April 16, 2024, at 1:00 PM

Original link

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

1.   Disclosures of Pecuniary Interest

That it BE NOTED that no pecuniary interests were disclosed.

2.   Consent

Moved by P. Cuddy

Seconded by S. Franke

That Consent item 2.3 BE APPROVED.

Motion Passed (15 to 0)

2.3   Kettle Creek Conservation Authority (KCCA) Appointment - Ministry of Natural Resources and Forestry

Minister Smith letter to City of London April 5 2024

Moved by P. Cuddy

Seconded by S. Franke

That, with respect to the appointment of one non-elected member to the Kettle Creek Conservation Authority (KCCA), the following actions be taken:

a)         the communication dated April 5, 2024, from the Honourable Graydon Smith, Minister of Natural Resources and Forestry, granting an exception under the Conservation Authorities Act (CAA) from the requirement in subsection 14 (1.1) for at least 70 percent of municipal appointments to a conservation authority to be selected from among members of municipal council BE RECEIVED;

b)         the Civic Administration BE DIRECTED to include applications on a future agenda of the Strategic Priorities and Policy Committee, for consideration and recommendation of appointment of one member of the public to the KCCA;

it being noted that advertisement for the position be in the usual manner, including the City’s social media channels.

Motion Passed

2.1   Whole of Community System Response - Quarterly Update April

2024-04-16 - Staff Report (2.1) - Whole of Community System Response - Quarterly Report final version - Full

Moved by S. Franke

Seconded by P. Cuddy

That, on the recommendation of the Deputy City Manager, Social and Health Development, the report dated April 16, 2024, regarding Whole of Community System Response – Quarterly Report, BE RECEIVED for information.

Motion Passed (14 to 1)

ADDITIONAL VOTES:

Moved by S. Stevenson

Seconded by J. Pribil

That pursuant to section 31.6 of the Council Procedure By-law, Councillor S. Stevenson BE PERMITTED to speak an additional 3 minutes with respect to this matter.

Motion Passed (9 to 6)

2.2   9th Report of the Governance Working Group

2024-04-16 Submission - GWG

Moved by S. Franke

Seconded by P. Cuddy

That the following actions be taken with respect to the 9th Report of the Governance Working Group from its meeting held on March 25, 2024:

a)  the following actions be taken with respect to the staff report dated March 25, 2024 related to Council Members’ Expense Account Policy - Further Updates;

i) the Civic Administration BE DIRECTED to maintain status quo and fund ward meeting and engagement expenses from the Councillor expense account with Ward Option #1, as indicated in the above noted report; and

ii)  the staff report dated March 25, 2024 related to Council Members’ Expense Account Policy - Further Updates BE RECEIVED;

b)  the following actions be taken with respect to the report dated March 25, 2024 related to the General Policy for Community Advisory Committees:

i) the updated General Policy for Community Advisory Committees BE REFERRED to a future meeting of the Governance Working Group;

ii) the Civic Administration BE DIRECTED to amend the following sections of the proposed policy;

A) section 4.3 with regard to reasonable timelines for advertising a mid-term vacancy on a Community Advisory Committee;

B) section 4.5 to schedule the presentation of applications for appointment to Community Advisory Committees at the end of Q1 after a new term of Council takes office;

C) section 4.19 to provide the City Clerk discretion with respect to placing a Community Advisory Committee agenda item(s) on an alternate Standing Committee agenda;

D) section 4.23 to provide for an alternate mechanism to process, resolve, and report complaints about members of Community Advisory Committees;

E) include language to clarify that Community Advisory Committees are permitted to invite members of the public to observe or participate as a guest speaker at Community Advisory Committee meetings; and

F) include language to state that where the General Policy for Community Advisory Committees or the proposed Simplified Procedures for Community Advisory Committees is silent, questions of procedure be deferred to the Council Procedure By-law:

 

iii) the Civic Administration BE DIRECTED to conduct an environmental scan and report back to the Governance Working Group with respect to the utilization of working groups and/or task forces; and

iv) the Civic Administration BE DIRECTED to report back to the Governance Working Group with attendance metrics for the City of London’s Community Advisory Committee meetings;

c)  clauses 1.1 and 4.1 BE RECEIVED.

ADDITIONAL VOTES:

Moved by S. Franke

Seconded by P. Cuddy

That part a) i) BE APPROVED.

Motion Failed (3 to 12)

Moved by S. Franke

Seconded by P. Cuddy

That the balance of the motion BE APPROVED.

Motion Passed (15 to 0)

3.   Scheduled Items

Moved by C. Rahman

Seconded by A. Hopkins

That, pursuant to section 27.6 of the Council Procedure By-law, a change in order of the SPPC Committee Agenda BE APPROVED, to provide for Item 5.1 in Stage 5, Deferred Matters/Additional Business to be considered after Stage 3, Scheduled Items.

Motion Passed (15 to 0)

5.   Deferred Matters/Additional Business

5.1   (ADDED) Secondary School Student Transit Pass Pilot Project - Deputy Mayor S. Lewis and Councillor P. Cuddy

2024-04-16 Submission - (5.1) Secondary Student Transit Motion

Moved by P. Cuddy

Seconded by E. Peloza

That the following actions be taken with respect to establishing a secondary school student transit pass pilot project:

a) the Civic Administration in collaboration with the London Transit Commission BE DIRECTED to initiate the development of a Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) with the Thames Valley District School Board (TVDSB), for the purpose of partnering to deliver a pilot project to provide annual transit passes to secondary school students at Clarke Road Secondary School, including the following:

i) the pilot project BE LIMITED to school years beginning September 2024 for all Grade 9 students and September 2025 for all Grade 9 and 10 students attending Clarke Road Secondary School;

ii) the current post-secondary student annual transit pass agreements between the City of London, Western University and Fanshawe College and the current Children Under 12 Ride Free program BE CONSIDERED as templates to establish the framework for this pilot program; and

b) the Civic Administration BE DIRECTED to report back to Council with the MOU, an appropriate source of financing, and metrics reporting for the pilot program;

it being noted that the TVDSB has written the Minister of Education to ask for consideration for provincial funding support for a bussing pilot. Additionally, continuing the program beyond the pilot project would require a permanent source of ongoing operating funding from a variety of sources, including reallocation of funding or funding from senior levels of government that would need to be investigated;

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

  • L. Pizzolato, Trustee, Wards 1, 11, 12 and 14 and C. Lynd, Superintendent, Thames Valley District School Board; and

  • D. Hendry, Get on the Bus - Co-Founder & Project Director.

Motion Passed (13 to 2)

ADDITIONAL VOTES:

Moved by P. Cuddy

Seconded by H. McAlister

That the delegation requests from L. Pizzolato, C. Lynd and D. Hendry BE APPROVED to be heard at this time.

Motion Passed (15 to 0)

Moved by S. Stevenson

Seconded by C. Rahman

That the following actions be taken with respect to a secondary school student transit pass pilot project:

a) that the motion from Deputy Mayor S. Lewis and Councillor P. Cuddy BE REFERRED to the next meeting of Strategic Priorities and Policy Committee on May 7, 2024; and

b) that Civic Administration BE DIRECTED to extend an invitation to the London Transit Committee to attend the meeting.

it being noted that a communication from Deputy Mayor S. Lewis and Councillor P. Cuddy with respect to this matter was received.

Motion Failed (4 to 11)

4.   Items for Direction

4.1   Targeted Actions to Increase London’s Housing Supply: Supporting Council’s Pledge for 47,000 Units by 2031

2024-04-16 - Staff Report (4.1) - FINAL Targeted Actions Report - Full

Moved by J. Morgan

Seconded by S. Lehman

On the recommendation of the Director of Planning and Development, the following actions are proposed regarding the Targeted Actions to Increase London’s Housing Supply:

a)    the report entitled “Targeted Actions to Increase London’s Housing Supply: Supporting Council’s Pledge for 47,000 Units by 2031,” as appended to the staff report as Appendix “A,” BE APPROVED;

b)    the staff report dated April 16, 2024, BE RECEIVED;

c)    the Civic Administration BE REQUESTED to invite the Upper Thames River Conservation Authority to participate in the work of the Customer Service and Process Improvement Reference Group.

it being noted that the Strategic Priorities and Policy Committee heard delegations from M. Wallace, Executive Director, London Development Institute and J. Zaifman, CEO, London Home Builders’ Association with respect to this matter.

ADDITIONAL VOTES:

Moved by S. Stevenson

Seconded by C. Rahman

That the delegation requests for M. Wallace, London Development Institute and J. Zaifman, London Home Builders’ Association BE APPROVED to be heard at this time.

Motion Passed (15 to 0)

Moved by S. Franke

Seconded by H. McAlister

That the motion be amended to include a new part c) to read as follows:

c)    the Civic Administration BE REQUESTED to invite the Upper Thames River Conservation Authority to participate in the work of the Customer Service and Process Improvement Reference Group.

Motion Passed (14 to 1)

Moved by J. Morgan

Seconded by S. Lehman

That item 4.1, as amended, BE APPROVED.

Motion Passed (15 to 0)

4.2   3rd Report of the Diversity, Inclusion and Anti-Oppression Community Advisory Committee

2024-04-16 Submission - DIACAC Report

Moved by D. Ferreira

Seconded by S. Franke

That the following actions be taken with respect to the 3rd Report of the Diversity, Inclusion and Anti-Oppression Community Advisory Committee from its meeting held on March 14, 2024:

a)   the Committee Clerk BE DIRECTED to place the following matters on the next agenda:

i) application requirements for the Diversity, Inclusion and Anti-Oppression Community Advisory Committee;

ii) potential interviews for top candidates; and,

iii) reviewing the Terms of Reference for the Diversity, Inclusion and Anti-Oppression Community Advisory Committee;

it being noted that the Diversity, Inclusion and Anti-Oppression Community Advisory Committee held a general discussion with respect to the above-noted matters;

b)    clauses 1.1, 2.1, 2.2, 4.1 and 6.1 BE RECEIVED.

Motion Passed (15 to 0)

4.3   Request for a Shareholder’s Meeting - London Hydro Inc.

2024-04-16 Submission - London Hydro Request for Delegation Status

Moved by C. Rahman

Seconded by S. Lehman

That the following actions be taken with respect to the 2023 Annual General Meeting of the Shareholder for London Hydro Inc.:

a)      the 2023 Annual General Meeting of the Shareholder for London Hydro Inc. BE HELD at a meeting of the Strategic Priorities and Policy Committee on May 28, 2024, for the purpose of receiving the report from the Board of Directors of London Hydro Inc. in accordance with the Shareholder Declaration and the Business Corporations Act, R.S.O. 1990, c. B.16; and

b)      the City Clerk BE DIRECTED to provide notice of the 2023 Annual Meeting to the Board of Directors for London Hydro Inc. and to invite the Chair of the Board and the Chief Executive Officer of London Hydro Inc. to attend at the Annual Meeting and present the report of the Board in accordance with the Shareholder Declaration;

it being noted that the Strategic Priorities and Policy Committee received a communication dated March 28, 2024, from C. Graham, Chair, Board of Directors, London Hydro Inc., with respect to this matter.

Motion Passed (15 to 0)

6.   Confidential

None.

7.   Adjournment

Moved by P. Van Meerbergen

Seconded by S. Franke

That the meeting BE ADJOURNED.

Motion Passed

The meeting adjourned at 4:14 PM.

Full Transcript

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

View full transcript (3 hours, 28 minutes)

Good afternoon, everyone. I’m going to call the eighth meeting of the Strategic Priorities and Policy Committee together. And I’m going to start by acknowledging, as always, that the City of London is situated on the traditional lands of the Anishinaabeck, 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. I also want to acknowledge that the City of London is 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, please contact sppclondon.ca or phone 519-661-2489, extension 2425.

And I will begin by looking for any disclosures of culinary interest. Seeing none, then I’m going to move along to the consent agenda. We have three items. I have been asked by Councillor Palosa to pull 2.2, the ninth report of the governance working group, looking to see if anyone wants anything else dealt with separately.

Councillor Stevenson. 2.1, please. Okay, so if we want to deal with 2.1 separately, we can pull that as well. That will only leave 2.3 for consent.

Councillor Trussow. Yeah, I think we should deal with 2.3 because we might want to put out a notice. Have we put out a notice already? In which case it’s moot?

Yes, the notice, the clerks have proactively for the notice. It’s done, so I don’t need to pull it. So we just have 2.3 on the consent. Other two items are to be dealt with separately.

So I’m going to look for a mover on 2.3 just so we can dispense with that item. Councillor Cudi and seconded by Councillor Frank. Any further comments or questions on 2.3? Seeing none, then I will ask the clerk to open the vote.

Closing the vote, motion carries 15 to zero. Thank you, colleagues. So moving on, we will take 2.1 and 2.2, and we will move those to the deferred matters at the end of the meeting. Deal with them then.

Moving on to item three, there are no scheduled items. Item four, items for direction. We have three items here. The first is the targeted actions to increase London’s housing supply, supporting council’s pledge for 47,000 units.

And I’m going to look to Mr. Mathers to give us a brief introduction here before we move into Sarama. Hold on one moment, Mr. Mathers.

Thank you, Chair. I’m sorry to ask this. I thought that another member of council is asking. Would it be possible to entertain an agenda shift change?

I know that there are representatives from the school board here, and I’m aware that one has to be at a funeral later today. I’m just wondering if we might be able to change the order in order to allow for that matter to be dealt with first? It’s always in order for a member to look to change the order. So I would just advise that we do have delegations for 4.1 as well.

So we do have two items for which we have delegations. So if you’d like to move a change of order, I’m going to look to you for where you would like to put the item regarding the school board before or after the housing supply one. Thank you, Chair. And I’m hoping that our delegation from housing will be okay with me moving this order and putting this item from the school board beforehand if that’s okay.

I’m seeing some thumbs up from our delegates in the gallery too. So Councilor ramen, you’re going to move a change of order which would deal with 5.1 before our items for direction. So look for a seconder for that and Councilor Cuddy’s willing to second it. So I will get the clerk to open the vote on that as soon as it is ready in the ascribe.

Colleagues that vote is now open in the ascribe. Just to confirm it’s coming up 4.1. It’s to move 5.8 in the text. So the title is not the same as the text in the vote.

Closing the vote motion carries 15 to zero. Thank you colleagues. So that will move us to 5.1. That is the secondary school student transit pass pilot project.

There is a communication in the agenda from myself and Councilor Cuddy. So I’m going to look to Councilor and we also have two requests for delegation status. They’re tied to this motion. So I’m going to ask for acceptance of the delegation from our committee first.

And if we can deal with both of those together unless anyone has any objections, it will look for a motion to accept both delegations. Moved by Councilor Cuddy and seconded by Councilor McAllister. Closing the vote motion carries 15 to zero. Thank you colleagues.

So we will move first to our delegation from the Thames Valley District School Board. So Ms. Lind and Ms. Trustee Pizalato, if you’d like to come to the podium for your delegation.

So can you hear me? Welcome. As with all of our delegations, you have five minutes with about 30 seconds left. If you’re getting close to that, you’ll hear us.

That’s just so you can keep talking over us, but you know you’ve got about 30 seconds at that point in time. So you have no red card? Okay. That’s an inside joke.

I’d like to thank you for making these changes today to accommodate my colleague for attending her funeral. So thank you. So thank you so much for allowing me to speak today on behalf of the Board of Trustees of Thames Valley District School Board. I am joined here today with Superintendent Kathy Lind who will answer many of your questions probably.

We would like to provide you with some information on work that was completed with TVDSB and London Transit staff to explore the possibility of starting a pilot to provide bus passes to secondary students in the city of London. This began in 2022 when I brought forward a motion to look at bus passes that were free of costs for secondary students in Thames Valley and St. Thomas Woodstock in the city of London. It was unanimously supported by the Board of Trustees.

At that point, multiple meetings were held between Thames Valley and London Transit where TVDSB staff highlighted the benefits related to investing in transit for secondary students such as stimulating the use of local public transit and helping you to develop independence with respect to transportation. A pilot project would also support students with employment opportunities by making transportation more accessible. Other benefits of a pilot project include allowing students to volunteer more broadly in the community and improving the opportunity for students to connect to community programs, activities, libraries, and shopping. A project such as this would support participation in extracurricular activities before and after school and off-site.

We also see benefits in reducing greenhouse gas emissions and a part and factor for consideration for any city. In addition to these positive outcomes, we also believe that this pilot project will assist students in getting to school which is necessary in order for students to be successful. We are pleased that the London Transit Commission expressed interest in this program and wanted to expand their services to secondary students in Thames Valley. However, LTC has indicated that they are not able to offer reduced rates for bus passes at no cost to students without the full cost being subsidized.

When we received this study, I made a second motion that was also unanimously supported by the Board of Trustees. That motion approved this delegation here. Thames Valley would like to partner with the City of London and London Transit to establish a pilot project to gather data to determine if providing students in London with municipal bus passes would yield the anticipated results. TVDSB understands that developing a pilot project requires collaboration and partnership.

And so the Board is asking that the City of London work with Thames Valley on a memorandum of understanding to determine logistics of the pilot, including the source of the funding, determining measurables and creating sustainability for the project. The Board believes that a memorandum of understanding can be successfully developed. TVDS has worked with London Transit to identify an attendance area where this project could be piloted. Clark Road Secondary School has multiple routes within the attendance area of the school and one or more routes that have had capacity in the morning or afternoon.

Should the City approved piloting a project in partnership with TVDSB and LTC, Clark Road Secondary School would be recommended to be selected for a two-year pilot project. The Board recommends including grade 9s in the pilot for the 2024, 2025 school year and grade 9 in 10s for the 2025 and 2026 school year. TVDSB has reached out to the Ministry of Education to inquire about provincial funding for this project and to have conversations with the Ministry of Transportation as well as potential funding from their portfolio. On behalf of the Board, thank you for taking the time to receive this public input and for consideration of this proposal.

I’m also happy to forward our feasibility report to anyone who wishes to have it. Thank you. Thank you, Trustee Pizalato. And we’re gonna ask you to stick around ‘cause there might be questions, but we are gonna go to our second delegate Mr.

Hendry for his presentation first and then we’ll allow counselors. We’ll open the floor for questions and comments. There, can you hear me? I certainly can, Mr.

Hendry. Welcome to London City Council’s SPPC meeting. And as I said to the trustee, you’ll have five minutes. So if you would like to go ahead, the floor is yours.

Perfect, this should only take four minutes and 38 seconds. Good afternoon, my name is Dan Hendry and I’m actually joining from Kingston, Ontario to share some insights that might be valuable regarding the motion in respect to establishing a secondary school transit pass pilot program. Since 2012, I’ve been at the forefront in Kingston of the Kingston Transit High School bus pass program as well as the field trip pass programs in my part-time role with the limestone district school board. Because of the amount of interest nationally over the years, my journey has shifted to the vision of expanding youth access to transit across Canada.

To leave, this led to the get on the bus movement, which is driven by the Small Change Fund, a Toronto-based national charity. While I recognize there are differences between Kingston and London’s transit systems, I believe there are some valuable lessons and parallels that can be drawn from our experiences. My intention today is to share some insights that might be, might benefit London and to an extended offer of support and resources through the Small Change Fund’s get on the bus movement. We are committed to aiding municipalities across Canada in exploring the potential for youth transit and we stand ready to assist with further experience and research in this area.

My journey in Kingston leading youth transit focus programs has shown me the profound impact such initiatives can have. We didn’t just dream big, we started small and truthfully didn’t really know where we’re getting into. Creating partnerships with local school boards, the city to make transportation more accessible and educational. In fact, this programs produce so much robust data that a university student from the University of Waterloo, Veronica Sullivan, was able to complete her master’s thesis on it.

And she found that grade 12 students on average use transit past three times more than grade 9s. This shows that as students become older and gain more experience with transit, they become more frequent transit users. Student feedback told us that the transit pass facilitated more independent trips and helped students participate in more extracurricular activities that they would have not otherwise been able to access. The research study concluded that the transit pass is an important stimulant for travel and independence for high school students.

And the program could be applied to other mid-sized North American municipalities. Training is a crucial part as we’ve witnessed firsthand in Kingston. Many young individuals are not aware of the public transit procedures and until somebody shows them for a 14, 15, 16 or even 17 year old student boarding the bus for the first time can be intimidating. It’s about normalizing the environment.

It’s about demonstrating together how to navigate the bus system. It’s about stopping the bus planning routes, ensuring safety and understanding the benefits. But training goes beyond merely teaching them how to use transit. It provides them with the narrative of why it’s important.

And this instills with them a sense of freedom, confidence and a lifelong skill. In Kingston, we’ve seen how removing the cost barrier increases students access to educational experiences and future transit use. In fact, the total number of youth passes sold per month has increased by nearly 140% since 2017. And this shows connection between usage, understanding the system and purchasing in the future, thus growing paid ridership.

In my over a decade of work in this area, I’ve seen youth transit not just as an expenditure, but as a very strategic investment that actually amplifies the value of other investments from federal, provincial, municipal levels, including education and public health sectors, we channel significant funds into youth-related programs, whether it be facilitating visits to fathers or cultural institutions, enabling attendance at farmers, markets or other community events, or even well-being supports. Offering free transit to students enhances the reach and effectiveness of these programs, ensuring that our community’s resources are fully utilized. Our success stories are not just numbers, but visual changes on how youth perceive and use transit. By normalizing transit from a young age, we’re not only facilitating immediate educational trips, but also cultivating future generations of transit users, reducing the environmental impact and fostering a more connected community, getting students to jobs, volunteering, sports and recreation, all while building mobility autonomy.

If London considers a pilot, perhaps a specific school, which it sounds potentially like, or to explore the benefits first hand, or decides to investigate this motion further, I would be happy to offer any insights or resources we have available. Thanks again for allowing me my time to share my passion and experience with you, and I’d be happy to answer any questions if you have any. Thank you, Mr. Henry.

And you actually only needed four minutes and 31 seconds. So great time budgeting there. You can even seven seconds under your budget. Thank you.

So I’m gonna open the floor for colleagues for any questions of our delegations before we move along to the motion from Councillor Cuddy. I’ve got Councillor Trussow and then Councillor Cuddy. I just wanted to confirm through the chair, I wanted to just confirm what I thought I heard, which is the school district is not in a position to fund this, or are you funding it partially or what? Ms.

Pizlato or Ms. Lind? Yeah, I think that’s what the MOU is for. We’re trying to establish the MOU.

What can we do together? Now, we can’t fund a lot of it as everyone’s well aware, we’re in a deficit position, but I think that we can work together. We’re looking for opportunities to have this funded. And I’m gonna, I don’t know, Cathy, you wanna say anything?

Okay. Councillor Trussow. I’m still a little bit confused about what the anticipated source of funding is, but what I think I’m hearing is the MOU will move us closer to that decision. Ms.

Lind? Yes, Ms. thank you. We’re looking, yes, to work together to try to determine what the cost, the projected cost would be, and what could be potential funding sources from either organization.

As any thought through the chair, has any thought been given to limiting this to a particular grade, which would give you more precise information about their transit behavior? ‘Cause you did say something about more likely for seeing your— Ms. Lind? Thank you.

Our report suggested that we would start perhaps with one school in grade nine and do a two-year pilot based on that school. So that it would be for their grade nine and their grade 10 year for one location. Okay, I’m curious how you selected this school. Ms.

Lind? Thank you. We received information from London Transit on which routes would be less crowded than others. And this one has a high percentage of students who take the bus already, that we believe, so we chose Clark Road as a potential candidate.

And again, just so I’m clear, supporting this next stage of an MOU does not, excuse me, does not create an expectation that we actually engage in any funding in the end. Is that correct? Okay, Ms. Lind?

Ms. Lind? Thank you. I’ve got quite a speaker’s list, so I’ve got Councillor Cudi, Councillor Stevenson, Councillor Ramen, and then Councillor Pribble.

So Councillor Cudi, you’re next. Thank you, Chair, and I’ll actually defer at the moment to Councillor Stevenson. If you can put me at the bottom of the list. Okay, Councillor Stevenson.

Okay, thank you. I’m excited to talk about this, ‘cause the idea of getting youth on our transit system and having them well equipped to be transit users throughout their life is a great idea. I’m curious, a couple of things. One, do we have a ballpark estimate of what this cost would be?

And also, what’s the desired outcome? Like, assuming that this is a successful pilot project, are we foreseeing not providing buses to high schools anymore, having them all using transit? Like, what is the, is there an end game to this that we’re testing out? Trustee?

Okay, I’ll start. Our end game would be to be able to provide bus passes at no cost to secondary school students. Actually, without all over the city of London, specifically for the city of London, but all throughout Thames Valley, where it’s accessible. Successful would be a lot of usage from the use, them being able to get to employment, them getting to experience extracurriculars, student achievement.

So, one of the things that if you miss your yellow school bus in the morning, you may not be able to get to school. So, one of the things Thames Valley would like to see is they can hop on to their municipal buses, get to school, increase attendance at their school. If you’re at school, you increase success. So, achievement, you graduate, you get your credits.

So, in the long run, do we want to see all our youth on municipal buses? Yes, we do. Councilor? Thank you for that.

And a follow up through the chair is, is the underlying assumption then that the, what’s keeping our youth from, our high school youth from being on the buses cost? Is that, is that the assumption here, that it’s cost that is the underlying factor? I can start. And if Dan Hendry would like to add to it, I’ll ask him.

But yes, an opportunity to understand and be introduced to taking the bus and have the ability to do it at no cost to families, we believe the cost is a barrier at this time. I’d like to add to, like from my experience, at least what I’ve seen, it’s also about normalizing it for youth. I mean, if they’re not using it, their parents are using it, teachers aren’t showing them how. You have an asset that’s moving around the city that has space.

And so when they normalize it together before they’re 16, they’re giving them freedom. They’re getting around. They’re using it. You see that usage translate into just continuing.

And so I think in Kingston anyway, we didn’t do it under the precept of eliminating yellow buses. We still run, run of a deficit in Kingston at the school board, my school board. But at the same time, it does compliment that. And I would say that one thing that I’ve never seen in my experience before was the Ministry of Education and obviously put it in a transportation budget.

There’s not a lot of clarity when it comes to student grants and transportation around this wording. But this is the first time I’ve ever seen the words of looking for efficiencies to integrate public transit. So I’m not sure where the Ministry of Education is going with this. That was not the complete intent.

But I think there’s a ways to find efficiencies going forward. That’s what I’m looking at now in a more mature program, I would say. But I would say that all the benefits that you’ve talked about, we’ve kind of realized and that nuance. Yeah, like it wasn’t cost is a barrier, but so is normalizing it together and them understanding how to use it.

And Mr. Henry, just before I go back to the Councillors, I’m sorry, I’m gonna make sure that I look to you as well. If during one of these questions, if you want to chime in on any of them, please, if you want to raise your hand on Zoom, I’ll keep an eye out for that. There was a question earlier from Councillor Trussow about why starting with grade 9s when your information had showed grade 12s, we’re using it more.

I did wonder if you wanted to comment at all about the value of starting in grade 9 to normalize them and then having it follow them through the system. Well, that’s a big part of it. It follows them through and they gain that over time, right? And so what I’ve seen, which is just tremendous, actually, I just realized this a couple years ago, is that I kind of say on the bus now when I’m training them, how many folks already use it?

And you see about, let’s say 40 students, you see about five, six hands. And those are the young kind of ambassadors I point out, right? And they help train each other over time, right? And so I think at starting young, you’re not gonna have the same usage as 12, but you gotta start younger for them to then normalize it.

By the time they’re 16 and they have more things to do in the community, 17, right? My own daughter is using it more and more as she’s 15 in grade 10. And so I think it is very important to start. You’re not gonna see the same numbers right away, but I think it is about what I’ve seen and heard from students, it’s about them doing that.

And then when they have more autonomy, when they have more responsibility, they have the confidence and understanding that they’ve developed in that time. Thank you for that. And Councilor, I’ll go back to your story to hold up, but I thought it was valuable to give Mr. Henry’s comment on the earlier question too.

Yeah, no, I think so too, thank you. And I just wondered as you sort of present this one, were there other options looked at as the best way to engage our youth in writing transit? Like was it considered to maybe have September be transit use month and everybody gets a pass and we teach them the first month of school, how to do it and, you know, prizes for the one who uses the most, I don’t know what other ideas presented and this one became the top idea. Ms.

Lind? Through the chair. Thank you, and there are discussions with Mr. Henry just building that capacity and that normalization that seemed like the best approach.

That is the one that we presented. Councilor Stevenson. Thank you, just final question then, I guess. So along with the free passes, is there a lot more to it in terms of education and supports and promotion or is it just a matter of handing out the best passes to those students in that school?

Well, let’s go to our school board delegation first and then we’ll get Mr. Henry to chime in to if he wishes to do that. Yes, I can start that. So one of the conversations we would have with the memorandum of understanding would be what are our measure balls, what are we going to do?

Are we going to train? And that would be a conversation that the board LTC and the city of London would work towards and kind of figure out on our, as we go. Okay, Councilor, you’re good, I can— I just realized I didn’t get an amount on the ballpark estimate cost for this. So I’m not sure if our school board friends can give us that right now because the discussion with LTC has to happen in them, memo of understanding.

So I will go to them if they want to offer a dollar figure, but I think that, you know, right now, if you were to just calculate based on the sticker price for a student pass, that’s not necessarily the price we would be looking at. But I will go to our board members. Thank you, the only cost that I have right now is based on the published rate. So based on that, providing it to the grade nine students for one year would be around 164,000 based on our projections for grade nine of next year.

And then we would ask, we would be looking for two years, but again, yes, that’s not considering, I guess, what actual cost would be, that’s based on the published rate. Councillor ramen, you’re next. Thank you and through you. First, I want to say thank you to Thames Valley District School Board, to LTC, and to our council colleagues here who have been steerheading this endeavor so far.

I was very pleased to see this come forward. And I know this spun out of conversations that were happening at the school board that trustee Pizolato had put forward. So thank you for those efforts. I just wanted to ask a few follow-up questions.

My first is when the feasibility study was done, were other schools other than Clark Road identified as having space within their routes? Ms. Lind. At the time that we prepared the information, we had information that there were three or four schools, I believe, that had space since that time.

My understanding is most of the routes are actually at capacity now. Councillor ramen. And I’m sure this is more of an LTC question, but my understanding is that there is still space along the Lucas route. Ms.

Lind, you can answer that if you want, but I might not have that information. So that would have to, and perhaps our council representatives on LTC can get that for you, Councillor. Sure, yep, and I can follow up with LTC on that as well. And yeah, I do look forward to receiving the feasibility study because I do think that would be helpful.

Within the memorandum of understanding, some things that I think would be helpful is since we already are involved with the current program of children under 12 riding free, as this be seen as a continuum of both of those endeavors. So if we look at our schools, for instance, my understanding, and I’m not sure Ms. Lind, if you might be able to help me to understand if this is still the case, is that all schools have a classroom set of fobs. Ms.

Lind? I have to confirm, I am aware that there are some that have it, yes. Thank you, and I did confirm with LTC earlier on about whether or not they were still giving them out if schools requested them and they are, but I don’t know how many schools still have them, which would allow for classes to go on field trips and so on and use them to aid in that process of teaching them before their age 12, how to ride a bus. And I know that this is something that within my own kid’s school that they have prioritized as an educational experience where grade eight students actually take JK students as well as parent volunteers on a day trip to a park and use the bus and it’s quite an exciting time for all ages to go and to learn that process.

Just wanna go back to the children under 12. So right now with that program, that’s a really an opt-in program for us, where in order to get that fob, you have to actually go to the LTC main office with you as the guardian has to go and parent guardian has to go to be able to get that. Did we look at an opt-in option for this program? And we will go to our Thames Valley representatives.

At this time it was just suggested, grade nine’s, we have not looked at details or options within that. Councillor ramen. Thank you, so consideration could be given to you, for instance, students that go to Clark Road that would ride the school bus versus all of grade nine. And so I understand the intention of the motion or the MOU is for all students, but I’m wondering from a cost perspective of as well, if we might entertain looking at those that would normally have, because my understanding of the initial purpose of the pilot was to look at potentially getting students off of yellow buses.

But if they are not within the bus, distance and they wouldn’t have received a bus, we’re now just giving them a free bus pass. And I’m not sure that that was actually the intention initially, and it seems to have morphed into more of that. And if that’s case, I’d like to just clarify that, that piece of the study. So Councillor, I’m not gonna ask our board representatives to speculate on what Councillor Cudi and I have included in our motion.

That would be best directed to us, not to our delegations. However, if Ms. Lin or Ms. Pizalato wants to offer a comment, I’ll certainly allow them to, but really that’s a question for Councillor Cudi and I.

But I will go, I see Ms. Lin has some comment to share. Thank you from our perspective. The focus of this was not to replace yellow school buses.

This was to enhance their experience and opportunities. Councillor. Thank you. So what we could see or what we’re hoping to see is the increase in uptake of ridership, but it wouldn’t actually perhaps get yellow school buses off the road or look to further amalgamate services.

I’m not sure that that was a comment or question. Clarification. Trustee Pizalato or Ms. Lin, do you have anything further to add to what you’ve already said?

Thank you. So I personally, I think that it’s a good initiative to look at opportunities. I would like to see it in more than one school if we’re going to pilot it. And part of that is, and I also like to get some more information about, and I’ll look to that feasibility study to better understand from a school selection perspective.

Because my understanding is if, let’s say we were to use Lucas, we would be touching on one of the bigger schools within the board with a larger grade nine population. So we’d be spreading the information to a larger contingent of students, which I think is important. When we’re talking about increasing ridership in the city, we’re also looking at where in the future we will be providing, we will be looking to fund transit and transit projects. And the Northeast and the Northwest part of the city also have need for business cases in that area.

So increasing ridership, looking to have information on that ridership in that area, I think will be important. This would mean students in ward three, ward five, and ward seven would have access to this pilot as well, which I think would be good to explore. So I would be open to having more discussion about it being a pilot for more than one school at a time, or look at a pilot that’s larger for students across the city. I do worry that if we just limit it to one school, it won’t give us enough information to be able to quantify it across the city.

Thank you, Councillor. Moving on, Councillor Pribble. Thank you, Mr. Chair.

I guess that actually was Mr. Hendry. Thank you very much for sending us that video, which was very beneficial. I wanted to ask you, or Ms.

Pislato or Lynn, in terms of the funding, Kingston is offering it free of charge. Who is anyone paying for it, or is the local transit transportation is picking up the tab, if you know the funding model in Kingston? Yeah, I can speak to that. And I can send any, we actually have, I have some council reports I could share as well, like over the years, we have about 12 years of them.

And so there’s a couple of things. So when we started, it was just grade nine’s for free. Like there was, that was just a council decision. So actually just grade nine’s right for free was paid for by the city of Kingston.

And what happened was they went to the school boards, again, not just the public, public and public Catholic, right? And in Kingston, we also have obviously French, public, French Catholic homeschool and private school. It affects any students in any of those. So the first year, they came back to the boards, the city did, and they said, you know, if you add a little bit more money, ‘cause it was never per capita.

We didn’t know what we’re doing there. It was just like a lump sum to try. So it wasn’t, it was looking at the foregone revenue of what was currently being paid. And so, yeah, so total right now, between ourself and the Co-termas board, which is Algonquin Lakeshore Catholic District School Board, we chip in, I think about $60,000 total for all grades, 24/7, 365, that’s how it’s established here.

Because it’s a paid, because there’s money flowing from the school board to the city of Kingston, it counts as a revenue ride with the Ontario gas tax, thus bumping up some. So the report I had in front of me, which was from 2019, approximately with, again, all grades in the city, foregone revenue of about $40 million offset by $60,000, because of the school boards, but then they also get a bump and paid ridership of 100 to 125. So in Kingston with the report I have in front of me, saying that the range of foregone previous revenue was about 65 to $90,000. It was never gone down to like a per ride, like per kid, because there will be passes that don’t get used, right?

And so that’s how we did it in grade, in lump, and in sum, and I have this report if you’d like to see it. Thank you, Mr. Henry. And I saw some heads nodding as you were speaking.

So I think I’ll ask if you can forward that report through our clerk’s office, so it can be circulated to all members. I think that’d be appreciated. So a problem. Thank you, and yes, I’m pretty sure all of us would like to see that.

Ms. Pizarro, you mentioned that you send a letter to the Minister of Education and Transportation, but I don’t know if there was any conclusion if you received any response, positive, negative. I have had conversations with them, and it was positive conversations, but I haven’t heard, we as a board haven’t heard back yet from the Minister of Education or Transportation. Councillor, thank you.

And for Ms. Len, your estimation, based on you said the fair, kind of the regular fair, 164,000, is it based on the $72 fair? Okay, for people watching, I got the nod, yes. And I do think, honestly for my, I don’t know what would be the best I heard, certainly, you know, potentially other schools this, and I certainly would leave it up to the people like you, have the experience after the LTC staff, but I do think it’s a fantastic initiative to get young people or high school students on the buses.

One thing, two things from my point of view, I don’t know, I don’t like things totally for free, so I would certainly in terms of if you can find the funding in terms of the pilot project, but in future ongoing basis, I like highly discounted, but free, again, in some other countries where I left, where public transportation is really very much used, I don’t know anyone who offers it for free, as a pilot, great, I would consider it. And there was one thing, one comment you made, and maybe it’s not in the near future, but in the big picture in the future, I personally would be looking, if not completely, certainly eliminate the school buses and have public transportation strong enough to support all the students, but I understand it’s within month, but future outlook, I do think that should be our goal, if not completely, diminish the school buses, at least decrease them. Thank you. Thank you, Councilor, and I’m just gonna, as I move on through the speakers list, I just want to remind colleagues that we’re asking questions of our delegations right now, but we’re not debating the substance or particulars of a motion.

There’s actually not a motion on the floor yet, so if we can keep our focus tight to the questions for our delegations, that would be good. We can certainly have a more fulsome debate amongst ourselves once there’s a motion on the floor. I’ve kind of given some leeway on that so far, but I think we need to keep our time here focused on our questions for the delegations, and then we can get into some further debate. I have, Councilor Van Mirbergen, I had you on the list, but I wasn’t sure whether you were stretching your hand or whether you were putting your hand up, so I’ve got you next if you wish to speak.

Yes, thank you, Chair. And I’d like to ask questions from our guests from Thames Valley. Clearly, the objective here is to have more students use the LTC, as opposed to the yellow school buses, so that logically will mean that fewer yellow school buses will be necessary, would you agree with that, that there’d be fewer yellow buses required as this program kicks in? So I think they’ve indicated right now, Councilor, ‘cause I want to be careful about asking, having them ask the same question over and over again, there’d be no change in a pilot project.

Right now, this is seen as a complimentary service. Anything evaluated in the future would be based on the results of the pilot first, before anything else was considered. I’m going to look to our delegates, just to make sure that I’ve encapsulated that properly, see if they want to add anything else. But this is the third time, I’ve heard that question asked in different ways, and I don’t want to cut you off, but I just want us to be respectful of the fact that right now, we’re only talking about a pilot, so until we have some data, it’d be very difficult for them to speculate on what the outcomes would be.

I will go to them, I’ll see if Ms. Lynn or Ms. Bizalato has anything further to add, but they’re shaking their heads no at me. Okay, I guess what I’m getting at, Chair, is obviously there’s going to be less demand on these yellow school buses, so they’ll be running somewhere along the project timeline, even past that, they’ll be running at less capacity, so there could be savings in terms of the amount of yellow school buses that are necessary.

And so my follow-up question was, will the savings from less yellow school buses be put towards the LTC cost? Is that the thinking? Okay, I think I hear what you’re saying, and again, I don’t want to put words in your mouth, but I’m going to try and, this is also perhaps helpful in terms of a conversation that was had with administration at Clark Road, too, because the school board does have things like a principal’s budget that funds bus tickets for students, and this may eliminate perhaps the need for the principals to be buying bus tickets, so I will go to our trustees and our administration and ask if they do see a potential cost savings down the road that could then be applied to help support this program. Thank you.

At this time, too, our buses, our costs are based on registration, so students who register for transportation and are eligible receive it. If there are less registrations, we’re actually hopeful because we have a deficit in our transportation budget with the new funding formula that’s coming, so we’re not sure at this point what, if any, savings there would be. Thank you, Ms. Linde.

Councilor? Okay, no, that’s fine, thank you, Chair. Thank you. Next on our speakers list is Councilor Ferreira.

Thank you, Chair. I guess I’ll start with, you know, thank you to the trustees and administration. This is a lot of, coming to my office and kind of pitching this. I know you’ve been working on this for a while, so, you know, it is a big deal, and I do see the success at Kingston, so it’s something that I think London definitely should look into, and it will be successful.

As far as I know, I believe it will be. Thanks to the Councillors and the Deputy Mayor for bringing this forward, too. So I guess most of my questions have kind of been touched on, but let’s just maybe go back, and I’m not gonna re-ask the questions, but I do wanna ask if we have any information from the LTC, if this may possibly need a service enhancement on the LTC side, whether it’s a new bus, adding to a route or anything like that, if there’s been any communication along that. Is Lind?

At the time where we were identifying where there was vacancies on the routes, we had identified this one. Since that time, I’ve been advised that most of their routes are at capacity and would require additional services. Councillor, thank you. So yeah, that’s like some of the questions that I was thinking.

I also wanna know if there’s any potential for like cost sharing, maybe between the London District Catholic School Board, is there been any conversation with that to maybe possibly get some Catholic students on the bus as well? If the ultimate goal is to get students on public transit. Ms. Lind?

Thank you. Our conversations, yes, did include the Catholic Board with us. Sir. Okay, thank you.

So other than that, most of the questions that I have been asked, I just wanted to look into that. And I guess maybe I’ll just, if you can, from what I understand, the conversations with the Minister of Education is looking quite positive at the moment, and hopefully we do get some funding on the provincial side, if you wanna answer. Trustee Pizlotto? I can say that I’ve had one conversation and he said, send me a proposal, which he rarely says to people.

So I took that as a positive. Have I heard, have we as a Board heard back from our letter? No, we have not. So we can’t confirm anything.

Councillor, thank you. Any timelines when we might be getting more information? That would be the last question on that. Okay, that was a good answer.

I know what the answer is for that. I’d be interested in that feasibility report too. So if you just don’t mind emailing that over. Thank you.

I’ve got Councillor Hopkins, Councillor McAllister, and then Councillor Palosa next on the list. Councillor Hopkins. Yeah, thank you for recognizing me. I do see, oh, Mr.

Henry’s hand went down. Oh, there he goes. You can go to him. Sorry, Mr.

Henry, I’m sorry. You’re kind of right on the edge of my monitor here. So I missed your hand there. Did you have a comment that you wanted to add as well?

Well, just around the funding. Though I’ve talked about Kingston, that’s my decade plus experience. With the get on the bus, we’re kind of bringing communities and learning from other communities across Canada. Halifax has a program as well, looking at high school students.

Oakville, Ontario, they didn’t go just in high school. They actually passed 13 to 19 year olds free all the time. Burlington is evenings and weekends, Victoria. So I guess my point is there’s some different examples across the country that maybe could be looked at too.

And I do have some connections, depending on Ms. Valdez. Thank you for that. And now we’ll go back to Councillor Hopkins.

Thank you, Mr. Chair. And thank you to the Thames Valley School Board for your work on providing opportunities for youth. And Ms.

Pizalato of your advocacy on this. Thank you for being here with us this afternoon. Also to Mr. Henry, I really appreciate you being here with your comments.

And you really spoke to me about normalization. And I do think it starts with young people. I started using transit when I went to high school in Toronto. And I am very at home on a bus, as I would be in a car.

When I moved to London, it is not normal for young people to use transit and anything we can do to encourage that. I’m all there. A pilot project for two years suits me fine. I wish we could do more.

But for now, my question is really around the MOU. And you did mention it in your presentation. How do you see that working? We do not have very many MOUs that I’m aware of.

It’s not very often. We see them. They are confidential. And maybe that’s my first question to you as we further debate this.

I will go to our delegation. I will also see if our staff want to comment as well on from a city perspective. I’m not sure if they will want to at this point. They may have something to share if we get into a debate on the motion when it comes forward.

But I will go to our board members. So I don’t know if Superintendent Lind has worked on the MOU. But MOUs for our school board is new. And I know because this has also been public that we have an MOU with the County of Oxford on co-builds within the county.

So this is new to us. We, I think, sat down and kind of hashed out an agreement of what we would do with co-builds and who wouldn’t form what. And I think that’s what we’re looking for with the city of London, a similar kind of, you know, what would this look like between the two of us, right? What is your responsibility?

What is our responsibility, those kind of items? So we have done one. But it is relatively new for the school board. And I will just see if Ms.

Pollack wants to comment on anything about the city entering MOUs with our partners. If you don’t at this time, that’s fine too. >> Thank you and through the chair. We do have joint use agreements that we use.

But we would have to work with our partners and come up with something that best suits both of us. >> And just for clarity for colleagues, information Ms. Pollack. When you’re talking about joint use, we have some agreements with the Thames Valley School Board already for joint use of facilities like sports fields and gymnasiums.

And they have joint use of some of our recreational facilities. Is that what you were referring to? >> Yes, that’s correct. >> Councillor Hopkins.

Yeah, and just for further clarification, they’re not MOUs though, because my understanding of an MOU is very, maybe, wrong. Then it’s more about a confidentiality between the two parties. But I think there’s more further work. I know this is, again, it’s new to the school board.

But I think it’s also new to us. And as we proceed forward, where we go with this, I’d like to know a little bit more about it. But I don’t want that to get in the way of this pilot project. And I would just make a further suggestion that LTC be part of that conversation.

Somehow it seems to be missing as we’re having these conversations here at Council. But those are my questions. And thanks again for being here. >> Thank you, Councillor Hopkins.

Councillor McAllister. >> Thank you, through the chair. Andrew, do I do appreciate all the questions that have been asked so far? I won’t repeat some of them.

Some of them will be taken off the list. My first question, I guess, is more for Mr. Henry in terms of some of the other data that was collected. I’m curious to know, in terms of Kingston’s experience, ‘cause you did touch on, there are other benefits in terms of students being able to participate in employment, extracurricular activities.

I was just wondering if you could maybe speak a bit more to Kingston’s experience with that, because I see that as another benefit in terms of getting our youth to get those jobs in high school, also be able to participate in some extracurricular, all of that adds to better wellbeing for the city at large. So I was just wondering if you could speak a bit more to maybe some of the other data points. >> Yeah, for sure. So again, not totally knowing what we were getting into when we did, I wish I could have set up some better indicators and markers.

But when I will say the first year, there were about 28,000 grade nine rides. That’s between, this was in 2012. Every year after it grew, as we put more cohorts on, we have about, I think, nine high schools, including the Catholic schools in our area that get the passes. Each school would be a little bit different.

One thing that I think is very unique, usually now between five to 600,000 rides a year by high school students. So to me, that’s always an indicator. I have more written, I can get it too, if interested. With that, over the years, we’ve used it for different things to see, like because they tap when they went on, we could see, especially when one of our schools went offline and we consolidated buildings, you could kind of see travel patterns as well.

So that was used, another one that I think is unique. What I’m always excited about is, when I see a ride, it’s about access, right? We built around the car, right? And so the summer rides get me excited.

Like a lot of times it doesn’t dip too far down, so they’re using it in the summer. And that to me means they’re getting out their family and doing all of that. As for other data points, a lot of it’s qualitative. Like your stories, I have testimonials from students, student videos talking about it.

But it’s really just the fact that there’s usually between five to 600,000 rides and that just means they’re doing something in the community and it’s spread out all from all days of the week, all days of usage, all routes, right? And so I think that’s the best I can do right now, but I can definitely, if you want to chat more, I could try to define more. A lot of stories from employers, right, principals, like principals say this is transformed their school community parents. Say, you’re the guy that helps me, you know, because I have time now, right?

And so it’s all this different type of value. Again, a lot of stories and that’s why I’m so passionate, but yeah, if there’s anything more specific, maybe I can try to help get it. Councilor McAllister. Yeah, and thank you for that.

Yeah, I can always take that offline and reach out to you, so thank you for that. And to your point, I mean, I totally agree in terms of the access. What I was trying to get at is that participation is a key component of this as well. And I want to see, you know, our high school students being able to have access to those jobs, to participate in the local economy, participate in, you know, the city services that we offer as well.

So I appreciate that. My next question, I guess, is more for our TV, the TV school board, let’s just say school board, ‘cause that always trips me up with that acronym. So my question, ‘cause we’ve talked a lot about the yellow buses, and I’m going to that territory, ‘cause I know we’ve already talked about that, and that’s not really where I’m going with my question. My question has more to do with getting the cars off the road, because the issue I see more often is parents dropping off kids.

And I would ideally like to give our buy-offs, there’s a bit of a break, because I get a number of calls about the cars backing up roads that feed into our schools. So my question is, in terms of the feedback that the school board has received from parents, in terms of willingness to, not even the yellow buses is in question, it’s the fact that we have a number of parents dropping off their kids, but have you received any sort of feedback from parents being like, this is great, I’d love to not have to drive my kid and pick them up, what kind of response have you received? Steve Pizalato. Thank you, and I was at a school council meeting with Deputy Mayor Lewis, even yesterday, and we did get positive feedback, even from parents, saying, oh my God, I can just put my child on a bus, that would be great, and she, I think, was struggling because she needed, I think, an Uber or something to get her, she couldn’t get access to the bus, but she was thankful that she could get her students onto the bus, so yes, we’ve heard positive feedback, we’ve heard positive feedback from our students as well, that this is something that they would like to see.

Councillor McAllister, yeah, and thank you for that, ‘cause I also view that as something we haven’t necessarily touched on, but I think there’s time savings for parents, also the cost savings when you factor in fuel to have to drive their children to and from school, so that’s great to hear that you’re receiving positive feedback, thank you. Thank you, Councillor, Councillor Palosa. Thank you, Mr. Chair, a question, and then a comment through you to the appropriate people.

Did I hear correctly that the bus fares would be purchased at the student rate and not at the rate that we offer for post-secondary education institutes to do the purchases? So I think I can help with that, Councillor, the response from our board representatives was that that was the purchase rate that’s advertised on the LTC’s website, was the number that they used to ballpark what their cost would be, which was cost prohibitive for them at the time. It’s indicated in Councillor Cudi’s and my motion when that gets on the floor that we actually do want to use that post-secondary template as a funding model, so does that clarify? It does, thank you.

As we’re the funding provider for LTC, I’d prefer that we give ourselves the preferred rate while doing different student bus passes and work through that with the LTC. I’m supportive of this and it’s been a conversation behind the scenes for years. As a parent whose child didn’t go to their assigned school if he went to school outside of the zone, I did have to buy a student bus pass. For me, it could have been a barrier to education that my child wanted, for us it didn’t, but for many it is in hearing from students who would like to have a job in the opportunity, but the bus fare is a barrier, or who are in charge of helping with childcare, it’s a barrier.

And agreeing with the speakers we had tonight that the sooner we can train kids that public transit is just an option for transit and train them young that it’s just something that’s built into them. Very grateful for that. And I know that you’re chairing, but when appropriate, I’m happy to move or second this motion, as I know Councillor Cudi’s also on it. But to get on the floor to hone in our conversation.

Thank you, Councillor Palosa. Councillor Lehman. Thank you. Just to be curious about the metrics and deliverables, ‘cause I know you’re going to bring that forward as you work through to something in mind about how you’re actually going to measure the change in usage of those participating in the pilot and how they change your behavior in terms of transit.

I’m gonna ask both our board representatives, but as well, perhaps we can get some comment from Mr. Henry on some of the metrics that they’re using in Kingston as well. So I’ll go to Ms. Linde first and then I’ll come to you, Mr.

Henry. We were just, we’ve just been having discussions internally and trying to figure out what that would be, but thought it would be a better discussion to have while we’re creating the understanding to know what is available and how to track it. And Mr. Henry, can you speak to some of the metrics that you’re using in Kingston?

A lot of us just about usage now, like every tap, you know, where they use it, when they use it, right? That’s at Kingston Transit Level. I’m at the school board, right? So I don’t have that daily, but we get reports.

A lot of it has talking, again, quantitative, qualitative on the way of comments from folks. I would say, you know, if you’re normalizing, you’re looking at the school, whatever, if you picked one, you see what’s being used right now, student comments, student feedback teacher. You know, I think it would just be making sure, and what I wish I could have been at is being a bit more proactive and talking about that, you know, and trying to set that up. So between the different institutions, you know, understanding what is available and how easy it is to get, I think would be, and set that up properly.

I wish I could have done that to give you a better answer, but a lot of it’s just kind of what I’ve explained there, and it’s about usage. And Ms. Palazzo. Trustee Pizlato, you wanted to add something to that?

I did, I wanted to clarify, ‘cause I know that Councillor Hopkins was saying this. The motion was for the MOU to be done with the City of London and LTC and Tenzali District School Board, but we come from different lenses of what we’re looking at for measurables, and that’s something the memorandum of understanding would come, what measurables do you need? What measurables do we need? Let’s all figure out how to measure what we all need to make this successful.

And before I go back to Councillor Lehman, when you’re talking about the measurables, ‘cause I think to his point, for you folks, is what measurables would the school board be looking for? And I know that you spoke last night about attendance, so I wonder if you wanna just maybe share that? Well, we haven’t really looked at all the avenues of what our measurables were, we’re gonna kind of hash that out. But some of them are, you know, is there an uptick on student attendance for their extracurriculars, because now they can use the bus to get back and forth from school?

Co-op, will they take more co-op programs if they know they have access to co-op programs through the municipal transit? Will they do their volunteer hours elsewhere, right? Or that they can use the bus to do their volunteer hours? Attendance, how many credits they receive because they are attending more so.

So we all have kind of different, that would be our lens, and that’s just off the top of my head at this time. Councillor Lehman. Yeah, thank you. You know, I understand that pilots do include act oil, feedback, but, you know, quantitative measurables actually provide substance to, you know, when we’re dealing with, you know, dollars of funding.

I wish we had a system with the LTC that we could tap, ‘cause I think that would be beneficial for not only this, but for many other programs that we look at in the city. But that’s not our discussion, so thank you. Thank you, Councillor Lehman. Councillor Stevenson, you put your hand up again.

I still got Councillor Cuddy who just asked me to put him at the bottom. Do you have any questions? Thank you. One question was the metrics, so that one’s already been answered.

And the other was just, I just wanted to confirm what I heard, because you had said that Clark Road was chosen because there was space on that route, but then subsequently you’ve heard that there isn’t actually capacity and it would need a service enhancement. So I just wanted to confirm that I heard that correctly. Ms. Lind?

That’s my understanding, but I think in working out those details, LTC could provide more up-to-date information. Absolutely, and also did I hear you say that all of the routes really for the high schools were at capacity, okay, thank you. Mayor Morgan, yeah, I just have a, maybe this isn’t a question, but I think we need to get some information here from the LTC, ‘cause during the budget process, they defined capacity as the seats are full, but the bus may not be full. But when the bus is full, they flip a switch so they know when the bus is truly full at whatever 200% capacity.

So I guess what we have to figure out at some point is, is there actually room on the bus or not? At the times when they’re needed, because again, we know that the capacity on any given bus changes throughout the day. There’s two very, probably specific times of the day that this is probably most relevant for most of the program. So I think that although we’re using the term capacity here, we’ve got to drill into exactly what we’re talking about from a capacity, from space on the bus because of the way that LTC talks about capacity and full buses in the times of day that they do.

Thank you, Your Worship. I didn’t hear any questions for our delegation in there. So I’m gonna move on to Councilor Cuddy. Thank you, Chair, and through you.

And if I could feel bear with me, Chair, I’d just like to speak to the motion and then I will circle back. And I think I can answer a couple of questions. One from Trustee Ferra and then the other question about from Trustee’s Raman and Trasso. I think you might mean Councillors.

That’s right, excuse me, Councillors, Trustee. Sorry, Councillors, pardon me. So first of all, Trustee Pazalato and Ms. Lynn, so good to see you both again.

And for the best years that I can recall, we’re spent at the school board and thank you for being a part of that. And I wanna speak very quickly about the work that Trustee and former Chair, ‘cause a lot of has done on this file. It is quite remarkable. And as Trustee Pazalato’s vice chair for a couple of years, she would call me into her office and say, “Peter, I’ve got this great idea.

“What do you think about it?” And I’d say, “Laurie, I think it’s way too big for us.” But you did it and congratulations, Trustee Pazalato, on the fine, fine work you have done. And I thank the entire board for their work that they’ve done. And Kathy, thank you for your efforts in this as well. I wanna speak very briefly, Chair, to something that Trustee Pazalato brought up.

And she said it very quickly, and I’d like just to reiterate, she talked about student achievement. And Trustee Bruce Smith from Elgin County has said to me many times, and Bruce is a good friend and a teacher for 40 years. He used to say, “Peter, it’s all about student achievement.” And what he meant by that chair was not that it was about the grades that you were getting, or if you were turning up for class or participation. It was about a full, well-rounded student.

And that is a student that, as the counselor alluded to, said that after school has a job to go to, has somewhere to go that’s productive, and makes him a better person, makes he or she a better person. And that’s what this program is all about. This program is making a well-rounded person, not just a student. That’s why this program and this pilot project is so critical and so important, because we are making young men and women, and we’re making them independent.

And I think that the opportunity to use our bus system, and to use our services, gives them that opportunity to become well-rounded and better citizens. So I wanna thank you both for the work you’ve done, and again, Trustee Puslotto for the work that you started. I also wanna refer to who will be my seconder, Deputy Mayor Lewis, very quickly. During the municipal campaign, I’d only met Deputy Mayor Lewis once or twice before.

During the campaign, I was out knocking on doors, and I got a call one night, and Deputy Mayor Lewis asked me about this bus project, and if it would work, and I thought maybe he was referring to the fact that I was gonna lose my election run bid, and maybe I’d go back to the school board. But it was, what it was, colleagues, was it was Deputy Mayor Lewis’s foresight and thinking ahead that we needed something like this for our students, and for that, sir, I thank you. If I could just now reference a couple of things, if I could go to Council for, you asked about the Catholic School Board, and I have been in discussions with very briefly with Chair Bazzoudi from the Catholic Board. I’m not sure if our TV DSB has as well, yes.

So Gay Bazzoudi, Chair Bazzoudi is fully on board with all of this as well, and we’ll be moving forward at some time, I’m sure. And then if I could just very quickly reference the choice of Clark Road, and I’ll do this from a rudimentary standpoint, Clark Road is a perfect intersection of all the buses, where they’re coming and going, and that’s why we chose, that’s why I thought we chose Clark Road, it’s a perfect opportunity. And also as Councilor McAllister and I spoke about earlier, Clark Road is a feeder for our bile, and a lot of kids are already working, they’re already taking the buses, so this is a perfect opportunity to add on to that. So if I’m just suggesting that if there was a friendly amendment coming to add on another school at this date, I wouldn’t accept that, but I’m just, thank you.

Okay Councilor, I heard some comments about the work that was being done, and so I allowed that. I didn’t hear any specific questions for our delegates, so we’ve gone through pretty much the entire council, only Councilor Frank and I have not spoken, and Councilor Hillier who’s with us remotely. So we’ve had a good question session with our delegates. I am going to thank all of you for your time today.

Of course, you are welcome to continue following the proceedings. I know that you can’t all stay, but we’ll let you relax and move away from the podium, and we’ll move into our motion and debate on this item now. And of course, thank you for offering to send more information. I would just ask Trustee Pizlato, if you can direct the feasibility study through the clerk’s office, and Mr.

Henry the same, if you can direct it through the clerk’s office, that will allow it to be circulated to all of Council, and they will make sure that we all get copies of that information so that we have it to review as we’re able. So thank you for your time. And now I am going to keep us on focus. Councilor Cuddy, I know you have agreed to be the mover of the motion that was forwarded by the communication.

So I’m looking to make sure that you’re still willing to move, and you are. And Councilor Palosa, you indicated you would second, so that I can, well, as I’m chairing, I’m happy to see the second to you, and that way I can continue to chair this portion of the meeting. Happy to second. Okay, so we’ve got a mover in Councilor Cuddy, and a seconder in Councilor Palosa.

Councilor Cuddy, we are, now we do have a formal motion on the floor. You did use almost five minutes in commenting on the work of the delegation. However, we do have a motion now, so if you would like to introduce it, you can, or we can move right into discussion. If you’d like to let somebody else start off, we can do that too.

Thank you, Chair, a little more. Okay, so the motion is moved and seconded, and we’re gonna start with Councilor Frank. Thank you, I just wanted to say I really like this, and thank you for everyone for making it possible. Thank you, Councilor Frank.

That was very brief. I thought you might have something else to share from an FCM perspective, but. I will actually follow up on that queue, sorry. I was asked by the Deputy Mayor just to reach out to contacts at the Green Municipal Fund, that FCM manages to inquire if there’s any funding opportunities via them, as they have funded multiple pilot studies and research projects on other similar pilots, and they reached back and said that they’ll have an answer to us within the next week, so I’m hopeful that there is some funding to do some of the qualitative and quantitative metrics studying and that there’s money available for it, so I will let Council know as that information comes available.

Thank you, Councilor. Looking for further speakers. Councilor Stevenson. Thank you, I just wanted to clarify that this would come back to Council for approval, and that we aren’t at this time approving this pilot project.

Yes, the motion indicates that this would direct our staff to go out and in collaboration with the LTC, and with the Thames Valley District School Board, create a draft memorandum of understanding, including financing sources, and come back to us before anything proceeds. Okay, perfect, because although I love the idea of getting our youth on transit, and I was hoping it meant the end of the yellow school buses for high school students, given the capacity that was mentioned, the fact that we don’t have any money, we have an 8.7% increase this year, and an 8.8 next year, so we don’t have the money, and if the intent is to support lower income families and having access to a pass, I think that should be the focus, rather than to, I mean, this is a pilot project that, I mean, I don’t know that we need a pilot project to know it’s likely to be favorably received. So for me, I would rather do what it is we intend to do, rather than spend a lot of time trying to analyze something that I think the metrics are also gonna be extremely difficult to quantify. How do you know, you don’t know what the baseline is, even in terms of what we just heard the school board saying things like, it all sounded great.

Attendance, co-op, jobs, after school, but how do you know who’s doing it that in a brand new grade nine class, how would you possibly know who wouldn’t have done it had they not had a pass other than asking them? And I’m open to hearing that, so I think I’m gonna support this to be able to get the information to see. But at the moment, I’m not inclined to support it. As I just don’t see how or why we really need this pilot project, and I’m not sure what, that we’re gonna be hitting that target that we’re expecting to hit, do you know what I mean?

If we don’t have a service, if we don’t have empty buses, and we don’t have money, and they don’t have money, and chances are people are gonna like free bus passes, I’m not sure what the intent of the pilot project is. So unless somebody can clarify on that, that’s where I stand. Thank you. So I’m gonna ask Mayor Morgan to take the chair, and I’m gonna speak next.

I will time myself your worship room. I will time you too. All right, go ahead, Deputy Mayor. Thank you.

So I wanna offer a few thoughts, and Trustee Pizalato indicated, we’re coming at this with different lenses. Yes, I too would like to see a time in the future, where there’s a decreased reliance for students in the city of London on yellow school buses. There will always be a need for yellow school buses, though, because we are going to have service areas that are outside of LTC’s service area. Even at Clark Road, there are students who come in from the county.

So they are going to continue to need some yellow school buses. Do I hope that there are fewer in-city students who rely on those, and that the board is able to realize some savings, five, 10 years, whatever it is, down the road where they can start reallocating, yes, but that’s their budget, and I don’t wanna presume for them where that may lead. I certainly know that the principal at Clark Road uses a lot of his budget for bus tickets for students who need transportation, and that would be a savings for them if these students had passes. It was talked about why we should only do it for students who are taking yellow bus, and maybe not doing it for all students.

But Councillor McAllister really zoned in on this. There are a lot of students who are dependent on their mom or dad to drive. They’re not eligible for a yellow school bus. Even if the board was able to provide them one, they’re not eligible because they’re outside that catchment area, so this allows those students that same freedom.

I would not be supportive of a pilot project that was limiting it to only students who rely on yellow buses. I wanna open this so that all students, however they’re getting to school right now, whether it’s the heel toe express, or biking, or being dropped off by their parents, I want them to have options, and we just had a long debate about mode share targets on the master mobility plan. How are we going to start to achieve those targets? If we are not starting to train young people today to normalize as Mr.

Henry and as Councillor Hopkins picked up on that experience before they are driving age, because once they have a driver’s license on a car, you’ve lost them anyway. So we need to start while they’re young. I think that this is a good opportunity for us to pursue, to see what it’s going to look like. And I think that a pilot project with one school is a responsible phased approach.

Let’s see what the uptake is there first. I could envision that the results of this may actually require a phase two pilot, where we expand to a cohort with more schools. And I know that Lucas was raised, and I know that that was a school that was indicated, where there may be some capacity on LTC right now, but I think the mayor also really zoned in on something. 100% capacity on an LTC route does not mean there’s no room for more riders.

It means the seats are full. There is standing room on LTC buses. And I can see it in my own front yard every morning at 740 when the number seven goes by the bus stop that is in my front yard. And there are seats as well as standing room available.

And that is a route that would serve Clark Road. So the seven, the 17, the two, the three, the five, the 35. And there’s one other number that I’m going to get wrong. So I’m not going to say the other route because there’s another route that serves it, but I can’t recall it off the top of my head.

But that’s why Clark Road in part was chosen because we have some attendance challenges. We have great service there. The transit hub is right next door at Argonne Mall. It will serve students in wards one, two, three, and four, which all have students attending the Clark Road catchment area.

So I think there’s some really good value to exploring this as a first step. It is only a first step. There will be a lot of work to do. And a lot of that work will depend on the data, but I was excited to be at a school council meeting last night with Trustee Pizlato and have students there talking about how they can help educate grade 9s on how to use the bus.

High school here I come arrives in August, the orientation for the new grade 8s coming in. I was at another home in school last night before I went to Clark Road and talked to some grade 8 parents. And they were over the moon excited that this might be an option because for them, they’re a single car home. So if they leave for work and the kid hasn’t left for school, they have an option for that student to ride the bus.

And so for them, that is a great thing. Also keep in mind how many snow days we lose for education because the yellow bus service often doesn’t run the same time transit runs. So it provides another option there as well. But it is about more than just two and from school.

It is about those economic opportunities. It is about those mode share shifts that the master mobility plan is working towards. This is a win for the city on climate initiatives and mode share. This is a win for the school board for student achievement and attendance.

And it’s a win for students in quality of life and participation in our community. I think it’ll need to be expanded in the future. But for now, let’s take this first step. Let’s see what an MOU looks like.

I’ll return the chair to the deputy mayor. Thank you, worship. I’ve got Councillor McAllister and then Councillor Stevenson again. Thank you and through the chair.

I do just want to start off by thanking both Deputy Mayor and Councillor Cuddy. A bit biased. Happy to see the East End leading the chair on this one. I think it’s great to choose Clark Road.

The Deputy Mayor touched on a lot of the points. ‘Cause I do think, I mean, we’ve spent a lot of time talking about the yellow buses, but I think the car culture, especially in terms of our mode share, but I hear it all the time from parents in terms of the struggle of if you are limited to a one car household, dropping your kids off, picking them up, the parents are working. And then if their children want to work as well, those are realities that a lot of lenders are facing. And so for me, I think that bus pass gives families another access point in terms of getting their kids employment, the extracurricular activities, it gives them options that currently, I think a lot of families are feeling that pinch and they need something like this on the table to help with that.

So I’m very happy to support this. I’d love to see, as a few of my colleagues had indicated, I’d love to see other pilot projects. I think this is a step in the right direction. We’ve got to start somewhere, happy starting in the east, and I’d love to see where the MOU goes with this.

So thank you. Thank you, Councilor McAllister. I’ve got Councilor Stevenson next, although I’m gonna see, ‘cause you’ve spoken once, I’m gonna just see if anybody who hasn’t spoken yet, wishes to speak. No, so Councilor Stevenson, we’ll go back to you.

Thank you. I hear what everyone’s saying. I started out saying how much I support encouraging our youth and doing what we can to get them in the buses. This is being proposed though as a pilot project.

So I don’t know if there’s anybody here who thinks that somehow free bus passes are not gonna be popular. Like, so it’s like, this what I’m saying is, I support the endeavor, but I’m just not sure that like, what exactly is it? Are we testing out the popularity of free bus passes? Who, what parent, what kid isn’t gonna like that?

I think we already know that. So I don’t know that we need to make it hard, spend years trying to figure that out. When we talk about their standing room in the buses, I’m not so sure how our hardworking parents who are currently riding the bus are gonna feel about standing on their way home from work because our high school students who they’re paying their bus passes are in the seats, potentially. So I think there’s, you know, if we’re, like I said, if we don’t have empty buses and we know people are gonna like free bus passes, I really, I’m really asking Council and those who are gonna be working on this MOU to really make sure this is a worthwhile endeavor and that we accomplish what it is we’re setting out to accomplish.

We don’t have a lot of funds. Would we be better to do a marketing campaign, make riding a bus cool, have prizes? I don’t know, there’s other ways we could potentially accomplish the goal. I don’t want us to be too narrow and focused on this pilot project.

I will go to Mayor Morgan next and then to Councilor Trussell. Yeah, so make a few comments. So first off, I appreciate all of my colleagues asking questions, I didn’t need to ask any of my questions ‘cause you hit them all pretty effectively yourselves. I’ll make a couple of comments.

Let’s start off by saying, I always appreciate people trying to innovate and find new paths forward. And then I know that that requires trying some things, measuring it and then seeing, you know, where the successes are and where they’re not. And I don’t presume that it’s going to be either successful or not successful. Just because we have a children right under 12 program doesn’t mean every kid in the city is riding the bus all the time, right?

It requires uptake. And when I listen carefully to the goals and the metrics of the school board, you know, it’s well beyond just people getting on the bus and riding. There’s other things that they’re actually trying to measure here with successes within their sphere and mandate of what they’re trying to provide, which is also, you know, supportive of a provincial mandate through the Ministry of Education. So, you know, I can get behind supporting the pilot project.

I’ll say when I look at part B about having civic administration direct back to council on the MOU and appropriate source of financing, I don’t mind us being a partner in the financing, but we shouldn’t be the only partner, whether it’s the Green Municipal Fund, whether it’s the Small Change Fund that was mentioned by Mr. Henry, whether it’s the school board finding a way to chip some in, whether it’s the Ministry of Education and the language that they’ve said saying that they might participate in some way. You know, this will be much more successful if we all have a stake in this because at the end of the day, this cannot be something where a whole bunch of people achieve their goals and then they show up at people, whoever shows up at city council and says, this is great, everybody likes this program. We want you to fund it all, right?

And us have that pressure without the partnership. And frankly, if the school board achieves some of the metrics that it can achieve with their desires and goals for this program, there is a very real ask of the Ministry of Education here to say, like this is supporting student success mandates and we need your financial support to fund something like this, right? So I think the pilot may be worthwhile in proving something on the school board side that opens up a much more effective case for provincial participation in the funding than it otherwise would if we didn’t proceed in that way, measured the right data and participated as partners through the process. So I’ll support the motion as it stands.

I’ll look forward to the pieces coming back to see what the details look like on how we would move forward. But I will say pretty clearly, we’ve got to start to do some advocacy here with the province because they like to be at the front end of us collecting metrics on these things. We had the AMO conference coming up in Ottawa. It’s a good opportunity to engage with ministers and delegations.

I saw Minister Lecce in person on Thursday last week while I was in Toronto, like we engage on a regular basis and I’m happy to once we’ve coordinated on where we want to go on this to lend my support to those early conversations about laying the groundwork for future provincial support on something like this. Should it be successful and should it meet the goals of the school board and the goals of the Ministry of Education, let alone the things that we would like to see as individual counselors and citizens about students being successful. I think that we can all believe in that, but there are organizations that have a specific mandate in that that we can support and then take the next step. So I’ll support the motions as it’s crafted and look forward to the next steps.

Thank you Mayor Morgan, Councillor Trussow. Yes, I’ve heard a number of suggestions, including from Councillor Stevenson, that I think would be useful at this point. I’m troubled by the use of the term memorandum of understanding. Because for me, a memorandum of understanding is something that happens at the end of a process that’s in the form of a formal contract.

I would be much more comfortable with this if it said in collaboration with the London Trick Transit Commission be directed to initiate the discussion with Thames Valley School Board for purposes of partnering with the end goal of developing a memorandum of understanding. I think it’s premature based on the information that we’ve received at this meeting to put the memorandum of understanding as this sort of goal in the first sentence here. And I’m not going to vote against this, because I think it’s a great idea to try to get school children to take the bus instead of maybe developing another auto habit. What grade would the students be in high school when they start showing up with cars?

Would that be 11 through 12th grade? Yeah, so this is great. I also want to see seniors in courage to get more passes. And I certainly want to see people of limited income in courage to get subsidized passes.

So I’m very not excited about this the way it’s written. And I’m not going to vote against it. But I’m just wondering, could we change the language a little bit, or does the makers of the motion really feel that this is written in stone? And I’ll just throw that out there to the makers.

Can we say discussion instead of memorandum of understanding? Because I think that’s premature. So I’ll take that as a question for myself, Councillor, and the language for memorandum of understanding came through advice from our staff, from finance and legal, who were copied on our intent to bring something forward. And it was actually a response that we received that said, enter, direct us to come up with a memorandum of understanding.

We’ll bring it back for your approval. You’re not locked into anything until you vote on it. But a discussion doesn’t really allow for— it doesn’t set specific goals. So discussion can take a while.

And then a discussion can come back with more direction for an MOU or not. So we want to just move forward, have the discussion, come back with a memorandum that says this is what it would look like if Council chooses to go this route. And then we will make a decision when it comes back to us. So Mr.

Chair. Thank you, Mr. Deputy Mayor. My understanding is the language related to the MOU came from the original motion that was tabled and passed with the Thames Valley District School Board.

What I would suggest versus deciding the correct vehicle for this agreement that we would bring back and draft and not obviously enter into without Council approval, we would comment as part of that report back as to the right mechanism to advance a pilot should Council choose to do so. What is important for us to understand is the context of what Council would like to see included in whatever that mechanism for advancing this pilot would be in the context of the motion that’s here. This is achievable before the start of school in the fall. If we’re to explore options related to income testing, seniors programs, additional locations, I think it will be challenging to come back in time for Council to make a decision in advance of onboarding this year’s grade nine class.

Councillor Trosto. Yeah, thank you. I get that. The looser this is right now, and I’m just stating this right now so there are no surprises later.

As things stand right now, I would be very surprised if I’ll support this when it comes back. Because I really would like to see some more discussion about other possible routes, other possible schools. I don’t like the idea of just cutting it off. First, we’re told that we could only use this school because there’s the capacity.

And then we hear, well, there might not be capacity. We don’t even have LTC here for this discussion. So I would say I’m not going to make a huge issue over opposing this, but I think this is a very weak motion. And I don’t think it’s going to support what you’re trying to do in the end unless you take a step to strengthen it now.

And I’m not going to put any amendments on the table because we’ve spent a lot of time on this already. I’m just telling you how I feel. Councillor Stevenson. Thank you.

I’m just going to say after listening to the mayor and Councillor Trosto. I’m not actually going to support this today. And I’m kind of sad about that because I would like to do something that encourages the youth on the transit. But it is very odd that LTC is not here.

And I have a lot of questions about that. And without their support for this, I’m really not sure what we’re doing. So there’s way too many questions, I think, for me to support getting into, for supporting a motion that has groups spend a lot of time getting into the weeds on a memorandum of understanding that I’m not inclined to support. So I think I’ll just be honest about it right now and vote no.

Thank you, Councillor. I’m going to, before I go to anyone else, I’m going to use a point of personal privilege to make this very clear. The general manager of LTC and both of our LTC council representatives were provided a copy of this in advance. LTC had an opportunity just as the school board did, just as Mr.

Henry did, to ask for delegation status. So we can’t compel them to be here. However, the school board has had discussions. I’ve had discussions with Councillor Pribble, as well as with Mr.

Collier, who’s a board member at LTC. So just from a point of personal privilege, it’s not that LTC has not been part of the discussion. Whether they’re here or not today, there have been discussions with them. Thank you.

And it would be really great to have their opinion and have them here to answer questions today. Councillor ramen, and then Councillor Pribble. Thank you. Before I speak, I just want to be clear that when a point of personal privilege is called, should the chair not be handed over so that you can speak?

I just want to be clear that that’s a procedure. Yeah. Okay, thank you and through you. So I’m, again, very similar to Councillor Stevenson, Councillor Trozzo, very supportive of the idea.

I really agree with the mayor that, you know, innovation has to start somewhere, and I appreciate the efforts that have went into this. I too struggle with LTC not being here. I’m not sure if our LTC board members may be able to answer whether or not this has, if the feasibility study has been before the board and whether or not the board has in principle supported, moving forward at LTC with this, if any of those decisions have been made or— Councillor Pribble had his hand up already to be next on the speaker’s list. So I’ll go to him, and then if Councillor Ferrer wants to add anything, I’ll go to him.

I certainly don’t know for the previous commissioners on our term, but certainly not doing our term. During our term, we will not present the feasibility study. No. Councillor Ferrer, did you want to add anything?

Thank you, Chair, nothing to add to that. I have the same answer as Councillor Roman. Thank you, and with respect to the possibility of having to add roots, this is where I’m struggling, because if the pilot then requires that there are route changes needed, I think we need to have a more fulsome conversation as a council as to whether or not this is how we want to go about changing routes. I have places in my ward where they have been waiting for routes for over a decade that should be potentially considered a priority over other potential new routes.

And even within the LTC’s strap plan, you see where they’ve prioritized, where they’d like to see new routes go. So I’m pondering whether or not that in and of itself creates some challenges and some directional challenges for LTC, if we’re looking at funding it, then the funding follows now where they were not planning on going. So I think for me, I’m comfortable with the part A up until the point where it specifies what the pilot is. So the Civic Administration in collaboration with the LTC be directed to initiate the development of a memorandum of understanding with the Thames Valley District School Board.

And I would add London District in here because I think that if we’re already in discussion that any collaborative relationship should include actually all four school boards, but for the purpose of partnering to deliver a pilot project to provide annual transit passes to secondary school students, period. Because then from there, it’s how we explore the different movements within that pilot. And I understand that there could be more complexities that then would not allow us to start for the fall 2024 season. I understand that and I realize that’s a limitation, but I have to agree with Councillor Stevenson that if you’re giving anyone a free pass, it is going to be a measurable, you know, and a quantifiable increase in use and engagement.

So I don’t know that it’s necessary to track specifically to one school. So whether we income test or whether we use other metrics, I think that we need to look at that. I also do believe that if we are considering the pilot that we have to look at more routes than just one to be able to show and demonstrate that this is not just successful at one school. All our schools have different conditions.

All of our schools have different makeups and I think it’s important to look at that as well. And I know again from the suggestion of Lucas that there were opportunities within their routes, it does then get to a larger base of students as well going into grade nine. So I would like to hear whether or not that’s possible and I think that’s something we’d have to ask LTC. So at this point, again, reluctantly, I want to support the direction, but I would have to split A in order to do so.

You can split A, there are two clauses in A. So there’s A one and then there’s A two. But I’m not clear on what you, what the purpose of splitting is. Like our, and I’m sorry, Councilor, I’m just trying to understand what the.

Yeah, thanks. I think we’re being too prescriptive within and we’ve narrowed the focus too much within what we’re trying to do already. So we’ve been basically handed the motion, which is great, that it’s been thought through as to where we should go. But my concern is that out of the conversation we’ve had today, there’s willingness for broader involvement.

And I think that this, the scope of this is too limited. And what we’ve heard is the rationale for the limitation of the scope. I don’t think we have confirmation of completely and without LTC here, we’re not able to fully understand whether or not this is, this is even feasible. Okay, Councilor, I’m still trying to discern.

So part one speaks to the grade nine students. Part two speaks to the Western Fanshawe and the children are 12 ride-free, considered templates. So you wanna just split part A and I’m trying to discern what part you want to split. Sorry, what I was saying is split the language in part A, not including one or two.

So that it would just say that we begin the process of collaborating with our partners to come up with a memorandum of our understanding to deliver a pilot project that we don’t have the specificity that’s in here as to what the pilot project is. Because I think that’s where we need more fulsome engagement with LTC, where we need to hear back more about where they, as the experts and the service provider would like to see us work within that pilot, as well as to get a better sense of, and I’m hearing from colleagues that, you know, whether or not we broaden it to other groups, other schools, whether or not we income test for it, et cetera, I think that there’s more pieces that we could be looking at than just a school specific pilot. Can I make a motion to refer it to the next committee? Can you hold off for a moment, please, Councilor?

Councilor Raman, what I’m hearing is not splitting the motion. What I’m hearing is you want to put forward an alternate motion, or you want to amend the motion, because you’re suggesting that you want to split out the specificity of the school, and that would make parts one and two, you know, if we’re changing part A, then part A one and A two may not be applicable anyway. So I’m gonna suggest that if you are not satisfied with the language in part A, you need to put forward an amendment, okay? I’d support a referral, and I’ll leave it to Councilor Stevenson to move it.

All right, Councilor Stevenson, you want to move a referral? Yes, to the next SPPC meeting, and that we ask LTC to be here. Okay, and do you have a seconder? Do you have a seconder for that, Councilor Raman?

Mayor Morgan, can I ask you to take the chair, please? Okay, I have the deputy mayor. I’m gonna ask colleagues to not support the referral, and I’m gonna be very clear on two very important things. This conversation actually started in 2019 with Councilor Squire and myself back when Councilor Cutty was a trustee at that point in time.

It has taken that long to get to the point where we have one potential pilot project to move forward, just one, and now I’m hearing we want to do all kinds of other things, which are gonna have all kinds of other costs. We have some income test programs in the city. We have seniors, bus tickets. We have bus passes for people who are on social assistance.

We do have some other programs. If you want to look at those, how those are run, by all means, colleagues, I would encourage you to look at those, but do not hold up this to look at those projects. That’s the first piece of this, is that you’re just going to, a referral is going to delay to the point where we will not make the 2025, sorry, the 2024 start of the school year. That’s why this was brought forward on the added agenda today, because timelines matter.

High school here we come starts in August. If this is going to come back to us, we need to make a decision today on whether or not we’re moving ahead. If you don’t support moving ahead with any sort of pilot project, then please just vote it down. But referring this is going to put us in a position where we will have no movement forward for the school year in 2024.

I am very, very much open to supporting other options as this moves forward, adding other schools, looking at other models to do this, absolutely. But that is going to require different funding mechanisms. It’s going to require further discussion with LTC. Right now, we don’t need to change any routes, because the routes that feed to Argonne Mall and to Clark Road Secondary School get the students there.

So that is one of the reasons the feasibility study recommended Clark Road, because there’s no route changes necessary to accommodate students. So please, make a decision. Don’t refer this. Either we wanna go ahead and try it or we don’t.

And when I hear that everybody’s going to love a free bus pass, students at Western and Fanshawe pay $272 a year for a bus pass that more than half of them don’t use. And we know that from the metrics that LTC collects. So to say that a free bus pass is gonna be wonderful and everybody’s gonna, the uptake’s gonna be there. That’s not a guarantee.

Even where students are paying at the post-secondary level, the uptake is not there for all of them. But what we do have right now is a gap where we have kids under 12 ride free, and then we have a deeply subsidized pass for post-secondary students. And we leave the high school students in the lurch. In between, the families that are most strapped for cash, the families that have the most transportation, because these are the students who have independence, who wanna be participating in the life of the community in other ways.

So these are the families that truly can benefit from this. But instead we let them ride up to 12 for free, and then we say you’re on your own. And then when you get to Western and Fanshawe, now we’ll deeply subsidize your transit pass. So I understand everybody would like it at the high school in their ward.

I understand that we would like it for all grade levels. That ideally should be the long-term goal here. Yes, but we need to take a first step. So I’m asking you to not support the referral.

I’m asking you to make a decision on this today. If you can’t support it, then don’t support it when we vote on the main motion. But don’t refer this. Let’s come to a decision today so that this can move forward.

Because otherwise, we’re gonna be talking about this again next year and the year after and the year after, still with no data. Because that’s been the lesson so far, is with three parties, if we don’t try something and get some data, there’s all kinds of ideas, there’s all kinds of things we can throw out and test, but we’ve gotta test something first. So let’s test this. Okay, I’m gonna return the chair to the February.

I have Councillor Trostav next on the list and that I don’t have anybody further after him. Okay, Councillor Trostav. Yeah, I would just like to explain why I’m going to support the referral to have LTC here. And I really appreciate what you’re saying about not wanting to delay this.

I do think though that if we have LTC here to answer some of the very good questions that have come up at the table today, it is gonna move this along much more expeditiously than having an MOU drafted brought back to us and rejected and starting over again. So I hope the people who have put a lot of work into this are not taking the suggestion to get more information here and refer this and have LTC come back as anything hostile to this ‘cause it’s not. So that’s why I’m gonna be supporting this referral and I would urge others to do so because I think that is gonna move this along in the best way. And I really do wanna hear from LTC.

Thank you. Councillor Ferrera. Thank you, Chair. So listening to the conversation, like would it be a possibility to have the general manager for the LTC here for possibly a delegation for Council, maybe to help us along?

Or, and I do understand that we’re gonna get the feasibility studies. Yeah, so Councillor, there’s no delegations at Council. However, if we direct staff to do this, certainly the general manager of LTC could come when the report comes back from staff after they’ve talked to LTC and after they’ve talked to the school board and the general manager of LTC could certainly come when this comes back. But there’s no delegations at Council so that would be out of order.

Okay, thank you. With the feasibility study, like I’m interested in that ‘cause I was originally under the understanding that we may need some service enhancements which would equal an extra bus along a route or however it looks, I’m not too sure. So I thought that this feasibility study would help us understand that and that might just help some Councillors who have questions along with requesting that further information from the general manager as well. So I guess we can’t have it at delegation at Council.

Is there any way that we could request to bring in a delegation for Council? Would that be within order? Or is that just completely off the book? Council, it’s no, Councillor Stevenson.

Thank you, I wanted to explain why I wanna do the referral and to ask for Council’s support on this. I appreciate the hard work the colleagues have put into this. The school board has put a lot of work into this. Maybe this goes back to 2019.

Maybe it’s been worked a long time. Then I truly do not understand why there isn’t a support letter here from London Transit. And we Council just passed the thing saying that we’re gonna be auditing London Transit. Now we’re going to be telling them, directing them to create this pilot project without having heard from them, without a letter of support from them.

And I think that is very unfair. We’ve got two colleagues here who’ve said that it has not been brought to them at their board, that they haven’t seen the feasibility study. So I think that’s a very, I don’t know, if I were the board, I would not want Council directing me without having given my input. And I think in order for Council to support it, we really should know that London Transit, and hear their pros or cons on this.

So I don’t know how we can go ahead and direct them at a time like this without giving them a chance to have input. We haven’t heard from London Transit, how many teens currently use the bus? We don’t know, like, people can say, well, we don’t know that, but the uptake’s gonna be, but it’s going to be positive. Like, what in the pilot project is going to measurably fail?

And if we’re going to do a pilot project and we get people excited about free transit for all high school students, we don’t have a budget for that. So are we gonna get people excited about something that we have not considered doing? Like, if we don’t have an end game, in plan, in place, and we’re testing it out to see before we implement it, fine. But if we’re just floating it out there, and then all of a sudden, potentially creating a huge amount of disappointment or expectation on council, let alone getting the input of London Transit.

Does this meet their goals? How does it fit into their strat plan, their objectives, their costs, all of those are very important. So a delay for one month, I don’t think is make it a breakout. I would much rather that than vote against this and potentially have it be a decided matter of council.

Councillor Per bevel. Thank you, I just want to make a comment. I think this is a, there’s three parties involved in this city, LTC, and TVDSB. And from the conversations that I heard from the delegation today, and some other comments that were made about participation of certain members at their meetings, et cetera.

I do believe there’s more of a two parties, very much involved, and third one is kind of being more address directed. Based on that, I will support the referral, and I do want the LTC, because again, it’s a three-way partnership, equal partnership, with their feedback. I did hear that they could have the opportunity to be here. But again, if they are not, then we got to reach out to them, and we got to, we got to be the ones to reach out to them and say, this is what we are proposing.

We need all three equal partners to be present there, so we move on. And this is the reason why I’m not going to support it, and I’m going to support the referral, and have LTC become the equal partner among these three. Thank you. Councilor Ferrer.

Thank you, and through you, I should state this. At this time, I will support the motion. I do want to see, and just to be expeditious and in good faith, but I do want to see the feasibility report, and I will be reaching out to the general manager of LTC. So that’s not necessarily how my vote will go on council.

I’m just looking for more information, but at this time, I will be supportive of the motion. The motion, not the referral, I will be supportive. Okay, thank you. We were just trying to get that clarity here, too.

So thank you. Councilor Frank. Thank you. I’ll try to be as quick as I was last time.

I will be supporting the referral. I think that this is moving in the right direction. I think it’s starting the discussion. I think all of these details that people have and all these questions can be nailed down between discussions with LTC and the school board.

And I think that if anyone else would like to run other pilots with LTC or give up free buses to different demographics, I will fully support that work. And I encourage anyone to bring forward a motion. I’m very open to a completely free fare for the entire city. Very interested in that.

So if anyone would like to bring that motion forward, I am happy to second it, but I encourage other councilors to conceptualize their ideas and then bring them to council as a motion. Thank you, Councilor Frank. I’ve got Councilor Hopkins and then Councilor Palosa. Yeah, I won’t be supporting the referral.

We’re talking about a pilot project. This is a good way to kill the project. I really do not believe in delaying this. I know it’s not perfect.

We do have opportunities follow up with LTC before council. So that is provided to us. We don’t need direction to do that. I would like to just point out to everyone ‘cause I will be supporting the motion that we are directing staff to collaborate with LTC going forward with this memorandum.

I’d like to use that word, but I think right now getting caught up in the weeds is a good way to kill the project. So it won’t be supporting the referral. Councilor Palosa. Thank you.

I also won’t be supporting the referral. As Councilor Hopkins just said, this is to be done in collaboration with LTC. I would also say it’s been a two hour discussion, which personally I wasn’t anticipating it going this long and I’m ready to make a decision and would not support a referral. Yeah, I don’t have anybody else on the speakers list.

I’m gonna ask the clerk to open the vote on the referral. Closing the vote motion fails four to 11. We have very close to exhausted our speakers list on the main motion as well. So unless there’s anyone else who wants to get on speakers list for the main motion before we call the vote, going once, going twice.

I’m gonna ask the clerk to open the vote on the main motion. Closing the vote, the motion carries 13 to two. Thank you colleagues. So that concludes item 5.1.

Now we have to go back to item 4.1. This is the targeted actions to increase London’s housing supply, supporting Council’s pledge for 47,000 units by 2031. As we were before we changed the order, I’m gonna ask Mr. Mathers for a brief introduction to this item.

And then I’m gonna have the clerk prepare the vote to receive the delegations. I’m gonna ask that we vote on those together unless colleagues want to vote on the delegations separately together, I’m seeing nods of together. So I’ll ask the clerk to prepare the vote on that while Mr. Mathers is making his introduction.

Thank you very much and through the chair. We’re happy to present today the targeted actions to increase London’s housing supply. In February of last year, Council made a pledge to accelerate the housing supply of 47,000 units in our community by 2031. Council then directed staff to develop a housing supply actions, working with our industry partners as part of the housing supply reference group.

Since that time, the housing supply reference group has met monthly. I added it up and it was about 24 hours of meetings that we’ve had on this. Today’s report is a result of all of that work. Targeted actions before you highlight that key work required to improve London’s housing supply.

I’d like to take a moment to thank everyone that’s been participating in this group. That includes our industry partners and our staff team. Bringing the report to you today is not a one and done effort. It’s in one iteration in an ongoing improvement effort that we’re making to be able to provide housing.

Along with regularly scheduled reporting, each action will have its own process and requirements for council approval and reporting. The targeted actions provide us with direction and priorities moving forward. It gives us a way to monitor housing units throughout the development pipeline with the goal of ensuring our community can meet the demand for new housing. We will be reporting back regularly and adjusting our priorities over time to ensure we have a housing and communities that are exciting, exceptional, and connected.

So with that, I understand that there’s a couple of delegations, so I’ll pass it back to the chair. Thank you, Mr. Mathers. And we do have requests for delegation status from Mr.

Wallace and from Mr. Zafeman. So I’m gonna ask the clerk to open the vote as a seconder for those delegates. Moved by Councillor Stevenson, seconded by Councillor Raman, and we’ll ask the clerk to open the vote.

Closing the vote, motion carries 15 to zero. Thank you colleagues, so we will move now to our delegations. Mr. Wallace is with us in the gallery as is Mr.

Zafeman. So I guess we’ll go into alphabetical order and start with Mr. Wallace. Thank you, Mr.

Chair and Mr. Mayor and Councillors. And I did learn one lesson today that I’m gonna be careful with my thumbs up next time for how long I can propose upon my delegation. Anyways, listen, we wanna be here on behalf of LDI.

I wanna be here first of all, thanking the leadership of Mr. Mathers and his team, working very extensively with our industry on this project. On these targeted actions, we’ve been meeting very regularly. The challenge has been that not only do we show up and chat, but there’s been lots of background information that has been provided by our industry.

It’s a tremendous amount of work that they have had their staffs do, to try to put for input into this process. We’re supportive of the three goals that are settled in the report. We do appreciate the recognition in the, when you read the background one-on-one purpose. And I wanna just take a moment just to point out the development pipeline that’s in your chart there.

I think it’s page five, but the very constant of the 10-year timeframe from start to finish, we need to be able to speed that up. That is a process to get from bringing in a piece of land to getting a building permit issued here in this city. And we are working on it, and we appreciate the not only housing supply committee, but the customer service reference group, headed by Heather and the Affordable Housing Reference Group that is at that match leading that is working on all these projects. On the background number two, it talks about the industry partners priorities.

We agree with the three that are listed there. One additional one that we would like to just put on the table just for information is that we’re, the industry’s also interested in working with the city and with council on looking at the London plan, maybe not in its broader sense, but on certain areas of the London plan that could help with the housing crisis that we’re facing and helping us with the growth that’s coming. I sent it on an email to everybody. I think it was yesterday morning, just outlining sort of our thoughts.

The things going forward, we appreciate the report talks about us continuing to collaborate as an industry with staff. A couple of things to keep in mind is that we are looking at yield, we bounce around the number 47,000 quite a bit, but you need to have a bigger goal to be able to actually realize 47. And I pointed out three reasons for that to happen. One, you just have to recognize that all developments that you approve, there’s only level, for example, ever make it to actually marketplace.

Another issue is demand might be underestimated or overestimated, and we need the flexibility to be able to do that. And just ‘cause you rezoned a piece of land, 50 acres, and you think under zoning, it yields a certain number of lots. By the time you put roads in, parks, stormwater, all those other issues, that yield shrinks. And we’ve done a very good job of supporting staff with actual sites that had been approved and built in London to show you what the difference between what was approved at the beginning and what was the actual yield.

The final thing I wanna point out is that we need to make sure we have flexibility in understanding the demands and the growth of this community will be. Look, the mayor of St. Thomas is on television last night saying that when he got elected, he thought they would be able, they needed to produce 500 homes a year. He was on TV last night saying that based on the changes that has happened due to growth, the economic changes, he believes now that as much as 1,500 homes a year in St.

Thomas, that growth isn’t just happening in St. Thomas, that is happening here. So all we’re looking for is to make sure that going forward, that we look at the facts of what is happening with information that is available from reliable sources on what the growth actually is happening. And that we’re able to adjust the plan, to be able to tackle that demand that is coming, both from population and economic opportunities that are here in the London region.

And we think you’re on the right track. We think staff are on the right track, where we have a number of milestones yet to get through, but that we are here to work with you and we appreciate the report that’s for us today. Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Thank you, Mr. Wallace. And Mr. Zafeman, welcome back.

Thank you very much. Good to see you and you know how this works. You’ve got five minutes, so go ahead. Perfect.

First of all, thank you to members of council for the opportunity today and a huge thank you to Scott Mathers and his entire team for their work on this. I was at a Ontario Home Builders event last week in Toronto. And one thing I did wanna note is that we are asked in London quite often how we do what we do here in the collaboration that we have with the city. This is something that is certainly the envy of many cities across Ontario where this type of relationship and partnership does not exist.

And so I wanted to just take a moment first to thank Scott and all of council for your collaboration and opportunity to partner with industry. It’s not something that is seen in every municipality and I wanted to just highlight that. We firmly believe these targeted actions will help increase London’s housing supply to meet your pledge of 47,000 units by 2031. And as Mr.

Wallace mentioned, certainly we see now with the growth that’s already happening in London, that target may need to be a bit higher even still. We are very happy to see the report begin with advocacy opportunities that we can partner on. And many of these items are ones which are provincial and federal associations have been pushing for years to help get homes built faster, to help address the affordability challenges that we see in our communities. And we are very happy to see even recently as of last week the announcements on the provincial and federal governments, including from the federal government longer amortization periods for first time home buyers of new homes specifically.

In this report, I wanted to mention a couple items, specifically the importance of rethink zoning and how critical that’s going to be over the coming years. We know that one of the biggest challenges certainly is timing of even zoning approvals. And so opportunities to have as of right zoning throughout the city, creating opportunities for greater densities and heights across the city is going to reduce timelines and enable housing to get built even quicker. We also at the same time need to ensure that there is an adequate land supply across the city so that we can meet the desires for all current and future Londoners by being able to build all types of housing in London.

And that includes single family homes, town homes, stack towns and departments. ‘Cause without this critical mix of supply of housing, we will continue to see Londoners move to neighbor municipalities where this type of housing does exist and we’ll continue to create strains on London’s infrastructure and at the same time we’ll be driving more commuters. I hope you appreciate that pun there. The last item I want to mention specifically is the highlight of off the clock permits and specifically focus on permits by the building division.

Certainly want to thank Mr. Mathers and the entire building division team already for their focus on this and work on this. This has been something that the London Home Builders Association has been focusing on for years without much change and we’ve seen tremendous change in that already in just less than a year. Certainly recognizing though that there is more opportunity there and that is recognized in this report.

I want to say thank you again to staff for their work on this, specifically looking at an escalation protocol to ensure that these permits do not become stalled during periods that are not governed by mandatory statutory timelines and helping ensure that permits get approved in a timely fashion again so that we can help ensure that homes get built as quickly as possible so that we can help meet that goal of 47,000 houses and likely beyond at this point. On behalf of the Home Builders Association once again, I want to thank staff and council for your support and work on this and our partnerships together. Without this partnership housing does not get built in this city and that is critical. Thank you.

Thank you Mr. Safeman and we appreciate the time that you both took today to come and present to us and your patience with our change of order. Mr. Wallace will look for those thumbs up at planning committee meetings in the future too.

So we’ve received our delegations. We’ve had our introduction from staff and we’re going to move on to the staff recommendation. Mayor Morgan is willing to move that so that we can and councilor Lehman second. So it’s moved and seconded so that we’ve got the motion on the floor to start the discussion and I’ll go to councilor Frank to start us off.

Thank you very much. I want to start off with a comment, a question and then an amendment. So first of all, I just want to thank staff as well as everyone who is on the reference group. I know that a lot of work went into this report a lot of hours and I agree with Mr.

Wallace that I think we’re on the right track with this and I like how we’re lining up all our different plans. So we’ve got a roadmap to 3000. We have this for 47,000. We have 600 for highly supportive housing.

I feel like we’re kind of getting all of our plans in our ducks in a row. So I really appreciate the work for this. I’m also especially excited for us to be able to track inactive and active development files. I know that there’s been lots of discussion about how we’ve approved many development applications but somehow they seem to either never get built or they get held up.

So I think it’ll be great for both this council and for the development community to understand why files are active or inactive. I did have one question for staff and through the chair under section five in the report where it says for un-service lands. It says that for the development of an inventory of lands with housing development potential and this would be merged with the current vacant land inventory which only includes greenfield areas. I’m just wondering if brownfield sites would be included in this inventory.

Mr. Mathers. Through the chair, yes, it would be. So we would classify that as a subcategory within the built-out area if it was in the built-out area.

So yes, it would be. Councillor Frank. Thank you, very happy to hear that. I do think that those sometimes are exciting opportunities, sometimes too expensive but sometimes very exciting opportunities.

I was hoping to add to the stock recommendation that the mayor and Councillor Layman just moved an additional amendment as a part C which would be that civic administration be requested to invite the Upper Thames River Conservation Authority to participate in the work of the customer service and process improvement reference group. And just for reference for council, that group collaborates on initiatives to strengthen relations, enhance customer service experiences and improve the efficiency and effectiveness of building and development in London and the current table members for that are LHBA, London District Construction Association, LDI, London Area Planning, Association of Consulting Engineers, the two school boards, the Association of Architects and the real estate sector in general. So I do think it is a natural spot for Upper Thames to be able to provide input where relevant and to be able to address any concerns as we saw outlined in the report, there are some concerns regarding Upper Thames ability to comment on various files. So I think the more that we can collaborate together on these things and the more that we’re all brought to the same table so we can have good generative discussion, I think would be really good to move us forward in a timely way and to try and address some of these concerns.

So hoping to make that amendment to the mayor’s motion. And you have provided language to the clerk and I did see that that was circulated during the meeting, so colleagues have it in their inbox as well. I will make sure that that gets loaded into E-Scribe, I’m just gonna refresh here to make sure that it’s there for you, for everyone to see, but the clerks are nodding that it is. So there is an amendment, it’s motion four in E-Scribe, if colleagues wanna refresh and read that, looking to see if there’s a seconder, Councilor McAllister is seconded, okay?

So on the amendment now looking for any speakers, Mayor Morgan, I don’t have any objections to this, I think you can see there’s significant concerns with the way that the Upper Thames Conservation Authority is operating and the ability to build housing, I think putting the two groups together might allow for both a realization of an efficiency of process as well as maybe enhance any sort of advocacy efforts with the province that might need to adjust things and rules and restrictions. So I don’t have any objections to this, I think it sounds pretty good, and perhaps we’ll allow for some enhanced discussion at their reference table too, especially given the concerns that the industry has with the Upper Thames. I know we’ve run into our own challenges and municipalities as well. Councillor Hopkins.

Yeah, thank you, Mr. Chairman. I wanna thank Councillor Frank for bringing this forward. I think it is important that Upper Thames Conservation Authority be at the table.

I do wanna recognize the members that were part of the group and I wanna thank them. Mr. Safeman spoke about how things have changed and I really do agree with that. I think we’ve made a number of improvements, but we’ve got to be at the table.

To be at the table means better cooperation and listening and conversations and I think we’ve come a long way, but not to see that Upper Thames wasn’t at the table at this working group, there is a possibility at another table to be part of the conversation given some of the concerns that we’ve heard. And I just wanna make a quick comment. We had city staff at our board meeting this morning talking about the two flood concept and it was really important that we had that conversation back and forth and that working and collaboration that was going on with city staff as well as Upper Thames and all the work that they’ve done in that. And to me that was an example that we can, I think we’re stronger and better when we are working together.

I think another part of that is also the many changes that CAs have been given throughout the years and it takes time to get these regs in place as well. And sometimes it does slow down the process. I know we finally received new regulations for section 28. Hopefully we as a council can receive some of that orientation and committee too.

It’s really important that we understand these changes and work together. So really happy to see this amendment. Thank you. Councilor Pribble.

Thank you and through your chair to the staff. If I could have a receive a feedback from you regarding this amendment, please. Mr. Mathers.

Through the chair, this aligns really well with the work that we’re doing at this committee. Actually, one of the items that we’ve, we have a series of items with all of the different improvements that we’re looking at making and one of the items that are actually very top of mind is looking at agent comment response times. And this is not just with our friends at upper towns, but with a various agencies. So this really aligns well with having contributions from them and be able to have that conversation and have them in the room for it.

This would be very complimentary to our process. Councilor Pribble. Thank you very much for the answer. I have no other speakers on the amendment.

So I will ask the clerk to open the vote on the amendment only. Opposing the vote, motion carries 14 to one. Okay, so we are back to the main motion as amended. Mayor Morgan and Councillor Layman, as amended, are you comfortable leaving your names as mover and seconder?

Seeing nods. Yes, Councillor Layman, you’re next to speak. Thank you. Chair, I just want to say thank you to Deputy C major.

Mr. Mathers, this report has been anticipated. I think it reflects the considerable work that you and your team have done engaging with our partners in the community. We’ve seen tremendous improvement in our efforts to move ahead with rezoning.

We’re getting there with building permits. The actions that your department has taken has been noticed and has been critical on our path to 2031, which I’ll remind everyone is only seven years away. And when I read the report and I look at section five, there are talks about 10 years, so to home construction, we’re already past that 10-year mark. So I think the actions mentioned in their regarding lands, needs review, housing, supply review, the update to GMI-S and the intensification inventory are really good initiatives.

You know, it wasn’t too long ago when I heard from developers how poorly London was when it came to getting homes built. So to hear Mr. Zafman talk about news in words, envy. I think that speaks great volumes to your efforts and your department’s effort and the great people working in the planning department.

The collaboration I wanna again point to is critical because we need that industry to put shovels in the ground that we’re seeing. Now, I know that this year has been a challenge, not aspect because of outside economic influences, but those economic influence will be changing. We’re seeing interest rates now on the at least stabilizing and forecasting and come down. So I think the efforts are gonna pay off right now ‘cause I think we’re gonna see that industry ramp it up to jump on the rezoning efforts that have been achieved in the last 12 months.

So thank you for the report, great direction. And I look forward to achieving great strides in hitting that target. Thank you. Thank you, Councillor Layman.

Any further speakers? Mayor Morgan. Yes, to the report in general, I also wanna add my thanks to both staff as well as all of the different agencies and partners who help contribute to it. And of course, when we set the direction to produce this goal, council set up a number of processes that would lead to actions like this so that we could not only take a series of actions to build more housing, but try to do so in an organized way, recognizing the shared accountability that exists between and across the different partners in the housing continuum, including the municipality, federal and provincial governments, the building and development community, not for profits and even the financial sector, which is why I like the mix of both actions and monitoring that the municipality and the industry take as well as the pieces on advocacy.

And a number of these pieces of advocacy has come as no surprise or already existing advocacy positions of both the FCM AMO and the Vixity Mayors at both levels because we have worked in partnership with the national and provincial organizations that are involved in building housing and listen to them in line to series of our advocacy efforts. And on some of these items, even progress has been made within both the recent provincial budget as well as some of the pre-announcements that the federal government has made in their budget. So I think we’ve been relatively successful in the early advocacy on the housing front and this is something that we are well positioned here in the city of London to be a leader on, given the positions of MP Frajiskatos as well as Minister Flack, Frajiskatos being the parliamentary secretary to the Minister of Housing and Infrastructure and MP Flack, of course, being the associate minister within the housing portfolio, working with Minister Clandra very closely. And so I like these actions and I would say too, like I think even the subset of existing actions, although I wouldn’t say they’re complete and comprehensive list of all the things that we would be advocating on, certainly do hit a number of important actions, right?

I mean, I look at a number of them, one that comes out to me as improving the funding model for school boards to acquire land within a timely fashion. You know, that’s actually incredibly important because I know Mr. Mathers is already working on expanding the timeframe that we would allow developers to, our school boards to take action on existing blocks of land. You know, that’s great to give the school board more time except it just basically sterilizes that land for housing for longer.

So the quickest and best possible solution to this is for the province to fund things, you know, a lot faster and get schools built in a more timely way. So, you know, these advocacy positions I think are important, that’s just one example of a number of them, but they’re in partnership with the actions that we need to take as a municipality. And so I know we’re not there yet, but when we see, you know, items in the news like today about organizations quickly moving on the ability to make applications to things like office torrential conversions and roadmap to 3000 work and combining those two projects together and starting to stack the incentives or contemplate stacking the incentives. I know they still need to make an application to a couple of those programs, but that is what’s going to help us accelerate, not just housing, but housing for everybody who needs it in the city, whether it’s people who just need a home, an affordable home, a home with supports, or a home with high-duty supports as well.

So again, I’ll leave my comments at that, but certainly supportive of the now amended motion and the change that Councillor Frank added, and look forward to the work ahead. Thank you, Mayor Morgan. I have no one else on the speakers list. Seeing no other hands, I will ask the clerk to open the vote on the motion as amended.

Closing the vote, motion carries 15 to zero. Okay, moving on colleagues. The next item on the agenda 4.2 is the third report of the diversity inclusion anti-oppression community advisory committee. There is a motion in the e-scribe, as you will see, the item for direction is really to the clerks in terms of the items for their next agenda.

And we are just receiving the rest of their report. So look for a mover and a seconder for that. Loved by Councillor Ferrer and seconded by Councillor Frank. Any discussion?

Seeing none, then I’m going to ask the clerk to open the vote. Closing the vote, motion carries 15 to zero. Thank you, colleagues. Moving on item 4.3 is a request for a shareholders meeting from London Hydro.

Again, that motion is in the e-scribe. I’m going to look to Councillor Ramen as our representative on the board, if she wants to move that. And if there’s any introduction you want to add? Okay, so moved by Councillor Ramen.

Seconded by Councillor Layman. Any discussion? Seeing none, then I will ask the clerk to open the vote. Closing the vote, motion carries 15 to zero.

Now we move to the items that were pulled from the consent agenda. So the first item was 2.1, full of community system response quarterly update for April. And I’m going to look, this is a motion to receive. So I’m going to look to see if there’s a mover and a seconder moved by Councillor Frank and seconded by Councillor Cuddy.

So that’s now on the floor. Now I’ll answer Stevenson. Thank you, I have several questions and comments on this. So this is the first of the quarterly reports since we changed the formatting.

And I was hoping that there would be included an update on the $25 million donation, how much was spent and how much am municipal funds. I know that we did get something sent to council, which was great, but I get a lot of questions from residents about that. And I’m wondering if it would be possible to have a financial reporting and even to include the number of beds and occupancy, et cetera, like we have for the winter response, the hours and services provided. We’ve got two hubs open now, and it would be great to know when they opened and how what their capacity has been.

Mr. Dickens. Thank you, Chair, and through you, the council is correct. We did circulate and provide for council a detailed breakdown of all the funding that has been spent, including the source of funding.

So that information is at your disposal to answer any questions you’re receiving. In the next quarterly update, if that’s council’s desire, we can provide a financial update as part of the quarterly report. And we can look to provide an update on the number of beds and the hubs functions at that point as well. Councillor Stevenson.

Thank you and through the chair. So we’re free to share that briefing that we received regarding all the financials and is there a motion required to get that information added to the quarterly report going forward? Mr. Dickens, do you need a motion for that?

Or can you just receive that to proceed? Through the chair, we can receive that and we will proceed. We do, I would just maybe for committee’s sake. We did change the format, as you’ll see, in this quarterly update from the previous monthly updates.

With the monthly updates, we were really writing a report every two to two and a half weeks to hit the submission cycle and the council cycles. So they’re really based on activities of like, we had a meeting and this is what we’re trying to do and this is what we’re working on. Really moved to this format to align ourselves with the 2024 work plan. To so that council and the public can see, these are the things we’re committed to doing this year.

And then we can report back on the progress made towards those key items. Certainly we can include more detail under some of those sub sections around the hubs and some of the performance base, just to round out more of a picture for committee. But I would strongly encourage that we stick to this type of format because it gives us a guide and a reporting structure, which is easy for committee and council to follow along with and it’s measurable in terms of progress made. Councillor Stevenson.

Thank you and through the chair. And so that has me follow up as well on the dashboard. We heard that was coming in April and I was just wondering when we could expect that and when we will know what, like on page nine it talks about the shared measurement and there’s a short list of common indicators that everyone’s agreed on including a set list of metrics. So I’m wondering is that what’s gonna be on the dashboard and when we will see that and how often it will be updated?

Mr. Dickens. Through the chair, as noted before, the dashboard that is going to be on the city website is separate and is born out of a different council direction around trying to give homelessness at a glance or a snapshot of homelessness in our community. It came from a request on some demographic information.

Working with our interim lead in the communications department, they are constructing that web presence, that dashboard. So I don’t have the communications team with me here today to answer that question on that very separate project but I can get an update and circulate that to committee. That dashboard will look very specific to what we discussed at those previous committee meetings in terms of those indicators that would be on there. I also don’t have that committee report on my fingertips to reference those indicators.

Thanks, no problem, if that’s a separate thing, I won’t, I’ll just leave that there. It does refer here to the encampment strategy that we have coming to us and it does say, quote, encompass an all year all weather plan, which I hadn’t seen before and I just wanna state again that I’m not gonna be supporting anything like that. I want an encampment strategy that has people out of tents and parks and into care. There was an update here on the two hubs that have opened and it referred to the resting spaces but it didn’t talk about the transitional beds.

The YOU had 15 transitional beds and Atlosa had 18. I just wanted to confirm that they were fully open, both resting spaces and transitional beds for both hubs. Mr. Dickens.

Thank you, Chair. Why are you opened up some of their resting space or respite beds through the use of some of their shelter space and we’re finishing their construction on the hospital grounds for some of the additional expansion of beds, the beds that they were able to open were fully utilized and Atlosa has opened up all of their sleeping quarters and the sleep cabins and those have been fully utilized as well and they’re actually doing some further renovations inside the programming space around some industrialized kitchen work and program space. Okay, thank you. So the YOU, the 15 beds aren’t operational yet and is that what I’m hearing?

Do we have a date as to when those will be ready at the hospital grounds? Through you, Chair, some of those beds are open and operating, I don’t, I might today have the exact number of those, I can get that for you and let you know. Thank you. Councilor?

I was also wondering, I hadn’t seen an update on 403 Thompson. I just wondered if there was a quick update there as to how things have been going. Mr. Dickens.

Thank you, and through you, Chair. Things have been going well at 403 Thompson as well as can be expected, working closely with Indwell. Did not plan as it was not part of our 2024 deliverables to have an update in this report on that housing project. So if there’s information the Council would like in terms of an update, I’d be happy to receive that.

Okay, thank you. On page 11, it talks about the strategy and accountability table. And I wondered, is there publicly available, the list of the chairs and the co-chairs, any minutes? Like when we have our boards and commissions, most of them have, you know, we know publicly who’s on the committees, who’s running them and there’s minutes available and there’s open meetings, given that this whole community response now is basically managing 25 million plus our whole homelessness response.

Is there any thought at some point as this settles into an ongoing project that it will be what the openness to the public and to Council will be? So I’ll go to Mr. Dickens. However, I just want to point out, Councilor, that the $25 million donation is managed by the London Community Foundation, not by the strategy and accountability table or the whole community response.

It is actually held in trust by the LCF, Mr. Dickens. Correct, but the requests for funding all come from the whole community response. So they’re the ones making the requests for how the money’s spent.

Mr. Dickens. Thank you, Chair and through you, those requests that we do make actually come to Council for direction to go to the fund and ask for those funds. But in addition, there are two members of Council that sit on the strategy and accountability table.

So there is Council participation and know at this time we would not consider opening this up to the general public. Councilor Stevenson. Thank you. Going back in terms of reporting, in February 2024, there was a news reporting where the Mayor had said that data from the first two hubs had gone to the province as part of a request for funding.

I was hoping to see that kind of data. Are we looking at going forward, getting whatever that specific data is, things that go to the province for funding requests would come to Council as well? Mr. Dickens.

Thank you, through you, Chair. As we just recently came to Council with was the evaluation framework that will be more of a robust evaluation process and a ability for us to bring back updates to Council with all sorts of data sets. And we made a commitment to reporting cycle in that report. So that is probably where you’ll see the data and information in terms of outcomes and impacts coming through Council is through that mechanism.

Okay, thank you and through the Chair. We went through this at the very beginning though, when numbers went to the province for funding and Council hadn’t seen them yet. And now it feels like that’s happening again. So I feel that if numbers are going to the province for funding, that Council should receive a copy.

Would that be possible? Through you, Mr. Chair, civic administration is not always involved in every single advocacy effort in terms of things that go to the province. I know there is some preliminary data that was used in sculpting this work and making projections that certainly the Mayor’s Office has been able to use in his work with the province.

Sometimes we’re asked for information in terms of how many people and how many this and how many that and some of that information makes this way to the province in terms of either a meeting or advocacy efforts. I’m not sure I’m the best person in the position to speak to the process that Council undertakes in terms of who advocates to the province and when and what information is gathered and shared ahead of time. Okay, thank you. I’m realizing that now, my apologies there.

So while we’re on the topic though, is it something, if I can ask the Mayor then, is there a motion needed to say that any data that goes to the province for funding requests that Council would get a copy? Or is that something we can just make a request now? So I want us to avoid getting in a cross debate, but that was a specific question. So I will go to the Mayor for a response on that.

Sure, so Councillors note that we’re advocating for the whole of community response program and the request for operating dollars from the provincial government. As you know, we’ve lined up a number of options for capital dollars. So all of the requests before them are not anything that Council has seen. We’re asking for money to operate both hubs as well as supportive housing opportunities across the city.

That work is done not just by us, but also the hospital system, who has the ability to gather some data and they may engage directly with the Ministry of Health. I would not necessarily see that. As for any sort of data that I’m using, pretty much all of it is basically the publicly available information that has been reported already by both London Cares and the success of their supportive housing units as well as what WIOU has shared through even their public engagements and their breakfasts. At this point, obviously we don’t have the data from the evaluation framework that we’ve approved as a Council and that we’ll be working towards, which will obviously create the robust information that will both inform the future of the community response as well as provide information that the province and others for the public province Council, everybody would be interested in seeing on the success side.

So in the early discussions on the ask for operating dollars, I would say all of the discussions are related around the information that you’ve ever seen in the media or not if you’re looking for a one page summary of that. I could certainly have my chief of staff produce that. It’s usually just a one page that I would use to reference myself. So I’m happy to distribute that to Council if that’s what they’re looking for, but I’m not using anything that we haven’t pretty much seen through this or we’ve seen in the media or you can easily get by just talking to our partners about how it’s going.

At this point, we don’t have years of data here. We have the early indications of some successes. We have the information that we have from the initial two hubs on what the general operating costs are and what the plans say are the projected budgets. Again, at this time, we’re only, we’re not asking for any capital for the province.

We’re just asking for the operating dollars, given we’ve been quite successful in accumulating the capital through a number of processes, including both the donor funds, as well as what Council has authorized to be allocated to support of housing through the Housing Accelerator Fund. Councillor Stevenson. Thank you. And just to be clear, I wasn’t asking for what we were asking for.

I read in the news article that data from the first two hubs had been sent to the province and I was looking forward to seeing that in the quarterly report and we heard astonishing astounding results, things I read in the newspaper and on the news, but I was hoping to see those details in the quarterly report and I will follow up to get the information because it is the number one topic for at least in my ward, people wanna know. And I would love to have that information. On page 13— Councillor, I’m gonna stop you there ‘cause you have used your five minutes. I actually let you go a few seconds over there to sum up, but you have used your five minutes.

Usually we get a warning. You have, nonetheless, used your five minutes. Okay, then I’ll ask Council for another, it’s okay, I’ll ask Council for another three minutes and please. Okay, so Councilor Stevenson is asking for a time extension of three minutes.

Is there a seconder for that, Councilor Perbo? Okay, we will do that in the e-scribe. We just need to give the clerk a minute to finish typing that up. That’s ready to go, so we’ll open the vote on that one.

Closing the vote, motion carries nine to six. I will reset the timer and Councilor Stevenson, you have three minutes. Thank you colleagues, I appreciate it. On page 13, it talks about funding and resourcing and it says funders will have accountability requirements that must be met through agreements reporting and other accountability mechanisms.

So I just wondered if we could get an update from staff on what that might include. You know, what are the reporting requirements that are being met by our hubs and highly supportive housing? As far as I know, we don’t have an updated emergency shelter guideline, I know we just did the highly supportive housing. Where are we doing inspections?

Do they have to have audited financials given what the federal and provincial auditor general report said about homelessness funding? I’m just wondering in this new venture, as we venture forward, what those mechanisms will be. Mr. Dickens.

Thank you through you, Chair. The accountability’s are laid out in the funding agreements that we enter into with those organizations. Some of those core components are often covered in Schedule B of those agreements. I don’t have a Schedule B handy for a specific organization.

But those accountability’s would include reporting requirements in terms of quarterly monthly, sorry, quarterly financials. And then yes, they’re audited financial statements. That has been the case and will continue to be the case with the funding agreements that we enter into. As this is a broader whole of community system response, we do have a funders reference table.

The funders reference table co-chaired by Ms. Smith here has a number of organizations that provide funding of different magnitudes. If they were to fund an organization in some part or whole or fund an initiative, they too would have their own accountabilities and reporting requirements and their own specific agreements as well. So this speaks to the fact that there would be things captured through their third party funding that would not be captured under Irish potentially.

Councilor. Okay, thank you. And since Council endorsed the highly supportive housing, we did have the Chief Medical Officer of Health for Ontario made a recommendation that our premier said he was not going to follow. And that was with regard to the decriminalization of drugs.

And given that we had that inner highly supportive housing that that was our endorsement, I wondered with this new news, will we be doing any revisions to align with where the province is going right now? Mr. Dickens. Through you Chair, we would not be taking any further action.

With that was one example listed amongst a very detailed plan. It is not a focal point of our plan. Okay, so a similar question. Alberta, Saskatchewan and Ontario, all three ministers of mental health and addictions are made an announcement just recently a couple of weeks ago saying they’re partnering to create recovery care plans.

And they’ll be looking at information sharing as a partnership as they move to a recovery oriented system of care. So again, when we did this whole of community response or hasn’t been, I don’t see the word recovery. I don’t see that focus. Given again, this new announcement, is it something that might be considered or are we potentially on a different path than our funding partner?

Mr. Dickens. Through you Chair, we would look to the province to direct us to do that work. Councilor.

Thank you. Yeah, I was just curious about that because I didn’t even know until I was out there that Ontario had put out a roadmap to wellness, a plan to build Ontario’s mental health and addiction system. It’s got four pillars and measurements of success. Is there a direction from the province in terms of the funding?

30 seconds. To align to their provincial model? Mr. Dickens.

Thank you and through you, Chair. As a service manager, as municipal service manager, I’m not funded through mental health or addictions. Ministries, I’m funded through the Ministry of Municipal Affairs and Housing. So again, that’s a question you should maybe direct to the province.

Okay, thank you for that. And so for our funding for the highly supportive housing, is it again, not under that ministry? It’s the one that you’re talking about. Would we be looking to get funding from this Minister of Health and Mental Health and addictions or is that not somewhere we’re looking to get funding for the whole community response?

Mr. Dickens. Through you, Chair, we would look for all ministries to take a whole of government approach to funding a whole of community crisis. We would certainly look for all available funding avenues.

There are some organizations that deliver highly supportive housing that receive direct funding from those ministries. In fact, we have community mental health agencies that may be part of those four-pillar strategies that other provincial governments have started to embark on. We know the provincial government has made several announcements related to mental health and addictions, including recovery. And we know that this council has actually endorsed and advocated to the province that London would love to be home to one of their first provincially funded recovery centers.

And we’ve yet to see that materialize at the provincial level. So in the absence of provincial direction and provincial funding on those topics, we trudge on. Councilor, you have 10 seconds. Last question is, I noticed updating the housing stability plan is a deliverable of the strategic strategy and accountability table.

Is that new having left city staff and moving there? Or is that just their input into it? Mr. Dickens.

Thank you, Chair, it’s a very good question. We look to create alignment in terms of the number of plans that exist and the updating of the housing stability action plan is one that, as we do that work as civic administration, it would then go to the strategy and accountability table to start to create that alignment between the housing stability action plan and the whole of community system response so that the two reflect each other. Thank you. Thank you, Mr.

Dickens. Moving on, I’ve got Councillor Ferreira, Frank, and then Pribble on the list. Councillor Ferreira. Thank you, Chair.

Appreciate the discussion. And I appreciate the report here. Speaking to like measurements of success, we can look at on page four under highly supportive housing, the implementation table there. We see that there was a 74% reduction in emergency department visits in the first three months as compared to last year.

What’s the change? It’s the whole of community system response. What is not fully operational. So we do see changes already.

So I’m really looking forward to as we start building out the system and we start getting more capacity, we’re gonna see these changes continue as we go. So I do wanna point that out. Going to the Hubs implementation table, I was looking at the deliverable section and I do see that its status is ongoing for most parts. So I just wanted to ask if you can, if you can shed light on any future dates that we might expect a possible new hub plan coming forward to council, Mr.

Dickens. Through you, Chair, I don’t have a specific timeline on that. We do know that it’s been well documented that there are some folks that are actively trying to align their business ventures and their properties to be suitable for future hubs. We also know there are some organizations that have not stopped working in terms of trying to create a viable hub proposal through Mr.

May. There’s this team and led by Mr. Feldberg. There’s a number of, sorry, there’s a lot of work happening in terms of developing an expression of interest process to receive future hub proposals.

There’s always the possibility of unsolicited proposals coming our way, but we work closely with the, with LCF and the Fund for Change to be at the ready. Should we receive a proposal? Councilor. Thank you for that.

And I do look forward to that. And I know we’ll see more results, just looking at the results that we’ve seen right now. Going to the encampment strategy implementation table section, I do see that we are going to be expecting a basic needs service provision update in May. I was wondering if I could get a little bit more information on what that would entail.

Mr. Dickens. Thank you, Chair. As we alluded to in our previous SPPC meeting, when we started to talk about the encampment strategy, we’re working closely with the encampment table to land on what a basic meeting people’s basic needs will look like with the acknowledgement that services are ending at the end of May.

So we anticipate, as everybody moves as quick as possible, that we’ll ideally be back before you with a plan and perhaps an ask for how we meet people’s basic needs in any way that we can. We anticipate it will look different than what exists today. It may not look different than what has existed in the past, but we are working closely with that table to really try to finalize some plans. There’s an acknowledgement that when we come forward with an encampment strategy, it really is your policy document.

It’s your fundamental position or our stance on encampments, acknowledging that we are trying to eliminate and reduce the number of encampments, but this is the method in which we will do that and this is how we will treat them and support them while they still exist. It is not a declaration that we have thrown up our hands and we sort of commit to that encampments will be here forever. We’re certainly trying to reduce the reliance of encampments. The basic needs is an acknowledgement that while people are living unsheltered, while people are in encampments, while people may be sleeping rough, what do we need to do to try to help them survive the best we can, knowing that every interaction is an intentional interaction to try to get them indoors.

We’re still very much committed to creating more hub spaces and bringing on more highly supportive housing units. There’s a lot of work happening in the community around generating more highly supportive housing units as quick as possible. We anticipate we’ll have more updates to bring your way in the near future as well. Councilor Ferrer.

Thank you for that and I appreciate that answer and the community, they are talking. So it’s good to see these things coming through. So again, I guess I’ll kind of touch on the all whether response for the encampment strategy. The way I see this is this is something to hold us over until we can fully prop up our whole of community system response ‘cause there is gonna be a meantime and because materially we gotta put buildings down, we have to have this operation organized to actually have people be able to be served in actual physical structures and those just take time to do.

We need something in the meantime and this is something that I like to see and all weather encampment strategy means we will not be having a cold weather response coming up. We will not have to do that discussion. We will not have to be temporarily allocating funds, potentially allocating funds with some capital improvements on some buildings and then just having that for a temporary means. So I do appreciate seeing that on the report as it is right now.

I guess I’ll leave my comments there but I’m really appreciative to see this report. The key or the deliverable section at the bottom gives us some good information on when we can expect some things. I can see that as we get to the encampment or the all weather encampment strategy, you can see that it gets more granular down into the actual months. So come June 18th, I’m looking forward to that report and I appreciate what I see here.

Thank you, Councillor, Councillor Frank. Thank you, I want to start off by saying I appreciate the quality of this report, not that your monthly ones weren’t great ‘cause they were but this quarterly one I think really shows and demonstrates the work that’s being done in the three months and gives us a lot more information and lets your staff spend more time doing work and setting up these meetings. In regard to the encampment strategy, I do agree with Councillor Stevenson, I would like to continue to see sufficient overnight indoor options provide year round for those living outside. I think it’s a both and because I do also think basic needs like water and hygiene needs to be offered but wanting to make sure that people who do want to come inside have available options, especially given in the summer, we are starting to see more and more heat waves and having viable options for people to rely on I think is important.

And as for the treaging on that your team continues to do in absence of provincial leadership or funding, I really appreciate the work that you guys are doing. Thank you, Councillor, Councillor Pribble. Thank you, answer the check to the staff and I missed this one. I know Mr.

Dickens, you mentioned the dashboard on the city website but I didn’t catch when are we planning to have it up for information full Londoners? Thank you. Sorry, Mr. Dickens, you can repeat your answer if you want but Councillor Pribble, Mr.

Dickens didn’t indicate the team is working on it but he does not have a specific date yet. Okay, thank you for that. There was a question regarding the recovery strategy and Mr. Kissen, you said we would look to the province and I know we didn’t take that any further.

What do you mean kind of we would look to the province? Is that the comment on the recovery strategy? Thank you, Mr. Dickens.

Through you, Chair, creating a recovery centers or a provincial recovery strategy is not part of this report and it’s not part of our whole of community system response work. If as the other Councillor indicated, there is a multi-provincial strategy around that. We would look for direction from the province to roll that out to direct fund community organizations or hospitals or flow money to municipalities but we have not received any funding from any provincial body to launch any recovery programs. It is a fantastic sign that our provincial government makes recovery one of their health priorities.

We have said that throughout all of our plans that recovery is a continuum and there are many options for people and we are trying to help people lead their life down the path of finding recovery that works best for them. So we would certainly welcome any additional resources that might come to London to help our community. Councillor, thank you for that answer and through the chair, when I look at the key action steps and table, business reference table and I keep receiving calls and emails from many businesses side of meeting with businesses yesterday and they have still ongoing issues has to do with these topics. And then business reference table, it says quarterly meetings and it’s the only table that really doesn’t have any updates, any key steps, actions.

Can you update me on that if the table is kind of working or if they just didn’t send an update because it’s not that the issues are there, the issues are there and the requests from businesses and BIAs is ongoing, Mr. Dickens. Thank you, Chair and through you. The deliverables that are in this in the appendix are generated from the co-chairs of those reference tables.

So the business reference table co-chairs have indicated right now, they just want to continue to meet, receive updates, provide feedback. Our co-chairs from the encampment table will be bringing forward a draft of the encampment strategy to the business reference table for some of their input. We have done that with the hubs plan. We continue to do that with some of the other strategies.

So that table, even though it just says that they’re meeting, that’s the co-chairs have indicated that’s where their priority is, is to continue to come together, provide us feedback on some of their concerns and pressures, receive updates, be able to provide feedback on some specific targeted initiatives, but that is where that table is currently at. Thank you, I don’t have any more questions and I did two of my counsels. So I didn’t mention it, but when I saw the all year, all weather statement in the encampments, I was, but again, I’m just gonna repeat what everyone is hoping for. I know staff as well for more supportive units and finding really the roof over the individual’s heads, but I know I don’t, I’m not saying anything, you and we are all hoping for that and we all know sooner, the better.

Thank you. No one else on the speakers list. So I’m gonna ask the clerk to open the vote. Seeing the vote, motion carries 14 to one.

Thank you colleagues. Our final item on the agenda is 2.2, which was pulled from consent. Councillor Ploza, you had asked me to pull this one. So I’m going to go to you to start.

Sorry. Sorry, this is the- That’s okay, no, Councillor Ferri was just asking a question about something else. Did we do London Hydro already with his question? Yes, we did.

So I think this really is the last. I’m only really looking to call for AI to be called separate. So I don’t know if you would like me to put everything else on the floor or just I guess nothing’s being amended. So I’m happy to talk to it, but I’m really only interested in going after AI for comments.

Okay, so we’re going to look to separate AI and that is the civic administration be directed to forward a business case to the 2026 multi-year budget update to fund travel option four. So we’ll give the clerk some moment to pull that out so that that can be called separately. We do have, so if you want that called separately, maybe I’ll look to the vice chair of the working group to see if she’s willing to put the whole thing on the floor and then we can call that part separate. Councillor Frank.

Yes, happy to put the rest of the report on to the floor. Okay, and do we have a seconder for that, Councillor Cuddy? Thank you. Okay, so now it’s moved and seconded and to your request Councillor Plaza, we will call AI separately.

Did you want to speak to that at all? Yeah, I’m happy to kick off your speakers list. Was happy to join the working group for this discussion as we move through many, many things for advisory committees in our expense policy. I will be supporting everything else except AI.

Last term of council, we did a change that we were going to do one board wide mail out outside of our councilors expense allotment of 15,000 to help address the discrepancies between ward size, both in population and geographic size, realizing that we’re also undergoing a ward boundary review. That was done and we did not make any reductions to the 15,000 in councilor allocation. At this point, I see that it was option four that was supported coming out of the working group which would add another $4,000 maximum annual outside of the councilor expense account, recognizing that no members of council exceeded $13,500. They’re, in my opinion, still a room in there to be able to manage our budgets accordingly within the 15,000 allotment.

I appreciate that it’s just asking it this time to bring a multi-year budget case forward for consideration, but I’m not even interested in that business case. So it was just being upfront and honest about why I was a no on this as there is no option currently to reduce our councilor expense account by those 4,000 to offset it. I’m not interested in potentially increasing everyone’s expenses by $4,000. So I’m a no and I’m not interested in the business case.

So it was just being upfront as I want to save staff’s time as well. Thank you. Thank you, councilor. Any other discussion?

Council approval. I would just like to support the comments made by the budget chair and my fellow councilor and I said it at the meeting as well. I don’t want to send it back to the staff to work on this. I really think the adjustments that were made during the actually, even before our term started, the adjustments were made and I will not be supporting this either.

Thank you for bringing it up. Any other speakers? Mayor Morgan. Yeah, I just, maybe I’ll add some context to what councilor Palosa said.

Because I was at the governance working group as part of the discussions last term and the idea of doing two things. One, pulling the ward mailings out and saying let’s make that a corporate expense was because there are some wards, like the one that I used to represent, which were the cost of mailing to 40,000 people was very different from the cost of mailing to 20,000. There was what we felt was a bit of an inequity issue in being able to reach all of your constituents, although at the time I didn’t think to add the mayor into that, so I have no ability to mail across the city, but the foresight, I guess. And then the other thing was to encourage people to attend or maybe increase attendance at FCM and AMO conferences was to pay just the registration fee, pull it into a corporate expense, recognizing the value of those, but recognizing that there was still ample ability within the councilor’s budgets, having pulled out the mailouts and the expenses to perhaps accommodate the travel and other activities.

So, I’m not speaking to the merits of what the governance working group discussed. I wasn’t there, but those are the reasons that the changes were made last term was to actually free up some capacity to be able to do the things that I think now are being asked to be pulled out. So I certainly understand where Councilor Palosa’s coming from, it probably takes a little bit of knowledge from being on the council last term to maybe have that perspective than if you’re looking at this for the first time. So I don’t know if that context is helpful for anybody, but it’s my recollection of the discussion and the decisions that were made.

Councilor Trossal. This is just a minor point of wording, but when I look at the line now, weeks after we discussed this, the civic administration be directed to maintain word option one as the status quo. If I was just looking at that, I might think that we’ve made a decision on the ward boundaries, and we didn’t even get a report on that yet. This was with respect to ward meetings, and I’m just wondering if that could just be a little clearer for our readers and the public, if we could say to maintain word option one, parentheses with respect to ward meetings, it might make that a little clearer for people.

Could we do that? The clerk is already adding that clarification in as we speak. Thank you, ‘cause I was saying, oh, what are the new board maps gonna look like? Thank you.

No, that’s a great point, Councilor and that clarity that we don’t need even a motion to amend. That’s a minor adjustment that the clerks can make. Looking for any other speakers, seeing none. So I will ask, I’ll ask Councilor Rama to take the chair.

I’ve worked the mayor hard enough today. Thank you. I have the chair recognizing Deputy Mayor Morgan. Or, sorry, Lewis, see, that’s what happens when you guys switch chairs.

Thank you, Madam Presiding Officer. So I supported this at working group, but on reflection, I’m gonna join Councilor Plosa in saying I don’t need a business case on this. I think it comes down to some choices we have to make. And the mayor referenced the word mailing.

I’ve done my draft budget for my ward this year. I intend on you, I’ve already used the corporate mailing. I intend on doing a second one. I know that that is going to cost about $4,000 from my ward expense account.

But my constituents see some value in getting those newsletters. So I’m making that choice rather than choosing to go to both FCM and AMO. Chosen to go to AMO. I think there’s more value for me as a Councilor to be there with provincial representatives right now.

That’s the choice I’m gonna make. Obviously other Councilors will see different values and choose FCM. That’s up to them as well. They may have different things that they’re gonna spend in their ward.

They may be able to fit both conferences in or not. But I think it does come down to just as we have to do when we’re debating the city budget, we have to make some decisions about our ward budgets as well. And so I don’t wanna ask Civic Administration to go through the process of presenting a business case that then may not even make it in the mayor’s budget anyway. So I’m not gonna ask them to undertake that work this year.

I’m gonna join my colleague, Councillor Ploza in not supporting that one when we vote. Thank you, returning the chair to you with Councillor Trussa on it. And Councillor Trussa, I’ll recognize you. Is there a motion on the floor to call to remove AI or to call it separately or what?

It’s, so the entire report has been moved and Councillor Ploza has asked for AI to be called separately to vote on separately. Thank you. Any other speakers? Seeing none, then what we’re going to do to make this easy is we’re gonna call AI first, and then we’ll call the rest of the motion after that.

Okay, just for clarity, ‘cause I hear a couple of people saying there’s a double negative here. So if you vote no, you don’t want staff to do the business case. If you vote yes, you do want staff to do the business case. Closing the vote motion fails three to 12.

And now we have the remainder of the governance working group report, looking for any other comments or speakers before we call that, and I see none. So I’ll ask the clerk to open the vote on the remaining balance. Closing the vote, motion carries 15 to zero. Thank you, colleagues.

It concludes all of the items on our agenda. So all we have left is looking for a motion to adjourn. We will by Councillor Van Mirbergen, who got his hand up on screen faster than anybody in chambers, and seconded by Councillor Frank. And we will just do this by hand, all those in favor.

Motion carries. Thank you everyone, we are adjourned.