and responsibilities that fall within this evaluation framework. We have been really, really fortunate that one of our university partners, the Center for Research on Health Equity and Social Inclusion, which you may notice, Cressy has come forward as a reliable partner, and it was endorsed by the Strategy and Accountability Table back in November, 2023, to act as an arms length research partner to help us further facilitate the research and evaluation efforts of the whole of community systems response. Of course, there’s also the backbone support that the city and the civic administration provides, which is crucial to help us stand up all of those tables in the first place, but also helps us to inform and guide and support Cressy and their staff as we’re standing up these evaluation teams, which we’ll talk about in a second.

And we’re also really fortunate to now have two dedicated research and evaluation managers who will be responsible for a lot of tasks, to be completely honest, but most tasks around the evaluation framework, including supporting work within and between those research teams, but also working on research ethics, protocols and accountability, which will be really important as a backbone feature there. And what may be really interesting to you, there are also the folks that will be having a running document with questions asked by the community, by community members, by council members, of those pieces that we really want to draw out through that process and those information bits and data information that we want to answer through this process. So how we see this coming to life is as we start to actually engage our partners. We’ve already got lots and lots of people out of expressed interest.

We’re looking at forming these four research and evaluation teams. So as I mentioned earlier, based on the framework, we’re gonna bring together a team that’s gonna focus on the experiences and outcomes of the defined groups that we’ve talked about. And I think it’s included in your package there. When we’re talking about this, certainly need to focus on those high needs individuals, highly homeless individuals, making sure that we’re providing good outcomes and experiences for them.

Also wanting to make sure that we’re focusing on people who are precariously housed and on the verge of becoming high needs. And so we’re not losing sight of that important population as well. But the other piece is understanding that this is really about improving the health and wellbeing of our entire community. So that all residents of London benefit from this.

We’re not losing sight of outcomes and experiences of all Londoners, people who spend significant amounts of time in the city, people who run businesses in the city. So that team will come together and they will be responsible for some of the questions specific to that. As I mentioned before, also gonna convene teams that have expertise in the outcomes and experiences of direct service workers. The third team is gonna be focused on those system structures and processes.

So this is the team that can ask some of those questions about do we have enough infrastructure? Where do we need to make investments? Are we using dollars efficiently? So wanting to draw on expertise in that area.

And then the fourth one, because we’ve had so much interest in this, and it really is a tremendous opportunity, really evaluating the overall process here. So what can we learn about right from the start when we brought people together? What did we do well? What could we have done differently?

And making sure we have that so we can share with other municipalities, other regions across the province and around the world really. So what we are gonna do with the idea with these teams is that it will be very much open to anyone with interest and experience in research and evaluation. We want these to be inclusive groups. These are not to be closed.

The idea is all hands on deck. We need lots of support as we probe us together. So we’re already got lots of people that have expressed interest and we’re gonna continue to kind of reach out and see who we can bring into these teams as they evolve. So not a fixed membership, but really open evolution around this.

As Mick said, really what we want these teams to do is to be a place where we can bring key questions that we have that we need to have evaluated and have them guide us in what is the right way to do that? What are the right methods? What are the right data sets we should be pulling together? Write out proper protocols and then think about how we’ll actually execute on that over time.

Again, keeping them focused on now. What can we accomplish now with what we have access to now next in the near future and then longer term in the future? So I won’t go through all of the questions, but as Mick said, the key here is that as these teams are formed, we wanna be able to deliver them the key questions and these are being garnered from our partners, from yourselves, from town halls, from lots of places where we’re hearing the questions that Londoners have about are we being successful in this? In respect for time, I’ll hand that back over to Nick then.

We are really, really fortunate to have this whole of community systems response and really having lots of folks coming together to provide support for it. One of the crucial supports, obviously, is funding supports. So through St. Joseph’s Hospital Foundation, in particular the Finch Mental Health Fund, through London Health Sciences Center, and through the University of Western Ontario, we’ve been able to, over two years or four two years, have funding of $600,000 to $100,000 from each of those partners.

In addition, this funding has been used to leverage an in-kind contribution in a grant proposal submitted on February 9th, 2024 to Infrastructure Canada, which, if successful, would bring an additional $700,000 to our planned evaluation activities. No desire for salts off the grant proposal, that always takes a little bit, is expected in summer of 2024. Obviously, you may be interested in the next steps for our evaluation framework. We’ve been consistently and constantly gathering questions, and that will not end.

Even when our research starts to be conducted, we’ll still be open for further questions that community members, council members, anyone in the city, and anyone affected by this initiative will have. We’re also looking at what evidence quantitative and qualitative, again, this important mixed methods approach, do the table co-chairs need to evaluate their initiatives? So each table, that helps to implement the Asian table, for example, the housing implementation table, will come together and ask those questions. What may success for your table look like?

We’re also really interested in what data already exists. We know there’s a plethora of data that is out there, so our research and evaluation managers will help us gather the data in the first place from different organizations, from HIFAS, from other initiatives led by the city of London. And what resources, training guides, boilerplate texts, for ethics applications, are needed to support research and evaluation. Obviously, we will begin developing processes and resources to support the coordination and communication between system foundation table research and partner.

And there’s a lot of work that will come for us when it comes to policies and processes as well, which will also flow, for example, into team four, our overall evaluation of the framework. We’re very encouraged that a lot of this work, gathering data, evaluation work, is actually being done as we speak. We are in the fortunate position of knowing what data exists and that we can leverage, and it’s now about bringing it all together. Great, we appreciate you walking through that with us and giving us a high-level overview.

I’m gonna ask you to stay nearby, as there may be questions as we move to council. And of course, some of those will go through to Mr. Dickens as well, I’m sure, but there may be questions that he will be looking to you to expand on as well. So colleagues, we’ve received the presentation.

I’m gonna look to see so that we can frame this if we want to get the staff recommendation on the floor moved and seconded, and then we can move to questions, comments, any changes that folks wanna see at that point. Moved by Councilor Palosa and seconded by Councilor Ferreira. So we’ve got the staff recommendation on the floor, and now I will start a speakers list and open the floor for questions, comments. Councilor Frank, you’re first.

Thank you, and I really appreciate the presentation and all the hard work that you guys have been doing on this. I am curious to know if there’s gonna be some, I know it’s more, I don’t know, technical or boring, but financial discussions about the ROI, and you know, if we’re spending this money on these kinds of programs, does it reduce emergency room visits, does it reduce ambulance visit, does it reduce interactions with the police force, and quantifying how much savings that offers. I’m just wondering if that’s one of the reflection and evaluation questions. Thank you for the question, through the chair.

Absolutely, that’s what Team Three is gonna be focused on. It’s why we drew in Donabedians triads, so that’s a lot of that’s gonna come through our structure and process work. I’m an adjunct professor at IV, and we have lots of researchers there with wealth of expertise that are really excited to be part of this, and through other faculties and other institutions as well. So definitely something we wanna focus on.

Councilor Frank, you’re good. Other questions and comments? Councilor Hopkins. Thank you, Mr.

Chair, and thank you very much for the presentation and for the work that you’re going to be doing out there on behalf of the community. How will the reporting look like coming? If you can just take me through that process and updates, have you looked at that, or can you sort of explain a little bit more how we will be informed as a council as to the information that you’re gathering? I’m gonna start with Mr.

Dickens on that one, and then of course, if we need to bring our partners in, on that, we’ll let you pass the baton as you will. Thank you, Chair, and through you. I’m not sure I’ll bring my community experts to every update we provide to council. I’m sure they will want to come back all the time.

We have in this report that we seek direction to report back annually. The research leads that are referenced in the report and in the presentation that have been funded by those three community entities are going to be working with those specific teams that have been set out here, focus on those, those different priorities to understand what the best way to report back on the data and the information is. Again, recognizing and respecting that we need to do this in an ethical way. I will speak from the city civic administration perspective.

We’re really raising the bar to be able to lean into experts at Cressy and Western and our co-chairs and all those around the table. And in doing so, we also elevate the scrutiny and the criteria in terms of how we handle that data, how it is shared and how it is disclosed. So while I don’t have a definitive, this is what it will look like. We do have the commitment that we will be bringing this back.

We’re gonna be very excited, frankly, to share this information back with the public and with council. And then also on the operational side, making sure we have regular touch points to bring back early data, early results, early metrics, to be able to work at the operational level to understand what do we need to adjust and respond to? What do we need to lean more into ‘cause it’s working well and what do we need to, of course, correct, if it’s not working well? Councillor?

Yeah, so follow up. Yeah, I think that data collecting is going to be so important, so different to what we’ve ever really done. So excited and look forward to the annual reports. Thank you.

Councillor Pribble. Thank you, Mr. Chair. Thank you for all this work and to, you know, when I look at this and the data collections and the things they are proposing, it certainly does make sense.

And I think I believe we own a right path and hopefully we’ll get there rather soon than later. But one thing is with the point three, beginning and developing processes and resources to support the coordination and communication between the system foundation table, researchers and partners. One of the things in such strategic plans with these three categories, if you look at these three target groups, a lot of time is spent on the plans, but what we need is the actions and the actions with timelines, with accountability and really delivering the results for the people that really need them. And in frequently in strategic plans, a lot of times it’s lost to talking about it and the actions follow much later.

So please prioritize these actions. I did hear the annual reporting. I personally, I know how my colleagues by a person would like to prefer more frequently than once a year. But thank you for all the work.

Thank you. Thank you, Councillor Pribble. Further speakers on this? Mayor Morgan.

Yes, first, I just want to thank you for serving as co-chairs of the system foundation table. I think the work that you’re doing is really critical to the overall understanding and success of the whole community response process. And I appreciate that what you said, and I don’t want it to be overshadowed, but the exceptional talent and access to professional researchers that comes with the partnerships that are involved in the whole of community response. And not only that, but as we’ve seen, also support from a financial perspective.

And I want to publicly thank the St. Joseph’s Health Hospital Foundation, London Health Sciences Center, and Western University for their contributions to this work to ensure that there is a robust and meaningful evaluation framework for both the purpose of the public having access to serious and meaningful data on the value of the investments that they’re making, as well as other funders and other levels of government who are involved, but also giving the ability on a more regular basis to make what Deputy City Manager Dicken said, and that is the real-time analysis of how things are going and taking the steps to make adjustments and corrections along the way based on actual accurately measured, professionally assessed data that allows us to continue to move forward in a way with something new that we know we are going to get many, many things right on, but we are going to get some things that we have to adjust. So this type of professionalism brought in to the data analysis from those expert research institutions and partners, I think, is a really critical piece of the overall work. And so I think I get excited about numbers and analysis and stats.

I know not everybody does, but I do understand how important it is to actually achieving the desired outcomes that we want to achieve as a community. So thank you for the work that you’re doing, and thank you to the partners who have both decided to step up and participate in this work as well as make financial contributions to it as well. Thank you, Mayor Morgan, looking for further speakers to this item. Councillor Stevenson.

Thank you. When we talk about annual reporting, when would we expect to receive that first one? Mr. Dickens.

Through you, Chair, I wouldn’t have a specific date, and I would look to really work with the table on honing that timeline, whether it be 2024, like by the end of the calendar year. The teams are forming. This table is meeting on a regular basis with this framework in place, with the research leads already hired, already doing their work. It’s conceivable we could have a first cut by the end of the calendar year, but I wouldn’t want to speak out of turn on that, but we would, I mean, as the co-chairs indicated, some of this access to data and some of the evaluation work is already underway.

We’re just moving in, trying to move in a coordinated manner and be as robust as possible, round out our research teams, round out those evaluation teams, really work with the population tables on what those interview questions need to be. Are we measuring the right things? So at Best Estimate, we could probably be reporting back by the end of the calendar year, knowing that we’re entering into April here on the weekend. But outside of that, we would expect very early in 2025.

Councilor Stevenson. Thank you, Hannah, follow up through the chair. Is there a way for Council to have some input in what is going to be reported or have a look once you’ve got it set up? Give it to us so that we can be sure that when we get it, it meets the, whatever it is that Council wants to see.

Mr. Dickens, Mr. Meyer, who wants to start? I’ll take that, thank you through the chair.

So just to kind of respond to both of those, and I think even Councilor Peril, your previous comment, it certainly is our, we acknowledge the timeliness of this and the importance of getting the evaluation, right? Because we need to get all of this, right? So our plan is we don’t want to over promise. We want to make sure that we’re doing it properly, but our plan is through engagement.

So we are absolutely open to any Councilors, any members of the public, even through those approaches, reaching out, we’re trying to capture those questions and understand wherever possible. As we start to develop that plan, we would love the opportunity to present and share the thinking with you to make sure that it’s gonna meet your needs at some point in the future. So that’s definitely part of the engagement plan that we’re working through. Councillor Stevenson.

Yeah, thank you. So on that regard, would it be reasonable to put an amendment onto this motion to say that by, I don’t know, whatever time, end of Q2 of this year, we would get a blank view of the reporting that’s gonna be coming so that we know what’s gonna be captured and if there’s anything that we would like to see that’s not on there, there’s a chance to be proactive on that? Councillor, I’m just gonna ask even for my own sake, but perhaps for our guests as well, if you can just expand a little bit and I won’t count this towards time, just on what you mean by a blank view. Well, if we know that what’s coming back is what Councillor Frank said and ROI, the reduction in emergency visits so that we can look and see, okay, this is the information that we’re gonna get and this is great and then we look forward to having it or if there’s something that’s really missing, we’d have a chance to say, could you add this in?

So if I’m hearing you correctly, you’re hoping to get a report back on what some of the data metrics will be without them necessarily having the data filled into the list. Exactly, so maybe just to know what the metrics are that are coming? So I’m gonna go to Mr. Dickens because you did ask for a specific timeline as well and I know he indicated a first report back with some metrics and data would be at least the end of the year, but I will go to you, Mr.

Dickens, in terms of giving us some sort of update on some of the identified metrics, would you be able to meet a timeline to report back on those? Thank you, Chair, and if we could be somewhat flexible in that, the table is eyeing some deliverables in July to be able to put some structure around this and start to round out some of those key indicators. Recognizing our two research leads with us today, they are working with those tables and those teams that are focusing on those specific demographics, the community, those that are housing deprived and so on. So the summer would probably be reasonable for us to report back and I wouldn’t have a specific date in mind, but we would target that July or August timeline knowing that as the co-chairs have indicated, we’re trying to move as fast as we can.

We’re also trying to do this correctly. And as we bring things forward, they will be brought forward to you after having been informed, reviewed through an ethical lens, through an equity lens, through a violence and trauma-informed lens, and so we will present to you something that is well-intended, that is well-researched, that comes through some level of scrutiny. We would welcome the dialogue and at that meeting when that comes forward, I may have some community experts to talk about quintuple aims and things like that with me, in case there are certain or specific metrics Council want to focus on, that we would be able to speak to those desires from a violence and trauma-informed perspective and from the lens of an ethical review. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Dickens, Councillor Stevenson. Thank you very much. I’m gonna tweak this a little bit and send it over.

One of the other questions I had was— Sorry, Councillor, just before you along with your questions, I’m just gonna interject as the chair, based on the response that you just heard from Mr. Dickens and in sort of a blank report with a few metrics that we would have an idea on. Given the date you indicated in the response that you had from Mr. Dickens, I might I suggest that if you want to address some of that, that perhaps the end of Q3, and that gives some sort of a window to work on.

So just wanted to rather than go back and forth on a number of amendments to amendments. No, thank you, that’s why I said I’m working on something right now to tweak what I dissent. So if you want to resume with your questions, go ahead. Okay, thank you.

So one of the things I was wondering, it’s probably more a question for city staff, but in addition to this, we talked about a dashboard about getting metrics more often like quarterly on the outcomes of the whole community response, the fewer encampments, fewer deaths, and more people housed. Are we, when can we expect to see some of those numbers? Mr. Dickens.

Through you chair, majors offer some clarification. The commitment to create a dashboard on the city of London website was in regards to a report to bring forward a snapshot of homelessness in London, trying to articulate with some level of confidence how many people are coming from outside of the community into homelessness. We tried to round that out with more broad picture. We used an infographic.

That was the information and the content we committed to create a dashboard on our city website and it would be updated quarterly. Having just recently met with the communications team here at the city, they are targeting an April update to that dashboard where we would have our first quarterly report once Q1 finishes March 31st. Councilor Stevenson. Okay, thank you.

And we’ll we have updates for last year so that we can see what happened throughout 2023 and our starting point of Mr. Dickens or Mr. Cooper. Through you chair, I would go back to some of the wording and the council resolution, we’d have to dig that out.

So yeah, we anticipated to give. So we brought forward a council, a snapshot of homelessness in London from year to date January 2023 to July 2023. So what we would reflect is that carry over from July 2023 to the end of Q1 of 2024. So that would be our first quarterly update and then we’ll be able to update quarterly going forward.

Councilor. Okay, thank you, looking forward to that. And I might have missed it as I was chatting about the amendment. Will it have the number on the by name list as well?

Mr. Dickens. Do I get some clarity on what it is? Do you mean the quarterly dashboard on the city website?

Yes, it will. Okay, thank you. Councilor. And I’ve got an amendment I’d like to put forward.

Okay, if you have sent that to the clerk so that they can get it in an e-scribe if you’d like to read it out for us, please. Okay, so this will be C added onto this, but the motion be amended to direct civic administration to report back on the metrics and the report format for the annual data sharing by the end of Q3 2024. And do you have a seconder for that? Mr.

Preble has seconded. Okay, so we’re gonna move to discussion just on the amendment, not on the main motion. Councilor McAllister. Thank you and through the chair.

I just want to be more information in terms of what we’re looking, ‘cause I want to be realistic in terms of what can be brought back. And understanding that we are one point of the engagement, and I know in terms of the metrics you’ll bring forward, you have to ask a lot of the stakeholders in terms of questions. So I’m being realistic in terms of, if you bring us something, you can be honest with us in terms of like, is that doable with the data collection? ‘Cause I don’t want to get into a situation where we as council are trying to direct the research and we’re not the experts in this field, right?

So I’m hoping that there’s some back and forth on this in terms of what is possible and maybe not possible. And recognizing that I’m sure this will evolve over time and that we’re also starting kind of midway through a year. So those benchmarks might look differently for 2024 moving forward. So I’m just wondering if you can speak a bit more in terms of how you envision this engagement and the metrics and being able to provide us that feedback in an honest way.

Well, we will go to our guest, Mr. Meyer, if you want to start. Yeah, thank you. And through you, Chair, I appreciate the question.

I appreciate the request for a back and forth dialogue and all this and the acknowledgement that this will take time. And so I think that when some of this back and forth conversation we’re having here, we don’t want to over commit what we can bring to you for Q3 for sure, but we absolutely want to be able to give you direction. And what we’re hoping to do as these teams come together in the next month or so is to be able to engage our experts, get their input into what is possible, how can we answer the questions that many of us have that we’ve discussed today, give us your realistic approach to what we think is right the right way to tackle those questions, to answer those questions. And also to start conversation about, if we’re talking about an annual reporting, what do we think we can add to that for next year and what would that strategy be and try to be very transparent with you in that approach?

So hopefully that meets the council’s needs. Councilor McAllister. Thank you, Chair, I appreciate the answer. And I know like in terms of what’s being requested, this is just the initial, you know, the questions you’re being asked.

And further to what I said before, I would also like to say, please flag things in terms of based on the ethical reporting. I’m sure, you know, in terms of post-secondary research, different ethical standards, but, you know, we’re politicians operating in a different world, but I do want to just make you aware that, you know, if things are being asked that cross the line, that those are identified as well, because we have to be partners in this, we need to work together, we’re all looking for answers and solutions. But in terms of, you know, identifying those red flags and what can and can’t be reported, I just want to highlight that. Thank you.

Thank you, Councilor McAllister. Councilor Stevenson. Thanks, I just wanted to explain why I was bringing this amendment forward. And it really is to just even be able to share with the public in anticipation of the results coming, right?

This is what we can look forward to. These are the measurements that we’re doing. There’s a lot of interest in this. And so just, and even to know too, then that we won’t be disappointed, right?

It’d be terrible to find out any year, oh, had you known we wanted X and could have done it, let’s us have that dialogue. So I would really appreciate having that information in this, by the end of Q3. And I think the public would too, even though there’ll be no numbers, just to get more information around what it is we’re measuring and what we can look forward to. Thank you, Councilor.

Looking for any other speakers on the amendment, Councilor Trussell? No, on the amendment, any other speakers? Seeing none, then I’m gonna ask the clerk to open the vote. Opposed in the vote.

Motion carries 15 to zero. Thank you, colleagues. I’m just gonna check with our mover and seconder to make sure that they are okay remaining on the main motion as amended. Seeing nods from both.

So with that confirmed, we can continue our debate now on the main motion as amended, Councilor Trussell. Thank you very much through the chair. One of the things that really got my attention, ‘cause it’s something I’m very interested in, is a sample of the questions that have already been raised. Team one experiences and outcomes.

So you’re looking at the, how do you identify people? How do you identify people who are precariously housed or at risk of homelessness? And for me, this whole area of identifying people who are at risk of homelessness is just so central. And it is very related to other policies that this Council has been moving forward on in terms of wanting to increase the goodness of our housing stock and really look at people who are precariously housed to the point where they may be losing their housing and then they join the homeless.

Could you just give me a little bit more information? It might be premature. But how are you going to go about identifying people who are at risk of homelessness? Mr.

Dickens, I think I’ll start with you. I don’t know if you want to pass it to our guests if you want to pass it to Mr. Cooper, but I’ll start with you and let you direct to the orchestra from there. Thank you, Chair, and through you.

There are some elements of that question that are fairly straightforward. Our team here at the city under Mr. Cooper’s leadership received regular touch points and phone calls from those that are at risk of experiencing homelessness. It’s why we have some programs that are preventative in nature, but we do have a pulse and some contact info and some data on those that are precariously housed.

We’re seeing more seniors, for example, reach out, stating they’ve been offered cash for their keys to potentially move to a different unit. Folks who are running out of money due to job loss and things like that. We do have a bit of an intake or an inflow of folks that are precariously housed. It’s not inclusive of everybody, but we do have community organizations like Acorn, for example, we do have community tracking lists such as those on the social housing wait list.

We would consider them precariously housed perhaps at risk of becoming homeless. Those in our GI or community housing as well would make up some of that demographic. So we do have a pretty good starting spot, which would give us a fairly sizable sample group to be able to engage and get solicited that feedback and input from those that would be considered precariously housed or at risk of becoming homelessness. And then with that, I may orchestrate over to these gentlemen here to see if they have anything else to add from the research team perspective.

And thank you and through the chair. Very much appreciate the question. And for your recognizing and acknowledging that we’ve had a extensive conversations at our system foundation stable. The fact that that’s, that is a group that we can’t lose sight of in our community, it’s really important that we do it correctly.

I just wanna respond, we are blessed with very intelligent, brilliant people. In fact, here that have access to lots of information that can help us to solve the very difficult challenge of how we identify these people. That’s also a big part of why we’ve identified both quantitative and qualitative methods to use to think this through because we’re gonna need both to be able to do it properly. So very much a focus that we’re gonna wanna work through and again, I think that’s part of what we wanna bring back to as part of the evaluation framework is, what do we think are the right ways to tackle questions like that?

Do you anticipate doing any direct field work which would be in the nature of actually going out and observing conditions that people are living in? Thank you very much and through the speaker. I don’t think there’s a limit to the research as long as it can be conducted ethically. I don’t think there’s a limit to the research that can be done.

Councilor, that’s a really good answer. You’ve been on funding panels where people have asked your questions about your research proposal I can tell. But I wanna raise this scenario. Let’s say you’re doing this research and it crosses over into, well, you’re out there in the field, you’re doing this research and you’re coming across people living in conditions that are not adequate.

Is there, do you just collect that research and move on or do you, at that point, try to assist the tenants with ideas about how they could go about improving their situation, which can include things like getting legal help or filing code enforcement complaints. We just held a very successful way. Some of the community groups just held a very, very successful tenant there here in City Hall on Friday and people were walking in, volunteering this information to us ‘cause very good outreach was done for this and they were talking about their conditions and I don’t know what the end numbers were but quite a few code enforcement complaints were generated out of the thing. So I just hope that when your researchers are in the field and they see something wrong, they’re not just observing it but they’re also reporting it.

It’s an action research. Thank you very much, Intel Head Chair. It’s a very, very good question and a very good comment to make. As my colleague Matt would always say, it’s all about now what?

So what? We’ve been very, very clear. It’s this some foundations table that we don’t want to do research just for the sake of research. As I’ve spoken about at the recent trauma and violence informed care conference and workshop, there’s great responsibility which comes with this research.

This is a community initiative. This is community-based research. We’re happy that through just research perhaps, some professors from our academics will receive accolades and publications. But in the end, this is about transforming the community.

This is about transforming lives and this is about saving lives down to. So we will not, as assistant foundations table and as researchers, forget that that’s the mission and the initiative while we’re here. Thank you. Councilor?

That’s the end of my questions. I just want to say how excited I am about what you’re doing and that last response just, I just think was wonderful. So thank you again. Thank you, Councilor Trussell.

Councilor Lehman, I have you next. Thank you and thank you, Mr. Coons and Mr. Meyer for coming here today.

I want to just start out with thanking St. Joe’s specifically a Finch Mental Health Fund and the London Health Science Center and the University of Western Ontario for coming up with funding for this. It’s not unsubstantial. It’s $600,000 for over two years and good for you for looking ways to leverage that with infrastructure Canada.

So thank you. I’m just gonna, it’s just a little bit what we’re kind of an offshoot of what we’ve been hearing from other Councilors. What I want is I want more people allowed to move from encampments and living onto sidewalks in our city faster. I always get a little nervous when I hear about more studies.

We have been studying this for quite a while internally and we’ve come up with a hub system after extensive collaboration with many partners. So I want to drill down a bit more into the purpose of this. I was good to hear from Mr. Dickens and previous questions that he does see the value here.

I was also encouraged and the important questions that your team is asking, specifically one, how can we provide the best value for the populations we serve? What policies and procedures are in place to support integrated care across the system today? Which ones help and which ones hinder? So in that vein, I want to know, are you going to be consulting with Mr.

Dickens? And this is a self-serving thing, I get it. In what he needs from this study to help him do the work in art that this council charges him, essentially, going forward. We’ll go to Mr.

Meyer, Mr. Coons. I’m not sure if Mr. Dickens can comment on what he’s asking of them, but we can go to him for some comment after that.

So through you, Chair, I appreciate the question. This is a whole of community response to health and homelessness. We see this as a whole of community response evaluation. And I think it’s important to know we’ve been very intentional in calling this evaluation and research framework.

There are research opportunities here. That does take time. There are certain approaches, methodology standards that we have to rigorously apply. But one of the things I think that we’re most excited about in the partnership is we’ve engaged in some of our research partners is bringing that rigor to the evaluation that’s being done consistently and thoroughly.

And so we’ve already had extensive conversations with city staff, understanding what their reporting needs are, thinking about how we can work together to leverage that information. And that will continue, that’s fully the intent of the work that we’re doing. And if I may add, Chair, through you, the city civic administration team is well-represented at the system foundations table where this work is happening. And we’ll be well-represented at some of these very specific team discussions and the facilitating of these questions and the creation of some of these templates.

We seek not to duplicate. We certainly seek to leverage. We are going to benefit as city staff to be able to lean on some incredible minds and some real experts in this field. Our team has for years been involved in point-in-time counts and generating reports and trying to use data to best inform our decision-making.

We actually went so far in the last year to work with other departments, other service areas, taking that enterprise-wide approach to leverage recruitment that was happening in other service areas with specific targeted positions around data analysis. And we’ve actually started to incorporate those staff positions from other service areas into the work that we’re doing in social and health development, but specifically in housing stability services and the whole community system response. So that we actually have a direct tether between what we’re trying to do internally and outward facing to you as council members, but also with the community work that is happening as well. And unfortunately for these two co-chairs, they won’t be getting rid of me anytime soon in terms of our interests.

Councillor Lehman. Thank you, that’s why I was hoping to hear. Thanks. Councillor Robin.

Thank you and through you, Chair. First, I want to start by saying thank you for your ethical and empathetic approach to the framework. I think that you’ve demonstrated that quite a bit here. My only comment is in relationship to the linkage to the corporate strategic plan, and just a comment that I do see that this actually links really well with our well-run city approach as well.

We can see alignment with like 1.1 and 1.2 around some of the measurement outcomes that we’ve been looking for as a city to look at improving our standards in service, but also where we’re providing more information to our community and more transparency. And what we’ve been hearing quite clearly is that there is that desire for that level of transparency within the information that’s been provided. But I think what’s also helpful is the ability to really understand the context of it. And what I liked about your approach was you asked a lot of really good leading follow-up questions around, well, what does that mean and what does that look like?

And so there’s always that linkage to not just having the data that the researchers like, but also the context that allows you to really get the human approach and how that it all relates. So much appreciated. And I see lots of opportunities for this to go from being leveraging to being a competitive advantage for the city and the way we do this work. So thank you.

Thank you, Councilor Raman, Councilor McAllister. Thank you through the chair. Again, just echoing the thanks of my colleagues. I really do appreciate all the work that’s gone into this.

And I look forward to seeing the research results. In terms of what we get back, something I also think of a great benefit is, one of the things I hear all the time from just organizations is just capacity issues, right? And so I’m hoping in terms of, you know, the reporting we get back is that we can highlight where those short foils are really, ‘cause I mean, doesn’t matter what level of government, it’s really honing in on, okay, you know, where do we need those added supports, right? And I know we’re taking this approach from, you know, local government perspective, but I think the value in this data goes far beyond us.

And I’m really hoping, you know, in terms of the research that comes back that these are things that we can use to highlight to our, you know, provincial and federal partners to say, you know, look, this is something, you know, we’re seeing in our city, but the implications obviously go much farther than the city, right? So I’m hoping in terms of what we get back that it’s not squarely, this is what the city can do, but it’s also leveraging those partnerships at higher levels of government to say, yes, this is one component, but there are other things that feed into this. And I know when we talk about a whole community response, absolutely it is, but part of that response is, you know, the cost sharing, the responsibility sharing that goes into this. And again, you know, we’ve said this a number of times, whenever this comes up, but we need everybody at the table and everyone, you know, bringing solutions and dollars to support those much needed support systems.

Thank you. Councilor Stevenson. Thank you, I forgot about one question that I had, and that’s around the $700,000 infrastructure grant proposal, which is great to see, but it’s a significant amount in terms of the entire cost, and I wondered how critical that piece is, or whether you’re quite confident you’re gonna get it, or if there’s a plan B, if that doesn’t happen? I’ll look to see who wants to take that one.

Thank you, Chair. Difficult to rate the level of confidence, although Dr. Rachorn, who was the primary, and submitted that in partnership with many other partners, is thinking that we probably have a pretty good chance. I wouldn’t say that there’s any dependency there, though I think our intention in this work is to, even to previous comments, acknowledge that from a research perspective, researchers need to secure grants, and they also need publications, and if we can support them to get the money, that helps them to bring the resource to the work that we all wanna do, then it’s a win-win, so that’s, we will certainly seek other similar opportunities.

Councilor. - Okay, perfect. That’s great to hear, and good luck with all of that. Looking for any other speakers?

Being none, I’ll just ask Councillor Layman to take the chair so I can offer just a comment or two. Please go ahead. Thank you, Mr. Presiding Officer, and through you, I actually wanna take this opportunity to sort of echo and emphasize what you said.

This research is valuable, and obviously, for Councillors, the outcomes matter as well, getting people housed and getting people out of encampments and the supports that they need. I just wanna emphasize, from my own perspective, we have no intention of relieving Mr. Dickens to inform you, so you are stuck with him, but we also need the results to come back to us in a way that the public can consume, because ultimately, academic research is often not something that the general public is going to spend a lot of time reviewing and reading through, especially when the reports get into the hundreds and hundreds of pages with various sources from all over all aspects, and so if these do not boil down to data points that the public can easily understand and see where the progress is coming, then my caution is not that it will all be for not, but that we will lose momentum, we will lose support, we will lose the public buy-in that we’ve seen so far, by and large, with obviously, people have questions and concerns, but in general, I think that there’s a desire in the community to tackle this problem, but if we cannot convince the community that we are actually making progress on this, then we will lose that momentum, and we will be in a spot where not only will the research not be able to continue, but the results won’t materialize either, so I just wanted to share from my perspective, as was said or politicians, we need to have something that comes back that we can take to the public, and that the public can understand when they consume it and see that we’re getting results here, so that’s the point that I want to underline, because I know in academic research, the end consumer is usually other academics, in this case, the end consumer is the public, and so we need something that is easily digestible for the public to see where there are money, because it’s public money, is being spent to resolve this problem, so I just wanted to share that perspective with you, I would echo all the thanks that you’ve already heard, and I know that there’s lots of work ahead of you still, so we do appreciate you dedicating yourself to that effort. I was running a chair back to the deputy mayor.

Thank you, and did you have any other speakers? No other speakers. Looking for any other speakers? Seeing none, I’m gonna ask the clerk to open the vote on this.

And the vote motion carries 15 to zero. Good colleagues, moving on. We have item 4.3, this is London’s Health and Homelessness Hall of Community Response, proposed highly supportive housing plan, and again, I’m gonna start with Mr. Dickens, while IT gets us set up, and ask you to introduce our guest presenter, and he can take it from there.

Thank you, chair, and three of you. We’re happy to bring forward the highly supportive housing plan that has been co-created by the community, informed by those who lived in living experience, supported by those that gather around the developers reference table, and has been led at the implementation table level by one of our co-chairs, Mr. Dean Astolfi. Dean is the director of supportive housing with CMHA, Ten Valley Addiction and Mental Health Services, and with Dean’s leadership, and through the support of the table and the strategy and accountability table, we have what’s before you today is our effort to start to define what highly supportive housing is, knowing we have heard in the past, that there are significant shortcomings when high-accuity individuals are housed in places like community housing, LMCH, for example, without the proper supports around them, that can lead to not only just evictions, but significant damage to units without proper supports, and that creates issues of empty units not going filled, and significant cost to providers.

So what we have undertaken as a community, and under our whole-of-community system response, is, again, hubs and the creation of highly supportive housing, recognizing that highly supportive housing needs to look and feel different than the traditional housing programs that exist. So with that, I’ll pass it over to Mr. Stolfi, who has the presentation. Welcome, Mr.

Estolfi, and as I said before, this is normally where I ask our presenters, that remind them that they have five minutes. I’m not gonna be super tight on that with you today. Again, I recognize that there’s some devil in the details in this presentation, so I want you to be able to present those, but if you can keep it within the general timeframe, the floor is all yours. Can we just get you to use your microphone?

There we go. Thank you for the opportunity to share the highly supportive housing plan with you today. Through this presentation, I will highlight the seven sections you see in the plan, just to give you an overview. You have the plan in front of you.

So when we look at the whole-of-community response, which my colleagues spoke to, it’s anchored in two foundational elements, hubs and housing. And to support the highest-accuity lenders, to move safely inside, to help them get stabilized, wrap supports around them, and to help them stay housed. Highly supportive housing is that critical component of that foundational element that is housing, and it is the focus of the highly supportive housing plan. Highly supportive housing plan is a strategic implementation pathway that represents the culmination of 12 months of intensive sector-driven collaboration amongst experts, colleagues, and many contributors to that.

What makes this plan unique is that it’s built upon the insights and inputs of those practitioners. Individuals with lived experience and living experience, subject matter experts. It is benefited from the collective insights of individuals representing multiple sectors. And it includes housing development, healthcare, housing service providers, architects, frontline staff, mental health and addictions, youth services, developmental services, and civic administration, ‘cause we can’t do it alone and we do it in partnership.

The highly supportive housing plan aligns closely with a number of city of London community plans, which you’re familiar with with the Hubs plan. And the highly supportive housing plan is designed to set a series of minimum practices, an additional project and program specific considerations that can be adopted by highly supportive housing projects, including the 600 that are intended to be developed over the next three years. It’s an ecosystem of clients centered and directed culturally appropriate and safe supports aimed at providing comprehensive service to individuals experiencing barriers to housing and healthcare. Highly supportive housing is for individuals who are experiencing homelessness and who face a multitude of co-occurring complex medical, mental health and/or substance use issues.

In highly supportive housing, you have housing operators, you have developers, you have partners and residents all involved in making highly supportive housing success. And it’s a project we’ll use as a strategy system-wise solution to have intake to help most, the most marginalized Londoners move into highly supportive housing. It offers a stable foundation focused on ending the experience of homelessness, improving health and housing, and an approved sense of community. We want people to feel a sense of belonging, a sense of wellbeing.

Individuals who lived and living experience shared their insights with us, and you’ll see that in the report as an appendix, which included themes related to accessible layout, affordable unit options, flexible floor plans and much more, all of which were incorporated into the highly supportive housing plan. The vision of this plan includes a consistent set of functions across multiple projects to ensure quality and consistency in delivering and managing of a 24/7 onsite support, regardless of site, location or operator. Each function has three sections, so it’s broken up into a definition. This provides a summary of description of the function.

There’s minimum practices which has been defined as the expectations of the service delivery, which are in place to support effective 24/7 onsite support and operations of the highly supportive housing. Additional to this is projects and programs specific considerations which have been defined as recommendations of the service delivery that may be integrated depending on the highly supportive housing project program. As you can imagine, luckily, we have a lot of proponents coming forward and there might be very specific projects that come forward. So the functions are where housing implementation tables spent the majority of our time in discussion and development and where possible definitions were used in the hubs implementation plans.

We try to have with the whole of system response, we try to have everything relatable and we were used to describe functions in this plan, for example, harm reduction. In section five, the physical space design guideline optimizes what we think highly supportive housing access looks like. It facilitates privacy and dignity and ensures a positive neighborhood relationships. Highly supportive housing developments may be purpose built or they might be retrofit projects.

And this is why it may look different that some of the plans have come forward is that there can be projects specific. The implementation of design guidelines will be largely dependent on the type of project or highly supportive housing program. With new build projects having more opportunities to align with design guidelines and design guidelines include the input of those who have lived in living experience as I stated before. You look at costing and budget.

To make new highly supportive housing developments viable, multiple funding programs are required for the same development to realize deep affordability. And I will say that in past practices, we would have separated out a capital investment and an operating investment and we’re bringing that together. So facilitating the stacking of programs is key for growing highly supportive housing. Deeply affordable rents require capital grants.

You’ve heard of affordable housing. We need deeply affordable housing for this to work. You can stack capital grants, rent supplements, and or ongoing operating subsidies. Capital costs depend on the degree of construction required.

So again, these projects are gonna be different looking from each other. The type of construction, the overall size of the project. The building location, design, density, and population serve will play a major role in establishing what that operating budget should look like. Cost estimates for an operating budget will vary depending on the specific highly supportive housing project.

However, we’ve included an example budget in the included plan. So you can see an idea of what we’re looking at. We look at moving forward. Currently, we have several highly supportive housing projects that you have heard of that have been identified and tabled and we have other ones that are identified in table as prospective projects.

We have many proponents coming forward, both in and not for profit groups and in our business community. And it recognizes that we have to recognize that there’s different stages of development and more costing and financing work needs to occur for most of those identified. The housing implementation table also continues to identify projects in the housing pipeline to find opportunities for highly supportive housing units. In October, 2023, London Community Health Sciences and London Care Homeless Response Services partnered to open 25 highly supportive housing units at 362 Dundas Street and in dwell open 44 highly supportive housing units at 403 Thompson Road.

These units are an exciting step towards moving forward with more projects within the community as organizations collectively aim to bring online 600 highly supportive housing units over the next three years. Thank you for your time and support and open to questions. Thank you. And having received that presentation, we’ll move to committee for questions and comments.

I’m gonna look to see first if we have a mover and a seconder for the staff recommendation to start framing the discussion. Councillor Frank and Councillor Hopkins, thank you. So the staff recommendation is now on the floor and we can begin questions, comments, debate. Soler Pereira.

Thanks Chair. I thank you for recognizing me. I appreciate the presenter in bringing this report. I do wanna say I appreciate the other presenters as well.

You know, mixed method approach. I really appreciate what you guys had to say. With respect to this report, I just wanted to start with, I like how you brought in the perspective of individuals with lived experience. I really like to see that portion of the report.

And I really like to see that we’re looking for, we had an emphasis for greater participation from the Indigenous community. So I really thought that that was a very good thing to be put into the report. And I do hope to see input from the Indigenous community moving forward. The report itself, you know, looking at how we’re incorporating the exterior and the common space in the main floor and entrances, security and safety and everything that was brought from that individual feedback, I think is very important.

And I’m happy to see the distinction between the highly supportive housing and supportive housing with the ratios. So I guess that would lead me into my first question. With respect to those ratios, could you just give me maybe an understanding of the difference between the highly supportive and the hubs? I understand that the complement, the staffing complement will be different.

I understand that the amount of participants within a hub would be different as well. But I was wondering if you’d just kind of expand on the distinction between the highly supportive and the hubs. So Mr. Astifoli, I’m not sure if you can speak to the hubs directly, but I know you’ve been involved in this process, so perhaps you can’t start with you.

And then if Mr. Dickens or Mr. Cooper has anything to add, we’ll go to them. So you’re correct, I was gonna say the same thing.

I can’t speak specifically to the hubs. I can speak to the ratios and just kind of the philosophy of our approach, whether it’s in hubs or in highly supportive housing. The fact is, is that the higher the intensity of service, the lower the density of people that you have within that program or that housing. So that follows with hubs, if you have a hub that serves say 10 people, then you can have a higher intensity of support for those folks, ‘cause they’re in a very acute stage.

Same with highly supportive housing. If you look at the supportive housing that exists, those ratios wouldn’t be necessarily a one to 10. In fact, they might be 24/7 supports. So that was one of the key things that the community brought forward was that ability to have the intensity of services that is needed for the people that are presenting to us.

You would have had other supportive housing projects that maybe were funded for a specific demographic, but didn’t necessarily address the folks that we know are falling through the gaps. So that is the intent when you look at the difference between highly supportive housing and just generally supportive housing. I would say this, highly supportive housing is a part of supportive housing. It is one in the same.

It is the intensity of service that is the difference. Thank you for that. Okay, so thanks for the answer. It expands on kind of what I was thinking, but I just wanted to ask.

For the intake process for the highly supportive housing component. So I do understand that the highly supportive housing will have its own independent intake process as well as the hub system. And I also understand that there should be, with that housing continuum, individuals within the hubs side, when they’re ready, we’ll be moving to the highly supportive housing portion itself. So knowing that we have that interdependent intake process and we have that kind of connection between the hubs to the highly supportive housing, I wanted to know if there would be spots allocated for individuals on the highly supportive housing side so that we don’t run into a point where someone who’s ready to move from the hubs to highly supportive housing doesn’t have no space available because we’ve had the highly supportive housing at capacity.

Mr. Dickens. Thank you, Chair. And through you, yes, that is the intent is to look at how we create pathways from living unsheltered, sleeping rough and encampments into hubs for those high acuity individuals.

And additionally, creating those pathways from hubs into highly supportive housing. To sort of pull that question apart, yes, we want to ensure that highly supportive housing that we’re creating enough stock so that we can always have a spot for those coming out of hubs to move into. That is the primary goal is to create those spaces. Not every single resident that moves into a high to supportive housing unit will necessarily pass through a hub.

Certainly as the number of high to supportive housing units may be outpace hubs to begin with. However, in some of the most recent models and the one that we’ve included in our report, a further partnership with London Health Sciences Center and London Cares, they are actively working with the two hub operators and are already starting to identify some individuals that will come out of those hubs into those highly supportive housing units. So that model is already starting to work. As far as the coordinated access system, we do want to make sure that we are matching high acuity individual into these spaces, into these rooms.

And that we are working through that prioritization process. So it is a bit of both. We want to make sure folks that are ready to move from hubs into housing have a spot to go. We also want to make sure we create enough highly supportive housing stock that we continue to get people of the highest need off of the streets as fast as we can as well.

Councillor. - Thank you, I appreciate that answer. That’s all my questions. Councillor McAllister, so I do now have a speaker’s list.

That’s for everybody was reluctant to put up their hand. So I’ve got McAllister, Frank, and then Stevenson. So Councillor McAllister, you’re next. Thank you and through the chair.

Good to see you again, Mr. Stolfi. I know we were at the Nonprofit Housing Conference. Interesting discussions at that conference.

I’m wondering if you could speak a bit more in terms of like the coordination within the sector and the needs we’re seeing. Obviously with supportive housing we hear all the time in terms of obviously we need more supply. But just in terms of the feedback going into this report that you received from the sector in terms of what they need to make this more viable. I think one of the key philosophies to the sector coming forward and saying what they need is it would have started in a place where we see we need more affordable, and that is absolutely true.

Where we go with that is that all supportive housing, all highly supportive housing has to be affordable, but not all affordable housing is supportive. So we need that to come together. We need to have non-market that is specifically highly supportive housing. And that’s how we need to move forward because if you think about the folks that we’re serving, it doesn’t work out well for them often when we try to put them into private market apartments.

No matter how much supplement we have, and that is why we as a community think that this is the way forward to support our most vulnerable and those that are struggling in our community. Councilor McAllister. Thank you and through you, appreciate the answer. And I know you spoke to a bit of this in your presentation, but in terms of kind of what we’re seeing is a more of like a mixed model to make this, as you said, deeply affordable, a lot feeds into that.

And so I’m just wondering again, if you could speak to, you know, the resources required to make it deeply affordable, just to provide some more context for my colleagues in terms of what would be required for that to actually occur. Mr. Estefoli. Yeah, so if you look at the sample budget plan that we put in, it speaks to the fact of how much an operating budget is.

So supportive housing is not as cheap as say you have subsidized housing, but it is still a better cost and a better impact and a better investment than being in jail, being in hospital. And for the individuals we serve living, right, you can’t quantify that. So when you look at that, the investment that we need is again, it has to be a coordinated investment of that capital investment. What does it take?

And I’ll defer to my colleagues within the city about exactly how much it takes to construct housing and the operating budget that’s associated with it. So there is a sample in there and I don’t wanna speak to specific numbers ‘cause again, the projects are gonna vary so much. You can imagine that a 10 unit build is gonna look much different than a 100 unit build. So it is difficult to speak to that specifically.

Councillor, thank you and through the chair. Yeah, and I really do appreciate that ‘cause I mean, for me, that’s where I see a lot of the discrepancies is we need a coordinated approach because from a city perspective, I mean, even with the hubs, we spend a lot of time in terms of those capital costs, but it’s the operating dollars that go into the support of housing too, which are really key, right? And so we are one part of that, but again, it’s that coordinated effort from all levels of government to be able to make this viable. So again, like I said before, we always need to eat that in the forefront of our mind that yes, support of housing, it’s highly beneficial in terms of what we’re trying to accomplish.

We are one portion of the funding stream and so we definitely need to acknowledge that. I don’t have any more questions, but I just wanna acknowledge and you know, I appreciate the good work, you know, in terms of CMHA, your input is invaluable in terms of support of housing. It’s key to making this work, right? We’ve said this a number of times, mental health supports, vital for this model to work, and I appreciate the input in this report.

Thank you. Councillor Frank. Thank you, yes. I want to say that I was really excited to see this report and the previous one and I feel like this plan is really starting to take shape and we’re starting to drop in some really pivotal key pieces along the way.

So I want to say thank you ‘cause it brings me a lot of hope to see this kind of work and see it moving forward and I’m really happy to see that we’re moving towards having 130 highly supportive housing units very shortly, hopefully this year. And so the 600 number doesn’t feel as daunting. Now that we have a bit of a roadmap and some success, some early success. So I really appreciate you providing myself and many members of the community some hope.

Councillor Stevenson. Thank you. I have a few specific questions on the report. So on page 202 it talks about understanding that highly supportive housing requires an occupancy agreement and it’s not the same as a regular private market residential tendencies.

And on page 206 it says where one exists when it talks about the occupancy agreement. So I wondered if you could just explain a little bit about the difference between an occupancy agreement and the residential tenancy. I will go to whichever of you wants to feel that one. I don’t mind starting yet.

So when you think about a regular sort of lease agreement that you would have in any apartment in the community that’s a much different commitment and govern differently under the residential tendencies act and supportive housing. Is there are clauses within the residential tendencies act that addresses supportive housing and sort of the things that don’t apply to supportive housing? So we don’t want to create barriers for folks that need to get into this housing. And often in the regular market there are barriers related to the RTI.

An occupancy agreement is basically a covenant between that person who needs the supports and the person providing the supports saying what the expectation is and what we can provide. And if you’re agreeable to it we’re going to help you come on in. And that in a nutshell is what an occupancy agreement is versus a lease. It offers a little bit more flexibility because if you can imagine our folks are struggling with their finances.

And if you try to have a regular tenancy first and last month’s rent, a year long lease these things don’t work well with people that are trying to get on their feet. So we’re trying to make it as low barrier as possible. Councilor Stevenson. And what’s the impact when things aren’t going well and there’s a need to unfortunately not have someone be there anymore?

Does the occupancy agreement make that an easier transition? Yeah, I think through our discussions I can tell you from the housing implementation table there might have been a notion from some parties. Keeping in mind there’s many voices that went into this plan that you don’t want any agreement at all. And really you have to have some sort of agreement because there are collective rights to everybody that lives in any highly supportive housing project and there’s individual rights.

And so you’re trying to balance that and make sure that it’s a healthy community because as I said, referring to the report you were really trying to create a sense of healthy community, right? So you have to have mechanisms to address that. Councilor Stevenson. Okay, thank you and through the chair.

On page 204 it talks about resident led safety planning around substance use. I wonder if you could just explain a little bit about what that is. Go ahead. - So I won’t speak to it as well as my colleagues that developed the hubs plan.

They did a really good job at talking about harm reduction as one of the foundational approaches to what we do. But what that basically means is that, again, we’re creating low barrier housing where we believe in harm reduction and that we have input from our residents as to what that would look like. Because if you compare that to a regular tendency, so anybody in any apartment in London, Ontario can use substances in their unit. There’s nothing that the landlord will be able to do about that or know about that most of the time.

It’s no different for the folks that we serve, but we want to be able to have some input and reasonable expectations because it’s not the substance use alone that causes issues. It is the issue of is that impacting your neighbors? Is that impacting your housing? Is that impacting your unit?

Those are the things that we would focus on in discussing that with the tenants and the clients that live within that highly supportive housing. Councillor Stevenson. Thank you. Well, as a follow up to that, I understand what you’re saying about if it’s their person’s home and they’re paying for it, but when the government is paying for the housing, so we’re back in that same situation of if people are allowed to do the drugs in their room in these highly supportive housing.

And it’s just to be clear, is there any, ‘cause when I look at this, one of my concerns is it seems like it prohibits almost having sober housing or whatever you want to call them, a highly supportive unit that doesn’t have it would now not be allowed because of these harm reduction policies or am I reading it to black and white? I would say maybe it is too black and white. I think that each project is independent of each other. There may very well be a proponent of abstinence-based housing that’s highly supportive.

That is a possibility. Councillor Stevenson. Okay, thank you for that clarity. And the other part on here, it says that under harm reduction definition, it says working to challenge existing systems and policies that create more harm.

For example, criminalization of drug use. So as council endorses this, are we then as a council saying that we are advocating for the decriminalization of drug use? It’s very clear to have that in here. I’m not sure that that’s one we can go to our guest on because you’re asking if council is endorsing it.

And ultimately that’s— Well, I guess my question is why is that stated in here? That this part of the definition of harm reduction is to challenge the existing systems and policies, which is the criminalization of drug use. Mr. Dickens, do you want to start with that one?

Thank you, Chair and through you. This is very similar, if not identical language, to what council endorses part of the hubs plan and round the definition of harm reduction. It’s not an explicit, but having a highly supportive housing plan, we are fighting for the decriminalization of drug use. What it speaks to is really looking at evidence-based practices wherever possible, understanding there’s a continuum of care.

One method of recovery does not fit all. I think everyone has acknowledged that. But we’re really looking at what are the existing systems and policies that organizations create that become administrative barriers to someone moving indoors and seeking safe places. It’s when we talk about resident-led safety planning, it’s resident-informed safety planning.

It’s an acknowledgement that if someone is going to consume drugs because they’re battling with an act of addiction, how do we have them inform a safety plan so staff know when to look for the signs of someone that is not doing well? How do we understand what will work as an intervention for that individual? So we’re not trying to intervene against their will or against something that would be productive in helping them recover in that moment, either the moment of crisis or through their act of substance use. So to make it clear, we are not advocating or asking council to start to challenge legislation or to challenge the criminalization of drug use.

That is about one example. It is an extreme example for sure. But we’re really looking at what are the administrative barriers that get created sometimes? Artificial barriers that get created through some of existing policies that would prevent someone from being able to be successful in high sport of housing.

Councillor Stevenson. Thank you and through the chair. A few other things on the next page, it talks about damage deposits may be required in various sizes and rates catering to various income levels. And I’m just looking for some explanation on that because we’re talking about coming from encampments and I’m just wondering what various income levels we have and how a damage deposit might be useful in this case?

Mr. Estefoli. Again, it’s a difficult question to answer when you consider how many, when you think about 600 units and the amount of projects that will come forward, it would be dependent. One of the things that we discussed within the housing implementation table is if you had high density housing, you might have mixed acuity.

There might be folks that are precariously housed or at risk of becoming homeless that will be considered what we would call maybe moderate acuity along with folks that were serving that are higher acuity. So there is consideration for the fact that different projects might serve different populations or the fact that different populations might have different funding sources attached to them too. So that is a possibility to look at damage deposits if there is a supplement program that accounts for damage deposits. So that would help out with the performer of the proponent of the person supplying the highly supportive housing.

Councillor Stephens. Okay, thank you. I appreciate the details. Where it talks about guest management, which we hear a lot about issues regarding that.

It says here that guests where the resident has given permission for the guests to enter the building. This is on page 206. To enter the building, their unit or their common space regardless of intent or outcome. And given some of the concerning things I’m hearing about guest management and a lot of our buildings, I’m just wondering what’s the meaning behind that statement?

Mr. Asht, Colvoli. Through the chair, can I ask for further content that was surrounding that as I would have to pull that up? Councillor Stevenson.

Yes. So it is the definition under non-resident guest and visitor management. It says this function requires the establishments of guideline and procedures for managing guests and visitors and highly supportive housing. Guests are specific to a resident where the resident by association has given permission or access to the guest enter the building, their unit or their common space, regardless of their intent or outcome.

Guests may become unwanted and processes should be in place so that residents have support in removing guests who are no longer wanted. Does that clarify, Mr. Dickens, go ahead. Thank you, Chair, and I’ll start with this response and then pass it over to Mr.

Astolfi for any further context. So what this is saying is that regardless of the intent of a resident inviting someone into the space, they become a guest. So I invited you in. You were just going to visit a short term.

You’re not here to stay, right? Regardless, you’re now a guest in the building. You’re a guest in other people’s space, be it common space or so forth. So whether it’s just a drop-in or whether it’s somebody who you’ve invited to come and watch a movie with you for the night, that person is by definition a guest is what this is saying.

So regardless of the intent of why that person is entered into the building, they’re now your guest and we wanna make sure that we should have a process in place with that, if that resident starts to signal that that guest is unwanted, overstaying their welcome, that we would be able to support that resident in that guest management process. So it’s really just articulating that it doesn’t have to be a formal invitation. You are now my guest for the day. It could be somebody who you’ve held the door open for, you’ve invited in, I have to go grab a few things.

That becomes a guest of the living quarters and we wanna make sure that people understand what guest management looks like. Councillor Stevenson. Okay, thank you. So the last couple of questions are just about the draft operating budgets and it’s on page 216 and it talks about 18 units at a market rent of 1200 and then 12 units at 70% of average market rent.

I guess, again, I’m just a little surprised to see that in here as a draft operating budget on highly supportive housing for people who are coming out of high acuity homelessness. Can you just explain how we’ve got that level of income coming in for those rents? ‘Cause I just assumed that this was, you know, for people who really had very little income. I saw a couple of nodding heads over there.

So Mr. Dickens, I’ll let you direct the responses here. Thank you, Chair, and I appreciate that. I will hand this response over to Mr.

Stolfi, who has been instrumental in helping us draft this. Thank you. So to be clear, when you look at a performer on affordable housing or highly supportive housing, you have to have enough operating dollars to run your building, to run your program. Therefore, you have to have enough rental revenue to do so.

That’s when you look at the cost in that line, that is not including rent supplement or operating funding that would come to us. So there would be, however it plays out, there would be either a supplement attached to that, so that the base premise here is that the housing will always be affordable for the clients that come into highly supportive housing, but we still have to have a business plan that accounts for the fact that we have to operate the highly supportive housing, and I’ll defer to you. Mr. Dickens.

If I may, Chair, through you, just to expand a little bit on what was shared, an example would be if home and community care or Ministry of Health had dollars attached to an individual and those dollars indicated there’s a support component here for $1,200 a month in rent, that we would look to apply that to this performer in terms of those market rental units, as would other housing providers or housing support programs. So just to recognize there would be a mix, not necessarily coming out of the individual’s direct bank account, but looking at where those other subsidies are attached. Okay, thank you. Councillor Stevenson, I just wanna let you know before I start the clock again, ‘cause I know you had suggested you might entertain introducing an amendment.

You’ve got a minute and 30 seconds left. Okay, perfect. So my last question goes back to the beginning, on page 184, where it talks about at the February SPPC, Council approved funding for lending cares for the purpose of either offering resting space beds or housing supports. And it said that the opportunity for highly supportive housing building has emerged.

And I wondered if we could just hear sort of when and how that emerged. I did circulate something around to council to say, for me, I was surprised. I didn’t know that there was this consideration. And I will be bringing an amendment just to help fill the gap in terms of the rationale behind why we did that and a few other factors.

But if I could just hear a little bit of a story around that, I’d appreciate it and I’ll bring my amendment. Mr. Dickens. Thank you, Chair.

And through you, if there’s a gap in the rationale, I’m happy to try and close that gap today. Lending cares had been operating 15 resting space beds, which were beds that people would come and stay in for hours at a time. And there was some program criteria around. You could use it one night, but you couldn’t use it the next, and then you could come back.

Where the opportunity emerged in the rationale for shifting away from a program that doesn’t directly address or work to end homelessness. It works to support a person in need and in an acute situation, absolutely. The opportunity was there. The rationale is this gave us an opportunity to directly align to council’s approved whole of community system response plan, to create hubs and highly supportive housing.

So the opportunity was there to convert 15 temporary overnight resting space crash beds for lack of a better term into 24 highly supportive and permanent housing units. That is a direct alignment to the plan. That’s a great opportunity for us to shift away from programs that may perpetuate homelessness to programs that would look to end homelessness. It would allow us to get two dozen individuals that are sleeping unsheltered right now into safe, warm and supported housing units.

The work had been ongoing prior to the submission of our February report. Hence why, through consultation with the city manager at the time, we’d look to propose an ask of council for funding for either the continuation of resting spaces because we did not have the full details yet on what London cares and London Health Sciences Center and their lease agreements with the Horton Street property were where that landed and where that was at, or housing supports. Knowing that there were still conversations happening between the two parties and with ourselves. And so not as to sort of give false hope or to disclose more information than necessary.

So that was prior to the submission in early February to meet the reporting deadlines. Throughout that process, London Cares was able to get more clarity on their business direction, board support, more clarity on their lease agreements and more clarity through the discussions with the London Health Sciences Center around their continued participation and partnership in the expansion of these additional two dozen units. And that is why we were able to consult with procurement after the February committee report to ensure we haven’t violated the procurement policy and the indicated council has approved the funding for this or that. But you do need to report back publicly on what you’re actually doing with that money.

And that is why it’s in this report today. Councilor Stevenson. Thank you. I appreciate that and the this or that, like I reread the staff report and the only indication that I could see of the or that was the or housing supports on one line and in a long report.

So just wondering, so I circulated an amendment that I’d like to move right now and then I’d like to explain why I’m bringing this forward. Okay, so we’ll get you to read your amendment first. That civic administration be directed to report back at a future meeting of the strategic priorities and policy committee with A, the rationale for the switch from 15 temporary resting space beds at 448 Horton Street to 24 furnished highly supportive housing units at 362 Dundas Street. B, the cost breakdowns for this new program to update schedule one that was part of the February 6 report and or a draft operating budget per the new highly supportive housing plan.

C, recommendations to ensure that council approved funding arrangements are clear and accountable to specific outcomes. And D, expectations for sources of funding for future highly supportive housing units and a list of other conversions being considered. Is there a seconder for that, Councilor Perbal? Just based on what we just heard from Mr.

Dickens, personally I’m satisfied with point A, but certainly B, C, D, we might as well leave it, but I just want to add it. So Mr. Dickens is aware that I’m satisfied with this on-service rationale for A, thank you. So Councilor, I am not clear.

You are seconding. Second A, as is, okay. Councilor Stevenson, it’s been moved and seconded, so now you can introduce your rationale. And then I have Mayor Morgan next.

Thanks, yeah, so I’m bringing this forward because there was a change that wasn’t part of the previous staff report. And the previous staff report was to stabilize the existing shelter system while the hub systems and highly supportive housing was being set up. That was the intention of that staff report from what I could see. So in terms of A, I’m still interested to know how we’re gonna make up that shortfall of the 15 resting spaces.

But the reason for this is just to fill that gap that is missing in the lack of, well, in the change that happened, since that last staff report. So I really would love to hear why there’s not the need for those 15 temporary resting space beds anymore, because there is still, like we’re gonna lose 100 beds very soon, over 120. The cost breakdowns for this new program just to update schedule one, ‘cause it was previously done under the 15 resting spaces, or I’m happy to see the new draft operating budget that was just presented here be used, so we have the financial details that we know what we’re funding. And recommendations to just ensure that we are accountable here to what it is that we’re funding, and I don’t want to be funding things that are too vague.

I would really like to know how we can be a bit more clear on what it is that we’re saying yes to when we agree to funding. And then expectations for the sources of funding is because my understanding was the highly supportive housing units were gonna be provincially funded, not through the municipal tax dollars. And so this one has now come from actually a reserve fund, ‘cause we didn’t actually have the money for that full contract. And so I’m just wanting to know what expectations are going forward.

Are we now looking at municipally funding these highly supportive housing units? And are we looking at converting or losing more of these shelter beds to highly supportive housing? Which again, I would just like to know so that I can explain to the public when we make these changes. If it is a great thing, I would just love to hear that and understand it so that I can share it with the public.

Mayor Morgan. Yes, I wanted to listen to the Councilors rationale for making the motion, which I think is a very reasonable motion that I would have expected to hear at Community Protective Services Committee. As I look at our guests standing here presenting and asking for us to endorse a plan, which doesn’t have to do with the other decision being made. It is the framework for supportive housing.

So related, just wondering if the Chair thinks that this is more an appropriate discussion for the Committee to have there, rather than tie it to the approval of the framework for supportive housing at this time, because it’s asking to be amended to this series of recommendations. And I’m just not sure, like I’m looking at our guests. I’m like, I don’t even know what he would have to do with talking about that. So until I understand the rationale better, I would ask the Chair would consider ruling on the proper place to actually deal with this, not recognizing the Council’s right to raise these questions.

It feels very fair and should be done. I’m just wondering if this is the proper report to attach it to. Okay, just give me, appreciate that. Give me a moment to confer with the clerk, please.

Okay, before I make a ruling in consulting with the clerk, there are a couple of options that we could go down here. If a colleague does not feel that this is germane to the item that’s on the floor, a referral to the appropriate standing committee, which I believe the Mayor has identified as community and protective services, would still be in order, but that would be dependent on my ruling. It’s not dependent on my ruling, a referral can always be made. The other option is I can rule that this is germane to the item that’s on the floor.

And in consultation with the clerk, I’m going to exercise my prerogative to allow the councilor who has put this on the floor, a brief rationale as to why you’re tying this to this item, because I do think that the Mayor has a valid point in terms of the motion that’s before us on this item is to endorse the framework and receive the report. It’s not to approve the 25 highly supportive housing units. And so I do believe that the tie to this item is a little bit thin, but I’m going to give you the opportunity to provide a rationale for why you don’t feel it is before I make a ruling. Thank you, I appreciate that.

I submitted this letter as an added agenda item. I expected it to have its own space on the agenda as did the LTC and the LPSB letter. I was surprised to see it as B on this item, and I was okay to go along with that as the clerk’s prerogative, but otherwise it should be an added agenda on this item. I don’t see why it would be referred to community and productive services when the February six report that I’m referring to was an SPPC.

So I’m happy to have it on its own as an agenda item or to have it here, whatever the chair decides, but this was not my request. Okay, thank you for sharing that. And I’m going to ask colleagues to just give me a moment to confer with the clerk again. Quick consultation with the clerk this time.

Because it is relevant to a previous SPPC report counselor, we can entertain this today at this meeting, but I am going to rule that it is not tied directly to this item in terms of receiving the framework and the presentation. So if you are prepared to introduce this after we vote on a receive the presentation and framework as a standalone motion, it would still be tied to this item on the agenda. So we’ll deal with it immediately after the staff recommendation, but we’ll deal with it as a separate motion rather than as amendment. And if you’re okay— - I’m fine with that.

Okay, and I see no objections from the mayor. So that’s my ruling. So we’re gonna return to the main motion, as has been moved and seconded, the staff recommendation from the report. Once we dispense with that, then we’ll proceed to allow the counselor to introduce a new motion.

Do we have anyone else on the speakers list? Actually, I did have Councillor Preble still on my speakers list that I hadn’t gotten to. Councillor Preble, you’re next. Thank you very much, answer the chair.

I didn’t have a question regarding this section 7.0, moving forward. And it stated that the procurement will have three annual windows where potential partners can submit a proposal. And also that these potential partners, they will be up to the three years on the list. And I was just wondering what’s the significance, the advantage of these two items, thank you.

There is a reason we have Mr. Felberg with us today, because he’s going to field that question for you. Thank you, Mr. Chair.

So what we did, when we went out in the fall with our affordable housing development partner procurement, what we did was we established a period where folks could apply. And in our first window, which closed just this past January, we had over 80 applications for that affordable housing RFPQ. We then, that has since closed, and now we’re working on the second stage RFPs to bring those forward to council in order to action affordable housing. One of the components of that includes supportive housing providers and expertise for those folks that deliver affordable, sorry, supportive housing through those RFPs and we’re building those RFPs right now.

The second window, so we now, those folks have been pre-qualified. They are now on a list that we can go to and assign that RFP and allow them to bid on that RFP as we start bringing forward those projects. We then open a second window this fall and then a further window next year where more folks can be added to our list. So it allows us a bunch of flexibility or a lot of flexibility in order to work with our partners in the community and deliver on new housing.

Councillor. Thank you. And I don’t think, just in case I missed it, but the maximum three years that we cap it, they will be on the list, the potential partners up to three years only. Mr.

Chair, Mr. Chair, yes, that’s correct. So we want to be able to go through that period for three years, short list those folks, work with them and then we’ll go back out. It also aligns with the funding period for the roadmap, which completes in 2026.

Councillor Pervall. Thank you very much, no more questions? Any other speakers on the main motion? Councillor Stevenson, just to advise you, you’ve got about 30 seconds left of your time on the original motion.

I just want to request that we vote on A and B separately. We can absolutely do that. And we have no other speakers, so I’m going to ask the clerk to open the vote once they have it ready, ‘cause they are going to have to separate it on part A, which is the framework in the staff report. Was in the vote motion carries 14 to one.

And now I’ll ask the clerk to open the vote on part B, and this will include it being noted that we received the presentation. Was in the vote motion carries 15 to zero. Thank you, colleagues. So before we move on to the master mobility plan, we’ve got Councillor Stevenson, who wishes to introduce a new motion regarding the health and homelessness whole of community system response, highly supportive housing plan.

So we’ll go to that, Councillor, we’ve got your motion already in E-Scribe, ‘cause you’ve forwarded it, you’ve given your rationale. So I’m going to look to go great to speakers, but yes, I will entertain a brief preface on this. Thank you. I just wanted to explain again, sort of the real driving factor behind this is for information for the public, and for the Councillor to be able to reassure the public when they’re concerned when 15 spaces are lost, when the drop-in at Lening Cares is talking about the ending.

And so the more information that I can have as to why this is better than what we originally had will really help me as a Councillor advocate for the decision that city makes. And then to just catch us up on what is the cost breakdown on the new venture and what we can expect going forward in terms of this. Okay, Councillor McAllister, I have you next. Thank you, and through the chair, and I appreciate the intention in terms of what the council has put before us, all supported just in terms of the rationale of getting that information.

But I do just wanna be clear that I support staff in terms of what they’re trying to do. This was something that obviously came up, switching from the 15 to the 25. And so I wanna give staff the opportunity to speak a bit more to that, because I don’t think they did anything untoward here. I think they have been following our direction in terms of trying to find those highly supporting sport of spaces.

So I just wanna give staff the opportunity to clarify their intention, because I think that they were following our direction. I appreciate getting more information. I understand the public appetite for that, so supportive of that. But I do wanna give staff the opportunity to respond to that in a more fulsome manner.

I don’t know if Mr. Dickens is prepared to respond anymore than he already has today, given that we’re gonna ask him to report back to a future meeting. But I will go to him if he’s got anything to add in the moment. Through you, Mr.

Chair, again, what we would particularly to committee is that this is a direct alignment to a council and doors plan. This is an opportunity where there were a lot of moving parts with multiple community partners at the time of writing the report. But this is a direct connection to a better system, to a system council. And the community have put their support behind, and it is a great opportunity to bring more highly supportive housing units online in quick order.

Thank you. Councillor McAllister. Yeah, thank you to the Chair. And I appreciate that response, Mr.

Dickens, ‘cause really that’s how I view this. You were responding to what we had asked to try to move people into a better system. So I appreciate that, I understand in terms of what the council was looking for. So I’m willing to support that.

But I just wanna acknowledge that the staff had, or they’re the best intentions in terms of finding that, those spots. Thank you. Councillor Pribble. Thank you, Mr.

Chair. I agree with the direct alignment. I have no issue with that whatsoever. But again, if there is a change, I just wanna see the sustainability and the financial planning for such initiative.

And I believe that it is, and what I heard so far, I do believe that it’s gonna be, even though we’ll be losing some bets, but overall in terms of ending homelessness, it is the better path in my opinion. Even though he has the questionable as provincial municipal funding for bottom line is, there was a change and I just would like to see the sustainability and financials attached to it. That’s all. Thank you, Councillor Frank.

Thank you, yes. And again, I appreciate the intentions of the Councillors mentioned by Councillor McAllister, but I won’t be supporting this motion just because I feel like a decision was made by staff. It’s an alignment with what we’re doing. I don’t need to have every single reason for every single decision that staff made, every single time they make a decision.

And I find it to be a bit repetitive, especially when it’s already in line with our strategic plan. Staff are busy enough. I’m not really nothing material in my opinion would change if we got this information. I think this information can be sought by asking staff for it in an email.

And if somebody’s asking you in your ward, I’d like to have this information. I think that you would ask an email to staff and then you take the information, you provide it back. I haven’t had any residents ask for any of this information, so I’m not waiting for it. So I’m not gonna be supporting this ‘cause I think staff are busy enough.

And it’s already an alignment with our strat plan. And I really appreciate the work of staff to make this possible. Councillor Ferrera, next. Thank you, thank you, Chair.

So I guess with the same sentiments with Councillor Frank, I appreciate the intent from the Councillor. I do feel that staff has answered questions A or A and B pretty sufficiently here. And I also haven’t been getting too much feedback from my residents asking about the details of this. For part D, I am a little bit interested on part D, but I would like to get maybe a little bit more clarification on part D and the intent for that from the Councillor if she’s willing.

And if we could, I guess, just thinking ahead, if I do end up supporting part D, can we split those up for the vote? Yes, Councillor, and I’m gonna take this opportunity to ask what parts you would like separated because I am getting the sense that there may be some desire to separate out and vote on A separately from the rest. Do you want the other three clauses, B, C, and D, all separated out separately, or is there a grouping that you were thinking? It would just be part D that I’m interested in looking into, so you can keep part A, B, and C for my purposes.

You don’t need to split those ones up. Okay, well, I’ll indicate that it’s actually my intention to vote on part A separately, personally. So what I’m hearing is A and D need to be called separately, B and C can be called together. I’m just gonna look to colleagues to see if anyone wants to indicate if they want that done differently before we proceed with the speaker’s list.

Councillor Raman. Thank you, I’d like them all called separately. I don’t understand what C is. So we will ask the clerks to prepare to call all four of those clauses as individual clauses.

And with that, I’m gonna return to the speaker’s list. Councillor Ferriero, you were asking about separating, but I haven’t treated that as yielding your time yet, so did you have other comments you want to make, or are you good for now? No comments from me, but I am interested in hearing more discussion on part D, just for greater clarity. Okay, I have Councillor Hopkins next, and then Councillor Trussow, and then Councillor Layman, and then Councillor Stevenson again.

Councillor Hopkins. Yeah, thank you, Mr. Chair, and I will not be supporting the motion, regardless if it is A, B, C, or D. I appreciate the Councillors’ advocacy around homelessness, housing.

I know this information is really important. I’m satisfied. Right now, we’ve had over a 30-minute conversation around this, I’ve received some information from staff. I think there’s also opportunities for each and every one of us to follow up with staff, and get the information that’s being asked here, so I will not be supporting this motion.

Councillor Trussow. I think it’s been said by the other Councillors. I won’t be supporting this. I’m usually a person who likes to get more detail, more information from staff, but I really think it’s been well covered here, so I will not be supporting any part of this.

Councillor Layman. Yeah, thank you, myself, on the other hand, would like to get some more information on funding, and cost breakdowns, et cetera. What I would just want to ask a question of staff through you, Chair, what’s the difference between this and a hub, Mr. Dickens?

Thank you, Chair, and through you, as defined, the hubs are meant for some time limited acute intervention, so getting folks coming in that may, we have a combination of respite and transitional beds, so folks that need to come in for hours at a time, sort of those resting-space-style beds, receive that acute supports, their basic needs met, what do you know, food, water, washroom, shower, the transitional beds might be, I’m staying at the hub a little bit longer, I need some, you know, I might have some medical care that I need, or I might have some primary care needs, I might be connected to a worker there, might spend a little more time starting to stabilize, get that wraparound support, build some of those relationships, and get myself to a point where I would be ready and suitable to move into some highly supportive housing. The highest part of housing is potentially someone’s forever home. It could be where a person lives. The scalability of that support system may ebb and flow, it may change over time, it may be a high level of support when they first come in and it may scale down.

People too, as they move into highly supportive housing over time, may self-select that it’s time to move out of that environment, move out of those spaces, and live more independently with some tertiary supports in place, or no supports at all. So that would be the significant difference between this, is that this is housing, this is someone’s apartment, it’s where they live, but different than what exists now, the supports would be prominent and on site all the time. Councillor Layman. Thank you, that was important for me to get that distinction between the two, I understand what we’re going now, so appreciate it, thanks.

Councillor Stevenson, and then back to Councillor McAllister. Thank you, just to clarify again, the previous staff report doesn’t reflect what actually happened, and so I think that in the public record, I’m just asking for the staff report piece that was included February 6 to be updated, so that the public has access to it, it’s over $2 million, I think it’s worth the staff time just to update the budget, the location, what it’s doing, and to give us a heads up on future things, I think that’s a great thing to have for the public, and for future Councillors who are going back looking to see what we did, because I know I spend a lot of time going back, and I would certainly appreciate to have this information on the public record, so that’s what I’m looking for. Thank you, Councillor Colleagues, I just want to ask, I’m starting to hear some circular arguments or points here, so if we can just stay on new points that we want to raise, please, Councillor McAllister, and then Councillor ramen. Thank you, through the chair, I’ll be brief.

No, I just wanted to take this opportunity to clarify in terms of listening to my colleagues, I’m supportive of B and D, ‘cause I do understand in terms of updating that, and D, to Councillor Ferris’ point, I am curious just to know what we’re considering for future use, I do think A has been answered, apologies to Mr. Dickens for having to repeat that for me again, but I wanted to give him the opportunity to explain, just to be very clear, and C, I’m also unsure about that, so I appreciate my colleagues asking for these to be voted on separately, thank you. Okay, I’ve got Councillor ramen, and then the Mayor on the list, before I go to our next speakers though, I want to actually go to Mr. Dickens, ‘cause we’re breaking things apart, we’re calling some separate votes, and I want to make sure that from his perspective, he has some clarity on what we’re asking him to report back on if portions or any of these are passed, so Mr.

Dickens, based on what we have before us right now, are there any clauses in these motions that you need some greater clarity on before you can confirm whether you can come back to us with the information? Thank you, Chair, and I actually appreciate that opportunity to seek some clarity. I do feel like perhaps we’ve addressed A, I’ll let the committee decide that, the cost breakdowns and B, that is the exercise staff undertake when we do contracting. When we enter into a contract with a service provider, we get those performance, we get those operational budgets, and that is a transactional thing we do at the staff level.

So if just, I think that we could report back on it certainly, but that is something we do between the provider and civic administration as part of our day-to-day business. Also as part of the day-to-day business, I believe is covered under C, but I would seek more clarity around what council-proof funding arrangements in the understanding that they need to be clear and accountable to specific outcomes. Again, that comes under the very program specific areas. It would be part of the expectations of the funding agreement that there’s outcomes in place.

So I’m just not sure where we’re not clear or where we’re not being accountable and what those specific outcomes, are those outcomes that council will be setting, or are they the outcomes that we have in place between civic administration and the organization. And lastly, Chair, and I thank you for this opportunity is the clarity around what the requirement for staff to report back with a list of other conversions that are being considered. We did not know, for example, that there was a retirement home being considered to be converted to highly supportive housing. There will be other projects that we are not aware of.

And I would not want to be perceived as being disingenuous by reporting back saying, we’re not aware of any. And then my phone rings the following week and somebody has an opportunity to do these things. The other piece is some of these things may be confidential in nature and there’s been a lot of great amount of work on into them. And they’re not at the point where we could even say confidently that they’re a proposed conversion.

In fact, it could jeopardize that work. And then we would be consulting Ms. Pollard and our legal team around how we start separating out D into in-camera reports. So I would just look for clarity on that.

The other sort of big picture on D is that we, and I think through the endorsement of the whole community system response plan is we actually hope there are more conversions in the future. That is why the community has endorsed this plan is to create hubs and highly supportive housing. Fully expect that we will have shelter operators that may be enticed in looking at ways that they can convert their space. London cares, for example, no longer wanted to operate the resting spaces.

That is a key consideration of their board and of their management to make that decision. That is a site that has led to some significant staff injuries and assaults and complaints from the neighborhood. And it was an opportunity for them to switch as well. So I just think in general, we hope there are more conversions in the future that what exists today, that system, will continue to convert to a new model of care to help address our highest acuity population in our community.

So any clarity on BC and D and how that’s different than what we already do now and more definition on D would be greatly appreciated. Thank you, Mr. Dickens. I’m gonna leave that with Councillor Stevenson to let that have a moment because I do have a couple of others on the list.

So that way, if there’s some additional clarity, I will come back to you if you want to address that before we go to a vote on this. But I do appreciate Mr. Dickens because it doesn’t help us. If we pass something that you don’t know quite what our intentions are for you to come back with.

So I appreciate you providing some clarity on that. I have Councillor Ramen next and then the mayor. Thank you. Your question actually was my question, was the round clarifying and understanding a bit more about the motion itself and what was the deliverable or actionable item that would come back to us.

From what I heard, B is the only one that I’d be looking to support. And with D, yes, I would worry about the same that we would be too soon to announce or to consider things that maybe aren’t for public consumption yet. And that these conversations are ongoing. I do appreciate that the community does desire to want to know sooner rather than later.

And I actually think that was the intent of the communication that was put out about this conversion. So I think part of that is also how we communicate publicly these changes. And so I think we’re learning as we’re going and as we continue to learn, we’ll do things differently. Thank you.

Thank you, Councillor. And you kind of won the lottery today because I forgot to start timing you on that, but I know you were under your five minutes. So I will go to the mayor next. Yes, so I appreciate the dialogue and conversation so far.

So on these, for A, I don’t need to, I’m not going to support A, I don’t need that information. I would say we had London Cares and London Health Sciences Center partner on the first, I think 24 beds, 25 beds at that site without any municipal involvement. And I’m not surprised that London Cares, having been involved with an incredible partner like them and seeing the work that’s being done there wants to shift some of their focus to being involved in the supportive housing space in a bigger way. I think they’re doing a good job on that site and this is a great way for them to expand it.

It also has the opportunity for us. And I will say the province too because there’s some provincial money associated with this to come in as partners on this site, which I think is going to be a very transformative project in the long run for the city. I actually don’t have much of a problem with B, like I just said, if we’re a funding partner, I think we should generally understand how our dollars are being spent and how they’re contributing to the overall success of that particular project. So I probably support B.

See, I don’t have any concerns with the way that council approved funding arrangements are being executed. In fact, how they’re accountable to specific outcomes, I think is very clear. We just had a giant presentation from the system foundations table on exactly how the work on highly supportive housing is going to be linked to outcomes through a series of reporting. So I mean, we just had a long discussion, a long presentation on that.

I think that that’s kind of covered through the work of the system foundations table on how these sorts of investments are going to be linked to outcomes and results for those impacted in all of London, as it was said in the presentation. And D, I share that colleague’s concerns with D. I’m not sure if whether that’s in-camera or public. Frankly, I think it aligns with the goals that we have and the work that we’ve approved as a council to expect that there would be more conversions of highly supportive housing spaces.

And in fact, Mr. Dickens was quite clear. Some of these do not involve municipal money at all. And so it is difficult to predict as more and more partners across the community, whether it be London Cares, London Health Sciences Center, or a group of developers, or a private donor want to come forward and support a plan.

It is going to be very difficult for our staff to have expectations on where the sources of funding for highly supportive housing are going to come from. They’re going to come from, as they have in the past, from all available possibilities, including those who are willing to devote their own operational resources towards this important work, work that the municipality’s done, work of provincial investments and federal investments in some part, and of course, private donor investments. So I think it would be very difficult to speculate on where those come from in the future. So I’m not sure that D is something that I need to support at this time because I think it’s not gonna lead to anything that achieves any sort of goal for me.

So but I get back to, I’ll support B. I think that that’s a reasonable ask even where a funding partner. Thank you, Your Worship. So that, other than Councillor Stevenson, who I promised I was gonna come back to, right now I don’t have anybody else on the list.

So I’m gonna go back to Councillor Stevenson. You did hear Mr. Dickens indicate where he might need a little more clarity on the intent of the motions. I’m not sure that we have to amend the language.

I think that if you want to indicate what the intent is, he can take that as the direction but I’m gonna give you an opportunity just to provide a little clarity on that. Thank you, I appreciate that because some of what is being said was not my intention here. So in terms of A, I am sure given the decision that was made that 24 highly supportive housing units is better than the 15 temporary resting spaces and I was looking for some reassurance because anyway, I’m gonna leave A. For B, definitely we would give in program details, financial details for all of the other things.

So I would assume that it’s not anything that’s proprietary or anything. It’s just an update to what lending cares gave us for the 15 temporary resting beds. And for C, like when we’re talking about clear and accountable to specific outcomes and then the references, the answers here are talking about highly supportive housing but I’m not talking about highly supportive housing. I’m talking about the shelter arrangements that were done because what came to us said that the whole community looked at it and these were essential to maintain the stability of the system while the hub and the whole community was being set up.

It was so critical that we dipped into the reserve fund by $4 million to maintain these critical spaces and then we get told that it’s better to have it over here. I am totally open to that. I would just really like to hear that so I can reassure the people who are desperately in need of those services and I can explain to them why we said these 15 temporary resting spaces were critical and now they’re not. I’m happy to hear that answer and to be able to share it with my ward.

But I have had a lot of concerns about the vagueness of what comes to us for funding. We get told it’s 24/7, they’re not 24/7. So I would just love to have some recommendations given this fluid and changing environment that we’re in. I’m sure I don’t even begin to understand the complexity of it, how we can have more communication to staff or to a council even via briefing notes or updates or something so that we’re better able to communicate and advocate on behalf of what city is doing.

And when I talk about conversions, I’m talking about emergency shelter beds, emergency shelter spaces being converted. That’s my concern, not all of the other work that is being done for the highly supportive housing, it’s this was a loss of critical emergency shelter beds or so I understood. And so maybe, and here today I’m hearing that hopefully a lot of it will be converted. If that is true, that’s again fine with me, just explain to me so that I can explain to the public and reassure them the path that we’re on.

Since last year, we’ve talked about building a bridge as we walk across it. I understand that still what we’re doing, we need to understand. I as a councilor need to understand the direction that we’re moving, the rationale for why we’re moving in that direction so that I can be on board and I can support the city. Councilor, I’m gonna stop you there ‘cause that does hit your five minutes.

But I think that what you’ve said is you are not asking about conversions of other buildings, you’re asking about how many shelter beds would be converted into housing. And so I think that that provides some clarity to Mr. Dickens in terms of what you’re seeking for information back on that part D and I saw him nodding his head on that. So I think that that helps provide some clarity to his questions about what you were looking for to come back.

So I wanna stop you there. I’m gonna look to see if there’s any other speakers to this, Councilor McAllister. Thank you. You’re on your third go and we’re at two minutes and 20 seconds of your time used so far.

Okay, thank you through the chair and I try to keep my comments as tight as possible. I just wanna round out kind of my thought process on this. I appreciate all the conversations that we’ve been having. I’m very open to having my mind changed when these come before us ‘cause it didn’t really have a lot of time before end to prepare for this.

So I appreciate back and forth between my colleagues and staff to the points that have already been raised. I think B is the one that I’m still in support of. Recognize the conversation we had around D. Even now I’m not really supportive of it.

I just think this is kind of a classic case of, I understand a lot of the intention behind what the Council is trying to get at. I just don’t think it was refined enough and maybe that’s just ‘cause, you know, not enough unfortunate, like specific language went into this. And so I think it’s a bit too vague in terms of offering direction to staff and a lot of it. So for that reason, I’ll just be supporting B but again, appreciate all the conversation between my colleagues and staff on this.

Thank you. Thank you, Councillor. And you still managed to save yourself about a minute and five seconds there. So I don’t have anyone else on the speakers list right now.

So there’s been a lot of conversation on this. I’m gonna ask if our budget chair will take the chair just for a moment and I’m gonna offer a couple of thoughts quickly since I haven’t spoken on this. Thank you, recognizing the chair. Thank you, Madam Presiding Officer.

So when it comes down to the four clauses here, A’s, I’m satisfied with the answer I’ve already had on A. B, I am always willing to get financial schedules back and take a look and see and I think that that’s not, I recognize those are transactional but I don’t think that it ever hurts for us to get those back and cast an eye over them. On C, I think that really this ultimately comes down to us as individuals when we approve any motion that we pass if we’re satisfied with what we expect the outcomes to be. And I think that maybe this goes beyond actually this item if there’s a desire to change, procurement policy, expected outcome things, I think that’s a broader discussion than just this.

And with D, I will just say, the more we can get people housed and not be reliant on resting spaces, that is to me good news. The fact that the number is not a one-to-one ratio, that it’s actually 24 for 15, makes me happy. And as colleagues will recall, I did not support all of the resting space beds in the first place because I do think that we need to stop jumping from emergent need to emergent need to emergent need and focus more on the long-term goals of getting people housed in a more effective way. So for me, and I just spoke to this in the last cycle when I did not support a further funding extension and the fact that we’re getting funding extensions misaligned with end dates and things.

For me, the fact that we’re able to move the resting space beds into permanent supportive housing is a good news story. And I’m super happy that we’re better than a one-to-one ratio. You don’t get that very often, frankly. So D is not one that I’m going to support, but I do support B.

I think that getting those financials back is always important. And I think that, you know, that’s where we have a role to cast an eye over, to make sure that we’re getting the ROI that we’re comfortable with, that the sources of funding and everything still continue to match up. And I will also say, I know that this is always a moving target. And to Mr.

Dickens’ point, that his phone could ring. I mean, we could adjourn at 4.30. I don’t think we’re going to get there. But we could adjourn at 4.30.

And his phone could ring at 4.45 with a new project. So it’s always hard to keep those up-to-date for us. I appreciate that. So those are my comments.

Madam Chair, I’m going to support B on this one. Thank you. That was two minutes and 30 seconds of your speaking time. And I have no further speakers in the list.

Thank you for giving me the chair back. It’s all yours. Thank you for that. And for advising me, I have no one else looking to see if there’s anyone else before we start to call the votes.

Seeing none, I’m going to ask the clerks to start. And we’re going to open with clause A. Those in the vote, motion fails 2 to 13. We will now move to clause B.

Councillor Stevenson. I vote yes. Noating the vote. Was yes, closing the vote.

Motion carries, 10 to 5. We will now open the vote on clause C. Councillor Trussell, closing the vote. Motion is lost, 3 to 12.

And finally, colleagues, I’ll have the clerks open clause D. Councillors, Pribble and Layman. Vote no. Thank you, closing the vote.

Motion is lost, 2 to 13. Thank you, colleagues. So that completes item 4.3. 4.4— I see your hand, Councillor McAllister, I’ll come to you in a moment.

Item 4.4 is another item which I expected we may have a significant amount of discussion around. We also have three requests for delegation status, which can take up to five minutes each. So I am going to suggest, as we have been at this for almost three hours, if colleagues might want to move a brief biobrief, break, there are some snacks for Councillors. So I’m looking for a motion for— I’m open to what you want, 10, 15.

Councillor McAllister, was that what you had your hand up for? I’m going to go to you first, since you were— how long would you like, Councillor? I’m OK with 10 minutes. And that’s seconded by Councillor Ferrera.

By hand, all those in favor? Motion carries. We are recessed for 10 minutes. We will be back at 355.

All right, colleagues, we’re going to resume meeting. Councillor Palosa is going to be switching to virtual. She is heading home, so she will rejoin us as soon as she’s able to log in from home. So I just wanted to advise colleagues of that.

We have quorum, so we’re going to resume now with item 4.4, which is the Master Mobility Plan 2050 Target Share. I’m going to go to Ms. Share first for some— you get to play double duty today. You get to be the Deputy City Manager and the Acting City Manager at the same time.

So I’m going to go to you for a brief overview. Colleagues, I want to note that we have requests for delegation for three individuals. So I’m going to look for a motion to accept the delegations after we’ve had the presentation from Ms. Share.

Thank you, Mr. Deputy Mayor. And I will warn it is not a presentation, just a few introductory comments. Council seeing this report again after deferral in November of 2023, when the 2050 mode share targets were deferred to a future meeting of SPPC to be aligned with the land use assessment report.

An update report on that matter was considered at PAC last week. And while that report did not recommend an increase to the built area boundary residential intensification target now, both staff in planning as well as engineering continue to recommend option 3 is the mode share target or the ultimate planning horizon for the mobility master plan, which is 2050. There’s no challenge with those alignments because of the long time frame we’re considering as part of the MMP. So what I share is that future councils will have the opportunity to evaluate progress and consider updates to the MMP several times between now and 2050.

They will also see and have the opportunity to vote upon plans and decisions that impact both modal choice as well as intensification. Because those two things are not the only things that influence each other. There are a number of other factors that help us achieve both targets that are set by council. So staff ultimately do continue to recommend option 3 because it ultimately unlocks the potential for increased intensification in the future where it’s appropriate based on the servicing capacity in place and the choices Londoners may wish to make about where they want to live and how they wish to get around.

I would strongly suggest that we do make to make a decision on this today. If not, we will not be prepared to have the project lists we require in January of 2026 in order to be part of the 2028 D.C. bylaw. We will continue to inform that bylaw based on the recommendations of the Smart Moves Transportation Master Plan, which is over a decade old.

And I think that is problematic for a rapidly growing city. So thank you for a little extra time on a very busy agenda. Our team is here to answer any questions you may have. Thank you, Ms.

Share. Colleagues, before we move on to questions on this, as I indicated, we have three requests for delegation. We have Mr. Wallace, Ms.

Podge, and Mr. Buckle. I’m gonna look for a motion to approve all three delegations together. Councillor, trust out, and seconded by Councillor Cudi.

And we will ask the clerk to open the vote on that for all three delegates. Councillors van Mirberg and Palosa. Oh, yes. Thank you, noting a yes vote.

One more call, Councillor Palosa. No indication, marking as absent. Close in the vote. Motion carries, 14 to zero.

Colleagues, we have two delegates in person in the gallery. And we have one delegate who’s joined us online. So I’m gonna go to the online delegate first, Mr. Buckle.

Welcome to SPPC. If you are prepared, we are ready to hear your delegation. You will have five minutes. Okay, thank you, Mr.

Chair. Thank you for this opportunity to address the Strategic Priorities and Policy Committee. My name is Ralph Buckel. I’m a retired mechanical engineering professor and also an avid cyclist.

I’m the Chair of the Master of Mobility Plan Subcommittee of the Integrated Transportation Community Advisory Committee. Part of the mandate of ITCAC is to provide feedback and advice regarding all matters related to transportation. ITCAC reports to the Civic Works Committee. The London Mobility Master Plan is perhaps the most important current transportation and issue of in London.

It will dictate spending priorities for the next several decades. The proposed mode share targets will require probably hundreds of millions of dollars in road expansion by 2050 to accommodate about a 20% net increase in the number of cars on the road according to the plan. To date, little information about the Master Mobility Plan has been provided to ITCAC. Several reports were submitted to the Civic Works Committee before being presented to ITCAC for comment and review.

The current mode share chart report that is being presented today is unchanged from the reports submitted in October 2023. ITCAC has not had an opportunity to respond or review any of these reports prior to their presentation to CWC and now SPPC. Normally, we have only a couple of days to review them typically through our subcommittee structures. ITCAC has reviewed all MMP reports and has provided detailed feedback and recommendations.

To our knowledge, none of these have been acknowledged or addressed and we feel that I’m speaking for my colleagues on the committee as well, that our feedback is largely being ignored. The MMP reports claim that option three targets are ambitious and can only be achieved by aggressive intensification. However, there is little analysis provided to support these claims. There is an assumption that London is a car-centric city and the changing mode share will be difficult.

However, even the option three targets are similar to current mode share in other Canadian cities and close to mode share target in London in previous years. Notably, the proposed option three mode share target is comparable to the mode share for Ottawa in the year 2011. We believe that the mode share targets are not nearly ambitious enough and we do not accept the rationale presented in the staff reports. We argue that much more ambitious mode share targets are possible today and there is strong evidence that the majority of Londoners already live within about a 15 minute walking or biking distance for most amenities.

To provide some further evidence, data from the 2016 travel survey shows that 70% of trips in London are shorter than seven kilometers, which is about a 20 minute bike ride. Over 95% of trips are within a 40 minute bike ride. This is typical of most so-called car-centric North American cities. For short cycling trips, cycling is not much lower than driving and in many cases it’s even faster.

Data also shows that over 85% of Londoners own or have access to a car and about 75% of trips are by car, less than 2% of trips are by bike. This is also typical of North American cities. If we want to meet our climate change targets, we must persuade car owners to ride a bike instead of driving for short trips. This is a challenge since once there’s a car in the driveway, it becomes the default mode for every trip regardless of distance or purpose.

So the question is perhaps we can persuade some drivers to make some of their trips by foot or on bike. Is this a reasonable goal? Has this been analyzed or modeled? How can we encourage walking, cycling, and discourage driving?

If we could get half of drivers to make half of their trips by bike instead of driving, we would be a long way to meet a much more ambitious targets. If we could reduce car mode share to 50% by 2050, this would roughly offset population increase and there will be no net increase in the number of cars on the road. 30 seconds. So as a result, hundreds of millions of dollars could be saved in unneeded road capacity expansion projects.

If mode share can be reduced even more, then unneeded road capacity could be repurposed to support transit and active transportation. Are these realistic goals? As a committee, we think they are. Thank you for listening.

Thank you, sir, and right on time, I appreciate you keeping to your five minutes there. Moving to our next delegate, I see Mr. Wallace is at the mic in the upper left, my upper left, so we’ll go to Mr. Wallace, and then we’ll go to Ms.

Hodge next. Mr. Wallace, go ahead. Thank you, Mr.

Chair, and I want to thank you, committee for allowing us to speak to you today. So Mr. Wallace, sorry, can you tilt your mic up so that we can hear you better down here? You’re very quiet, which is not normal for you.

That’s not normal for me, how’s that? Is that better? That is much more like your normal voice, sir. Thank you, thank you, Mr.

Chair. I want to thank the committee for allowing for some delegations on this particular topic here today. I’m going to start with my recommendations first, and then my rationale, just make sure I don’t use up my five minutes. So we’re recommending that this report be received for information, and then in addition to that, that staff be directed at the time when the actual land needs assessment comes back for your discussion and review, and whatever it proposes that a review that should be done at the same time, that is being done on the soil and water service capacity within the bill tree.

Boundary be available. I review the policy changes that would be required under the London plan to need to support increased intensification opportunities as outlined in this report. Review the option for different mode splits, for different areas of the city. The poster child for mobility splits, Amsterdam, I believe, if I’m reading Dutch correctly, as the community broken up into different segments with different modal splits for different splits, and I’ll get to that when I get there.

And finally, additional public input, we believe is required. Now let me start from the first, not the reasoning, the reasoning. So we submit that the MMP report is premature. The November resolution says ask for the report to be aligned, come back at the same time as the land needs assessment.

What you saw last week was an update. It is not the land needs assessment. The position of that is undermining the work that your staff and our industry are doing on the land’s needs assessment process. That was not the land’s needs assessment.

And I think it’s inappropriate to position that report on the 19th that way. So I do think that the land’s needs assessment should be, when it’s fully completed, should be considered at the same time as the mobility master plan. The intensification targets and alignment 2.2 of this report are just not feasible. You know, I sent you a picture of what’s in the land plan of the urban growth boundary, the city boundary and the PAV.

It’s all, it’s there. It’s just not achievable. The report require a tremendous number of changes, not only to the, in our view, the boundary of the PAV, which was from 2016, but you kind of understand, it’s a current commitment that you’ll be making to a huge change in how the city develops. If you want this, these kind of intensification numbers in the built-in boundary, the low-ranging fruit has been taken out by our industry.

We don’t build aspirations. We build houses and homes. This target numbers would start us to, you requiring us to start with a bulldozer and start docking down houses in areas, like Springbud Drive, and taking up those homes that are around forever, single-family homes, and then starting to put in either walkups, townhouses, four-story buildings. It’s a change, and if this council wants to do that, that intensification target needs to be paid attention to.

If that’s what you think, that’s what intensification is. It’s an actual change to the neighborhoods. And we’re happy to build it, but we need council who will be able to support that kind of change. If you know what I mean from a neighbor perspective.

So water capacity needs to be, you need to have it. You can’t make a decision without it. Just because there’s pipes in the ground doesn’t mean there’s capacity, you as a council, this council has turned down sites in the PAB because there isn’t capacity, sewer and water, to be able to build. You need to make those change.

And if you are going to make that change, you need to find out how you’re going to pay for that investment to make that happen. And the province may help you building faster fund? 30 seconds. - Okay.

Two more items. The London Plan. The London Plan does not support intensification in the neighborhoods place time. You need to make changes.

Look what you can build there. You can build single detached, semi detached, duplex, townhouses, a triplex and a fourplex and a low rise apartment, which is four stories or less, maximum six with the light. If you’re really lucky, it’s not actually four stories only when feasible by our organization, based on what we’re building. And finally, the amount of input you’ve had on this from the general public is very small.

The number’s up and I manage your time. And I really thank you. I’m asking you to get more information before I make a decision. Thank you.

Thank you. And we’re going to go next to Ms. Hodge. And I just want to let colleagues know, just as we do at planning.

I’m noting the questions being asked on a couple of these items. And I will go to staff for some answers on those before we engage in our debate. So Ms. Hodge, welcome.

As you know, you’ve presented to us before. You have five minutes. And if you’d like to go ahead, the floor is yours. Thank you.

And to echo everyone else’s comments. Thanks for approving our delegations here today, because I do firmly believe that mode chair targets are a foundational issue. And as Mr. Wallace has indicated, it is very connected to intensification targets.

I would just like to remind people that this is like a 25 year view. We’re not looking to make changes in the next two to three years. This is a decision that’s being made over 25 years. And so I’m speaking on behalf of Climate Action London and other individuals in the city to say that we, as you’ve seen with a lot of the other written submissions to this meeting, that there is a lot of interest in the fact that this is not even ambitious enough.

And that as we are looking at what is our vision for a sustainable, economically attractive city here in London? And are we going to design the city by looking through the rear view mirror? Or are we going to be looking to the future? If we’re looking for expanding the population in London to 675,000, a lot of those people are gonna be immigrants.

They’re used to having transit. They’re used to having other sources of transportation. We are looking to keep the young people in the city who are studying at Western and keep that knowledge here in London. What are they looking for?

They are looking for other options besides personal vehicles. They are not used to having personal vehicles. And for a lot of people who have been driving a car for 20, 30 years, they can’t imagine not having a car. But the young people today can’t imagine that.

And there are also people I’ve been talking to who are making plans that when they hit the age of 75, they’re gonna turn in their driver’s license because they’ve heard stories of accidents and tragedies that happen due to error and they don’t wanna be part of those statistics. And so we know that with this tsunami of older people of which I’m probably in that category, that they are not looking to keep their vehicles forever. And so they wanna see more options. And so that’s what we’re talking about here is options and looking for some innovation.

We, you know, the car is just one of those things in our evolution of civilization. So we’re looking at the fact that there are growing inequalities in Canada and around the world, which is leading to a lot of unrest and a lot of division, a lot of us versus them. And if we continue to plan our cities according to those who have the ability to fund vehicles and personal vehicles, then we are just exacerbating that division. And so unless we are planning our cities in a way that those who have less sources of income can get around in the same manner that they are not having to spend as we heard from Councillor Hopkins during the budget process, that there are students who are forced to buy a vehicle because they can’t get to school in a realistic manner, that that has income and prosperity implications for those who are at least able to afford it.

So how can we make London more affordable and more attractive for people to come? It’s to provide them with options. And for those people who complain about all the bike lanes and the rapid transit infrastructure, they forget that by encouraging other people, it’s not necessarily them that need to change their driving habits, although that would be good, but it’s the other people who are coming online that can take advantage of these options. I lived in Toronto for 20 years.

When I came back to London, I was so dismayed that the transit options here were so poor that I couldn’t take advantage of them. So we have a multitude of crises. We have the climate crisis, but we also have a housing crisis. We have a mental health crisis and the affordability crisis.

And we know when we look at crises that if we don’t act in the early stages, that it becomes more difficult and more expensive to deal with those crises. 30 seconds. - Thank you. So we need to be proactive instead of reactive by improving our mode share targets and making them a little bit more ambitious.

We provide the ability in the future to build it and you’ll see how people will come. Regarding intensification and the destruction of housing to provide some of this intensification, that has been the story of London. I live in a historic neighborhood where houses have been destroyed throughout time to build high rises. And so we will continue to find those places in London.

That’s your time. - Thank you very much. Thank you, Ms. Hodge.

Thank you to all three of our delegates for taking the time to come and speak to us today on this issue. There were a few questions and these were raised primarily by Mr. Wallace around. The land needs assessment and the time alignment in the previous council resolution.

Any reference to an industrial to residential conversion that happened at the last planning meeting, but that definitely was not the full land needs assessment. I know that the work is ongoing. I’m gonna go to Mr. Mathers first to see if you can give us an indication of the timelines for the land needs assessment to be complete.

Through the chair. So we are working through that land needs assessment. That portion that went to PEC this week was a very important component of that work. We’re expecting that land needs assessment to come back in June is what we’re targeting to the PEC meeting in June.

However, I just want everyone to be clear, there will be no recommendations related to changing intensification target. We have a council approved forecast, it’s 45%. We have the official plan, it says 45%. There will be no consideration for a change of that intensification target.

And following up on the planning component of this, Mr. Mathers, I’m gonna go back to you around the neighborhood place types not allowing for more than I believe it was stacked towns as the maximum intensification. I do know that, of course, we’re going through a rethinking zoning process as well. So I’m just wondering if you can comment as to any updates that your team may be bringing forward around place types and intensity, not in terms of our intensification targets, but in terms of allowable intensity in different place type designations.

Through the chair, as part of that report that also went forward, we highlighted we will be doing a phased approach to doing an official plan review. So that will be one of the considerations in looking, relooking at some of those land uses and looking at whether we can provide some additional intensity in some areas. Thank you for that. And we’re gonna switch gears a little bit here and go back to Ms.

Cher now. We had the question about the sewer capacity and I think this falls under your area. I know you’re wearing two hats today, but the sewer and water capacity to meet our intensification targets and that was raised. So I just wonder if you wanna offer some comment to council before we get into our deliberations around that piece.

Thank you, Mr. Deputy Mayor, the sewer and water capacity evaluation for growth and for intensification is ongoing. We are looking at nodes that we think are likely to see intensification. Those do align well with our current transit plans, but in order to model out what we would need by 2050 for all potential and infill developments, we’re not going to be able to make any decisions about investing in transportation for quite some time, which presents a number of concerns.

Sewing water capacity is an interesting thing because it is a problem solved with money. It is a problem that we can address strictly through engineering means. Transportation’s a little more elegant. There’s a bit of an art to it because we are dealing with people’s choices and how they interact with that infrastructure.

So I think as Mr. May, there’s noted, we’re not asking to improve intensification targets tonight. The report is clear that says it may require those things and we will go lockstep with the planning for our other services that are required to support that growth. Thank you for that, Ms.

Cher. I’m just going to follow up with you on two other points that were raised during the delegates’ comments. The first was around, has the MMP considered different splits for different districts? And I don’t know whether you can comment on whether that work has already occurred, whether that work would be part of the next step or if this is the first time that’s arisen for consideration, but I wanted to allow you to offer some thoughts on that.

Thank you, Mr. Chair. We have had discussions about district modal splits in the past, it was part of some early discussions as we were scoping the work that became the MMP. That would be a substantial reset again to the MMP and would put us on a timeline that would take us out of alignment with future federal funding programs as well as the DC bylaw in 2028.

Most cities don’t go that route. They do average over the city seeing some locations that are going to be more modally intense for things like transit and cycling and walking. And in some locations, for example, an industrial park that would be largely dependent on the need for motor vehicle traffic because of the nature of what goes on in that area. It’s something we could pursue in the future, but it would be a reset at this point.

And just before we go to committee, Ms. Chair, this one’s directed at you as well. You mentioned it in your opening comments. You heard the concern about the land needs assessment.

We’ve heard as a council that the land needs assessment is likely not coming back until at least June. You had mentioned some deadlines and some challenges with aligning all of these things together. So I just would like to give you an opportunity to repeat what the timeframe is on the master mobility plan versus where we have the land needs assessment right now coming back to us likely in June. Thank you, and I think deferring this to June for the land needs assessment doesn’t accomplish anything different than what we know today because as Mr.

May, there’s noted, they are recommending the current intensification targets because that is a point in time intensification target. We are talking about a timeline out to 2050 and intensification is not the only driver of modal choice for residents as they pick how they get around their community. I don’t think there’s a misalignment except for that expectation that a 2050 target would be reflected in our more immediate growth plans. In terms of schedule, we need to provide costed schedule detailed projects to our colleagues in development finance in January of 2026.

The MMP will be done in the first quarter so 2025, which gives us just enough time to do that work. Should we maintain our schedule through to the end of the MMP? If we do not have those lists in 2025, prepared for 2026 for inclusion in the next DC bylaw, we will continue to work from smart moves, which is a decade old. And there are things in that particular schedule and timing that don’t support the way our city is currently growing.

We also would not be in a position. We understand there may be future federal funding programs coming, we would not be in a position to recommend new projects for London. Thank you, Ms. Chair.

And that concludes the list of points that I heard raised during the delegates’ presentations. So I wanted to give you an opportunity to provide additional information to council before we move along. Sorry, I’ve got hands up. So everybody wants to speak to this, that’s great.

I’ve got Councillor Layman, Councillor Stevenson, and Councillor Trussow all have their hands up. So I’m gonna go left and then I’ll go right. Oh, you were pointing at Councillor Layman. I’m sorry, yeah, he’d already flagged me.

So I’ve got him and then I’ve got Councillor Trussow. So Councillor Layman, I’ll go to you first. We do need to get a motion on the floor so that we can frame our discussion, please. Okay, I’ll speak briefly to get a motion on the floor.

Mr. Wallace has identified a number of concerns. I have others as well. So I want to make a motion that essentially encapsulates what Mr.

Wallace has said, Clerk has the language ready to be distributed amongst Councillors. Can you read out your motion, Councillor, just so that while the clerks are entering and in the E-Scribe, please? Absolutely, part A, we received the report. B, direct staff to report back at the time of the land needs assessment study when that is complete include the following items.

A, review of sewer and water servicing capacity within the built area boundary. B, review of policy changes within the London plan that would needed to support increased intensification opportunities within the urban growth boundaries. C, review the option for different mobile split targets for different areas of the city instead of a city-wide target, i.e. along the Rapid Transit corridor and where servicing capacity exists.

And do city administration conduct random focus groups for further public input? Okay, Councillor, that was rather a mouthful. Do you have a seconder for that? See Councillor Van Mirbergen online as seconded.

We don’t have the language in E-Scribe yet. I just want to give the clerks a moment to, oh, I may be slow on my refresh button. The clerks do have it in there now. So now we can entertain debate on the motion that you’ve put on the floor.

So you wanted to speak to your rationale and then I’ll go to Councillor Frank next. Thank you. Yeah, so we have a London plan, which is a carefully thought out plan upon which, if I think it’s, I can’t remember how many years old is eight years old, recently adopted. So probably a little less than that.

The community of all is consulted. Now we look at arbitrarily making some pretty major moves, in my opinion, that are coming without, I think citizens of London being aware that we’re even discussing this. It reminds me when BRT was discussed, people didn’t even realize what was going on until it got farther down the road. And then that was a major source of community debate and even went into the election with election issues.

We’re looking at substantially reducing people’s use of cars from 61% down to 50%. People, I don’t know if I want to get into what people think. That’s why I agree with Mr. Walsh’s thing about random groups as opposed to specified input.

Because my feeling is, is that people do want choice. I’m not against providing alternative means with transit or cycling or walking, but not at the expense of artificially constraining choice of automobile and there’s many reasons why people choose to go that way. For sure not before we do a land’s needs assessment or urban growth boundary discussion or a built out area boundary discussion or intensification targets. Those are all part of discussions that we have when we’re talking about changing official plan.

Last official plan was built around BRT and now that has changed dramatically. So I think it’s incumbent upon us before we make these arbitrary changes to targeting for how people get around their cars that we have all the information as much information as possible. So I think getting the information that Mr. Wallace spoke to is very prudent before we entertain directing Londoners on how they get around.

Thank you, Councilor Layman. And I do want to let colleagues know that Councilor Palosa has joined us virtually. Councilor Frank, you are up next. Thank you, yes.

While I appreciate the information that Mr. Wallace provided, I will be supporting this. As we heard from staff that it’s incredibly important for us to make sure we line up for potential federal funding in order to be paying for this infrastructure work as well as making sure that our next DC master plan is timed out properly. So I think it would be irresponsible to wait.

I’m glad that the Council who made the motion reference to London plan. That was our single largest community engagement process that we’ve ever done in the city after the rethink London plan. And it clearly captured Londoners’ desires to build inwards and upwards and shift away from being only able to drive around the city. That was the most engagement we ever had, have ever had in the city.

And that’s what I base a lot of my decisions on. And so I think that we’ve already heard through our community engagement that people want better active transportation options. So I think staff have already done the line share of the work for community engagement. Sure, this one survey on the mode share split didn’t have a lot of participants, but building inwards and upwards and giving people good transit options, that’s part of rethink London.

We’ve done a lot of community engagement on that. So I won’t be supporting this option. I do hope it fails because I think that we need to look at option number three or higher so that we can give Londoners choice. I think the biggest roadblock we have here is that there is a belief that people only want to drive a car and not everyone does.

People want safe and convenient alternatives so that they can bike, bus, and walk around the city. In the words of William Wallace, people want freedom. Even if people are driving 100% of the time, that’s fine. I don’t care.

But right now, the city is built in such a way that driving is the easiest choice and having only one choice is not freedom. And having cars still be, even if we picked option three, cars would be 65% of the trips. That’s not a restriction. That’s the majority.

That’s well past the majority. Having people being able to 35% of the time be able to use bike, bus, and walking, that’s more restrictive. But that’s even, I guess, ambitious for London. We’ve invested in the Budweiser Guard and come and guard market to stimulate economic growth in our city.

If we build it, they’ll come. From 2022 to 2023, we saw a 15% increase in cycling volume on our cycle tracks with our data that we collected. If we build it, they will come. LTC added the 90 express route in 2014.

It was even more successful than they ever anticipated with over 500 users a day. If we build it, they will come. If it’s not clear, what I’m saying is, if we build it, they will come. We need to plan for walking, busing, and biking as more common modes of transit and referring this and potentially missing out on funding and missing out on the DC master plan will not set the city up for success.

So I will not be supporting this because I think that option three or higher is what we need to do. And we need to get Flunner’s affordable choices to get our under city. Thank you, Councillor Frank. And I don’t know if he’s a direct descendant of William Wallace or not, but Mr.

Wallace in the gallery managed to keep his excitement to a fist pump and not applaud, which I appreciate. We will go next to Councillor Trussow. Thank you very much. I was listening to Councillor Lehman’s motion and except for one thing, I think there’s a lot in there that I could support.

And the one thing is a really big one thing. And that’s what we were told just now, that if we delay this further, we are going to potentially lose out on federal funding. And look, we’ve already lost out on federal funding with respect to some serious projects. I sort of tried to get my hand up first because I also have a motion, which by the way, I don’t think is inconsistent with parts of Councillor Lehman’s motion.

My motion was just going to speak to number one, seeing the most shared targets had a minimum, just added a minimum. And number two, revisiting this every few years, which I think Steph already said we could do. Maybe we could save some procedural time by splitting these out and putting my motion in there with his. But let me just speak to one thing that was said that bothers me.

We are not trying to direct Londoners to do anything. What we’re trying to do is we’re trying to create choices for Londoners. We’re trying to create a better transit infrastructure, which we’re going to be spending some more time later in the meeting, talking about that one, for sure. We want to create a better transit infrastructure so we could drive those numbers up, and we want to create a better active transportation of infrastructure so it becomes easier and safer for people to cycle.

No, I’m not speaking to the merits of the entire motion right now, so I’m going to really try to stick to this amendment. I can’t support the amendment as it is without it being taken apart because I am not willing to risk the delay that we were warned against. And in fact, in my, well, I won’t speak to what my motion will be, I’ll say that. So I really appreciate Councillor Neiman’s attempt to put that on the table, but I can’t support it as it’s been put forward.

The clerk has my motion, and I think I would look to the clerk for some procedural guidance. Is there some way we can expeditiously put these together and proceed without having to go down the rabbit hole of successive motions? So, Councillor Truss, I’m going to say the answer to that is no, because what we have on the floor right now is a referral to send this staff report back with some specific items to come back. Yes, they’re absolutely right.

So, yeah, and I believe yours is to direct an option choice. So this referral wouldn’t do that. So we’ve got to deal with the referral first, and then we can look to other motions. And that brings me to Councillor Ferrera.

Thank you, Chair. So I guess I’ll start off with, I would not necessarily be supporting this motion as it is, just because I feel like the report really detailed out where we are and what we need. And we did hear from the acting city manager that this decision definitely needs to be made as soon as possible. And looking at the motion, I see a review of sewer and water, a review of policy changes, a review of the option of different mobile splits and public input.

I see all these reviews in that. I can tell that this is going to take a long time. I also don’t see a date when we should have this assessment or any of the studies coming back. So I feel like if we were to approve this, this would put any decision out indefinitely.

And I do see that we need to do something now. My support, I support option three, and I would like to hopefully see that on the floor so we can vote on it. But that captures everything from the socioeconomic spectrum to our environmental goals, as has been kind of spoke to already. And it’s already been said as well, the generations to come, they are using cars less and less and less, and they’re using alternative modes of transportation more and more and more.

So we need to give these options so we can have people live in the city and have them be able to freely move around in the city. That goes with retention of workers too. That goes with the people who are graduating from the university and the college here. How do we retain students?

How do we retain people in the city? Good people in the city? We have to give them the options that they’re looking for to move around the city so they can have access to work, to home, to shopping. So Councilor, I’m just gonna sorry to interrupt you.

I just wanna bring you back to the motion that’s on the floor. It sounds right now like you are debating option three, and that’s not what’s on the floor right now. So if we can just focus on the referral first, there would be an option to debate other motions after the fact. Thank you, Chair.

I am saying my support for option three, but I’m not debating option three. I’m debating why I’m not supporting the motion as it is right now. And I’m just pointing out the reasons for why I would not be supporting the motion. But let me, I guess I’ll go to staff and ask some questions.

You know, we have something that we spoke to not too long ago was the Oxford Warren Cliff intersection, and we were waiting for the mobility master plan before we could actually see what we’re gonna action there. If we were to delay this or refer this, what happens with that intersection specifically? And through the chair, do you want that, or do you want me to go to Mr. McCrae?

Through the chair, I can certainly start. And Mr. McCrae can give me a task if he needs to adjust. That is pending the outcome of the mobility master plans, final approval, any future decisions about that intersection would be put on hold until that work is done.

Councillor Ferrer. Thank you. And I could probably bring up a whole bunch of other items that we’re waiting for for the mobility master plan as well. That could be delayed with that.

So basically, I guess just to wrap up my comments would be, you know, like here’s something. We get a lot of complaints on people, you know, their grievances for what they experience in driving, congestion, other modes of transportation with respect to the bike lanes, with respect to all of our reforms of transportation. We get those complaints. And one of the reasons why we get a lot of complaints is we’re a little bit behind the ball on how we’re building out that infrastructure.

So that’s why this decision to just, this decision right now should be done as soon as possible. We have very good data. We have a very good report here. And I feel like we have the information we need to make the decision as it is right now.

So I wouldn’t be supporting this motion for that, for those reasons exactly. So I do hope that this gets voted down. I see the intention that the council is bringing. I do like what I see in this motion.

I just would like to see a decision right at the top. So that’s why I wouldn’t be supporting it the way it is at the moment. Thank you. Any other speakers on the referral?

Mayor Morgan. Yes, I’m gonna speak against the referral. Not because I don’t think that my colleagues who’ve spoken to it have a really great intention and wanna see a number of things that are important to this discussion happen. But I do wanna emphasize that, you know, we’ve already delayed this by I think four or five months.

We need to actually set some sort of modal split so that we can complete the master mobility plan so that we can actually have projects ready for the DC review and that we can actually have projects ready for when the permanent transit fund, which will start in 2026, but open for project submissions in 2025. And we know that they’re always oversubscribed and it’s important to be first and on these things. We need to be prepared for that. And so I think given the concerns that some have, and I actually think there’s a wide variety of opinions on this, we do have like a staff direction that gives us a general framework to work with.

We know Mr. Mathers has been clear that we don’t need to change the intensification targets in the short term. We can kind of have it both ways for now when we design transit projects for the next number of decades, while making sure that we plan and grow the city and accommodate the growth that we need to do responsibly. And that being said, we also have to think about taking a wider viewpoint on the growth in the region.

You know, we can’t mess around with our intensification targets and unintentionally create more pressure for single family home development in Elderton, Luchan, Kilworth, Comocha, Talbotville, Thorndale, where there’s no transit. People still live in the city. They utilize our roads. Like we actually have to start to move forward with a number of these things at the same time.

I think we can work out some of the details. If we want to have some sort of direction or consideration of different modal splits in parts of the city, you know, I think we could set a general target and then have discussions about refining that through the process in some way. But I think we actually have to move forward with some sort of direction now that is reasonable. I don’t support some of the discussions about then changing the intensification targets because I think there are other implications that we want to be cautious about.

But we can actually plan some projects, prepare for the DC studies, get line up our funding with our funding partners and our projects, projects that will be executed over decades. Like these are not things we have to build in, you know, all of them in 2028. Like this is setting up the framework for long-term collection of DCs for projects and being prepared to engage in what will probably be a multi-year, almost decade long, you know, federal funding program of permanent transit funds, pending any sort of, you know, change that the federal government may make to that. But I just don’t think delaying another few months is going to change anybody’s opinion on the general direction of where we need to go.

And all we will have done is added another number of months where we’re unable to let our staff prepare the projects that we need to have ready to go to access the funding, which we need. We’re not going to proceed with any of these projects if we don’t have federal partners the municipal tax base can’t support them. So without a program, nothing is going to happen. We wait too long.

We risk missing the window for programs. So let’s try to move forward in pieces. We have to make refinements. Let’s make refinements as we go.

But we need to actually get the mass mobility plan done in a reasonable timeframe. Councilor McAllister. Thank you to the chair. I won’t be supporting this.

Various reasons have already been raised. So I don’t want to rehash what’s already been said. But I mean, to Council first point, like I have caught a response and sometimes from staff in terms of, well, pending the mass mobility plan, right? I feel like that’s become a template response, unfortunately, with some projects.

So like I’ve personally seen like a lot of, like there are a number of projects, not just the large one you referenced, but there’s a lot that is on hold pending our decision, right? So I’m not willing to hold this up anymore. I do think we need to make a decision. But I also want to just, as a question to staff, I don’t really like when the mass mobility plan is categorized as something that’s being rushed or like it’s arbitrary.

Like I feel like this is a very involved process. So I just want staff to comment how long we’ve been doing this and the work that was involved because I think we’ve put in that time and I’m comfortable making decision. But I just want staff to speak to that, to demonstrate how much has gone into this already. Ms.

Chair? Mr. Deputy Mayor, I’m going to refer that question to Mr. McCray and Ms.

Grady to provide an overview of our timeline to date. All right, Ms. Grady or Mr. McCray, I’m not sure who wants to start, but we will hand the floor to you.

I’ll start, Mr. Chair, thank you. Yeah, this process started with a report to Civic Works Committee in late 2021. There’s been a number of reports since that time.

The consultation with the public and other interested parties has, you know, it’s involved surveys. It’s been involved pop-up events, discussions like setting up booths at events like the home show and the parks, the Victoria Park events through the summer, presentations to groups like the London Development Institute and the Home Builders Association, the Chamber of Commerce, the Realtors. That work has continued through and advisory committees too. I shouldn’t be leaving them out.

So that work has progressed steadily to the point that we’re at today. Thank you, Councillor McAllister. Thank you and through the Chair. And I appreciate that.

I’ve seen that engagement and I just wanted to obviously let staff have that opportunity to explain what’s already gone into this. I’m not supportive of this, I’m comfortable to make a decision. And as already has been said, I don’t want to miss out an opportunity for that vital funding and we need to move projects forward. Thank you, Councillor Hopkins.

Yeah, thank you, Mr. Chair. And just following up on Councillor McAllister’s comments about the community engagement, I held a community engagement session for my ward. Think about a year ago on the Mobility Master Plan.

Then here we are today, referring it back again. We did this already. Here we are doing it again. We have heard the opportunities for not getting funding, for not having going forward with our projects.

All that is gonna just stay the way it is. The growing population with the DC Master Plan coming up, we need to make decisions. And I know change is difficult. I have these conversations with residents.

Out of ward nine, we are building, building, building. We do not have opportunities to move around. It was in Europe last fall. And one of the things I noticed about their road infrastructure is they build it for people, not just for cars.

And I really think we are falling behind as a municipality as we grow our population. I have residents that come to me having visitors from out of town and they have to drive their visitors around the city because they’re unable to get the transit or have choices to move around. And I know we can do better as a city. So I would urge you, I appreciate the Councillor wanting to get it right, certain things right.

I don’t think we should stall any longer. This plan is for the next generation. It’s not gonna be for us. But the big decisions have to be made now.

So I would encourage you not to support it. And let’s move forward. I’ve got Councillor ramen next. Thank you and through you.

So I am struggling with this one as well. I look at the motion that was provided on November 7th at council. And I see that the intent was to really link the master mobility plan 2050 and the land use study intensification. And I feel as though what I interpreted and received at planning was not that linkage.

And yet I’m in front of us as a decision to make a decision without having that information. When we had the conversation at planning around intensification, again, we heard what Mr. Mather shared today as well, which was again that there’s no plan in the near term around changing intensification targets. So I understand that we are setting the target from here to 2050, but I agree with my colleagues.

I feel like I’m missing information to make the decision and that is where I’m stuck. I do feel that the idea of having different targets in different areas is absolutely critical. I also think that within the master mobility plan, we need a more detailed approach or even more of an acknowledgement that we don’t have certain types of transportation like rapid transit in the north and the west. And therefore, it changes the way that we move around the city.

And that it’s very clear that those investments need to go into those areas where we do not have, we do not have that type of transit nor, in some cases, any transit. So I do think that that’s, I see where my colleagues are going. I appreciate where they’re going. However, I hear the opposite side around we’re not going to be able to receive funding or we’re going to put funding at risk if we don’t move forward in the shorter term right now and make a decision.

So I guess my question is what is possible for us to receive in the next, I mean, I know we need to make a decision and you were saying we can’t wait till June when the land use study is available. I’m just wondering what additional information can be provided to us in order to help us to make this decision. I think that that’s ultimately what my colleagues are trying to get at here with the referral and to get to a level of comfort with where we’re going with the discussion. I know where I’m comfortable in terms of the mode share target.

It’s just how do we get there from an intensification perspective that I’m still trying to wrap my head around. And that’s why I need more information to be comfortable. Thank you, Councilor. I’m not sure if either Ms.

Share or Mr. Mathers can comment on that. I’ll go to Ms. Share first and see if Mr.

Mather says anything to add from a planning perspective, Ms. Share. Thank you, Mr. Deputy Mayor.

I don’t believe a delay till June is actually catastrophic to completing the mobility master plan. But what Mr. Mathers has shared is that there won’t be new information around a different intensification target. And we’re not approving an intensification target even in 2050 by approving the modal split.

What we’re saying is that that may be required if that is the only thing we do between now and 2050 to achieve modal share. The motion that’s on the floor is many, many, many months of work. Essentially, it requires us to pre-do the DC background studies for water and sewer in order to even start the transportation study. So we miss the window to update our DC by-law to ensure that where growth is paying for the right growth and transportation projects.

It also helps Ms. Means we miss the window to reset timelines for growth-related road investments that I think a lot of folks are hearing demand for from their constituents. The ones that are in 2030, 2035, we have no better information to move those up without doing the mobility master plan. What we can report back on if you wish to delay this to June would be the iterative process you’ll see in the future to make these decisions.

But I don’t think you’ll have anything new other than the confirmation of what Mr. Mathers has said that they are not making a short-term change to the intensification plan through the land needs assessment. What I do think is really important to remember is we plan these things out is it’s not one and done, that we will report back, we will adjust and we will monitor and we’re tying new ones hands to a particular style of growth. But the motion itself, I don’t imagine we could accomplish anything on there inside of 2024.

And Mr. Mathers from planning and economic development anything, you’re good, okay? Councillor ramen. Thank you, I’ll continue to listen to bait and continue to think it through, thanks.

Okay, well, the good news is I’ve got myself on the speaker’s list next. Then I will put Councillor Frank back on the speaker’s list, letting her know she’s got two minutes and two seconds. But first, I’m gonna go to, I’m gonna ask Mayor Morgan to take the chair. Hold on, I wanna get my timer ready.

All right, I’ll recognize the deputy mayor. Thank you, Chair, and through you, first I will say to Councillor Frank, I think some of that bike lane increase was Mr. McCray and I riding the Wavell Street bike lane back and forth to address some deficiencies that we had there early on in its early days. But I raised that because I also had an accident on Wavell yesterday, I actually shared this with Ms.

Sharer. I had residents calling demanding that we tear out the bike lanes because they were the cause of the accident. And my response to them was absolutely not. Because I do see value in a mode share transition to some degree.

I also am very concerned about the timelines. And I think that a number of the pieces of work that are being requested in this referral, the sewer and water servicing, we’ve heard that work is happening, but it is a long way out still. We, those of us who serve on the planning committee, know that there’s quite a number of official plan changes coming through that process. But they don’t always all align as much as we love them too.

We don’t live in a world where we get to hit pause, get all the plans together and then hit play again. And so for that reason, I’m not inclined to support the referral, although I will say, I really like the idea of us collecting public input in the future through random focus groups. I feel like the voice of the average Londoner is often missed too much in these discussions, and we get special interest groups coming forward. And no offense to Ms.

Hodge or to Mr. Wallace or to Mr. Buckel today. But you all represent groups with a gender as you want to bring forward.

And there’s nothing wrong with that, but I feel like we often miss Joe and Jane London, who aren’t even aware that this debate is happening to Councillor Layman’s point. So I like the idea of random focus groups moving forward, not just for this, but honestly, I think it’s a better form of engagement on a number of things we do. I think we should ask people to put their name in a pool to be part of a random group and call them at random when an opportunity comes up. But the other thing that I’m also not necessarily convinced that the permanent transit funding is necessarily going to appear in 2026.

There could be a change of government between now and then, whether those, so I want to make sure we get the funding we can. Well, the funding is there. So I’ve heard a lot of discussion already. I think there’s value in a number of the things that are in this motion.

I don’t think I can support the referral. I will also say though, because I heard it, I also can’t support option three and definitely can’t support setting those as minimums. For me, option two is where I’d be comfortable landing. I think that those are actually attainable goals, because again, it’s down to people’s choice and we as a city are not going to change the culture of what people choose.

They’re going to make those decisions on their own. I think it’s important that we offer them a lot of options. I’ll have more to say about that in terms of if an alternate motion comes forward. But I don’t think we can put off making a decision on this.

I was actually ready to make a decision on this back in November. Might not have agreed on the same option that other counselors wanted to see, but I was ready to make a decision on it then. So I think the work that’s in the referral, particularly on the random focus groups, I think we should incorporate that into whatever option we take going forward. But that’s where I am today.

Great, our turn to the chair to the deputy mayor and no one’s on the list yet. That’s okay, ‘cause I was making a list of my own while you were speaking. So I’ve got Councillor Frank, you’ve spoken already. So I’m going to those counselors who haven’t spoken yet first and I’ve got Councillor Cuddy, then Councillor Van Mierbergen, then I’ll come back to you.

Councillor Cuddy, you are next. Thank you, thank you Chair and through you. I’ll be supporting this motion. I want to thank Mr.

Wallace for bringing it forward. I also want to thank the mover of the motion. I won’t go into any detail, everything that has been mentioned in the motion by the mover I can relate to. I think this is a thoughtful approach to this situation.

I think it’s a sustainable long term. And Chair, you and I know better than most from our wards that we have issues with sewer and water servicing, we have a lot of infill going on it as does Councillor McAllister. And we want to see growth out there. We also want to see alternative modes of transportation.

Biking is huge for recycling, walking. But I do think we need to take off more thoughtful approach and I appreciate all the work that staff has done. I really do like this motion and I will be supporting it. Thank you.

Thank you Councillor Cuddy and just as a point of order, we don’t actually allow Mr. Wallace to bring forward any motions here. And there’s a reason for that. We’d have to extend past 11 p.m.

My opposed. But we’ve got Councillor Van Mirberg and next. I just want to remind colleagues, we’ve got a number of other items on the agenda. We have an hour before we’ll need a motion to extend at 6 p.m.

So if you’ve already said your piece, you might want to keep that in mind. And I do know that Councillor Ramen has a commitment for her ward at 6 p.m. as well. And she will be leaving us in order to respect that commitment.

She’s made to her ward constituents. I’ve got Councillor Van Mirberg and next, go ahead. Chair, I think it’s clear that Michael Wallace is a direct descendant of William Wallace. And why do I say that?

I say that because he has let out the clarion call to let the people speak. We’ve heard this earlier. Most, as you have said, Joe and Jane Londoners don’t even know we’re in the middle of trying to constrain their future private vehicle use. And that’s what all this is about.

As we move forward, our already constipated road system is going to get that much more constipated. Why? Because we’re going to focus on bike lanes, maybe some walking paths. I don’t think we’ll be seeing thousands of bicycles at rush hour.

This is the number one complaint. And it’s citywide is the road system is falling, falling, falling behind. We’re a city of rapid growth. People want their private vehicles.

They’ll want them even more as they become even more and more environmentally friendly. I mean, the basic fact is if we go ahead with this share of 35%, you’re basically constraining the system so that everybody’s idling and stuck in traffic. Well, that’s when the pollution is the greatest is when you’re idling. So let’s free it up, but help clean up the environment and get people moving to where they want to go because that’s what they want.

And last I checked, this was a free city in a free country. I’ll be supporting this motion. Thank you. Thank you, Councilor Van Mirbergen, Councilor Frank, you’re next.

Thank you. Always hard to go after Councilor Van Mirbergen always making me laugh. What I meant to say earlier, and I think I was quite snippy in my first comment. So I do want to apologize.

But I do actually, I’d be quite happy to second option A, B, and D at motions at council next week as part of the land needs assessment item. I actually think staff are already doing part A and B just they don’t have necessarily timelines on reporting back. And I think it’s more of a planning issue, not necessarily transportation one. I’d also throw in, we could add a request to the province for regional planning and that would ensure we have a growth plan for Southwestern Ontario to address the mayor’s earlier comments and concerns about rural sprawl.

So what I’m trying to say is, I don’t mind some of these things, but I don’t think now is an appropriate time to use them as a roadblock for this mode share target. Thank you, Councilor Frank. I have no one else on the speakers list. Going once, going twice, I’m gonna ask the clerk to open the vote on the referral.

Opposing the vote, motion fails, five to 10. Okay, I’m gonna go to Councilor Trust out next who indicated he had an alternate motion he wanted to bring forward. The language to the clerk and also to some of the staff. Opposed amendment A, the 2050 mode share target for the development of the mobility master plan shall be set at the levels described in option three or greater for transit and for walking and cycling.

And part B, the mode share targets for the mobility master plan shall be reviewed at least every four years and adjusted appropriately. And that’s my motion and I’m looking for a seconder. Okay, we’ll look for, Councilor Frank is willing to second and now we will start a new speaker’s list on the new motion. And may I start by talking to you?

Absolutely, you’ve been here. Part of me wanted to refer this back for more analysis on a mode three plus or a mode four analysis. I didn’t wanna do that because I appreciate we’ve been on this so long. I mean, this is my second year on civic works and we’ve been really working hard on this.

We’ve had so many representations from people. And I do wanna say, I think the public consultation was good. Yes, a lot of people are not paying attention to public consultations. But we can only do the best we can do.

So what I’m hearing from a lot of people and a lot of them just wrote in again. We’ve had several representations from the advisory committee and we’ve had, we’ve got people in our packet today, Dr. Evans, who has been writing to us all along these lines. So I think instead of me trying to pull a number out of my head, let’s do 48%.

Instead of me doing that or instead of me asking for this to be delayed, I just wanted to keep open the possibility of flexibility. And that’s why I’m asking for language that says at least, at least. Now, the second part of that is very much in keeping with the idea of getting maybe more focus groups or more public input. And that’s to be determined.

I don’t think we need to put that in the motion today. If somebody wants to put that in, if somebody wants to put that in part B, that’s fine. But basically I’m saying, let’s review this every year. I’ve already heard staff say that even though we’re making this decision today, it’s not always gonna be locked in.

This is out to 2050. And the reason I picked four years was, I wanna give each council the opportunity to take a look at this and assess whether they’ve been changes. So I think that’s reasonable. So I’m hoping colleagues will support this motion.

I think it’s a marginal change from what we have. And again, 69% of the respondents did say they wanted something more aspirational. I do think there is public support for us raising these targets. I’m just not prepared right now to say, this is what I think the number should be.

And under no circumstances do I wanna delay this. So there’s my motion. Thank you, councilor, councilor Frank. Thank you, yes, happy to second this.

I’m supportive of option three or higher. Option three is a greater equity benefit, understanding the lack of affordable, safe, reliable, and efficient mobility options is a barrier to many being able to access and maintain their job, to be able to access childcare, education, healthcare, groceries, and everyday needs. And many people, at least 13% of the households in London do not have access to a personal vehicle or are unable to drive. So giving them options provides them a way to get around to education, healthcare, groceries, work, all those things that they need to do to live their lives efficiently.

And I wanted to share a couple of stories I’ve been collecting, short ones, very short on this item because I do think to some discussion about having good community engagement. I think it’s nice hearing how this kind of decision would personally impact somebody. So on my Instagram, I had somebody reach out and say, I bought my first car this year at 32 years old. As sad as I am about it is because it means that London has failed to provide me good alternative modes of transportation, but buying the cars opened up the city to me.

I still walk bike and scooter to work for short trips, but the local cafe across the city that I’ve been dying to try, I now have to drive to it. I’ve also been more social with the car. I get to see my friends more, but I’d rather be doing these trips via buses or biking. And I’m so burnt out by these decisions.

I hate sitting in traffic, but I also am the traffic. And there’s a possible new high-rise going up at Wonderland and Beaverbrook, and I really hope that busing and protected bike lanes become a priority in that area, especially because it’s on a major artery and near the university. So that’s one story. Another person you know me saying, where I grew up, you could easily walk to a grocery store, other retailers like Woolworths, Eaton’s, drugstores, and churches.

I always walk to school. My mother would walk to the grocery store approximately a kilometer away. My mother never rode a bicycle and she always walked wherever she could. While over time, progress hollowed out in the downtown.

She walked as many stores as she could. She made it to 92, attributable to an active lifestyle and good genes. And I’d like to see a move closer to 50% for transit walking and biking. I think that would give a healthier city option for everybody.

Another story, different perspective. My story. So I live in a one-car household. Today I took the bus to work, and then I walked the rest of the way.

And I’ll probably get a ride home from one of my colleagues if they are interested. On the average week, I’d probably drive to work maybe once. But I really want to. I get stuck in traffic going home.

You know, if I forget my fob, I have to pay for parking. I have to pay attention to the road ‘cause I’m trying to be a good driver. Whereas on the bus, I get to read a book. So this plan is not only from the next generation.

It’s for people who want different options now. And trust me, I plan to not drive as much as I can ‘cause I really just like the other options. And I’m happy for other people who want to drive for every single trip, they can do that. Wonderful, go for it.

Have at it. But I personally and many others, as you can tell from these stories, would like other options. So please give me and other Londoners more choices and pick mode share option three or higher. Thank you.

Thank you, Councillor Frank, Councillor McAllister, and then Lehman. Thank you through the chair. And I appreciate the comments that Councillor Frank just made in terms of sharing those perspectives ‘cause I hear those as well. And even from my own personal perspective, I wanna share as well that I just feel, and this has been mentioned by a few of my colleagues, like when you go elsewhere, whether that’s within province, the country abroad, we really are lagging behind in terms of having those options for Londoners.

And I hate to say it, I mean, you hear things like snail rail, like you’re stuck in traffic, like it feels like you’re stuck in a different time. So I wanna plan for the present. I would like to have more options for myself, for the next generation as well. It’s not just the future.

I mean, this is a longer plan in terms of we’re planning for 2050, but I really do think we need to take a hard look at the way people get around the city right now. And we’re actually constraining them with our options right now. And I keep hearing references to freedom, but really there’s a lack thereof, and that’s how I see it. I want people to be able to choose their form of transit and not constrain them and tell them, well, we built roads, so you gotta drive.

Like that to me seems unfair. I think we need to open up our infrastructure to allow Londoners to make the choice for themselves and to live as we’ve set like a healthier lifestyle. A lot of these other forms of getting around greatly benefit in terms of, you know, let’s reduce the burden on our healthcare system, which is also feeling the pinch. If people are active longer in life, the quality of life will increase as well.

So for me, I’m supportive of this because really I want to take that aspirational goal and strive for better and more active city. Thank you. Councillor Layman. You know, thank you.

And I’m not suggesting that we don’t all share concerns about having options for people to get around. I’m just very wary of socially, socially engineering people. I understand your points so that it could be seen in the reverse. What I wanna do is I wanna cut to the quick here.

I want to look for a way out and I’m gonna make an amendment chair in light of what my concerns were to kind of find a pragmatic ground here. So I’d like to make an amendment that we go with option two, along with the rest of Councillor Troso’s motion. So there’s not an amendment on the floor. What you put forward was an alternate motion from the staff recommendation.

So it’s an original motion on its own. So an amendment on that is in order. It is a change from an option two to an, or from an option three to an option two that was outlined by the staff as choices. So bear with me for one moment.

So it’s not a direct negative to the motion. It’s changing an option three to an option two. So it’s very similar to some of the discussions we had in the budget debates last month where the dollar amount was changed, but it wasn’t eliminating a business case. It was changing an investment.

So my ruling is that it is in order to amend that. There would need to be a seconder for that though, Councillor Cudi is gonna second that. So I would like to challenge that decision. You are welcome to do so, and now you’ll have to bear with me for a moment there.

So it’s just a simple, the clerks actually have pre-prescribed language for this. So you’re challenging my ruling that it is not a direct negative. So it’ll be a simple vote of shall the ruling of the chair be sustained. Everybody’s gonna have to bear with us for a moment until we get that ready and you scribe.

So you do need a seconder for your challenge though, Councillor, Councillor Ferrera. There’s no debate on the challenge. So it’s just shall, the ruling of the chair be sustained. We’ll open that per vote.

Councillor Ferrera, did you have a— Clarification on sustained means yes. Sustained means you agree with me that it is not directly contrary. A no means you are determining that it’s contrary and my ruling’s out of order. Opposed in the vote.

The ruling of the chair is sustained nine to six. You colleagues, so the amendment is on the floor. Also thank you for the fun. I think that’s the first time I’ve ever had a challenge to the chair.

Happy to contribute. (laughing) So the amendment is now on the floor. So the amendment is to move from option three to option two. So now we’ll have a new speaker’s list on the amendment.

And I just wanna remind everybody in about 30 minutes we’re gonna need a motion to extend past six p.m. And no, dinner has not been ordered tonight. Not seeing anyone on the speaker’s list. So I’m gonna call the vote on the amendment.

Opposed in the vote, motion carries eight to seven. Okay, so now we have a main motion as amended, which is the motion that Councilor Trust’s output forward with option two now replacing option three. And so now it’s a new motion ‘cause it’s as amended. So we restart a speaker’s list and we can speak again.

Oh, sorry, we do, because it’s been amended, we do need a mover and seconder. I’m assuming Councilor Trust’s out, you no longer want to be the mover. That’s what’s there. So Councilor Layman and Councilor Stevenson, looking for speakers on this.

Is the language or greater still in there? Yes, it is. It’s option two or greater. Part B was not changed.

That was my understanding. I’m just gonna double check with the clerks. Yes, so none of the other language changed. It just changed option three to option two.

So the or greater part is still in there. I have no one else on the speaker’s list. So Councilor McAllister. Thank you and through the chair.

I would imagine other people want to speak. They probably haven’t collected their thoughts yet. Yeah, I was confused by that too. So that it says greater leads me to believe that when this is reviewed, could be changed.

So I’m kind of looking to staff for that. So does that then mean we can change the percentage at the four year review or how would you interpret that? Ms. Chair.

Thank you, Mr. Deputy Mayor. What we need the modal splits for is to model the network that we’re going to be recommending to the community and Council. That network is for pedestrianism, cycling, transit and roadways.

This will be the basis by which we model. It’ll be the 30% option two. That doesn’t mean that if there’s opportunities for further development of say transit in the future, they would be precluded, but we will be modeling option two and option two only and open to those future opportunities at that four year review cycle. Or should something change substantively in other planning exercises being done throughout the community?

Councilor McAllister. Thank you. I don’t feel like I’m stuck in a bit of a wag wire here because personally, I don’t think it’s aspirational enough. I still stand by that.

I think into the shares point she just made, we would still be developing the plan based around mode share two. That’s not precluding if those opportunities present themselves, but my issue with this is still, it’s setting the bar very low by my standards. I know some of my colleagues may disagree with that. And I think we need to be more aggressive in our targets, especially as we’ve indicated, there’s funding available for those projects.

I would rather start those pitches at a higher level in terms of getting that infrastructure built. I think this sets the bar low, and I would imagine future generations of Londoners will look back and say they did it again and they set the bar too low, and we didn’t plan for the future. So I don’t wanna be in a situation like that. So I’m still a no on this, I think, but I’ll listen to what my colleagues have to say, and maybe I’ll circle back when I’ve heard what others have to say.

Councillor Palosa, were you looking to be recognized? Yes, please. You are next on the list. Thank you for the robust discussion tonight.

I would ask when it comes time to call the question that we call them separate police for A&B. I am in still in support of option three. As we grow up the city, we’re promoting giving Londoners more viable options for how they choose to get around the city, either it’s for leisure or work or education, and reading the report that we see within it the cost of operating a vehicle is around $9,500 per year. A transit pass is just over 1,100.

In addition to giving people the option of how they want to have around the city, if they choose to use active or public transportation, all that becomes disposable income, which for some becomes income that they need to pay for the essentials of living off of, others it becomes disposable and they can have some nice-to-haves versus the needs-to-haves. And we’ve been in this road before that we give staff a direction. And then at a point we ask to revisit something and we hear we have already made our policy decisions based on original direction. And in order to go back and change things, you need to undo years worth of reports in direction that they’ve been given.

So that is my concern that it really is saying the foundation. It’s a rather aim high and fall a bit short than aim low and get stuck there. So I will be not supporting option two, but thank you to everyone for the conversation tonight as this really is shaping London and for the future generations to come. Thank you.

Thank you, Councillor Palosa, Councillor Frank. Thank you, yes. I won’t be supporting option two. I’ll be voting against it.

I don’t think it’s sufficient and I wouldn’t be able to talk to my residents if I supported this and be proud of this decision. That may indicate the shortest speaking time used by anybody through the entire meeting today, looking for any other speakers. Councillor Prossal and then Councillor Ferrer. Yes, at first I was a little intrigued because if it’s at least option two and option three is greater than option two, that would include option three and it would include greater than option three ‘cause greater than option three is greater than option two.

But the problem with that is this is what’s gonna be used for the baseline planning. And option two, I think the Civic Works Committee was very wise to recommend eliminating option one but I don’t think option two is a whole lot better. And I do think that option two is really going to constrain us in terms of some of the creative things that we might be doing. Once again, we are not banning automobiles.

We’re not telling people they can’t drive their cars. We’re just trying to create a broader sense of options that many of the speakers over the year and many of the people who wrote in tonight are talking about equity. They’re talking about equity. It’s not just a basic transportation issue.

It’s an equity issue, it’s an economic issue. It’s an economic development issue in terms of being able to create more options to get to jobs. It’s a housing issue because the better the transportation is, the more options people have to maybe not live in the exact same area. I’m thinking about this particularly with respect to my ward where the better transit, safer cycling is gonna make it a lot easier for many of my constituents students to look at living in other neighborhoods besides where they are.

And I think that that will be empowering for people. So I’m going to, while I was intriguing and while I had to think about it, I most definitely will be voting against option two. But I was thinking about it for a second. Thank you, Councilor.

Councilor Ferrer, you’re next. Thank you. Yeah, the comments that I’ve heard from Councilor McAllister, you almost asked the exact same question I was gonna ask and just everything that I’ve heard, I agree. And I would just kind of add to that, like the politics of today will be different than the politics of tomorrow.

But if we set the bar too low, it will not be different. Is the frustrations and the issues that people who are trying to move around the city are facing like they are right now. So I would love to see option three. I don’t want to support option two.

I do like the idea that we can revisit this within four years and maybe we can get a little bit more information and get back on track where we need to go. But just going back, we are gonna be separating the votes. So I believe, is that right? Separating the vote will not be separated?

Yes, we will be separating A and B. Okay, so yeah, I’ll be supporting B, but I would not be supporting A. Councilor Hopkins. Yeah, thank you.

And if this has been intriguing, even though I’m pleased to see option two or greater, I was thinking it was just option two. I think it’s setting the bar way too low. I just want to speak from my experience. When I moved to London, I had to get my driver’s license.

I didn’t have the opportunity to take a bus. There wasn’t a bus route. Stores weren’t accessible. And now as I age, I am looking at opportunities to move around, I think we are going to be seeing that aging population.

This to me is not really what I hear from my community that they want to see. And I think that’s mainly why I won’t be supporting this motion. Mayor Morgan. Yes, so I remember my first term of council.

I’ve kind of sit back through the discussions, listen to everybody and then try to find that common ground. And this one feels like very divided. People want more than option two. They’re not quite willing to go to option three.

Although I don’t want a lot of debate on this, I’m willing to try something between the two. I don’t see why we can’t do 32 and a half percent. I don’t that you’d shake your head if that’s not possible, maybe. Thank you.

If I may, do you respond? We will ask Ms. Sharer in terms of the mode share split. Through you, Mr.

Deputy Mayor, staff put forward three options, one, two and three, all of which we’ve eliminated number one. Two and three were both put forward for the consideration of civic works and ultimately council because both of them did move us along a pathway towards providing greater modal choice citywide. There’s no magic necessarily to 30 or 35. It’s an arrange comparable with other cities similar to London with the similar sort of growth pattern and infrastructure.

If you wish to do 32 and a half, that certainly can be the basis for our modeling as well. Yes, so this probably won’t fly, but in the spirit of seeing if rather than an 8/7 vote, maybe there’s a slightly larger vote, I’m willing to amend the motion to be a split that is 32 and a half percent, halfway between option two and option three. I don’t know if there’s a seconder. Okay, we’re gonna need Councillor Cuddy, you’re indicating you’ll second?

Oh no. Councillor Van Meerberg and if you can keep your mic off when you’re not being recognized on the speakers list, that would be great. Absolutely. We’re gonna need a moment, Mayor, because there’s no option 2.5 in the report.

So we’re gonna have to capture some language there a little bit stronger. That’s just a point of order two. We’re within the 30 minute mark for 6 p.m. Yeah, once this is dispensed with, I’m gonna be looking for a motion to extend because we have several other items to still work through, yes.

And I have a point of order to Mr. Chair. Go ahead, Councillor Palosa. Thank you, realizing and spilling the difference of 2.5% as Chair, are you deeming this to be material a different enough to allow it?

I am going to deem this materially different enough in the spirit of trying to find some compromise and noting that it still will be a change that will reflect our DC planning studies. So I think that in the overall financial impact, it is substantively different. So I’m allowing that unless you’d like to challenge that ruling. I would.

Okay, I guess we’re gonna see if I can go two for two today on a challenge to the chair. So while we are still getting the language sorted on the option 2.5, we will seek a, shall the chair’s ruling be sustained in which my ruling is moving from 30 to 32 and a half percent mode chair split is substantively different enough to allow the amendment. So if you agree with me that it’s materially different enough, you’re voting yes. If you agree with Councillor Palosa that we’re just splitting hairs and it’s not material, materially different enough, you vote no.

Mr. Chair, I think you need a seconder. Yes, you do need a seconder. Councillor Stevens is willing to second you.

Thank you kindly. I’m gonna get the clerk to open the vote on the shall the ruling of the chair be sustained. The ruling of the chair is sustained eight to seven. Thank you colleagues.

That makes me two for two today on challenges to the chair. I’m gonna look to see Mayor Morgan. Do you have language now through the clerks for an amendment that you’d like to read out to us? Okay, so Councillor Cutty, you had stuck up your hand.

We’re gonna read the motion so you can determine whether or not you still want to second that. I know there was an alternate seconder in Councillor Ramen. At least I think she was putting up her hand to do that at the same time as I saw you both. I’m just gonna ask the clerk to read out the motion as it’s been crafted.

The motion be amended to change option two to represent 32.5% mode chair split. And I’m just going to go to Ms. Chair to make sure that that language can work for her in terms of option two and changing the mode chair split and still listing it as option two. Mr.

Deputy Mayor, the labeling of the options probably less important than the total active mode and transit chair split would be 32.5 and we’d proportionately just to adjust between the current two and the current three across the three modes that are included. Okay, so staff understands the intent and can work with that. Councillor Cutty, are you still seconding? You are, okay, so that has been moved and seconded.

Councillor Frank. Quick question about the language. Does this still include or hire? Yes, it does.

Mayor Morgan, we’ll go to you now to speak to your rationale a little bit further. Listen, I know colleagues, we’re talking about, you know, 5% difference here between two and three, they 87,000 trips a day. So 2.5 is half that 43 and a half thousand. And all we’re doing is giving our staff direction here to design the projects and the plans that will be submitted for all of the different funding envelopes, whether it’s the DC fund or federal opportunities.

Listen, the DC fund is not gonna be able to fund everything we wanna do to achieve this. We’re gonna be dependent upon federal opportunities. It means we’re not gonna land exactly here. And I’ll remind everybody, this is the 2050 modal split.

It’s probably gonna change between now and then. We’re talking like 26 years. Look at how much the city has transformed in just the last five in a way that even the official plan didn’t predict. We’re gonna make adjustments in the future, but we need a framework to plan by, ideally a framework that has a wider support of council than where we were heading just before.

So for everybody who was close, I just ask you, maybe think about coming together, getting this done and moving on to the next steps. Thank you, Mayor Morgan, any other speakers to this? Council, trust out. I know it’s getting late.

I know some people have to leave. I know we’ve got other things on the agenda, but I just think this horse trading and sort of trying to cut things down the middle is not the best way to make proactive purposeful policy. I’m gonna vote no on this. And I appreciate what the mayor is trying to do.

I get it. But this is one of the most important transportation issues that we’re gonna be making during this council term. And I just hate to sit here as the clock runs down and not take the most principled position. And I’m not saying what you’re saying is not principled.

I understand what you’re trying to do. But I feel very strongly, and I’ve heard this very loud and clear from my constituents, very loud and clear from my constituents, that they want something, they want option three. When they think about it, option three is a base. So I can’t support this.

And I really hope that people stick to their, stick to their, I’m looking for the best word here. I don’t wanna say principles, because I’m not suggesting that this isn’t a principled approach. But I don’t think it’s the evidence-based, precise approach that we wanna be taken. Hey, I wanted option three to go up.

And one of the first things I said tonight was, I’m not gonna just start throwing numbers out there. I’m not gonna start throwing out 39%. ‘Cause I don’t have sort of like the precise analysis that was provided for us. And I just don’t think we should be making policy this way.

There is a split on this council, okay? There is a split on this council. There are people who wanna see option two. We probably like to see option two or lower.

And there are people that wanna see something greater than option three. And we’re not gonna make that split go away. And I think that we have to be honest to our constituents in terms of who we are, and where we stand on this issue. And just trying to compromise away into 2.5 land, I don’t think that’s the best way to let our constituents know where we stand on this.

And I’m willing to go back to my constituents and tell them proudly that while I supported option three as the best of the three, I wanted more. And I’m not gonna hedge on that. And I think it’s a principled position to take. So, and I will say the same thing to my constituents who asked me about whether I’m trying to constrain their car, I’m not.

I’m just trying to create more efficient, economically viable and equitable options for people. Thank you. Thank you, Councillor, Councillor Palosa. Thank you, just ever so briefly, I appreciate the effort of trying to build consensus on this one, as I challenged you on it.

Obviously just felt we built ready to call the vote in the last one. And we have our stance to be heard from our residents. And, you know, it’s gonna be projects going on for years. And sometimes not having consensus cross council is okay.

And I believe that’s just one of those times. Thank you, Councillor. That’s almost exhausted my speaker’s list, Councillor Frank. I’ll be even faster than last time.

I’ll be supporting this. I know it’s not principled, but it’s better than option two. That was actually two seconds longer than last time, but I appreciate the effort, Councillor Ferrera. I wanna, Councillor Frank, option two is, or better.

So I will be supporting it. And I do understand the principle nature of everything, but, you know, I am looking for the compromise. And that was shorter than last time. So thank you, Councillor McAllister.

Thank you, through the chair. I’m sure Councillor Trozzo grown at this one as well. But, and it’s okay, but it’s not for lack of principle, but I’m also trying to take a stance here. And we’ve said this tonight that like, there’s a lot of things being held up by this.

I’m a very aspirational person. I’d like to see more, but I’m also a believer in consensus as the mayor has indicated. And I think in any negotiation, you know, we started with three, we worked through this, we found something that was more amenable to everyone. And I don’t think it’s fair to hold up all these projects for, as the mayor indicated, a few percent.

The greater language is still in there. Who knows? Maybe the next council will fight this next battle. There will for sure be more conversations about this in the future, but I think for the time being, we’ve kind of found that consensus.

And I’m happy to support this. Obviously, I’d like to see more. I think that bar can be raised. And I think that the, obviously in the future, we can, we can fight those battles.

And hopefully we can find that future goal that everyone’s happy with. And that was not shorter than last time. But thank you. Now I have exhausted my speaker’s list.

Oh, Councilor Vameerbergen, I see you waving on screen. Go ahead. Thank you, Chair. I will not be supporting this.

The vast majority of my constituents, and I would say most around the entire city, do not appreciate having this level of constraint placed upon them as the years go by. And the city grows and chokes on its ability to move around. So I will be voting against this. Thank you.

Thank you. Now I have exhausted my speaker’s list. Councilor Stevenson, I have not exhausted my speaker’s list. I agree with Councilor Vameerbergen.

I will not be supporting this. And most of the residents that talk to me do not feel freedom driving their car around the city. One of the things I heard the most when I was canvassing was we should have built a ring road. So I will not be supporting this.

Councilor Perbal, thank you. And 2.5% isn’t a huge difference for me. And I do appreciate that this was put forward and I will be supporting it. I do think that, again, it’s not, it’s not that I win for the car drivers.

It’s not that I win for the public transportation. But again, it’s a long time ahead. And I do feel that this is a good proposal. And I hope we can come together as a council, as a team and move forward.

Thank you. Seeing no other speakers, I’m gonna ask the clerk to open the vote. It’s before you and he scribe. This is just the amendment.

So we will still have to then vote on the main motion as amended. Posing the vote, motion carries nine to six. Mayor Morgan and Councilor Cuddier, you prepared to be the mover and seconder on the main motion as amended. I’m seeing thumbs up from both of you.

Any further debate running out of time? So we’re gonna have to have a motion to extend. And then colleagues, I need to know if you still want this separated out into separate votes of A and B. But before we do anything else, we have to move past 6 p.m.

So I’ll ask the clerk to open the vote to extend. We’re gonna need a mover and a seconder moved by Councilor Robin, already on it. And seconded by Councilor McAllister. Councillor Trassel, to be a clear vote, indicated with yes, closing the vote.

Motion carries 13 to two. We now are able to extend past 6 p.m. We now have a main motion as amended by the mayor. The amended motion is moved and seconded by the mayor and Councilor Cuddy.

This changes the mode two or the option two mode chair to 32.5, or a greater piece from the earlier motion is still there. Hope that brings colleagues up to speed. Councillor Layman. Yeah, a couple of points for 25 years.

I’ll support this, but I’ll tell you why. On the faint hope that we will see the financial funding that was much discussed might be in jeopardy if we don’t, specifically for Oxford and Warren Cliff, which is also expressly mentioned in debate. I would love to see federal funding for that, or to be used for that much needed in front of that intersection. Councillor Stevenson.

I’ll just remind colleagues that the BRT funding is cost us a fortune. Any other speakers? Councillor Vermeer Bergen. Yes, thank you, Chair.

I’d like to separate A and B if that’s possible. That’s fine, we can call A and B separately. Thank you. Councillor McAllister.

Thank you, and through the chair, just to round off, I appreciate the conversation we had tonight. You know, we heard everybody out came to us, closest consensus, I think, as we’re gonna get. And just Councillor Layman’s plan, you know, I’ll take a hell of a marry any day of the week, funding materializes, I think we should still try. So, you know, I think we need to put forward that ask, and, you know, gotta be aspirational, like I said before, gotta try.

Thanks. Anyway, speakers, list is exhausted. We’ve had a request to call A and B separately. Seeing no other hands, I’m gonna ask Clerk to open the vote on A.

It carries 11 to four. Now I’ll ask Clerk to open the vote on clause B. Councillor McAllister. The vote’s in the vote, motion carries 15 to zero.

Thank you, colleagues, that completes 4.4. Next on our items for direction is 4.5. This is the request for proposals for external auditor of the London Transit Commission, communication from myself and Budget Chair Palosa. As I’m chairing, I’m gonna look to Budget Chair Palosa to introduce this.

Thank you, Mr. Chair, I would like to move it. It has been pre-circulated. I’ll note that a couple minor changes were made as per Councillor Pribble’s request, and happy to put it on the floor.

And as your co-author, I’m happy to second that. We’ll look for any discussion on that. Colleagues did see a draft circulated by Councillor Pribble yesterday. This incorporates both the cost implications, savings or additional costs.

And it also includes that the full report be provided to LTC at the conclusion of the auditor’s work. Looking for any discussion? Councillor ramen. Thank you and through you.

I appreciate the motion that’s been brought forward and that you worked with the Councillor Pribble as well to incorporate his concerns into the motion as well. I agree with undertaking the audit for the purpose as it’s directed, but I also wonder whether, in my head, if it’s because we’re directing an audit in a certain direction, what are we potentially missing in terms of what kind of information we could gather? And I’m not sure if Ms. Barbone might be able to comment on this, but I was wondering because LTC already has an auditor, and if we were to prove this motion, would their auditor be precluded from applying for the RFP?

Ms. Barbone. Thank you, through the chairs. So the LTC has an external auditor.

This is not the work that the external auditor would undertake. Certainly given the scope and the inclusion of what is being looked at in terms of the audit itself, that is not work that KPMG through the external audit team would do. Generally when, so through something this significant, there isn’t anybody that we currently have retained that would have the expertise to be able to do this. So certainly in RFP, particularly given the significance of the amount, we need to be undertaken.

The external auditor from their firm in general would not be precluded from applying. They would need to put proper controls in place to segregate and maintain independence, but given the size of the firm, there are opportunities for them to proceed that wouldn’t preclude them from bidding, just as any other expertise or audit firm, along with many others potentially that would have the expertise, could proceed through that formal procurement process. Councillor. Thank you, that’s very helpful.

My concern was that some of the questions in terms of structure of organization, financial structure, et cetera, had been part of the audit considerations for LTC as well. And so where there was overlap, that that could be a concerning factor. So I’m glad to hear that because I would prefer that all options be on the table. So I will be supporting what’s in front of us.

I do think though, as we’re looking at this, I think that we have to with full transparency and with full respect to LTC and continue to engage in dialogue. I think that with the conversations that occur during the budget, there’s more relationship work that needs to take place. And we all have the same goals. And I think that it’s very important to continue to build on the good work that LTC is doing and using the information and this process to again, just strengthen our understanding.

And then from there, look at what we can do with the information. Thank you. Thank you. Councillor Pribble.

Thank you. And I would just like to follow up on my fellow Councillor. I do take this audit as we have to do most efficient, effective audit. And even though not half a million of Londoners take the LTC, this result of the audit needs to be in benefit of the half a million Londoners because even if they don’t take it, there are investments that the city is making on behalf of the taxpayers.

So I am supporting this, the audit as a commissioner. And as I said, as I reiterate it, I want this to be the most, it’s got to be a cooperation between the auditor and LTC. And they have to come up with the best solutions to be presented in front of us and for us to make the best decisions to move forward. And again, on behalf of half a million of Londoners, thank you, Councillor Hopkins.

Thank you. I will be supporting this. I am glad that Councillor Ramen asked the question around the audit process that’s already been taken at LTC and that we aren’t duplicating anything with this motion. So I’m sort of satisfied with that.

I appreciate Councillor Preble’s additions. I would like to underline the importance though, this request from the deputy mayor and Councillor Pelosa reminded me of the importance of partnering with LTC and the more we can do that and work with LTC to get the results that we all sort of want, I think is also important. So I’ll be supporting this. Thank you.

I have no other speakers. I’m gonna ask the clerk to open the vote. Is there trust for indicating a vote of yes? Councillor Stevenson has left.

Council chambers marking as absent closing the vote. Motion carries 14 to zero. Thank you colleagues, moving on to 4.6. This is the request for accountability from the London Police Services Board.

You have communication from the mayor, Councillor Frank and Councillor ramen. I’m gonna look to see which one of the authors wants to introduce this, Councillor Frank. Thank you. I feel like I’ve been falling told and I appreciate it, I’m just kidding.

Yes, happy to introduce this. This was based coming out of our debate discussions and we had heard from the mayor that there’d be greater accountability on the budget and from the police board, but we weren’t really quite sure exactly what that entailed. And so this letter is simply being sent to the police board if it’s approved here. As a way and an opportunity to have this discussion with the police board and I’m happy for any of my other colleagues to add some context as well.

So you are moving the motion in the communication and seconded by Mayor Morgan and he wants on the speakers list as well. So Mayor Morgan, you’re next. Yes, I’ll just say my intention as a board member too to ensure that this lands there in a discussion that the board is planning already about this and I think the feedback and suggestions from municipal council is pretty important. I’ll say as we drew the potential metrics, you’ll see as we’ve all read the business cases, we’ve drawn a number that were written to the business cases and the expectation should be that these are, these are things that the London Police Service will be tracking and reporting out.

And I do appreciate both the commitments of the board and the chief to a greater level of transparency. And although we talked a lot about what we can and cannot do with the London Police Services Board, as a funding partner, it is well within our rights to provide our feedback on how we would like to see metrics tracked, investments measured, value shown, not just for us as a funder, but for all Londoners. And I think this will be the start of a good process over the next couple of years. Thank you, further speakers?

Councillor Hopkins, Councillor Layman. Yeah, I’m just wearing my Councillor’s hat ‘cause I’m on the board as well. We were told about, you know, and this is a fairly substantial part of our budget, we heard about transparency and accountability. So by all means, I think Council is fully within their obligation to access to the board.

And as a police board member, when that comes to the board, we’ll have that discussion then, but I’m certainly supportive of this at budget because of the transparency and accountability part of that and commitment, I think that we got from the chief and the board, so we’ll supporting this. Councillor Trussow. Very briefly, I just wanna say I am gonna support this. So I think it’s needed and I’m really grateful for you all bringing this forward.

And you know there’s gonna be a however coming, however. I really would have preferred to have seen these types of questions raised before we passed the budget. I think these would have been legitimate questions to raise during the budget process. And I felt that there was sort of pressure on many people to not raise these types of questions and simply go along with the request.

And I know that there’s a lot of disagreement, but I’ve heard that from so many people. Now, looking forward, and I wanna look forward, I hope that in the future, when we’re looking at these big budget items, we can build into the budget process itself. Some of these types of accountability questions. I don’t think there’s any reason why in good budgeting practices, we can’t have this type of feedback loop put into the funding issue.

And I don’t think there’s anything in the law that would preclude us from doing that. That’s just the practice that we decided. So I wanna give a lot of thought over the next period of time to how we can improve the budget process. And it may be that we land in the right place, ‘cause these are good questions to be taken before the police board.

But I just really wish we could have engaged the community more in these particular questions. ‘Cause what happened with the police budget, quite frankly, was the people that wanted to scale it down necessarily focused on some of the really big ticket items. And we never really got into this question of long-term accountability. And I think we have to do a better job doing that.

Councilor Palosa. Thank you, Mr. Chair. And I guess speaking as budget chair as well, if colleagues have things they would like to see changed for the budget process, there’s an annual update.

We get that in November, so please let me know now as having those meetings with staff now about it. And I’m supportive of this motion. And as well, the police chief will be appearing before council later this year, as we did do that through budget process when we asked for accountability and coming and presenting to us for some things like these metrics that he will be able to speak to and engage with council on. So looking forward to that coming and just working with staff to find the appropriate time is for that report and delegation to hit within our council meeting rotation.

Thank you. Thank you, Councilor. And I must say you have incredible power as the budget chair because no sooner did you see an annual update was coming than Mr. Murray joined us in council chambers just in case there were questions about that.

Councilor Roman. Thank you and through you. I just wanted to say thanks to my colleagues for working and collaborating on this letter, but also to those here in having this discussion. I do think that this creates not only the accountability, but it allows for a different discussion as we move forward as we continue to look at making data informed decisions.

We now have metrics that we’re agreeing on that we’re going to be updated annually on and that we can then move forward with. So I think it also gives that transparency to the public on knowing this information and also what has council specifically asked for from the police service board and what in turn did they reply and say that they were willing to provide. So I think that it’s a good step towards some additional dialogue and I look forward to hearing back from police service board on it. Thank you.

No other speakers, oh, sorry, I do. Councillor Hopkins, you’re next. Thank you, Mr. Chair.

I know it’s been a long meeting. I will be quick, just a quick comment. I appreciate the greater level of transparency. The OB supporting that.

I do recall a couple of councils ago. Councillor Mosale brought forward an opportunity for the police services to meet here in the chambers and to have the public available. And that sort of didn’t really carry through because of the confidentiality around the board meetings. And that just sort of leads to my question around, I understand it’s quarterly reporting that we’re asking the police services, not annually and just want to know how we can expect that reporting to come to us through committee and then eventually to council, but just like a better idea of the process that we’re looking at.

And Councillor, I apologize. I wrote your name down for a second time under my LTC speakers list instead of my LPS speakers list. I’m gonna go to Mayor Morgan as a member of the board to see if he can respond to that, but we don’t have the chief here, so we’ll have to go to the mayor. Yeah, and I’ll just be clear ‘cause I tell other colleagues not to do this.

So I’m not speaking on behalf of the board right now. I’m sitting in my chair here as the mayor, but I will say from the knowledge that I know about this, this is our dialogue with the London Police Services Board. Ultimately, what they do is going to be their decision and communication back with us. What I can tell you from discussions that I know the board has had is that their desire is not just to communicate effectively with council or the chief’s desires to communicate and effectively with council, but also directly with residents of the city of London who they have an obligation to as well.

So what the ultimate overall accountability and transparency framework looks like for the board will be a discussion that will happen there. So I don’t think we can answer your question on what that looks like yet. This is kind of our submission to say, here’s what we’re hoping for and what you to consider so that they can respond back to us. I appreciate that.

I know you can’t speak for the police services board, but as much as we’re asking the police to be accountable back to us, we also have to make sure that we follow up with the police service board as well. So I’ll be supporting this. Any further speakers? Seeing none, then I’m going to ask the clerk to open the vote.

Mr. Van Maryberg, thank you for closing the vote. Motion carries 14 to zero. Okay, moving on.

4.7 is the second report of the diversity, inclusion, anti-oppression, community advisory committee. And we have, Councilor Raman. Are you looking, I was looking to move the motion that’s provided? That will help frame the discussion.

So if you’d like to do that, I’ll look for a seconder. I think that it’s important for folks to know that there’s a direction to governance working group, as well as a clauses to be received. So for your seconding, Councilor Raman. Thank you and just to be able to be quick, but this was in line with our conversation, a governance working group to move these conversations forward.

And so I appreciate the, again, the work that the committee’s doing, and I look forward to these discussions. Thank you, any other speakers? Seeing none, Councilor Layman, you’re not on the governance working group. Can you take the chair for me, please?

I will take the chair and go to the deputy mayor. Thank you, Mr. Presiding Officer. So I won’t be supporting clause A.

The governance working group is already reviewing in terms of reference for all the advisory committees. I think it’s very important for the advisory committees, and I said this is a governance working group this week, to have the same terms of reference. They should be treated equally. I don’t believe that one committee should have more power or consideration in an area than another.

To me, I’m not even sure what they’re asking for in terms of the quote specifically, in order to better utilize the talents, efforts, and viewpoints of racialized communities within the city of London. There’s no clear indication from the report that we have exactly what they intend. I don’t know how this is supposed to integrate with the work of the ARAO with our staff. And it feels to me like this is just reviving the same discussion that was had with them two years ago by the last governance working group.

And we have had reviews of the advisory committees in terms of reference on the deferred matters list at the governance working group since the day I arrived at City Hall. Because every time we approve a terms of reference, we have another advisory committee asking us to change the terms of reference for them. And here we are again. So I’m not going to support clause A, I’ll support the hit being received.

I’ll return the chair to the optimator. Being for any other speakers. Okay, so we’re going to sort of trust out and just clerks have indicated they’ll separate it out into AMB for votes. Yeah, I’m going to support this because I believe that the advisory committees and the advisory committee should be able to have a little bit more autonomy, although I do think your point is very, very well taken.

And what I do want to point out though is I’m not sure that this is complete enough so that if somebody was just picking up this document and said please correct me if I’m wrong, that I’m missing it someplace. But I wouldn’t really be able to understand the full issue just based on what’s here. Now I understand what their intent is, but I’ve mentioned this about advisory committee reports in the past. I would like to see them more complete.

So instead of saying something like there was something attached, attach it to the report so it becomes part of the council record. And that’s just what I hope is a helpful suggestion. But I understand what they’re doing here and I’m going to support it, but I would like to see more clarity in these reports. Thank you, Councillor.

And I can’t provide you any more information ‘cause I don’t have it either. I don’t see it myself. So I agree with what you’re saying there. And we do have Councillor McAllister to speak next.

Thank you. And I was wondering in terms of if this would be appropriate, I don’t know if I need to amend this or just maybe procedural question, but is it possible for this advisory committee to come to the government’s working group to have that collaboration face-to-face instead of just back and forth? Yes, it is. That would be something that you would propose at the governance working group to invite them to a future meeting.

We have done that before. And in fact, in the last term of council, we dedicated two days with two hour meetings each day for each of the advisory committees to attend. So four hours were devoted to them appearing before the governance working group. So I don’t have to add that in.

I can bring that up a governance working group? That’s correct. I think that’s— - Sorry, just so that you’re clear. Because the terms of reference for all advisory committees is already on the deferred matters list at governance working group, that can be something that you determine at governance working group.

You don’t need direction from SPPC to do that. Okay, and thank you for that clarification through you. I do think if we’re updating the terms of reference, I don’t know how many delegates we could have, but perhaps the chairs, or I just think it would be beneficial as we’re doing the terms of reference to have people from the committees there to kind of maybe cut back on the back and forth. I recognize the time involved, but if we can hash out some of the issues at governance versus bringing them back and forth.

Councilor just, and for everyone’s information, I just had a quick sidebar with the clerk. The clerk is going to check and see if we have the video recordings from the governance working group from last term, because there was that very extensive consultation with the chairs and the vice chairs of these advisory committees coming to governance working group. If, in fact, we have, because it’s a working group, it’s not like a standing committee, so we weren’t here in chambers and there may not be a stream available. The clerk is going to check though, and if the stream is available, that will get circulated to all members of council so that you can review it.

Councilor McAllister. Thank you, and once again, through you, I’m not trying to belabor this, but were there recommendations that came out of the governance working group to update the terms of reference, or was it just a discussion that was had? Sorry, Councilor, I was just following up with the clerk on that. Can you just ask that again?

Yeah, absolutely, and through you, just curious in terms of, you said there was four hours dedicated, were the terms of reference updated in the previous council, or were those conversations halted before any decision was made? Yes, the terms of reference were updated. They were actually passed February 16th of 2022, so they’re only two years old. Mayor Morgan.

Just some comments on this. So I understand why chair of the governance working group would want to vote against this, because when you look at this, and then you look at the committee agenda and the letter, it’s not actually clear what the change is that’s being asked. So I don’t think approving this just puts the governance working group in an awkward spot of trying to make a change without any context. If colleagues are interested in doing this a different way, given the work that the governance working group has been done, you could just refer, like don’t act on this, but just refer this piece of correspondence to the governance working group, ‘cause looking at the letter that went to governance working group, although I didn’t watch the meeting, so I don’t know what the conversation that happened, there’s a number of questions I think actually have answers to them about the structure of advisory committees.

There’s some ideas that were referenced about how to engage, seeing the advisory committees as kind of a lucky few, and that there’s a wider engagement that needs to happen, which I think is something we can consider, but it doesn’t necessarily fit with what’s task in front of us. So I think rather than just dispensing of this, we could just refer this piece without actually asking the governance working group to do anything besides consider it, and maybe provide a communication and engagement with DAIAC about what the actual thing is, because there’s a little bit of this that looks like communication to me, and there’s a little bit of it that looks like different processes through maybe ARAO with a wider outreach, and I’m probably missing a piece of this because I wasn’t privy to the discussion at the meeting, but I wouldn’t want us to miss capturing that. So I’d be comfortable moving on A, just a referral of A to the governance working group for their consideration without any suggested particular action that governance working group take on this, right? So that they could have that dialogue as part of their general looking at advisory committees, and I just wanna make sure that there’s some general consensus on that, because I think that I’m kind of on the voted down piece right now, but I get that we’re just actually not being, it’s not clear what’s being asked here, and I would hate to throw that out at the same time.

Okay, so before I go to Councillor Hopkins, are you moving a referral? Yes. - You are. Councillor Hopkins?

Happy to do second. Okay, so that’s, we’re just gonna give the clerks a moment to get the language to refer part A, the communication referenced in part A to the governance working group. Yes. But not task them with reconfiguring at this point, and then clause B will still read, be received these other pieces.

Councillor Ferrer. Thank you. That does make sense to me referring to the governance working group, but I just have one question before anything, and that would be, we have a pretty extensive deferred matters list on the governance working groups. I just wanted to know where would that fall within the timing when we would be able to discuss?

Well, Councillor, we don’t have the governance working group report to this SPPC, it’ll be to the next SPPC, but we did have some discussion around some terms of reference on Monday. That discussion is by no means finished, it’s gonna come back. So when the clerks bring that update back to us, we can then consider this as, in addition to that update at the same time. So we would align those two things to discuss at one meeting rather than multiple meetings.

Okay, thank you. Okay, given we have a referral now on part A, rather than a up and down vote, I won’t need that separated anymore, but what it has basically done is a men part A. So motion four in your E-Scribe is that the request to reconfigure the terms of reference for DHAC, be specifically in order to better utilize the same language, be referred to governance working group for consideration, so we can open the vote on that unless there’s any further discussion. Seeing none, we’ll open the vote on that.

Close in the vote, motion carries 14 to zero. Okay, and because the clerks had been very efficient and got this into E-Scribe already before we said it did need to be separated, there is the second piece. So Councilor Raman and Councilor Ferra, if you’re still okay being the mover and seconder, that the, this motion reads that the following actions be taken with second report of the diversity, inclusion, anti-oppression community advisory committee that, and this is the part B, that the clause is 1.1, 1.2, 2.1, 2.2, 3.1, and 4.1 be received. Last clerk to open the vote on that.

In the vote, motion carries 14 to zero. Thank you colleagues, moving on to item 4.8. We have a communication from Mayor Morgan, requesting an off-site meeting, Mayor Morgan. I’ll yield the floor to you to introduce that.

Yes, and you see the communication, but the motion that you’ll see in E-Scribe actually does three separate things. So I just want to outline for colleagues who may not have looked at that yet. One is in order to have a meeting between Municipal Council and Oneida Nation of the Thames Council. We need to give ourselves permission to have an off-site meeting, much like we did for the inauguration.

So that permission is requested in there. Also, given my discussions with the chief and the desire to have this a very collaborative discussion, I’m also asking for us to, at this point, give ourselves permission to suspend the Council of Procedure By-law with things like speaking limitations and some of the protocols contained within certain sections. We won’t bring the ceremonial mace and we’ll kind of just basically transition this into the structure of two bodies meeting together, having a formal meeting but having a dialogue. And that is out of respect for the different procedures that we both operate in and coming to a common ground.

And then the third piece is given, we’d start the meeting at five. We have to pass a motion to go past six. I thought I’d just get that out of the way now rather than doing some procedural messing around at what I want to be a discussion and not us executing a bunch of our own procedures during that time. So those are the three pieces.

Now, I’ll see if there’s a seconder for that and then I just wanna provide some additional context. So that’s been moved. Do we have a seconder? Councilor McAllister, Mayor Morgan, if you wanna provide your context?

Yeah, thank you. So I hope colleagues will support this. So let me just cover a couple of questions that may come up preemptively. The establishment of this meeting is after a long series of discussions between the chief and I about a desire to form a different type of relationship between a municipal council here in London and the United Nation of the Thames Council.

This is the preferred way of us engaging that we’ve kind of come together on common ground. Now, you probably wonder why aren’t we doing this with the other two significant nations who exist in the area? Because it’d be presumptuous to suggest that they might want the exact same thing. So what I’ve done is I’ve reached out to them to let them know what we’re considering doing with the United Nations of the Thames to start a dialogue between myself and the chiefs about, if you would like to do something similar, what does that look like?

If you wanna do something different, let’s have that discussion. But I didn’t want you to think just because we’re meeting with one, we’re precluding building a relationship with the others. I just wanna be very respectful about the approaches that they wanna take. Given the history of this country, it’s important for us to be very respectful and collaborative and not presume that all indigenous communities would like to do things in the exact same way.

They all have their own histories and processes and cultures and unique ways of approaching things. And not all may want to engage in this type of relationship in this way. So this is how Oneida and Chief Cornelius would like to do it. I’m happy to accommodate that.

I think it’ll be a great discussion. I’ll update council later on what engagements the other nations might be looking for from us and that might not be looked the exact same way as this one, it may look slightly different. So I just wanna call these to know that I’ve reached out to all so that this has come as a surprise to them that we’re considering this. Councilor McAllister, thank you through the chair.

I just wanna extend my thanks to the mayor for putting this forward. Happy to second it. I also appreciate in terms of the suspension of the certain protocols you mentioned, not bringing the mace. I don’t know if this has already been discussed, but you might also wanna consider not wearing the chain of office.

I also think that might send the wrong signal just in terms of some of the things that are on the chain of office. Just recognizing in terms of the colonial history and trying to build those bridges. So again, thank you and just a food for thought for you. Thank you.

So, Mayor Morgan, I wanna just respond to that. So that, so through the chair, that is a piece where we would also be presumptuous to say that we don’t think something’s in it, that the mace has specifically come up. It’s not required for us to run meetings. The chief may, and I may, may both wear things that are recognitions of the authority and the councils that we go.

That is not perceived as disrespectful. In fact, you will see us perhaps do some of our own traditional ceremonial things at a respect for each other’s processes, but there are some things that we’re just not gonna do. So that has not been decided yet, but those things are being considered. I don’t need those sorts of permissions at this point to have to do that, but I wanted to be aware that the mace, which does have a specific history, but it’s not technically required.

I wanted to just counsel to recognize that so that it comes as no surprise that it didn’t come along. If I could just quickly respond through the chair, I’m not trying to presume anything. I’m just happy those conversations are happening, because likewise, I didn’t know if you had presumed. So I just wanted to make sure those conversations are happening just to be sensitive to those issues.

So thank you for that context. And colleagues, I would just suggest that if you have personal concerns about any of the ceremonial components, that’s conversation you can have with the mayor offline. That’s not part of this motion. So honestly, I’m gonna cut off debate on that any further.

We need to focus on the motion. That’s before us. Councillor Palose, I’ve got you next on the speakers list. Thank you.

My comments were just brief of ideally, I guess, for going, singing “Oh Canada” and making sure that we brought a tobacco offering if they’re welcoming us on their territory for meeting. That was all. Thank you. And the mayor’s nodding in the affirmative.

Any other speakers on the motion? Seeing none, then I’m gonna ask the clerk to open the vote. Councillor Van Neillberg, closing the vote. Motion carries 14 to zero.

Thank you colleagues. Before we move on to item five, which is deferred matters additional business, we still have item 2.3 from our consent agenda. This is the allocation of the 2024 assessment growth. I will note that there was a request for delegation status.

Our delegate is no longer with us, but I did receive an email from him and he just indicated he has emailed to let me know that he had to leave the meeting at 3.45 as he had another commitment at 4 p.m. He respects that chair stuff happens and regrets that he couldn’t stay with us, but noted that after three plus hours, he had other commitments that he had to attend to. But we do have item 2.3 and the staff recommendation on that to deal with Councillor Pribble. You asked to have this pulled.

I don’t know if it’s, if you have anything other than the staff recommendation that you want to speak to, but I do think we should get the staff recommendation or an alternate motion on the floor. I don’t know if you’re prepared to move the staff recommendation. Excuse me, I’m gonna be a really brief chair. The staff did an act at exactly as per council policy and it should be received for information.

I just wanted to bring it up because I really hope that I would like us to reconsider this for the future. I do think that these are the things that we should, as councils, we should be deciding. We should be looking to our budget and organizations that we have approved budgets for and allocate to the highest needs, what our city needs and that includes the taxpayers. So I just want us, again, it just received for information.

I will not support it, but I just want to let you know, I’m not just supporting it because of this case and I will be looking more into it and I hope we will revisit this policy and we’ll change it and we’ll make this decision, these decisions to be in our hands. Thank you. Okay, Councillor, I just need to understand did you say you will not be supporting it? The first thing I’m looking for is a mover and a seconder to receive.

So Mayor Morgan moves, do we have a seconder? Councillor Cuddy, just that way, Councillor, if you choose not to receive it, that’s fine. Councillor, trust out your next on the list. If I understand this correctly, which I might not, we’re not going to come back and vote on this.

This is the end of the matter. This is enacted and we’re receiving it. That is correct. The assessment growth is a delegated authority.

Okay, well, I guess it’s too late to do it now, but I would very much like to undeligate it because I guess the question I had when I looked at that, their agencies that do have potential assessment growth issues, they would have to demonstrate them who were not included on that. And I just feel that they were shortchanged. Morgan, yes, I’ll support the receipt of this. I’ll say there are many organizations in the past who have submitted assessment growth business cases and been approved.

The example of one that may not be here is the London Public Library. They’ve submitted to assessment growth many times. The city grows, they need more library resources. We had a whole conversation about how transit should be submitting to assessment growth, but hasn’t.

But that isn’t coming up on them to access the assessment growth policy. As the city grows, they have to make growth related business cases into the process. And I know that there will be a desire for colleagues to want to jump in this and make all these decisions ourselves. But the more technical this is about the city grows, more services need to, or more costs are on the municipality, we need to cover those costs.

The better than us in our own way reallocating this. This is about growth paying for growth and growth causing costs that we need to cover with the new tax dollars. So I think that there are many organizations that have submitted assessment growth business case in the past. They may not have this time, but when you look back through the history, there was even a motion that Deputy Mayor Lewis and I brought to say homelessness and housing initiatives as the city grows, so does the challenge of homelessness.

And there was even one time where half a million dollars went to homelessness and supporting that within assessment growth business cases. So I think each and every year will look different depending on the case is submitted. If your criticism is that something isn’t here that you think should, go to that organization, ask if they submitted a case. There was a challenge with their case being submitted.

Have them work with the treasurer and the Deputy City Manager about submitting a case in the past or talking about why their case may not have been identified as growth oriented. So I just think undeligating this at this time seems like us moving into us making our decisions based on our preferences rather than us ensuring that we’re trying to be true to when the city grows, we got to supply more services to those areas. We really should be using part of those tax dollars to supply those services. And when there’s excess, as there is this time, we have a policy to dump it into very responsible places like infrastructure gap and debt reduction.

And that is how we have paid down so much debt and how we have started to close the infrastructure gap is by these good policy decisions. That happens on a one time basis and then it goes into the next year. After two years of surpluses and once in a while we do spin some of this off to tax relief and we have in the past. But we know through housing start numbers that it depends on when those completions are made on when assessment growth happens.

And there could be some inconsistency given our numbers in 2023 and what 2024 looks like. Caring some forward gives us the buffer to ensure that we will have the dollars in place to prepare for the growth, especially of 2024. Doesn’t happen in the way that we did or we have to catch up with the 2023. It’s all about when units come to completion and the tax dollars start to be collected.

So with all the high density residential we have in our city, we know there’s lots more costs happening but those will not all come to fruition at the same time. 7100 units across the city and they’re gonna land at different points. We need to ensure that we carry some of this assessment growth forward so that we smooth the curve and don’t have a deficiency in supporting the types of things we need to support for a growing city. So, apologize to the chair for being a little long on that but I think assessment growth policy is a well-developed, robust policy that has been working well over many years.

And just because an organization or agency isn’t there doesn’t mean that they shouldn’t have applied or could apply in the future if they have growth-related pressures. And you’re not long, you’re worship, you still have a minute and 15 seconds. Looking for other speakers, I see none. I wanted to advise colleagues, Councilor Palosa had to leave the meeting and I’m gonna ask the clerk still on the vote.

Mr. Van Mirbergen, closing the vote. Motion carries 11 to two. Thank you colleagues.

We have one item of additional business. There was an added communication from Councilor Raman and Councilor Hopkins with regard to the Thames Valley District School Board. Councilor Raman. Thank you and through you.

So first I wanted to say thank you to Councilor Hopkins and to the TBDSB Board Chair for communication, which I know was circulated to a number of counselors with respect to the needs for new schools in the area. And I wanna say thank you to the mayor for his communication in October that outlined support for the four schools that were indicated in the business case. We’ve provided a new version of the motion to recognize the previous communication, but basically to highlight the need for movement from the province and from Minister Leche on the school in West London and Southwest London because those are the school blocks that are set to expire in near term. And as far as I understand there are decisions that are going to be made quite soon around new schools and hopefully some funding announcements.

So that’s why the letter is before you and our hope is that it would be something the mayor would be able to provide communication on with the support of Council. Thank you. Thank you. Councilor Raman, I’m just gonna ask if you can confirm and e-scribe if that is the updated language or if that is the original language.

Yeah, if you refresh that the mayor be requested to send a further communication on behalf of London City Council with particular focus on the pressing needs for approval on the West London and Southwest London schools in order to option school blocks set to expire in the near term. Perfect. And Councilor Hopkins, you’re still prepared to be the seconder and then we’ll go to you next. Thank you, Mr.

Chair and thank you Councilor Raman for getting this together. Thank you, the mayor for getting the letter out last year. I think we cannot do enough to make sure that the province is aware of the need for schools in the area, the two schools and this is what I learned that even though you are on the list, it does not mean that you are going to get it. These two schools, there are no available sites in the area and hoping we can get support here from our colleagues to support another letter to the minister as they in the next week or so make decisions.

Thank you, Councilor. Any other speakers? Mayor Morgan. Yeah, I’ll just for colleagues may not object to the email when I saw the motion and I appreciate the colleagues adjusting it.

I did submit, I was requested to submit on behalf of municipal council and the corporation a letter of support for the original application which went in through the board as part of it. I appreciate that the urgency now is on particular options that will expire without having that funding come forward. So I also appreciate the send to further communication on behalf of London City Councils there. I know before it said write a letter, I’ll probably end up trying to get a phone call and communicate directly with them and then can follow up with some actual correspondence via email but given the time is of the urgency here, a time is of the essence and there’s an urgency here.

I’ll look to coordinate with the board chair to ensure that, you know, I’m not making calls but they’re making calls and just have that conversation about the importance of having those funding allocations sooner rather than later to ensure that those school blocks don’t pass the expiry and the contracts which can’t be changed ‘cause there are actually contracts out there and there’s an urgency to this. So happy to receive this direction from council and I’m happy to not just write a communication but see what else I can do to try to assist with this. Thank you, Your Worship, any other speakers? Seeing none, I’ll ask the clerk to open the vote.

The vote motion carries 13 to zero. And the good news is I have no emergent motions. No notices of motion given. We can move now and nothing on confidential so we can move to adjournment.

All those in favor? By motion carries. He had his hand up so, okay.