October 29, 2024, at 2:00 PM

Original link

The meeting is called to order at 2:04 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 D. Ferreira

Seconded by A. Hopkins

That Consent Items 2.1 and 2.2 BE APPROVED.

Motion Passed (15 to 0)

2.1   Special Meeting of the Shareholder of the Housing Development Corporation, London to Authorize the Dissolution of the Housing Development Corporation, London

2024-10-29 Staff Report - Dissolution of the HDC

Moved by D. Ferreira

Seconded by A. Hopkins

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

a)    the proposed by-law as appended to the staff report dated October 29, 2024 as Appendix “A” BE INTRODUCED at the Municipal Council meeting to be held on November 5, 2024 to:

i)    ratify and confirm the special resolution of the sole shareholder of the Housing Development Corporation, London to authorize the dissolution of Housing Development Corporation, London and as incidental to the dissolution, authorize the distribution of the property of the Housing Development Corporation, London to the City of London;

ii)    authorize the General Conveyance Agreement between Housing Development Corporation, London and The Corporation of the City of London (the “General Conveyance Agreement”); and

iii)    authorize the Mayor and Clerk to execute the General Conveyance Agreement;

b)    the Civic Administration BE AUTHORIZED AND DIRECTED to execute and perform all acts, documents and instruments necessary or desirable to give full force and effect to the dissolution of the Housing Development Corporation, London and the transfer of real property of the Housing Development Corporation, London to The Corporation of the City of London;

c)    the Civic Administration BE DIRECTED to undertake all administrative actions required to support the transfer of real property from the Housing Development Corporation, London to the City of London;

d)    the Civic Administration BE DIRECTED to bring a source of financing, if necessary, directly to Council for approval if a land transfer tax will be applicable to the transfer of Housing Development Corporation’s properties to the City; and

e)    the report BE RECEIVED for information.

Motion Passed

2.2   Initiation of the Downtown Master Plan Project

2024-10-29 Staff Report - Initiation of the Downtown Master Plan

Moved by D. Ferreira

Seconded by A. Hopkins

That, on the recommendation of the Deputy City Manager, Planning and Economic Development, the following actions be taken with respect to the development of the Downtown Master Plan:

a)    the Downtown Master Plan - Terms of Reference BE APPROVED;

b)    the Civic Administration BE DIRECTED to initiate a procurement process to engage a consultant to undertake a Downtown Master Plan; and

c)    the Civic Administration BE DIRECTED to report back in Q1 2025 with a series of quick start actions based on the feedback received to date;

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

  • D. Doward, London Downtown Condominium Advocacy Group;

  • M. Fitzgerald;

  • B. Maly, Executive Director, Downtown London and S. A. Collyer, LDBA Board Chair;

  • A. Carapella, Tricar;

  • M. Wallace, Executive Director, London Development Institute (LDI);

  • B. Madder, CEO, London and St. Thomas Association of REALTORS;

  • P. McIntyre, President, Board of Directors, MCC #87 and R. J. Fox, President, Board of Directors, MCC #173;

  • A. Soufan, President, York Developments;

  • H. D. Chapman, Member of the London Downtown Condominium Advocacy Group; and

  • B. Maly, Executive Director, Downtown London and S. A. Collyer, LDBA Board Chair

it being further noted the request for delegation dated October 27, 2024, from B. Maly, Executive Director, Downtown London was referred to the meeting of the Strategic Priorities and Policy Committee with the report back in Q1 2025 from the Civic Administration on the series of quick start actions.

Motion Passed

3.   Scheduled Items

None.

4.   Items for Direction

4.1   Whole of Community System Response – Community Encampment Plan: Implementation Recommendations 2025 and Basic Needs Update 

2024-10-29 Staff Report - Whole of Community System Response

Moved by S. Trosow

Seconded by A. Hopkins

That, on the recommendation of the Deputy City Manager, Social and Health Development, the following actions be taken regarding Whole of Community System Response – Community Encampment Plan: Implementation Recommendations 2025 and Basic Needs Update, that:

a)     the Civic Administration BE DIRECTED to reallocate up to $99,700 from the surplus 2024 Housing Stability Services funding to fund the basic needs provision for a period of November 1, 2024 through December 31, 2024;

b)     the Civic Administration and the Mayor BE REQUESTED to engage with the federal and provincial governments to fund the Encampment Implementation Recommendations for an initial period of January 1, 2025 to December 31, 2025 as part of London’s portion of a $250-million federal fund dedicated to addressing encampments;

c)     the Civic Administration BE DIRECTED to seek out and apply for additional sources of funding to offset any municipal funding;

d)     the Civic Administration BE DIRECTED to report back in mid-2025 on plans and recommended funding sources for 2026 and beyond;

e)     the following actions BE TAKEN with respect to additional service depot location(s):

 i) the establishment of future service depot locations include a community meeting, which will include city staff, service support agencies, and the councillor(s) for the impacted area. It being noted that a presentation describing the depots and the rules in place will be included;

 ii) a notice will be circulated to impacted residents within a 120 metre radius from the location of a future service depot; and 

 iii) future service depot locations be deferred for consideration at the November 19, 2024 meeting of Strategic Priorities and Policy Committee and that Civic Administration bring forward a new list of possible locations (with a buffer of 50 to 100 metres) more evenly dispersed across the city as well as alternative locations that do not concentrate service depots in one ward.

f)      the Interim Housing Assistance Plan Update, 2024-2025 Cold Weather response plan update, application for the $250M of federal funding for encampments update and the public washroom facilities availability update BE RECEIVED;

g)     continuation of contracted services at the Canadian Mental Health Association Thames Valley Addictions Mental Health Services (CMHA-TVAMHS) related to their previously approved Cold Weather Response by reallocating remaining operational surplus to maintain services at The Coffee House located at 371 Hamilton Road from December 1, 2024 to May 31, 2025 BE APPROVED;

h)     the Civic Administration BE AUTHORIZED to undertake all administrative acts which are necessary in relation to this project; and

i)     approval given herein BE CONDITIONAL upon the Corporation of the City of London entering into new and/or amending existing Purchase of Service Agreements with agencies identified through the City’s Procurement of Goods and Services Policy to deliver the approved services;

it being noted that the Strategic Priorities and Policy Committee received a presentation from G. Nash, Director - Program Development and Complex Urban Health, London InterCommunity Health Centre and C. McDonald, Director of Services - London Cares with respect to this matter;

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

  • B. Fuhrman;

  • C. Watson, W. Thomas, D. Brown, Coordinators, Midtown Community Organization;

  • L. Grushka;

  • D. Boyce;

  • G. Maniago;

  • D. Del net;

  • E. Estabrooks;

  • C. Forster;

  • A. Kytka;

  • P. Gallien;

  • D. Page;

  • N. Bangsboll;

  • K. Miller;

  • A. Medina;

  • SusiQ;

  • A. Keet;

  • P. Bestall;

  • R. Kadar;

  • S. Boyd;

  • P. Larsen;

  • C. Crncich;

  • P. Matthews;

  • J. Stuifbergen;

  • C. Chaarani;

  • D. Hinschberger;

  • D. Annis;

  • C. Vetere;

  • R. Richmond;

  • D. Conley;

  • D. Boudreau, Breakpoint Communities;

  • R. Van Gelderen;

  • J. Herb;

  • J. Ross; and

  • D. Devine.

it being pointed out that the following individuals made verbal presentations at the public participation meeting held in conjunction with this matter:

  • R. Van Gelderen;

  • J. Herb;

  • J. Ross; and

  • D. Devine

ADDITIONAL VOTES:

Moved by S. Stevenson

Seconded by P. Cuddy

That the delegation requests from R. Van Gelderen, J. Herb, J. Ross and D. Devine BE APPROVED to heard at this time.

Motion Passed (15 to 0)

Moved by C. Rahman

Seconded by S. Stevenson

That part b) of the motion be amended to read as follows:

b)    the Civic Administration BE DIRECTED to reallocate up to $141,400 from the surplus 2024 Housing Stability Services funding to fund the basic needs provision for a period of November 1, 2024 through December 31, 2024;

Motion Passed (15 to 0)

Moved by J. Morgan

Seconded by C. Rahman

That part c) of the motion be amended to read as follows:

c)    the Civic Administration and the Mayor BE REQUESTED to engage with the federal and provincial governments to fund the Encampment Implementation Recommendations for an initial period of January 1, 2025 to December 31, 2025 as part of London’s portion of a $250-million federal fund dedicated to addressing encampments;

Motion Passed (15 to 0)

Moved by H. McAlister

Seconded by S. Stevenson

That part f) of the motion be amended to read as follows:

f)     the following actions BE TAKEN with respect to additional service depot location(s):

i) the establishment of future service depot locations include a community meeting, which will include city staff, service support agencies, and the councillor(s) for the impacted area. It being noted that a presentation describing the depots and the rules in place will be included;

ii) a notice will be circulated to impacted residents within a 120 metre radius from the location of a future service depot; and 

iii) future service depot locations be deferred for consideration at the November 19, 2024 meeting of Strategic Priorities and Policy Committee and that Civic Administration bring forward a new list of possible locations (with a buffer of 50 to 100 metres) more evenly dispersed across the city as well as alternative locations that do not concentrate service depots in one ward.

Moved by P. Cuddy

Seconded by S. Lehman

That part f) of the motion be further amended to indicate “with a buffer of 100 metres”

Motion Failed (6 to 9)

Moved by H. McAlister

Seconded by S. Stevenson

That part f) i) and ii) of the motion be amended to read as follows:

f)     the following actions BE TAKEN with respect to additional service depot location(s):

i) the establishment of future service depot locations include a community meeting, which will include city staff, service support agencies, and the councillor(s) for the impacted area. It being noted that a presentation describing the depots and the rules in place will be included;

ii) a notice will be circulated to impacted residents within a 120 metre radius from the location of a future service depot; and

Motion Passed (15 to 0)

Moved by H. McAlister

Seconded by S. Stevenson

That part f) iii) of the motion be amended to read as follows:

iii) future service depot locations be deferred for consideration at the November 19, 2024 meeting of Strategic Priorities and Policy Committee and that Civic Administration bring forward a new list of possible locations (with a buffer of 50 to 100 metres) more evenly dispersed across the city as well as alternative locations that do not concentrate service depots in one ward.

Motion Passed (8 to 7)

Moved by E. Peloza

Seconded by A. Hopkins

That the Strategic Priorities and Policy Committee recess at this time, for 15 minutes.

Motion Passed

The Strategic Priorities and Policy Committee recesses at 4:34 PM and reconvenes at 4:56 PM.

Moved by S. Stevenson

Seconded by P. Cuddy

That part b) of the motion be further amended to change funding amount from $141,400 to $99,700 and to read as follows:

b)    the Civic Administration BE DIRECTED to reallocate up to $99,700 from the surplus 2024 Housing Stability Services funding to fund the basic needs provision for a period of November 1, 2024 through December 31, 2024;

Motion Passed (9 to 6)

Moved by S. Trosow

Seconded by A. Hopkins

That part a) of the motion be approved:

a)    amendments to the setback requirements in the Community Encampment Response Plan to be on or within 25 metres of any private residential property line with a habitable dwelling as per the Building Code BE ENDORSED;

Motion Failed (5 to 10)

Moved by S. Trosow

Seconded by A. Hopkins

That part b) of the motion, as amended, be approved:

b)    the Civic Administration BE DIRECTED to reallocate up to $99,700 from the surplus 2024 Housing Stability Services funding to fund the basic needs provision for a period of November 1, 2024 through December 31, 2024;

Motion Passed (12 to 3)

Moved by S. Trosow

Seconded by A. Hopkins

That part c) of the motion, as amended, be approved:

c)    the Civic Administration and the Mayor BE REQUESTED to engage with the federal and provincial governments to fund the Encampment Implementation Recommendations for an initial period of January 1, 2025 to December 31, 2025 as part of London’s portion of a $250-million federal fund dedicated to addressing encampments;

Motion Passed (14 to 1)

Moved by S. Trosow

Seconded by A. Hopkins

That part f) i) and ii) of the motion, as amended, be approved:

f)     the following actions BE TAKEN with respect to additional service depot location(s):

i) the establishment of future service depot locations include a community meeting, which will include city staff, service support agencies, and the councillor(s) for the impacted area. It being noted that a presentation describing the depots and the rules in place will be included;

ii) a notice will be circulated to impacted residents within a 120 metre radius from the location of a future service depot; and

Motion Passed (15 to 0)

Moved by S. Trosow

Seconded by A. Hopkins

That part f) iii) of the motion, as amended, be approved:

iii) future service depot locations be deferred for consideration at the November 19, 2024 meeting of Strategic Priorities and Policy Committee and that Civic Administration bring forward a new list of possible locations (with a buffer of 50 to 100 metres) more evenly dispersed across the city as well as alternative locations that do not concentrate service depots in one ward.

Motion Passed (8 to 7)

Moved by S. Trosow

Seconded by A. Hopkins

That part h) of the motion be approved:

h) continuation of contracted services at the Canadian Mental Health Association Thames Valley Addictions Mental Health Services (CMHA-TVAMHS) related to their previously approved Cold Weather Response by reallocating remaining operational surplus to maintain services at The Coffee House located at 371 Hamilton Road from December 1, 2024 to May 31, 2025 BE APPROVED;

Motion Passed (8 to 7)

Moved by S. Trosow

Seconded by A. Hopkins

That parts d), e), g), i), j) and balance of the motion be approved:

d) the Civic Administration BE DIRECTED to seek out and apply for additional sources of funding to offset any Municipal funding;

e) the Civic Administration BE DIRECTED to report back in mid-2025 on plans and recommended funding sources for 2026 and beyond;

g) the Interim Housing Assistance Plan Update, 2024-2025 Cold Weather response plan update, application for the $250M of federal funding for encampments update and the public washroom facilities availability update BE RECEIVED;

i)    the Civic Administration BE AUTHORIZED to undertake all administrative acts which are necessary in relation to this project; and

j)    approval given herein BE CONDITIONAL upon the Corporation of the City of London entering into new and/or amending existing Purchase of Service Agreements with agencies identified through the City’s Procurement of Goods and Services Policy to deliver the approved services;

it being noted that the Strategic Priorities and Policy Committee received a presentation from G. Nash, Director - Program Development and Complex Urban Health, London InterCommunity Health Centre and C. McDonald, Director of Services - London Cares with respect to this matter;

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

  • B. Fuhrman;

  • C. Watson, W. Thomas, D. Brown, Coordinators, Midtown Community Organization;

  • L. Grushka;

  • D. Boyce;

  • G. Maniago;

  • D. Del net;

  • E. Estabrooks;

  • C. Forster;

  • A. Kytka;

  • P. Gallien;

  • D. Page;

  • N. Bangsboll;

  • K. Miller;

  • A. Medina;

  • SusiQ;

  • A. Keet;

  • P. Bestall;

  • R. Kadar;

  • S. Boyd;

  • P. Larsen;

  • C. Crncich;

  • P. Matthews;

  • J. Stuifbergen;

  • C. Chaarani;

  • D. Hinschberger;

  • D. Annis;

  • C. Vetere;

  • R. Richmond;

  • D. Conley;

  • D. Boudreau, Breakpoint Communities;

  • R. Van Gelderen;

  • J. Herb;

  • J. Ross; and

  • D. Devine.

it being pointed out that the following individuals made verbal presentations at the public participation meeting held in conjunction with this matter:

  • R. Van Gelderen;

  • J. Herb;

  • J. Ross; and

  • D. Devine

Motion Passed (14 to 1)

Item 4.1, as amended, to read as follows:

That, on the recommendation of the Deputy City Manager, Social and Health Development, the following actions be taken regarding Whole of Community System Response – Community Encampment Plan: Implementation Recommendations 2025 and Basic Needs Update, that:

b)     the Civic Administration BE DIRECTED to reallocate up to $99,700 from the surplus 2024 Housing Stability Services funding to fund the basic needs provision for a period of November 1, 2024 through December 31, 2024;

c)     the Civic Administration and the Mayor BE REQUESTED to engage with the federal and provincial governments to fund the Encampment Implementation Recommendations for an initial period of January 1, 2025 to December 31, 2025 as part of London’s portion of a $250-million federal fund dedicated to addressing encampments;

d)     the Civic Administration BE DIRECTED to seek out and apply for additional sources of funding to offset any municipal funding;

e)     the Civic Administration BE DIRECTED to report back in mid-2025 on plans and recommended funding sources for 2026 and beyond;

f)     the following actions BE TAKEN with respect to additional service depot location(s):

 i) the establishment of future service depot locations include a community meeting, which will include city staff, service support agencies, and the councillor(s) for the impacted area. It being noted that a presentation describing the depots and the rules in place will be included;

 ii) a notice will be circulated to impacted residents within a 120 metre radius from the location of a future service depot; and 

 iii) future service depot locations be deferred for consideration at the November 19, 2024 meeting of Strategic Priorities and Policy Committee and that Civic Administration bring forward a new list of possible locations (with a buffer of 50 to 100 metres) more evenly dispersed across the city as well as alternative locations that do not concentrate service depots in one ward.

g)      the Interim Housing Assistance Plan Update, 2024-2025 Cold Weather response plan update, application for the $250M of federal funding for encampments update and the public washroom facilities availability update BE RECEIVED;

h)     continuation of contracted services at the Canadian Mental Health Association Thames Valley Addictions Mental Health Services (CMHA-TVAMHS) related to their previously approved Cold Weather Response by reallocating remaining operational surplus to maintain services at The Coffee House located at 371 Hamilton Road from December 1, 2024 to May 31, 2025 BE APPROVED;

i)     the Civic Administration BE AUTHORIZED to undertake all administrative acts which are necessary in relation to this project; and

j)     approval given herein BE CONDITIONAL upon the Corporation of the City of London entering into new and/or amending existing Purchase of Service Agreements with agencies identified through the City’s Procurement of Goods and Services Policy to deliver the approved services;

it being noted that the Strategic Priorities and Policy Committee received a presentation from G. Nash, Director - Program Development and Complex Urban Health, London InterCommunity Health Centre and C. McDonald, Director of Services - London Cares with respect to this matter;

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

B. Fuhrman;

C. Watson, W. Thomas, D. Brown, Coordinators, Midtown Community Organization;

L. Grushka;

D. Boyce;

G. Maniago;

D. Del net;

E. Estabrooks;

C. Forster;

A. Kytka;

P. Gallien;

D. Page;

N. Bangsboll;

K. Miller;

A. Medina;

SusiQ;

A. Keet;

P. Bestall;

R. Kadar;

S. Boyd;

P. Larsen;

C. Crncich;

P. Matthews; 

J. Stuifbergen;

C. Chaarani; 

D. Hinschberger;

D. Annis;

C. Vetere;

R. Richmond;

D. Conley;

D. Boudreau, Breakpoint Communities;

R. Van Gelderen;

J. Herb;

J. Ross; and

D. Devine.

it being pointed out that the following individuals made verbal presentations at the public participation meeting held in conjunction with this matter:

R. Van Gelderen;

J. Herb;

J. Ross; and

D. Devine

Moved by P. Cuddy

Seconded by C. Rahman

That pursuant to section 33.8 of the Council Procedure By-law, the Strategic Priorities and Policy Committee BE PERMITTED to proceed beyond 6:00 PM.

Motion Passed (13 to 2)

4.2   Sprung Shelter Motion - Councillor S.  Franke and Councillor J. Pribil

2024-10-29 Submission - Sprung Shelters-Franke - Pribil

Moved by J. Morgan

Seconded by A. Hopkins

That correspondence from Councillor S. Franke and Councillor J. Pribil regarding the feasibility of a quick community with small housing structures such as sprung shelters, tiny homes etc. BE REFERRED to the Customer Service and Process Improvements Reference Group to receive feedback from community partners in the development, construction, and real estate industry.

it being noted that the Strategic Priorities and Policy Committee received a revised communication from Councillor S. Franke and Councillor J. Pribil with respect to this matter and communications from the following individuals:

  •    J. Zaifman, CEO, London Home Builders’ Association; and

  •    M. Carter, CEO, London & District Construction Association (LDCA).

Motion Passed (14 to 1)

4.3   Agencies, Boards and Commissions Motion - Councillor S. Franke and Councillor C. Rahman

2024-10-29 Submission - Agencies, Boards and Commissions-Franke - Rahman

Moved by S. Franke

Seconded by C. Rahman

That it BE NOTED a communication dated October 16, 2024 from Councillor S. Franke and Councillor C. Rahman was received with respect to this matter.

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

  • L. Bikos, Assistant Professor, King’s University College;

  • R. Skinner;

  • B. Couto; and

  • T. Devlin.

ADDITIONAL VOTES:

Moved by S. Franke

Seconded by C. Rahman

That the Civic Administration BE DIRECTED to convey to all agencies, boards and commissions that receive tax levy funding through the City of London budget, be directed to work in good faith in their interactions with the City and that the use of municipal funding intended to support lobbying efforts including advertising or communication materials to solicit engagement with the Municipal Council be prohibited (or avoided);

it being noted that the Strategic Priorities and Policy Committee received a communication dated October 16, 2024 from Councillor S. Franke and Councillor C. Rahman with respect to this matter;

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

  • L. Bikos, Assistant Professor, King’s University College;

  • R. Skinner;

  • B. Couto; and

  • T. Devlin.

Motion Failed (5 to 10)

4.4   10th Report of the Diversity, Inclusion and Anti-Oppression Community Advisory Committee

2024-10-29 Submission - DIACAC Report 10

Moved by S. Lehman

Seconded by P. Cuddy

That the following actions be taken with respect to the 9th Report of the Diversity, Inclusion and Anti-Oppression Community Advisory Committee from its meeting held on October 10, 2024:

a)      the following actions be taken with respect to the 2024 Diversity, Race Relations and Inclusivity Awards (DRRIA):

i)     the Needham Funeral Services BE AWARDED the 2024 Diversity, Race Relations and Inclusivity Award, in the Small Business/ Small Labour (49 or fewer employees/members) category;

ii)     the London Afro Centric Association (LACA) BE AWARDED the 2024 Diversity, Race Relations and Inclusivity Award, in the Social/Community Services (including Not-for Profits) (49 or fewer employees/members) category;

iii)     the Black Health, London Health Sciences Centre BE AWARDED the 2024 Diversity, Race Relations and Inclusivity Award, in the Social/Community Services (including Not-for Profits) (50 or more employees/members) category;

it being noted that the Diversity, Inclusion and Anti-Oppression Community Advisory Committee held a general discussion relating to the nominations;

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

Motion Passed (15 to 0)

4.5   Committee Appointment Preferences Submitted by Council Members

2025 - Committee Appointment Preferences

2025 - Standing Committee Preference Chart

Moved by E. Peloza

Seconded by P. Cuddy

That the following appointments BE MADE to the Standing Committees of the Municipal Council for the term December 1, 2024 to November 30, 2025:

a)      Planning and Environment Committee

Councillor P. Cuddy

Councillor E. Peloza

Councillor S. Hillier 

b)      Infrastructure and Corporate Services Committee

Councillor J. Pribil

Councillor A. Hopkins

Councillor P. Van Meerbergen

c)    Community and Protective Services Committee

That the Community and Protective Services Committee member appointment process BE REFERRED to the November 5, 2024 meeting of Municipal Council;

it being noted that the following Council Members were appointed as Chair and Vice Chair by Mayoral Decision 2024-011:

Councillor S. Lehman as Chair and Deputy Mayor S. Lewis as Vice Chair - Planning and Environment Committee

Councillor C. Rahman as Chair and Councillor S. Franke as Vice Chair - Infrastructure and Corporate Services Committee

Councillor D. Ferreira as Chair and Councillor H. McAlister as Vice Chair - Community and Protective Services Committee.

Motion Passed (15 to 0)

Appointment to Planning and Environment Committee

Majority Winner: Councillor P. Cuddy; Councillor E. Peloza; Councillor S. Hillier

5.   Deferred Matters/Additional Business

5.1   (ADDED) 2025 Calendar Amendment Motion - Deputy Mayor S. Lewis and Councillor P. Cuddy

2024-10-29 Submission - (5.1) Amended 2025 Calendar-Lewis and Cuddy

Moved by P. Cuddy

Seconded by E. Peloza

That the Civic Administration BE DIRECTED to bring forward a by-law to a future meeting of Municipal Council to amend the Council Procedure By-law to adjust the Annual Schedule of Meetings, effective 2025 and on an ongoing basis, by incorporating a meeting-free “Constituency Week” in both April and May. It being noted that this will be achieved by rescheduling the meetings of the Infrastructure and Corporate Services Committee (ICSC) and the Strategic Priorities and Policy Committee (SPPC) to the preceding week in those months;

it being further noted that a meeting-free week is currently provided for in March, and two consecutive meeting-free weeks are accommodated in July and August;

it being pointed out that the Strategic Priorities and Policy Committee received a communication dated October 24, 2024 from Deputy Mayor S. Lewis and Councillor P. Cuddy with respect to this matter.

Motion Passed (15 to 0)

6.   Confidential (Enclosed for Members only.)

Moved by E. Peloza

Seconded by D. Ferreira

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

6.1    Labour Relations/Employee Negotiations

A matter pertaining to personnel, labour relations and potential employee negotiations in regard to the Corporation’s association or unions, advice and recommendations of officers and employees of the Corporation including communications necessary for that purpose.

Motion Passed (15 to 0)

The Strategic Priorities and Policy Committee convenes In Closed Session from 7:33 PM to 8:20 PM.

7.   Adjournment

Moved by S. Franke

Seconded by S. Trosow

That the meeting BE ADJOURNED.

Motion Passed

The meeting adjourned at 8:24 PM.

Full Transcript

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

View full transcript (5 hours, 37 minutes)

We’re going to call the 16th meeting of the strategic priorities and policy committee to order. So if you can please take your seats. And as we begin every meeting, I want to acknowledge that the city of London is situated on the traditional lands of the Anishinaabe, the Haudenosaunee, Lene Peiwok, and Adawander in peoples. And we honor and respect the history, culture, and languages of the diverse indigenous people who call this territory home.

London is currently home to many First Nations, Métis, and the new peoples, and as representatives of the people of the city of London. We’re very grateful to have the opportunity to live and work in this territory. The city of London is also committed to making every effort to provide alternate formats and communication supports for meetings upon request, and to make a request specific to this meeting, please contact sppc@london.ca or phone 519-661-2489, extension 2425. Colleagues, I’m going to begin by looking for any disclosures of pecanary interest.

Seeing none, we will move on to the consent agenda. I do want to start by advising colleagues. There was a request for delegation status from Ms. Malley of the downtown London Business Association.

I did reach out to Ms. Malley with regard to this. It’s not usual to have delegations on consent items, and in discussions with her, we agreed that perhaps the best route forward would be to refer her request to delegation to the future SPPC meeting at which the quick start action items that are referenced in item 2.2 of the initiation of the downtown master plan project are brought back in Q1 of 2025 so that she can offer her comments to us on those quick start items at that time. That was agreeable with her, and so that’s how we’re going to handle the delegation request is there will be a motion the clerks have to refer that, and I’m going to look just now for a motion on the consent items, and then I will look for a motion to refer the delegation at the same time.

Councillor Ferrera, Councillor Hopkins, and you’re willing just to move and second both the consent agenda with the referral included. Seeing nods from both of you, thank you for that. So with that moved and seconded, we will look for any discussion on items 2.1 and 2.2 on the consent agenda. Councillor Hopkins.

I can go to the Councillor first. Councillor Ferrera. Thank you, Chair. So yeah, I just want to comment on 2.2 the initiation of the downtown master plan, and I just want to say, you know, I’m happy that we’re at this stage, and we’re really taking our stake in the revitalization of downtown.

I would like to just add, you know, we’re in new times that we have effects that are lingering from the pandemic. We have some areas that have permanently changed in our society, like working from home with our health and homelessness struggles, housing costs, the cost of doing business. And the way, you know, we speak to each other, and all these things have changed and not always for always for the good, but some things for the good. And we still also have things that are still changing, and it’s very evident to me that how we operate the core needs some updating.

So I’m happy that we have this comprehensive plan or this direction for a comprehensive plan. I’m detailing steps for the revitalization of our core, I think is very important. And I’m hoping that we all can come together and take our stake with this development. But I do also understand that that will require some time, and that will also require continued leadership from this council and from the next looking at the schedule of the report and with the development of the downtown master plan.

So as one of London’s most pressing issues, we all understand that we require immediate action now. And I’m very happy to see that that was in the quick start part in phase one that’s going to be coming back to Q1 2024 2025. And I’ve had many conversations with staff on this. So I do appreciate the time that you’ve given me with this.

And I am looking forward to the quick start actions coming in the first quarter of 2025. So I guess I’ll keep my comments kind of concise and brief, and I’ll just keep them right there. But I am looking really forward to it. I do appreciate the work that staff has done with me up to this point.

I appreciate, I guess, you dealing with me. So I will turn it down a little bit. And I’m very excited to see what’s going to be coming for Q1. I do know that we have a lot of work coming ahead of us, but I do see the prioritization from staff on this.

So I appreciate that a lot. So I’m just hoping that everybody supports this. And I’m looking really forward to seeing what comes in the near future. So thank you.

Thank you, Councillor Ferris. Councillor Hopkins. I have you next. And then Councillor Preble.

Yeah. Thank you, Mr. Chair. And I’d like to make a quick comment and maybe a quick question to staff for you on 2.2, which is the downtown master plan project.

So pleased that this project is in front of us to receive and start the terms of reference. I was really pleased to see the community reach out in all the edits on the importance of this plan going forward. So with that, I’d just like to say I’ve been around a long time. And when we develop, especially the downtown master plan, it does take a while.

I do think that it is quite urgent as well that we start to do something and make some decision. So and take advantage of some low hanging fruit and maybe through you to staff if staff can give me an understanding that there are ways to do that as we go through the process. Well, let’s go to Mr. Mathers first and then we’ll hand it over to whomever might be appropriate.

Through the chair. That’s one of the reasons why we incorporated this quick start. Like if there’s good ideas, we’ve had so much consultation over the last couple of years with the key folks in the downtown. So we’re going to bring some of those things forward as quickly as we can.

So that’s why we have this quick start. I’ll throw it off to Mike here. He’s really about doing the lead on the staff perspective and he has some thoughts as well to be able to add. Thank you.

Through the chair. So like as Mr. Mathers mentioned, we’ve had a lot of consultation with the downtown community as of late in the recent years. We understand that there are certain conditions that we need to address in order to set the stage so that the development of the master plan has the best chance of success as we look to implement it.

The report in January in Q1 2025 will include a list of strategic quick start actions that we have identified and that the community has identified that need to be addressed. And we will outline some of the operational matters with regards to those quick start actions and present them for council for their consideration as we move through the development of this. I’d also like to highlight that at the completion of phase one, which is expecting Q4 2025, we will include a summary of those quick start actions. It’s kind of a formal documentation of the past, present and future of the quick start actions given that the overall timeline of development for this entire project will take us well into 2026.

Thank you, Mr. Macaulay and Councillor Hopkins. Yeah, thank you. I’m really excited to know that this could be coming to us.

I heard January, but I’m not going to keep it to January, but the first quarter I think is really, really important to see if we can get some streamlining done as soon as possible. So thank you. Thank you, Councillor Hopkins. We’ll go to Councillor Preble next.

Thank you. And I would like to make a comment that thank you, by the way, for this work. And I do think that in terms of the strategy and looking in the future that it is the right path we are having said that when I look at the timelines, and I know there were certain initiatives that will be sooner, but I just want to reiterate, these timelines are great if you are doing well in something and you are looking to improve, but we are not in that situation. Downtown London is not in that situation, so I’m truly hoping that the initiatives that are going to come through, we need to take actions, and we got to deliver on those sooner than kind of the first ones in Q4 2025, we will not go too far.

So please keep that close to our heart that even though we agree with this, and I believe or certainly I will be supporting it. I hope my colleagues as well. But again, this is not the path that’s going to get us quickly out of where we are. So let’s please take this to our heart and let’s address these actions as soon as possible.

I know for example, Downtown London PIA, they have a strategic plan, 21 to 25, and there are some good initiatives as well, which should be revisited, and there is no need to wait for these phases to come into fruition. So thank you very much, and no more comments. Thank you. Sorry, Chair.

I just wanted to give an opportunity because I saw some nodding, but give an opportunity to the staff if they wanted to respond in any way. Thank you, Councillor Preble. Mr. Macaulay, or Mr.

Mathers, did you have anything to add to that? Through the Chair, we absolutely acknowledge the urgency, and that’s why we think what we want to do is be able to bring forward these things as quickly as possible, knowing that we’ve had this consultation, and you spoke to the Downtown London in their strategic plan, and there’s lots of great ideas that we can feed from, and I think there’s a lot of work has been done historically that we can consolidate, bring forward quickly, along with all of that engagement that we would need to do as part of a long-term plan, but I think we can bring some of those good ideas forward as quickly as possible. Thank you. No more questions?

No more comments? Thank you, Chair. Thank you, staff. Councillor Stevenson.

Thank you. As I hear about these quick start items coming in next year, and I know our strategic plan includes the whole core area, I wondered if there might be a consideration to be looking at the core area in terms of some of those as well, or are we looking strictly at the Downtown? Mr. Mathers, or Mr.

McCauley, whichever one of you wants to feel that? Through the Chair, so this will be more specifically looking at the Downtown, but if there’s aspects that can align and make sense for the entire core area, we’ll make those suggestions as part of the report as well, so we don’t want to ignore. We know that there’s a lot of other areas in the city that are struggling having challenges, so as much as that will be focused on the Downtown, it doesn’t mean that we can’t apply some of those good ideas to other areas in the core. Councillor, looking for any other speakers on the consent agenda?

Seeing none, I’m going to ask the clerk to open the vote on that. Councillor Bamirobergen. Councillor Bamirobergen. Oh, yes.

Closing the vote. Motion carries 15 to 0. Thank you, colleagues. So moving on, I will draw everyone’s attention to the fact that we do have in scheduled items, a scheduled break from 4 to 4.15, we are nowhere close to 4 o’clock yet, so we will not be taking our break in scheduled items right now.

We will be moving forward with the items for direction, and we will see how far we get with those prior to taking a scheduled break. I will be sticking fairly closely, though, to the 4 o’clock planned break time. As I know that there are a couple of Councillors who do need to step out for a minute or two at that time, and we have planned to just have some quick snacks and coffee in the Councillors lounge for everyone to refresh and take a bio break. So we will move forward with item number four in the agenda.

This is items for direction, and we will start with 4.1, which is the whole of community system response encampment plan implementation recommendations 2025. And we do have a presentation from Mr. Nash from London inter-community health center and Ms. McDonald, the director of services from London Cares, we get that set up, and we’ll welcome you both back.

You know, this is not your first time before us on this and several other items, so we appreciate you making time today to come and walk us through your presentation. When you’re ready to start, you’ll have five minutes. Good afternoon, building on the community engagement plan endorsed by Council on June 25th that defined the why and how London will support and manage encampments. The implementation recommendations for 2025 in front of you are the activities and funding needed to operationalize this plan.

Chantel and I are honored to represent the encampment elements of the health and homelessness system response. As you recall, the encampment strategy is one part of a three-part plan that aims to move the most marginalized people in our community indoors into hubs and highly supportive housing. We as co-chairs have met with hundreds of people, individuals including community residents, frontline workers, senior leadership from social services, health, and first responders, as well as developers, city staff, business owners to develop the strategy. The overall intention of the community encampment plan is to create pathways to housing.

You’ll recall the core elements of the community encampment plan, our transformational outreach, transactional outreach, and health and safety. The intent of the community encampment plan is to enhance the supports to individuals living unsheltered in our community and better manage the impacts of people living without adequate housing while achieving our community’s desire to solve this crisis by building pathways to indoor spaces and housing. As described in the community encampment plan, the whole of community recommendations are as follows. Recommendation number one, we are confident that in 2025, the housing system will have the capacity to move approximately 100 to 150 highly marginalized individuals indoors.

Based on proven best practice, we would need six additional transformation outreach workers to assist the most vulnerable in our community to successfully move indoors. Transformational outreach workers will support people to get ready, be ready, and support them to successfully move into hubs and highly supportive housing. Recommendation number two. The goal of transactional outreach is to alleviate the suffering in our community and provide individuals with well-being checks and in the moment support while they remain outdoors waiting for housing.

The recommended investment includes the cost of staffing as well as material requirements. Much of transformational outreach will occur at service depots. Recommendation number three. In addition, the third component of the community encampment plan is intended to improve safety and people’s experience.

We want to note that this recommendation is outside the scope of this report and acknowledge additional support is needed in terms of people and funding are required. The purpose of service depots are to alleviate suffering and desperation by providing effective and efficient service delivery. The service depot locations we are recommending for consideration are Watson Park, Evergreen Park, Kiwanis Central, South Park, Municipal Law at number 12, Fairmount School, and McCormick’s Park. Service depots are not fixed structures and can be moved based on the needs of community.

When we attended the PPC meeting in June, we were asked to utilize proximity, recommended by council and encouraged to revisit these recommendations if they were not working in community. There are several concerns outlined in the plan with the previous proximity recommendations and the limited space available for individual experiencing homelessness. It only leaves 18 percent of public spaces within London remaining available based on the current buffers. We are recommending that the adjustment to the residential buffers to 25 meters.

Because it will take time to build out hubs and highly supportive housing and other appropriate indoor spaces, further considerations have come through the engagement process that we have done over the past two years. Those include pop-up shelters or pop-up indoor spaces, sometimes referred to as sprung shelters, as well as support to small businesses as the health and homelessness strategy and other housing initiatives are implemented in the next couple of years. Funded in this council have demonstrated tremendous leadership. We need to stay the course and continue to work in collaboration through this collective impact approach.

Since the COVID-19 pandemic, the demand for support has outweighed the level of resources in communities. The level of government — all level of governments are trying to catch up. This recommendation is based on our commitment as a community to save lives, alleviate suffering and build a healthy, strong, and safe community. Thank you.

Thank you. And I knew Ms. McDonald, you were probably giving us the closing statement there. So we went a little over five minutes, but pretty tight to that time.

So thank you for keeping it in that time frame. Colleagues, we have on our agenda in addition to the presentation, a number of communications, as well as for request for delegation status. So before we move into discussion and debate on the motion, I’m going to look for a mover and a seconder to approve the delegations, and that’s moved by Councillor Stevenson and seconded by Councillor Cuddy. And I will ask the clerk to open the vote to approve the voting.

Posing the vote, motion carries 15 to 0. >> Thank you, colleagues. So we will first hear from our delegates. Then we will move into motions and debate around this item on the agenda.

I will advise members of the public that Councillors, a couple of Councillors, have circulated potential amendments already. So when we get into the debate on the main motion, we will be considering some amendments that colleagues want to bring forward as well. But I’m going to move to our delegates now. So our first delegate who registered was Ms.

Van Gildren, and I’ll ask you to come to one of the mics in the gallery, and you will have five minutes to speak to us. I will give you a wave at about 30 seconds just so that you know you’re hitting your time. And otherwise, when you’re ready, please go ahead. >> Mayor Josh Grogan, Deputy Mayor Sean Lewis, council members, city managers and fellow delegations.

Imagine that you were adopted when you were two, put into foster care when you were 13, then dropped off at a shelter with a garbage bag of belongings at age 17. And you have never found a place to call home at age 31. Imagine that your long time partner brings home a new girlfriend and chases you from your home with a weapon. You are forced to leave your two children behind.

One of who dies from drug poisoning. You have health issues with your legs and use fentanyl for the pain. You steal to get drugs, go to jail, get sober, and your legs heal. But when you return to the street, there is nowhere to go.

Your health condition returns and eventually your drug use. These are real life stories. What is your future? No names, no faces, but there are many more like them, similar but different.

My own daughter is one of them, and many of you have received, most of you have received letters from me in the past. As many of you are aware, I have written several letters in the last two years. I understand that the federal government and province have promised money to Ontario municipalities that are struggling with homelessness and addiction with London having one of the more serious situations, although it is dire everywhere. I know that you may or Grogan by following media and your post on acts have been working hard to put London at the top of the list for funding in this issue, and I appreciate your efforts.

However, as a city, community, and place of business, London needs to prepare a plan for how this money is going to be allocated and what can be done to support this community and basic survival. Winter is upon us in a few weeks, yet we have no winter response plan, except for funding for the ARC, which will end in December. We have service encampments, the locations of which change so often that I cannot keep up with it. If I have difficulty tracking it, how can community members possibly keep track?

London Council needs to stop up and formulate a plan and place in which actual city-sanction encampments can be established. Citizens called for it at both encampment meetings last spring, but the idea was discouraged by our city manager. To me, this seems like the most plausible idea to reduce the numbers creating pressure on businesses and homeowners in the downtown core. Community members need a place of safety if they are to move out of the core.

Pushing people out of the downtown without a safe place to go makes it increasingly more difficult to keep track of community members that many of us are trying to support. And I have one girl I’m supporting who’s struggling to get sober on the street, but have not been able to find her for several weeks now. As a result, people stealth camp in the core. They end up using a loan.

They are more susceptible to overdose, violence, and theft. It forces people away from life-saving supports, food, drop-in space, or night shelter. Many struggle with the ability to walk the distance to encampments. They have foot and leg issues.

Many are in wheelchairs or use walkers. Community members need a place with hygienic resources, not just port-a-potties, but comfort stations with soap and water at the very least. They need a place with security, a fenced area for the encampment, and a place to leave their belongings without fear of someone going through their tent and stealing their few possessions. They need transport to downtown in order to access support workers, showers, laundry, community access, medications, health care, and more.

But if they have a way to return to a place they can temporarily call home, they won’t stay in the core. I believe that. The level of misinformation and outright vitriol against this group online is growing. The suggestions posted are both murderous and inhumane.

Throw gasoline on those using publicly. Pick them up and drop them off outside the city to die. And after last week’s tainted drugs caused 20 overdoses in one day, celebratory remarks were made that someone had found a solution to the problem. I understand that many of these are keyboard warriors hiding behind their screens until they aren’t.

I feel that as people get desperate on both sides, that this may turn into a crime scene. As a city and as a community, we need to work together to bring solutions to this problem. Priorities need to be made and finding land to support these solutions in low residential neighborhoods. I’m asking you, as a council and our city managers, to do the right thing and work toward a solution to fix this issue before it is too late and we have needless stuffs.

Thank you. Thank you, Ms. Van Geldren. Our next registered delegate is John Herb.

If we can ask Mr. Herb to come to the microphone. Not a problem, sir. We will wait for you.

Welcome, Mr. Herb. And just as with Ms. Van Geldren, you’ll have five minutes to share your remarks with us.

And when you are ready, you go ahead. I will give you a wave with about 30 seconds left if you’re running up to your time. Thank you very much, Chair. I appreciate that.

I’ll be very brief. I’m just going to speak to the motion, which is a reduction of the distance from 100 meters to 25 meters from a residential property. I just wanted to make that kind of clear that it’s not the actual building, but the property line that it’s the distance from. So, reducing that requirement as being discussed as an urgent matter.

But really, we’re talking about 75 meters difference here, which is less than a length of a football field. But to a property owner, a distance of 25 meters from their property line is roughly the distance of an average suburban backyard. So what we’re talking about there is having a potentially a large encampment situated that distance, 25 meters, or a backyard distance away from residents, people who want to enjoy the property safely. Council decided that that was a safe distance back in June as far as a buffer zone, and that hasn’t changed.

So there’s a couple of questions that I’m hoping you’re going to ask, so that at least I have the answers or take back to people that I speak to. And I’ve been informed that there’s a PowerPoint presentation concerning this. I haven’t seen it, but it would have been highly useful to have been able to view it before standing in front of this committee just on the basis of having that information. So when you say the questions I’d like to have answered is when you say an encampment, how many tents maximum would that encompass?

And what area would that be allowed to spread out to as far as a physical area? And how many people in that proximity in that area would be allowed to dwell there, even on a temporary transient basis? And as far as growing encampments, we’re talking about increased waste, increased debris and garbage, and how that’s going to be collected and dealt with, because we can’t just leave it to fester. So I’d like to also make the point that, and it’s pretty obvious to me, if not to staff, that reducing the distance to 25 meters is actually going to increase the frequency of calls, if not to CIR, but to fire EMS police, as residents are essentially forced to be more proximal to this encampment, you know, if you hear a woman screaming in the night, are you just going to ignore it?

Are you going to call the police? Do you see a fire getting out of control? Are you going to ignore it? We’re talking about increased neighborhood conflicts.

And as Rosemary Van Geldren mentioned, these are increasingly becoming violent, and more and more, a pro-brium is being heaped on that transient community. So we have a public interest here, a public safety interest. So really, and I’m going to cut it off now, I’m just going to ask the committee to deny this request to amend the distance, and not have it, not even have it come to council. You’ve already voted on it, this is a thing that’s already been taken care of as far as I’m concerned, and reducing that distance is just going to exacerbate the problem rather than solve anything for the residents.

So thank you for your time. Thank you, Mr. Herb. And our next delegate is James Ross, if we can ask James to come to the microphone there and welcome, sir.

Just as with the other two speakers, when you’re ready, I’ll start a timer. You’ve got five minutes, and I’ll give you a wave if you’re getting close to your five of both 30 seconds. Notice. Thank you very much.

Thank you. I just want to say thank you for being limey to come today. It’s been a fascinating — I mean, most people would say fascinating watching budget meetings, and maybe my daughter, Ella, who’s with me today might have a question about that. But I have to say, this has been really fascinating, and I have to say positive, even though these are difficult subjects.

I just want to give a little bit of introduction. I originally grew up here in London. My wife and I. And we’ve been living in trouble for the last 25 years, and we’ve maintained a home there, but we came back to London during COVID.

We bought a property that’s a beautiful place at the very underground avenue, east of Wellington. And the reason I decided to take on this project was because it’s beautiful there, and it makes me think about this city, and it makes me think about the future of the city and the options and all the things that are here. There’s so many positive to the city, and yet there’s so many challenges in how to navigate it in ways that don’t divide the community more. And I think it’s been important for me — it’s been important in clarifying for me to be here today to realize that.

I think the city has actually an incredible trajectory if it would recognize it. And this is coming from someone where people compare cities all the time, right? There’s a lot here, and the downtown has a lot to offer in the core and the river and all the rest of it. But there are serious issues, and we’re not just issues that are unique to London, they’re across the country.

So this is, in a way, a tiny part of a huge problem that many communities are dealing with. So anyhow, now to the things that maybe I have learned about procedure and so forth, by being here, there’s a lot of skills needed to navigate these difficult and arcane kind of discussions and committees and what have you. I learned about this — the recommendation from city staff to reduce the distance from a friend in BC who sent it to me on Sunday night, and I realized I was shocked. We live surrounded by encampments.

I’ve had many interactions with city staff regarding encampments. I’ve met the former city manager who promised me three years ago that there would not be any permanent encampments. And now we’re talking about not just permanent encampments, which are not a solution to the core issues, but what we’re seeing is they’re becoming more entrenched. And just to be clear, I’ve met many of the people.

I live right there, and some of them are delightful people and great people, and sometimes you’re screaming and fighting in police. I don’t even know how many times I’ve called the police. And I’m like here to say, you know, on some virtual signal thing here, I’m saying these are issues that we have to deal with. My daughter has to walk to school.

I could honestly say to you that my community in downtown Toronto is safer than here. And that’s a serious issue in which it would probably shock a lot of people. It’s not London’s a small, you know, no, no, this is a serious issue. So I can’t address all the huge underlying issues, and that’s not what I’m talking about today.

But what I am here to talk about is the process in which this is happening and finding a bit recommendations at the last minute, learning that I have to write something was an eight minute deadline to get delegation to come in today. And then being handed, and I don’t mean to signal anybody out in particular, but my ward councillor, the proposed amendments for today. What we are going to do is, but these are proposed. This is not the way to do things.

People don’t know. I don’t know what’s going on, and so the city needs, and the council needs to communicate. I’m recommending that this entire motion be a deferring to the next meeting of this committee, and that the combination be made for any emergency funding so that no services are cut off. People need, and the community needs, and people will be around the core part who are concerned need to be part of this.

So thank you very much. Thank you, Mr. Ross. And colleagues, I’m just going to ask, please, sorry, those in the gallery, please, no applauding, no booing.

People are going to have different views. We want everybody to be able to speak here without feeling they are being supported or unsupported by other members in the gallery. So please keep any shows of support or discontent to yourself. We do have one more, and I will say, Mr.

Ross, I’m sure that budget chair Palosa would be happy if Ella wanted to send budget questions her way. We do have one more speaker to this item. Our next delegate is Diane Devine, who is joining us via Zoom today. So we will just ask the clerk to make sure that she’s able to join us by Zoom.

Hi. Can you hear me? We can hear some sounds, but we can’t hear you very clearly. That is much better, Ms.

Devine. Okay. Okay. Thank you, committee members.

We are losing you again. Hold on one sec. It was for a moment, and then you faded out again. Okay.

I’m not sure what’s going on, my computer, how’s that? You’re good for the moment. Okay. Okay.

Thank you, committee members and staff, for the opportunity to speak before you. I’m not sure where I sit on the change in the distance required between homes and encampments. Although I do agree, 25 meters is a little too close. I’m here today, more in the effort to urge council to develop a designated area where those who are unable to get into the minimal number of available shelter spaces compared to the number currently needed can set up tents and know that if they take the time to insulate those tents, they will not be under the certain threat of being made to take it down come 9.30 a.m.

the next morning, especially those here in ward four where it’s guaranteed the councilor will have been out on their morning scope of the area to ensure enforcement and LPS are here by 9.30 a.m. For example, there is a lot on the north side of King Street between Rectory and Ontario Street. I believe this lot is currently owned by the casino. However, I have not been able to confirm this.

Even so, is it not possible for the city to negotiate with the property owner to allow the eastern end of that lot to be deemed a safe encampment area for a separate time each year? I suggest this specific area because there are currently functioning electrical stations set up that I assume were once used by the carny workers in their trailers and such. Now that the fair has relocated, the only time I have seen that specific area of parking lot used in the almost three years I have resided here is when the fair is actually open. Other than that, there are very rarely vehicles in that specific lot.

Allowing them to set up there and allowing them access to these electrical stations would eliminate the need for starting fires to keep warm if they are able to find some form of safe space heater. And it would also allow organizations such as the art which do outreach programs, bringing food, clothing and other necessities, better ability to help more people without putting themselves at risk just trying to get to wherever the homeless have found to set up until the next time the city removes them. So as I understand, as I said, I understand the area I’m going to suggest it is not city owned. Ms.

Devine, I’m going to get you to just pause for a moment. We’re hearing you really clear and then in the last 10 seconds or so, you started fading out. I don’t know if you turned away from your mic or something, but… Okay.

Is that better? Yep. That’s much better. So you’ve used up two minutes and five seconds, so you got just about three minutes left if you want to continue.

Yes. So as I said, I understand the area I have suggested is not city owned and therefore may not be an option. But there must be an area of land that is located within the city, not in some outskirts area that will be impossible for the homeless to get back to the city’s corner where the help is located for them or is a costly truck for outreach organizations to get to to provide help. I’d also like to say that it’s time our council accept the fact that we need to follow the great examples being set by cities such as St.

Thomas, which is currently in the process of developing an entire tiny home complex that will consist of a number of single bedroom and multi-bedroom homes, as well as a playground, basketball court, and community center. The St. Thomas for the population of just over 45,000 can accomplish such a great project to help aid their less fortunate citizens, while I can lend in with a population that is more than ten times that is St. Thomas not do the same for our less fortunate citizens.

It’s about time council accepts the fact that we need to create larger amounts of RGI subsidized and fully supported housing options sooner than later. The final thing I’d like to say in response to one council’s recent post on Facebook, if funding continues to refuse to take steps such as I had mentioned to aid our less fortunate citizens, then yes, we need to support organizations that are constantly trying to provide some type of shelter in the form of tents and stop confiscating the tents that citizens have been so kind to donate in the effort to help the hundreds of citizens we do not have beds to offer during the cold winter nights. Thank you again for your time in this matter. I do hope a solution can be developed to aid our less fortunate citizens as they do deserve our help and respect regardless of what unfortunate circumstances may have created the situation that they are struggling in now.

Thank you and have a good day. Thank you, Ms. Devine. And that concludes our four registered delegates colleagues.

We also had a number of communications. Those will be included in the motion. So before we move into our own series of debates, we have an item with some staff supported recommendations. I’m going to look for a mover and seconder.

Then we’re going to move into a process around Council Trust. I’ll hold on just a moment where we’ve had a number of Councillors circulate amendments. We are going to move into a process of dealing with the amendment pieces first. Then when all that has been sorted out, we will come back to deal with the main motion as amended, whatever that looks like at the end of the process.

I’ve also been asked by more than one colleague because the 100 meter is a decided matter of Council. Don’t we need reconsideration to accept the 25 meter distance? I will advise that first this is coming from the whole of community. So we are not required, of course, to accept that.

We can make our own decision on what we want to do with that. However, it is substantively different enough from the 100 meters. They could be deemed to be an amendment to the adopted Council buffers. And so it is in order that an amendment could be made to a prior decision of Council.

It is not a reconsideration of the original report that came back in June to us. So just wanted to be clear why that has been deemed in order for this meeting. So with that said, I will now look to see if there is a mover and a seconder for the recommendation presented and then we’ll move into discussion and amendments. So moved by Councillor Trussow, is there a seconder for that?

Seconded by Councillor Hopkins, okay. So now we can start the process of questions, comments, amendments. There are several I am going to have also advised colleagues how via email, how I would break up the votes on this. I will stick to that when we get to the main motion as amended unless some of the clauses are completely gone.

But we’re going to start sort of in order, Councillor McAllister, you had circulated an amendment with regard to clause A, which is the setback distances. So I’m going to go to you first. Thank you and through the chair. This is going to bother the chair, I’m approaching this, but I do actually want to start first by putting forward a referral for A and F.

I’m going to try that to see if there is enough council support. I do think that it warrants a further discussion. I’m not going to get into my reasons just yet. I’m going to put forward the referral, but I’m going to put that on the floor for just A and F.

Okay, Councillor, I’m going to hold you there for a second before I look for a seconder because we’re going to deal with A first, F was to be dealt with later, just so that we can stay organized. I’m going to ask if you’ll consider just dealing with A for now. If you want to put a referral on for F later when we get through the, like, we can move to that next, but rather than binding them because Councillors may feel differently about referring one and the other, I’d ask that if that’s amenable to you, that you’d just speak to A for the moment? Yeah, I’ll put a referral for A.

Okay, Councillor Trussell. I believe that if the Councillor wants to move a referral, there should be more information given in the motion as to its nature when it will happen and some details about the reasons. So I appreciate that, Councillor. I’m going to ask colleagues to please bear with me as I steer us through this on the points of order because that was going to be my next question to the Councillor.

There’s no direction on a referral as to what they would be bringing back or timeline. So simply a referral would not be in order, there needs to be some direction. What are you referring it back to come back with? And did you have a timeline?

Yeah, sorry. I can provide more context. I just didn’t want to get into my reasons, so I apologize for that. In terms of the direction I’m giving, this would be until the next SPPC meeting, which would be November 19th, I want to afford, especially my residents who currently have the Watson Depot to be able to have more time in terms of providing feedback.

I’m also going to have a community discussion with them, I’m going to set that up. I apologize in advance, just bad timing on my part, I’m in the process of moving. I know these are important discussions, but I absolutely want to have those with the community. I’ve heard loud and clear, a lot of my colleagues have got that message as well, and I do think this is a big decision, and I think the community that currently has the depot deserves that time.

I’m giving that two-week window to get some more feedback from them to be able to make a more informed decision. Thank you. Okay, so you’re moving a referral on part A to the November 19th SPPC to allow for a community engagement. Yeah, community engagement and feedback on the setback.

Okay. Is there a seconder for that? I do not see a seconder for that counselor, so I’m going to come back to you because you had originally suggested in your communication a different motion on A, which was to actually amend what’s in this report back to the original 100 meters. However, I know that that was sent through the clerk’s office, but I actually believe that in order to leave it at 100 meters, all we have to do is defeat part A, so I’m going to come back to you to see if there’s anything else you want to do with part A before I move to the next group of amendments that counselors have proposed.

Yeah, thank you. So I think there was a bit of confusion, I apologize for the lettering, but mine was specific in terms of provision for the depots themselves. With A as it stands currently, this is just the residential setback by large for the entire city, and so mine was specifically dealing with just the depots. So I’m okay if we can split A, I don’t care really clerk-wise how you want to split that, but if there can be two components to A and then vote it on separately, I would be willing to do that.

Okay, so what I’m hearing is what you actually want is a referral on F with regard to the depots, a chance for some community engagement, and some potential discussion around setbacks from the depots. Sorry, you meant A, F is locations. Yes. Yeah, so do you want to include, because right now what we’re dealing with is the residential property setbacks.

Yes. The reason I’m trying to keep this- I know you’re trying to do this. I know you’re trying to do this. Those are not the same as necessarily the other, so I’m wondering if you want to consider just including that in F, like a setback for depots rather than a setback, the general setback.

Yeah, we’ll put it all in F, and I’m willing to just- Okay, I tried my referral. Thank you for letting me try. So I will counsel you when we get to clause F. Okay, I’m going to move on now, because we did have also motions from Councillor ramen on part B, and then the mayor on part C.

So I’m going to go to Councillor ramen next for her potential motion on part B. So Councillor ramen. Thank you and through you. So I did circulate, I apologize to my colleagues for the last minute for the circulation.

I did circulate a language change for part B. It has to do with the source of funding, so that instead of coming from the operating budget contingency reserve fund, that we’d look to use some surplus that is available elsewhere through housing stability. And for that reason, I’m looking to put that forward. I do have rationale that I can further provide if I have a seconder.

Well let’s look to see if you have a seconder for that, seconded by Councillor Stevenson. So I’ll come back to you, Councillor, for your rationale. Thank you. And I know that we’re going to enter a lot of debate on this topic today, so I’ll keep mine firm to the topic at hand, which is part B.

And specifically, the timeframe for those basic needs provisions for the period of November 1st to December 31st, 2024. Later on, we’ll entertain some additional amendments around looking to just have further discussions with the federal and the provincial governments. And I do believe that we need a buffer period to allow for those discussions to take place. And so this would keep funding for basic needs provisions, but it would take it off the contingency reserve fund and put it onto surplus so that that funding can be maintained.

My intention is to look for opportunities to use surplus and to use funding to be able to support some of our highest priorities right now, outside of operational contingencies and outside of the tax base. Thank you, Councillor Robin. I’m going to look for other speakers on the amendment, Councillor Frank. Thank you, yes.

And I’m just curious as to maybe any rationale or any comments from staff regarding the difference between the operating budget contingency reserve and the housing stability services and why one reserve or surplus might be better than another? Well, let’s go to Ms. Barbone. If you want to hand that off to Mr.

Dickens as the lead in this area, I understand, but we’ll go to you first as the chief of our financial bookkeeping and advice for us, Ms. Barbone. Thank you, through the chair. So originally when this report was contemplated, they were looking for a service to financing and noting that they were not going to use the full allotment for the previous decision of Council for the use of the operating budget contingency reserve fund, the recommendations were put forward in that regard.

There were questions that the Councillor had asked us earlier today with respect to some reimbursement and as a result of getting some of the reimbursement through the IHAP funds, what that created was because of the timing of the payment, created some surplus funding that was not anticipated as a result of the accounting for the reimbursement of those funds in the 2024 budget. So therefore, there will be an additional surplus identified as part of the housing stability services that the Councillor simply choosing to put this forward to use those funding instead of taking the allocation from the operating budget contingency reserve fund. So it’s simply a change in the source of funding and that would preserve the OBCR for its use in the future for something at a later date. Councillor Frank.

Thank you. Looking for other speakers. Seeing none, I will ask the clerk to open the vote on part B amendment and that is in your e-scribe. It is vote for, it changes the source of funding and it is to fund the basic needs provisions from November 1 to December 31.

Closing the vote, motion carries 15 to 0. Colleagues, moving on, we’re going to move into part C of the staff recommendation now. And Mayor Morgan, you had circulated an intended amendment, so I’ll go to you now to introduce that. Yes, so I don’t know if the clerk’s going to put the language up, perhaps I need a second or first, but essentially the basis of my amendment is to not draw from the operating budget contingency reserve, but to direct myself and municipal staff to engage in discussions with the federal and potentially provincial governments on accessing the $250 million with some potential provincial matching to see if that is an appropriate funding source for this, as for the previous amendment that Councillor ramen made, identifying what is a surplus from funds from another level of government, it is my desire to have other levels of government pay for these services, especially when they’re actually putting funding envelopes around supporting municipalities on encampments.

It’s exactly what we should be engaging with them on is funding from here. Given we’ve got a window to the end of the year, I think providing that direction would allow us to go and engage in pursuing that as an option rather than using the contingency reserve. By not using the contingency reserve, it would still be there later, so I would prefer not to identify that as a source now and to engage in discussions on what is appropriate funding from the federal and provincial governments to support an initiative like this. Sorry, I was going to cut you off and say before we get too much farther into your rationale, can we get a seconder for that, but I think you still have time left, you’ve only used a minute, but Councillor ramen has indicated she’s prepared to second that.

So I will go back to your worship to see if you have anything further to add or if you want me to go ahead with the next. No, I’ll just say like this is our opportunity to continue to engage with other levels of government on funding envelopes that they have identified specifically in support for encampment spaces to assist municipalities on this. And given the way the discussions are going and you heard me provide some thoughts on this in the budget presentation, provinces are now signing on across the country. Mr.

Frazier said this money needs to flow in time to use for the winter. So the timing and all of the signals that are being given is that we will have access to a pot of money of some size to assist us with generally managing encampments and providing supports in that space. So I would prefer to have the direction from city staff to go and do that engagement rather than us just identify our operating budget contingency reserve at this time to fund this project. I think that there’s a more appropriate source and that source is of the levels of government.

Thank you Mayor Morgan looking for other speakers and I’ll go first to Councillor Layman. Thank you Mayor for bringing that forward. I just want to ask you the mover of the intention. If funding doesn’t come forward from for up province or the federal government would this still go through coming out of the operating budget contingency reserve?

So the answer to that would be if you can just wait until I recognize you your worship and then we will also see if there’s any staff response to that as well. But I will go first to Mayor Morgan to ensure the mover. So the answer to no would be identified that this is the source, if that source didn’t come through we would report back to council, council would make whatever decision they felt was appropriate. Mayor Layman?

Okay thank you and I think that’s a good direction to go. So in preparation for the budget discussions I looked at one really terrific graph that I know staff brings out to community engagement and that kind of shows how our pie of spending is broken out and I compared that to I look back at 2016 for interest to see how we’ve changed and how we allocate resources. Many things haven’t changed at all, for example like protective services which are essentially police and fire still take up 20% of our budget. The same percent exactly that they took in 2016.

There are as one glaring change and that’s housing, social and health services. 2016 that took up 27% of our budget. Now it takes 33% a third of our budget is spent on housing, social and health services. These are areas I think we’re all aware of it intrinsically.

We feel it, we talk about it all the time, our cities are being forced to deal with other than roads and fire and police and sewers, etc. We now have this added layer of health care. I looked at well how’s the funding matching that, in the next four years we see the funding expected from higher levels of government to actually decrease 1% a year as opposed to our property tax which is going up over those remaining years. As a share of our funding the higher levels of government are falling behind.

At some point we have to say enough is enough and I think this is the start of that. So thank you to the mayor for looking at saying there’s only so much the taxpayers of London can do. We want to do as much as we can to do it but people are having challenges with affordability on their own paying for gas and groceries. So I’m supported of this if we can find the funding from where I believe it should come from.

Thank you. Thank you Councillor Lehman. Other speakers? Councillor ramen.

Thank you. I appreciate the motion from the mayor. I appreciate the continued advocacy in continuing to position London with respect to these discussions. I will say I do have some other pieces that I’d like to discuss as it relates to the plan that’s in front of us and the motion.

So I’m just wondering in terms of the order of our discussion if I have leeway in terms of going into some of the things within the plan as it relates to our advocacy. I think that’s in order Councillor if you want to go ahead. We are directing the mayor to go be an advocate so the details matter. Thank you.

So although I first I wanted to say a big thank you to our presenters today to the whole of community for the work that you’ve done for the engagement that you’ve done. I think it’s really important to have these discussions and to continue having these discussions as a community. So the federal government has put $250 million into a funding envelope. To me it’s still very unclear how much of the $250 million that London could capture.

And what I saw happen with the asylum claimant funding was I saw Toronto get the lion’s share of the amount and other communities get very small amounts including in this report here where we have the amount from our IHAP request which was in line with what we identified as our costs but I do think there are so many hidden services and costs that do not even get into the equation and are very hard to capture especially when perhaps things aren’t fully recorded all the time in their interactions with HIFAS and other agencies and organizations. So my concern is I do not feel as though we may get all the funding that we’re in need of or requesting. So I do think it’s important that we signal what is the priority for the funding that we are looking for. And my understanding is that this funding is for encampments to housing strategies.

So being true to those strategies in all the talking points I’ve seen so far that connectivity back to the winter response and getting people inside is really prioritized as well. So I see this as a conversation that actually needs to be broader than the encampment plan but includes some of our other requests including the request within the budget for funding for our gate because I think that what we’re saying ultimately is we need to make sure that there are winter spaces and that there are plans to bring people indoors but there is also ongoing supports for those that are encampments. So although we have in front of us one in my opinion piece of the puzzle I think that we have to look at it from the lens of what we think will get funded as well. And with so many unknowns on that I know there will be conversations there have been some preliminary conversations but I do think that setting the stage perhaps and the expectation as to what it is that we would have funded or supported so that we give an idea to other levels of government.

So for instance would we have been in full support of four additional service depots? Would we have been in support of five comfort stations and then looking at that again layered against what kind of supports do we need for overnight beds in cold weather? And so I do think that this gives us pause if that’s our approach is to go after the federal and potentially provincial dollars we need to think what is it that we’re going after and we also don’t know I assume it’s multi-year money but right now are we talking about you know annualized funding because again then we run into the situation where we could be ramping up something that in a year we cannot support even at the federal and provincial funding levels that that’s provided. So I want to be cautious about how much we’re signaling but I also think that we need to be looking at what those priorities are and I know for me it’s indoor spaces and it is getting people out of the cold.

Thank you Councilor ramen you didn’t necessarily ask it as a direct question but I think it was alluded to in there enough that before I go to the next speaker on the list I’m going to go to Mr. Dickens if you don’t have the answer if you need to pass it off to somebody else to respond obviously please do so but have we had an indication of whether the federal funding is one year or whether it is a multi-year funding stream that we may be able to access. I know that the details may not all be in and yet but have you had any early indication about whether this would be more than one year through you chair very preliminary discussions with the federal government and I think at this time we wouldn’t be in a position to confirm their intentions of a single year multi-year funding or what the proportion of that $250 million funding would be available to the province of Ontario to be dispersed let alone to the city of London. Thank you just wanted to check on that Councilor ramen.

Thank you okay so because our our request is initial period I’m okay with that right now because that’s the way the language is structured but I do think that we need to think about this from a multifaceted approach I’m just wondering if there’s any possibility when the funding when all the funding pieces are known for a report back to us so that we can look at ensuring that the the requests that we have are again meeting those needs of that that funding request and making sure that we capture as many dollars as possible. Thank you Councillor that was 5 minutes and 1 second so I am going to go back to staff though to see if Mr. Dickens can respond to in those negotiations with the federal government if we’re successful would you be bringing a report back or before we enter into an agreement would you be bringing a report back to us to advise us what is on the table from the federal government’s perspective or Ms. Dater spear sorry Mr.

Chair my apologies yes definitely we’d certainly want to be back in front of council with any update on any funds that we’re able to access in any way so the good news is yes we’ll come back and let you know having said that there are realities of how we flow funding and how funding is flowed and Mr. Dickens has authority to sign contracts on behalf of council so depending upon how quickly that money gets to us we may need to put those contracts in place right away and we wouldn’t want to stop that from happening in order to ensure we have services in our community but there would be definitely a report back so no concerns about that. Thank you for that I’m going to move on and I have Councillor Hopkins next on the speaker’s list. Yeah thank you Mr.

Chair and just following up on the Councillor’s comments I had a question regarding if we are successful to get some funds from this $250 million federal funding where would the money go and I know we’re going to get a report back but what I’m starting to see us do more and more as a council is change different funding envelopes to take care of the need in the community and obviously with the encampment strategy we need to do something as soon as possible and so we’re constantly caught and I’m not exact and I always want to know do we have the money and obviously if we do have the money where is it and do we have to flip and flop these the funding around so maybe a quick question where with this funding if we were successful where would it go to? Mr. Dater’s beer. Thank you again for the question through you Chair to the members of committee.

When transfer payments are made between other levels of government to the municipalities generally they put rules or requirements or guidelines around how those monies are to be used. They’ve identified this monies encampment funding. They’ve identified it based on the information that they have shared with us initially. As we get more information and they’re clear with us about what their expectations about or how they would fund them how they will provide that money and how we should use that money then we would need to determine how our existing plans the good work that’s already been done in this community matches with the funding that they’re providing and then we would roll it out provided we get it consistent with what they’re saying works.

We are trying to find the balance between what we’re already doing and hopefully identifying flexibility from the federal government or any other government in this provision of the funding and the service that we need. Thank you Mr. Dater’s beer. Councillor Hopkins.

Yeah I appreciate having that background information. It’s not an easy process and it sounds a little bit complicated it’s just not good. We cannot really direct where the funds go so I’m glad that staff are on top of this. I really do think it is important that we get these funds.

It’s Councillor Layman talked about the housing and social increases that we’re experiencing as a municipality but we’re also seeing this in our agencies and boards and commissions. The decrease of provincial funding that they receive and we’re having to offset it. So I do think we’re in challenging times at the moment and the importance of doing this is also very important in our community so best wishes to the advocacy there with the mayor. Thank you Councillor Hopkins.

I will move now to Councillor Palosa. Thank you Mr. Chair and I always appreciate trying to get the money out of the levels of government who should be funding this. But my question through you to staff is as we wait, as we hold tight, time keeps passing and services still need.

People are still need to service and not sure what staff like I’m always aware and cognizant of the time that it takes to ramp up to start delivering services and I’m not sure if our delay may or may not cause some of the organizations who would be doing this work to cause their services, lose staff and then lose some of their capacity to help. So just wondering about the timelines of how much it would take to ramp up and a potential delay impact would cause for rendering service. Mr. Dickens.

Thank you Chair and through you the organizations that are currently providing the services that are identified as part of that basic needs provision, if we were to maintain those services, those organizations would continue to provide those services, recognizing that we would want to get a decision from other levels of government on funding commitments as soon as possible so that those organizations have clear indication of how long that runway is for maintaining services or the ability to scale up to meet the need in the community as well. So yes, we’re in a period of limbo and yes, we’re not in the driver’s seat on timing of decisions and announcements but we do have core services that are being provided. We’ve asked for those to continue to the end of December and then move into a full, more comprehensive plan to support people to get out of encampments and indoors with more resources. So the earlier, the sooner we hear from other orders of government, the better we’ll be able to undertake those necessary procurement steps and those planning steps to make sure we hit the ground running in January.

Councillor Palosa. Thank you, I guess, through you to the Mayor on this one as they did with, as Council did with our delegation to the Police Board of just as the Mayor continues advocacy with civic administration, how will Council be updated on ideally progress? Mayor Morgan. Sure, so this is an urgent matter to which we haven’t waited for Council direction to engage with them.

We’ve seen how active I’ve been in promoting the need for this money to flow quickly. Both the OBCM as well as the federal big city mayors have both passed resolutions and made this what is their top advocacy priority with the federal government in the short term. And so like when I know something, it’s going to be if we know that we’re going to get money, we’re going to let Council know ASAP because we’ll have to move very quickly on any sort of decision making we need to make or maybe the money can be deployed effectively fast. But this will be, this is an, we know that they’re going to flow the money before the winter.

Like every indication the Minister has said is they recognize that they have to do that. They’re moving quickly to sign agreements with the provinces. They anticipate that we will be able to share information fairly soon because they want to get this money at the door. Usually governments are slow with that, but this seems to be they, they’ve heard the call for urgency and I don’t think they want to have people outdoors in the winter and having made this announcement and not flow in the money or float the money.

So we’ll let you know when, when I know you’ll know. Councillor Palazzo, you’re good? Okay, moving on. I have Councillor Ferrer next on the speaker’s list.

Thank you, Chair. Thank you for recognizing me. And thanks to the mayor for bringing this motion. I do appreciate it, you know, money, money is tight.

Money is tight at home for many Londoners and it’s the same here at City Hall. So looking for other levels of government to, you know, play their part, especially if a lot of these areas are within their area of responsibility, that’s, that’s always a good thing for me. And I would also add that, you know, we have gone to great lengths to do what we can in this space. We have made plans.

We’ve spent money and we are trying our best. So just kind of recognizing the city coffers and where we have to distribute our money, that, that is a good, a good call. So I do appreciate us going out to the other levels of government, hopefully getting that, that cash to us and hopefully soon. I would also say just on other comments that I have heard, you know, this, we need to start or we do need to advocate and I do know that that’s already occurring, especially with the Ontario big city mayors of that more holistic plan because this is in the end.

This is a temporary and I am going to use this word cautiously bandaid solution when we’re servicing encampments. We don’t want encampments. We don’t want people living out on the streets. We don’t want that.

We want people to be in housing and that’s the transformational part. We do have that included in the encampment strategy, but we do need the capacity to be able to bring people to. We are still working on that. So that advocacy there needs to be a big part and hopefully we get something soon, sooner rather than later because at the city level, you know, we are very limited on what we can do and, you know, we are just trying everything that makes sense.

So with that, I would just ask one question. I do, I can see that the question was kind of alluded to, but I just wanted to ask directly, you know, we do have some funding, which is another good motion that I appreciate bringing us to December at the end of this year. But at what point if we haven’t confirmed an agreement with the other levels of government, and I guess it would be through the chair to the mayor, at what point if we don’t get that, would we be hearing something back here at council to know that like what’s the what’s the cutoff time that there is leading up to that December 31st deadline, when we would know whether or not we’re going to get that funding and what other plans we might have in order. So that’s the question that I’m asking.

Thank you, Councillor. I’m going to ask you to hold just a moment. I will go to Mayor Morgan. I think he’s just checking the schedule.

So there’s a number of pieces here, Councillor. The last opportunity for us, if we had to make decisions, which includes the budget approval is December 17th is the last council meeting, that being said, there’s always the ability to authorize civic administration to execute agreements, and those are pretty standard provisions. And if funding flows under existing frameworks, you know, those sorts of things could be received and not necessarily need a council meeting. But as for the updating, I mean, information could come at any time, but if you’re talking about when’s our last points of decision as a council, it’s SPPC on the 10th and council on the 17th, those would be the two last points before we hit what would be the end of funding.

And before I go back to you, Councillor, for Ms. Dator’s beer, can you expand a little bit on staff’s delegated authority to execute agreements already and what that timeline looks like for staff side of things? That’s correct. I said it, thank you through you, Chair, in addition to the information that the mayor has suggested and indicated in terms of dates, it’s exactly true, Mr.

Dickens has the authority to execute these agreements on behalf of council. And so as soon as we knew about the funds, we would action that activity and we would certainly advise you thereafter. Thank you. I always appreciate it when the city manager says I’m correct.

Councillor Ferrera, back to you. Thank you, Chair. That’s my comments. That’s my question.

Supporting this amendment, thank you. Okay. I’m looking for other speakers. Councillor Stevenson, go ahead.

Thank you. I just had a question as to whether — do we know if there’s any measurable outcomes that are required for this funding or if the federal and provincial funding that flows comes with a requirement that it reduces encampments? Then what do we do if this plan does not fulfill that? Mr.

Dickens or Ms. Dator’s beer? Thank you. And through you, Chair, while we don’t have all the details on the fund that hasn’t been announced yet, we do know that the federal government is positioning this to reduce the number of encampments, to reduce the number of people experiencing homelessness or unsheltered homelessness.

We expect that we’re going to see expectation for a clear plan, a clear plan that is not said in any isolation that is a plan that is connected to local priorities, local concerns, and is connected to local organizations, that would be consistent with what the provincial government just rolled out on the heart hubs. And we know there will be funding contribution agreements as well, which will spell out terms of that funding agreement and some of the expectations. I would feel like we’re in a strong position locally because we already have the chance to align the federal program expectations around outcomes with the evaluation framework that this council has just recently endorsed unanimously. So that also probably puts us in a position of strength when communicating and negotiating with the federal government on receiving funds that we will have the foundation to be able to measure and track and report on how we can make an impact on reducing the number of encampments.

Councillor. Thank you, just to follow up, I guess for me, in the short term of this winter, the only way to reduce encampments is to open up more indoor spaces. And I wondered if we have a plan B or are there other options coming to us where we’ll be able to bring people indoors? I know I’d send an email about the Lending Coffee House.

There was the location that we had for Lending Cares last year. Like do we have the possibility of opening up spaces to reduce encampments right away? Mr. Dickens?

Through you, Chair, I would caution on my ability to answer that. Not knowing what degree of funding we may or may not receive. I think this community has done a lot of plan B, plan C, plan D, planning to try and give as many people indoors as they possibly can, and there is no magic location or mysterious organization. Everybody is pulling on the rope to the best of their ability.

Again, not knowing if we’re going to get the funding into what extent, if we get less than a million dollars, I don’t know what spaces I’m opening up for the winter. So I’m not in a position to answer those type of hypothetical questions other than everybody has looked at every possible option. Councilor, anything further? I guess my last comment on that is we’ve linked the funding to a plan that may or may not qualify because if it were me handing out money from the federal or the provincial government, I’d be wanting to know that you were creating indoor spaces, not doing outreach and trying to manage people outdoors over the winter.

So it’s just a thought that we’re linking it, and it might be worth thinking about that if we’re unable to qualify, that might be an issue. Looking for other speakers on this, Councillor Trassau? Just a quick question to the Chair. We’re not yet at the point where we’re talking about the main motion or we are.

We are only on the Mayor’s amendment at this time. Okay, so I’ll just be really quick. I want to support the Mayor on this because I have confidence that he’s going to be successful in his advocacy efforts. At first, I was not thinking I would support this, but I’m hearing some assurances that if the money is not forthcoming, the way we like it, we will have an opportunity before the end of the year to revisit this allocation request or some portion of it if we don’t get everything we want.

Is that correct? Because if you can assure me that’s correct, I can go with this. Mr. Dator-Spier.

Thank you, Mr. Chair. I think it’s consistent with the information that the Mayor shared. There will be opportunities to come back as part of your December 10th SPPPC, too many piece there, SPPC, and then a Council meeting thereafter.

That would be the timelines. Councillor, thank you. That’s very helpful. And with that, I’ll defer the rest of my comments on the merits of the motion to when we get back to the main motion.

Looking for any other speakers, Mayor Morgan, I will come back to you. I’ll just advise you that I’m holding myself to a last on the list. I’ll ask Councillor Ramen to take the chair at that time, but that’s fine, you know. I don’t need to go last.

I just want to add a couple of closing comments just so it’s clear. First, by asking for us to go and advocate for funding for this, does not necessarily mean funding will be provided for this. In engagements with the federal government, they may say, here’s the parameters under which you could. And we may come back and say, we can fund this, this, this, and parts of this plan, but not all of it.

Like, we’re not going to be boxed into a corner when we’re going and asking for millions of dollars. As well, let’s be clear that there’s not going to be enough money to do everything we’d like to do. Like the parliamentary budgetary officer said, for the federal government to meet their own goal of reducing chronic homelessness by 50%, they’d have to add $3.5 billion a year to the budget. So, you know, $250 million is good that they’re getting that out of the door and they want to get out of the door quickly.

There’s a long way to go from other levels of government funding, things adequately to meet their own goals for homelessness across the country. So we will go and we will do our best job on this and many other components. We’re not going to say, you know, we’re not going to leave things off the table and we’re not going to not ask and make clear what our total and more complete needs are, even if we know we’re not going to get them, but we’ll be able to figure out what could be funded. And then, as was said, if you don’t use the operating budget contingency reserve to answer Councillor Trostahl’s question, the operating budget contingency reserve is still there later.

We’re not eating up that piece. So as long as we, you know, we come back at a point where we know what our options are and we know it’s funded, council will have that debate at that time and decide what else they’d like to do for this and other things that they may need to fund. So, you know, the point is with the direction, we’re going to do our best, but it is not just this. It is not this in its entirety or nothing.

It is, we know what our needs are generally. I just don’t think with this motion that the time is for us to put ourselves on the hook when we have another funder, two funders, who are looking to partner with municipalities to try to make gains in this area, whether it be bringing people indoors, whether it be the types of things in the encampment plan here, whether it be the types of things that we know are not funded in the budget that we’re going to have conversations about. All of those things we know we have a need for and all those things are appropriately funded and have been funded at points in the past by provincial and federal governments. So we’ll go do our best, but, you know, we may not get exactly all these pieces here, but we’ll come back with what we can do.

Thank you, Mayor Morgan, looking for any other speakers. Seeing none, I’ll ask Councillor ramen to take the chair so I can make some comments. Thank you. I’ll go to the Deputy Mayor.

Thank you, Madam Presiding Officer. So through you, I’m absolutely going to support the Mayor’s amendment here, and I’m going to be really clear. Without this amendment, I would have been an absolute no on Z because the time has come to draw a line, the buck has to stop somewhere. We cannot continue as Councillor Layman outlined to lay everything on the feet of property taxes.

And I want to say, I really appreciate, I want to be really clear. This is not about our local MP. I think MP, Fredra Skato, has done a really great job of being an advocate for us locally and in Israel as Associate Housing Minister on a number of projects, that a number of funding pots have opened up for us to do water, wastewater to unlock housing lands, to do all kinds of things that unlock housing opportunities. The housing and homelessness crisis we have was not caused by municipalities.

It was caused by bad decisions of former federal and provincial governments over the last couple of decades. And folks can agree or disagree with me as much as they want. But the closure of the psychiatric hospitals, the Safe Supply Program and the problems that have been had there, this was stated to the federal cabinet this summer. The current federal immigration policies are bringing in 100 newcomers an hour and the housing starts in this country in that same hour or 24.

There is no way in the world that that math works. These are the policy failures that have led to tremendous pressure on rental stock, on housing that have forced people who were in housing out into homelessness situations because the market has become so crazy in terms of staying in a rental that they can’t manage it. They get outbid by the pressures of a growing population. These problems have been the direct result of policies of other levels of government and they need to step up and start funding some of these.

If this had been the original Part C, I would have been a no. And if they don’t fund it, when this comes back, I’m still going to be a no. It’s time they deliver. They announced this encampment funding back in June.

It’s the end of October and we haven’t seen a nickel of it and neither has any other city in this country. That is shameful and we need better from our senior levels of government. So I’m absolutely going to support the mayor going and lobbying for this because it’s time that they started carrying their fair share of the load. Thank you.

I’m returning the speakers chair to you but with no one on the speakers list right now. So with no one else on the speakers list, I will ask clerk to open the vote on the amendment to Part C. Joining the vote, motion carries 15 to 0. Thank you colleagues.

Deal with the other clauses here. But before we do that and thank you to Councillor ramen, I have been distracted by a couple of messages from home. So thank you to Councillor ramen as the vice chair for catching. Before we go on to the next clauses, there were questions asked during the delegation and specifically for Mr.

Herb that I want to go to staff to just get a response on first so that everyone is aware and Mr. Dickens or Mr. Cooper perhaps under our current encampment guidelines, can you provide the public the information about the number of tents and the number of those in camp that are allowed in any given encampment site under our current guidelines? Through you chair, I’ll start this answer and pass it off if needed.

I know our practices indicate that we would have per site no more than six tents and that’s roughly four to five people per site where we have large swaths of open space. We try to keep no less than 10 metres per site. So in big open areas, you may have multiple sites of encampments but right now we are our practice is no more than six tents, two to four people and try to keep those sites about 10 metres apart. Thank you for that Mr.

Dickens. So I hope for Mr. Herb and for others in the gallery who were interested at least having that information is helpful. So we’re going to move on so we had some other amendments suggested and so now I’m going to go before we do some of the housekeeping clauses that are D, E, G.

I want to go to part F as I indicated to colleagues I would. This is with civic administration be directed on the council preferred location for additional depot locations and as I indicated earlier, Councillor McAllister, you had circulated a potential amendment for F. So I’m going to go to you first for an opportunity to introduce an amendment if you’d like to do that now. Thank you and through the chair, apologies for the mix up with A.

If colleagues look at what I was sent out, essentially all of the sections would be a part of the referral in terms of direction I’m offering. There would be the special service provision of 100 metres for the depots also just recognizing some housekeeping that building code part wouldn’t need to be in there because that was part of A and that obviously is not the 25 metres that was suggested but I think A was speaking to a special provision in terms of the 100 metres. The other elements that I want to draw attention to as part of this referral is that any future service depot locations would include a community meeting which would have city staff, service support agencies and the impacted Councillors of the area would also be included. There would also be a notice that would be circulated to the impacted residents within 120 metres of the location of a future service depot and future service depot locations be deferred for council’s consideration at the November 19th SPPC meeting and to bring forward a new list of possible locations that are more evenly dispersed across the city as well as alternative locations that do not concentrate service depots in one ward.

I’m happy to speak to the rationale for this but I’m looking for a seconder for that referral. Okay so we will look for a seconder for Councillor McAllister, seconded by Councillor Stevenson. Councillor McAllister I’ll go back to you now for your rationale and I will confess I was conferring with the clerk so I wasn’t counting your time as you were introducing the motion so take it away. Thank you once again and through the chair really this referral comes out of conversation with the community.

I do also want to afford the opportunity for ward 4, ward 13 to speak to this more. I know they experience a lot of the same issues and having had one of the service depots, Councillor Ferrell also had a number of them previously. These are the things that I’ve personally had come up multiple times and I’m hoping my colleagues will speak to it as well in terms of the things they’re seeing. I think it’s incumbent on us to have these conversations with the residents as well.

I don’t think we can make these decisions in a silo. I really do think for future service depots we have to take a lot more input on board in terms of picking these locations. One of the things I’d like to call out specifically with two of the locations as they would be impacting my ward Watson was identified as staying as one. I want to recognize that that community has essentially held the line in terms of being a community impacted for quite a few years now.

I would also like to point to with the Thompson location we did just build the support of housing there and I’m in constant communication with Inwell about the issues that I’m already having with encampments and non-residents entering that building. So just for awareness for colleagues that is an ongoing issue. The other issue I’d like to point out is with the Fairmont school that is also identified in this report. It does specifically say in the report that nothing will be located on Hamilton Road.

I’d like to point out that Fairmont school is on Hamilton Road. It is also a site that we have identified for affordable housing. I’ve had a lot of conversations with residents of that neighbourhood as well and affordable housing has been a topic that they are on board with. They are in favour of a project.

They want more information obviously but affordable housing is something we need in this city. If we do a depot I believe that we will actually lose support within that community. They are looking forward to a project that has already been identified by us at that site. I think we need to be building bridges not burning them with a lot of our communities.

I think it’s also unfair as Councillor Stevenson often points out the concentration. We’re doing it again. We need to learn from these lessons and not repeat them. We know the consequences.

I worry that concentrating these depots will have an adverse effect and I think we will lose more support from the public. Londoners want to be involved. I think we have to afford them the opportunity and that’s why I want this to come back with other suggestions because I would imagine staff have looked at other places. I do not think it’s fair to put this on the shoulders of a few wards.

Councillor Farron and I, we’ve talked about this. We’ve had the depots for a number of years but it’s siloed. It’s me and him having these conversations and that’s not fair. This needs to be something that’s on council’s radar for the whole city.

So I would ask for support for this because we definitely need to have more conversations and we need to have more options put on the table. Thank you. Thank you Councillor McAllister. I’m just going to let colleagues know that the Councillor’s amendment is vote six in eScribe and I’m just going to read it out because I know folks in the gallery may be interested as well.

The part FB amended to read as follows the following actions be taken with respect to additional service depot locations. One amendment to the setback requirements in the community engagement community encampment response plan to provide a buffer for a service depot to be 100 metres from any private residential property line with a habitable dwelling. Two, the establishment of future service depot locations including a community meeting, sorry, include a community meeting which will include city staff, service support agencies and the Councillor Councillors for the impacted area. It being noted that the presentation describing the depots and the rules in place would be included.

Three, a notice would be circulated to impacted residents within 120 metre radius from a location of a future service depot and for future service depot locations be deferred for council’s consideration at the November 19th meeting of the Strategic Priorities and Policy Committee and that civic administration bring forward a new list of possible locations more evenly dispersed across the city as well as alternative locations that do not concentrate service depots in one ward. So that’s what’s on the floor that’s been moved and seconded. Councillor McAllister has spoken to it. I will go to Councillor Stevenson next.

Thank you. I just wanted to thank my colleague for this amendment. I do support it. This whole of community talked about hub spread throughout the city.

This is temporary. It’s, you know, we keep being told and it’s true. There are people who are unhoused who are not addicted. They’re not on drugs.

The services that they need are food and this encampment plan is bringing this transactional and transformational outreach to people with a service depot. So there is no need, no need for these depots to be near the downtown core area because they’re being brought food. They’re going to have washrooms. They’ve got outreach workers in a one to 12 ratio that are going to be there.

Even if people are addicted to drugs, my understanding is safer supply delivers to encampments and we’ve got harm reduction being delivered to with the outreach workers. So there is again no reason why it needs to be near the downtown core. We know we have an oversaturation. We know we have issues.

So this is an opportunity where if we’re not willing to do this for service depots, then we need to stop talking about like we’re going to do it for hubs. This is an opportunity to at least explore and maybe staff comes back and tells us why it’s not possible. But I just can’t understand why we wouldn’t have support for this, for have the, to explore these options and look to see how we could provide services that are needed in other areas of the city because there’s that too, right? We don’t put all the pools in one end of the city.

We have homeless. We have people who need these services throughout the city and to provide these depots I think is only kind and fair to do that throughout the city as well. And the other thing is we just had a speaker come and say how important communication is. And it really is important to have this piece in here as well to give residents the opportunity to have their questions answered to understand, to understand how they can be part of the solution.

Many people want to help. And so I’m fully in support of this. Thank you, Councillor Stevenson looking for other speakers. Councillor Palosa.

Thank you, Mr. Chair. A question, I guess, through you to staff or the mover in regards to part four of F that the future service to people’s locations be referred and staff bring in for a new list of possible locations looking to see if the new list of locations could include the current list that’s before us and then you’re looking to expand and brainstorm for locations across the city and come back. Or if the indication would be that if we said bring back a new list that we’re inherently excluding the recommendations already brought forward that we haven’t actually discussed.

Well, I’m going to go to the mover because so that we can get his intent as to whether this would be these come off and it’s a different list or whether some or all of these might remain on a new list. Councillor McAllister. So my intention essentially to look at as many options as we possibly can. Again, I’m leaving it up to Councillor’s direction in terms of locations they think are appropriate.

But keeping in mind that what I have said here is that I think it’s fair to disperse them. I don’t think and this is speaking from experience and again, I offer the opportunity Councillor for error, but it’s very difficult to manage multiple ones. And I think it’s again fair to spread this out. I do think we need as many options on the table recognizing obviously there are restrictions and obviously in terms of some of the distances, but I do think there are other places in the city.

And I think it’s unfair right now that again, I know Councillor Stevenson said the core, but a lot of these are in the east. And that’s not geographically fair either. I think we have to recognize that there are other locations that were never even contemplated that should be put on this list. Councillor Palosa.

That’s fine. I just didn’t want to accidentally exclude things without discussing them. That the list could be all encapsulating of what’s currently there and new ideas for across the city. So thank you.

And I understand where the Councillor’s coming from. Thank you, Councillor Palosa. Mr. Dickens.

Thank you, Chair. And through you, just from a procedural standpoint, just for some clarification purposes, as we sit here as staff want to make sure we fully understand what the motion is saying. So I almost want to make sure I understand we’re working in a little bit in reverse order of the numbering that staff would be directed to come back with a list of potential spaces for Council SPPC to consider and debate. Once those locations are then decided, notice would be provided in three to those within 120-meter radius.

Then we would establish community meetings in those decided locations. But for four to happen, we would need to incorporate the setback requirement. So to answer Councillor Palosa’s question, I’m not sure there’s any current locations on the list that would satisfy the 100-meter setback from private residential property lines. We would have to take that away and do some mapping to make sure.

So some might automatically be taken off the list because they won’t satisfy Fi. But just for clarification standpoint, are we coming back with a list for Council to debate and decide? And then that triggers us to post notice and have community meetings? Or are we going to have community meetings?

We can’t post notice because we don’t know where they’re going to be. But we’re going to have community meetings in general. And use that as consultation to come back by November 19th, just looking for clarity. Councillor McAllister.

Okay. So to answer the question through the chair, my intention is to have some locations brought to the November 19th meeting. Recognizing the 100-meter might be an impediment. I don’t mind if alternative locations are put on there.

And so if that’s a problem, but I would like the distance noted as the option to say it’s 80 meters to residential, just so we can put some options on the table. Because I think we’ve written some things off. I think the 100 meters is still important. But that, to me, can be part of the conversation after we’ve identified some locations.

This is coming to SPPC on the 19th. My intention would be once we’ve identified the options a Council might have a preference for, we would still have a buffer between Committee and Council. And my intention would be to push it for one cycle, to allow for the impacted Councillors to have those discussions and for notice to be sent out. So I’m going to go back to Mr.

Dickens because it’s important our staff know that the order of operations that they’re being asked to undertake here. So, and I’m just going to repeat what I just heard from you, Councillor McAllister, that staff bring forward a new list, which may include some that are notwithstanding the 100 meters. Once that list has some direction from Council, then a community engagement piece would begin. The staff can then do the notice of circulation, the community meetings, once that list is brought back and Council has provided some direction.

If it’s helpful, it’ll be clear. Yeah, and to be helpful, maybe to provide more options. I think what I’ve heard in terms of minimum distances, I know some 25 is too short, but 50 to 100 to see what options could be put on the table for that. Okay, so you, just to be clear, are you suggesting that you want to amend the language in your amendment to read 50 to 100 meters?

Or is that a, well, we’re changing numbers on the fly here. So we, you know, I know we’re changing numbers on the fly. And through the chair, the problem I have with this is that I would have liked the options first. And this is the problem I’m encountering is that based on what I’ve got before me, it doesn’t even meet the criteria we’ve got in terms of the options presented.

100 meters is the number that we’ve been operating with. And what I’ve heard is it has limited options. So for considering options, which is IV, I would like maybe to add in a language that 50 to 100 be considered. And then with respect to the 100 meter buffer, if we come back and we have no options, then we will have that I think there needs to be discussion in terms of the 100 meters.

But right now I just don’t have any options in front of me that I can consider is what I’m saying. I think my colleagues might want to consider them. But for me personally, that’s why I think I want some flexibility in terms of looking at more options. And if that’s an impediment, then I’m happy to have that discussion and we can debate that as to the merits of the amendment.

But I do not think there are sufficient options on the table. And yeah, I personally think the 100 meters is fair. And if we have to stay with that in the limits, the options, then I’ll stay with those options. But I think that there are options out there that still meet that criteria.

But in terms of IV, if it’s helpful for staff to look at 50 to 100, then that’s fine. Okay. So you want to leave part one, but in part four, the new list of possible locations, you want to add in with a 50 to 100 meter buffer? Yeah, if that leads to more equitable distribution, then yes, I think that’s fair.

Okay. So you got to give me a minute to talk to the clerk here. Does anyone object as I’m seeking consensus? If there’s an objection, then we’ll have to amend the amendment.

If there’s consensus, we’re going to allow the counselor and the seconder to change the language in part four. And can I just ask the clerk to read that language out as captured by what was just said? Future service depot locations be deferred for council’s consideration at the November 19th meeting of strategic priorities and policy committee, and that civic administration bring forward a list of new possible locations bracket with a buffer of 50 to 100 meters as indicated above closed bracket, more evenly dispersed across the city, as well as alternative locations that do not concentrate service depots in one ward. Councillor McAllister, I’m seeing you’re nodding.

That’s capturing your intent. Councillor Stevenson, are you still willing to be the seconder to that? Ms. Dater’s beer.

And thank you, Chair, for clarity. I suggest that the buffer will be 100 meters. IV suggests that the buffer would be 50 to 100. If you agree to I, can you actually do IV?

That’s my question. And then I also have a question about what does council consideration mean? Does it mean approval at SPPC for approval at the 26th of November council meeting, for the purpose then of advising the community about the locations that council has approved? Bear with me for one moment.

Thank you. So to the Chair, to make life easier, just put between 50 to 100 meters at the top, and then the two align. Councillor, the clerk’s interpretation might be slightly different. I need to understand and I’ve got to go back to the original conversation we had right at the start of this item that rather than introduce a amendment to keep the part A at 100 meters instead of the 25 that we just needed to defeat part A.

The clerk’s interpretation of this, as you proposed it, was that F part one is trying to amend the setback for the entire plan back to the 100 meters from residential properties for the encampment response plan. But what I’m hearing from you is this is about the depose. So with respect, Councillor, I think that part I becomes redundant in less, well, we could put the 50 to 100 in there, but it is still then I and IV are essentially saying the same thing. So is part one of your amendment about the entire plan or specific to the service depose?

Yes, so I see your point. So I would imagine I does become redundant if we’re just putting the 50 to 100 in our options. So if you want to take eye out, that’s fine, because really we can’t establish any sort of a buffer until we’ve established what our options are. So fair enough.

Okay, and I saw Councillor Stevenson nodding in agreement. So again, consensus, does anyone object to the Councillors withdrawing? I, and so we will just renumber. So it’ll be three parts now instead of four.

Final part will be the 50 to 100 meter buffer for the service depose. Any objection to allowing the Councillors to change their motion? Seeing none. So we will move forward.

We’ll just give the clerks a moment to correct that. Ms. Dator spirit, does that satisfy your concern? That part one is removed.

Everything else is renumbered and part four refers to a 50 to 100 meter buffer. If I could, Mr. Chair, through you, just so we’re clear on process. When we bring back future service depo locations for councils, sorry, for SPPC consideration on November 19th, it is for SPPC review and approval that would then transition to council approval, potentially, on the 26th, so that when we go back to the community through, I, sorry, through two, that we will be telling the community that these are the locations approved by council.

That’s the question I think that staff are asking about, so that we understand process and that we are sure for you and for the community about the process that will be implemented. So I’m going to give you my interpretation of how I’m reading this. I will let Councillor McAllister and Councillor Stevenson confirm if this is in fact the intent, which is similar to today, part F started out with seeking council direction on six locations that were listed in the report. We are saying go back, bring us a new list.

We will provide that direction at the November 19th meeting that will go to council. Once council has approved the direction on whichever of the locations are chosen, you would then proceed with the community engagement and the mailing notice to those impacted residents. Councillor McAllister, I’m seeing you’re nodding, that’s captured and I’m seeing Councillor Stevenson nodding. So if that clarification assists, that is the intent of the motion and I’m seeing civic administration nodding.

So Councillor McAllister. Yes, because I think the larger conversation is once council has made their decision based on options presented to them, I think individually is the Councillors that in between period between SPPC and council is our opportunity as Councillors to go out and do the engagement component, but to create a better environment in terms of communication and interaction, I think with what I have intended here is to allow staff and the service providers to have the opportunity to talk about what’s happening in the depot, what are the rules, get some contact information, because really I hear that as a missing element is we have to have that engagement component. So I think that’s vitally important. So Councillor, I hear what you’re saying, and again, I’m trying to read the interpretation so the staff have the clear direction.

It would not be possible for staff to meet the notification piece of this motion between SPPC and council so that it would arrive in property owners mailboxes between those two meetings. There would be nothing, however, that prevents Councillors from going into community engagement on their own, from inviting staff to do that piece, but this motion would require staff action after council’s approval in terms of the community engagement. So I’m trying to be really lenient in terms of making sure that we’re capturing your intent here, but we really need to get to a point where we’re ready to have some debate and vote on what’s here instead of on changing the motion. So checking with you to see if what I’ve just explained is still okay with you in terms of the motion that’s on the floor.

Yeah, and I understand the time restrictions. I’m trying to express the frustration that comes from this and that we have these tight timelines, but I still think it’s important even if we’ve made a decision, which I don’t love the tight timelines, but I think the neighbourhoods need to be informed because I still have conversations where people don’t know what’s happening, and so we have to still, I think, send notice out. I mean, the example I used was essentially when we have a planning application, like we have the ability to send notification out with information to residents, and I think that that’s fair that that gets sent out because not everyone receives their information through social media, like a lot of people still get their information through these flyer drops. So I think the notification still should be in there.

I don’t love the timing. I recognize the obstacles there, and if a decision has been made, but I still think it’s important to send out notice with contact information so that people are aware. I’m going to take that as commentary to staff sending out a notice, but it would not be a notice about the council meeting. It would be a notice about contact information, that sort of thing, after council’s direction has been approved because there’s not a timeline for notification to go between an SPPC and a council, and there’s no PPM at council.

So those restrictions are there, whether you love it or not, that is the procedure. So I’m going to move on because we have other speakers to speak to this. We also have a break scheduled. Some folks do need a bio break soon, so we are going to go to Councilor Palosa.

I have your point of order, but we are in the midst of a debate on an amendment. I want to finish this debate before we take our break. I know that there are a couple of people who have phone calls. I hope you can message your phone calls and tell them that you’re going to be late because we’re going to finish part F before we take our break.

Councilor Ferreira, I had you next on the speakers list. Thank you, Chair. Thanks for recognizing me. I’m one of those councils.

You need that bio break. So hopefully we can get a little bit moving here, but I have to comment just because I am the counselor in the downtown and surrounding area, and I do know what Councillor McAllister is talking about. I can feel what he is going through because I’ve been through that before, but I will also say that I have also been in the situation where we have messed with some numbers in the past, and things have went in a direction that we didn’t necessarily intend to go. Like we did change our boundaries with what is allowed in proximity to residential, I believe it was first submitted at 10 meters originally, I think it was, and then we changed it to 100.

And I did notice that things got worse just in my general day today going around where I live, going into work, and then just hearing feedback from the community. So I’m hesitant to change numbers on the fly, because I know that there’s unintended consequences that could arise if we were to do that. Now, I’m not saying that 25 meters is something that I’m not speaking to the service depot part, but just speaking to, and I see them as connected, because if what I, my conversations with staff at the 100 meters radius for the for the residential for any type of encampments, it would be the same with service depot because we would get into the same situation. And from what I understand that 100 meter radius took out, I think some something like 80% of the city, like 80% of the space that we have in the city was completely off limits.

And that led to things being unenforceable from what I understand, and that also led to issues that we could run into with legal and other issues. And we get brought back here, and I’m just worried on making changes on the fly with that. When it comes to community engagement and the meetings, like I did that too, at the first service depot, and I’m going to tell you, it was tough. And a lot of the feedback, I wouldn’t even necessarily call of some of the feedback, but I wouldn’t say it was that as, I wouldn’t say it was as a productive meeting as I would have hoped it would have been at the time.

So I’m just worried that, you know, we are talking about these measures that again, from what I guess my comments earlier, you know, these are very temporary Band-Aid solutions. And this is what we’re limited to as a municipality. We have to be really careful on how we do things. In the end, we do need that comprehensive change.

We do need that capacity. You know, homelessness and housing in our city has pretty much three main kind of components. There’s the mental health aspect, there’s the addictions aspect, and then there are those who just simply, it’s unaffordable. The cost of living is extremely high.

When everything comes to intersect, we find ourselves in the situation that we’re in, and we’re in a crisis situation. That is the truth. I do feel as myself as Councillor McAllister and as some other Councillors that we have a little more weight on our shoulders to carry this. So I totally get what the Councillor is saying and where he’s coming from, but I would be very hesitant to make those changes.

I’m like going to the 25 meter for the in proximity to residents. There could be some possibility to move from that, but I would really look to staff first to see, is that enforceable? Is it not enforceable? How much of the?

So Councillor, we’re not talking about the 25 meters from residents for the whole plan right now. So I just want to keep you on part F so we can get to a vote on this, please. I understand that chair. But let me just clarify.

I do see that radius from a service depot itself to a residential area. It would have the same outcomes as we do with just an encampment in general from a residential area. But that’s really what I’m trying to say. I’m hesitant to make certain moves on the fly and I would really like it to be vetted.

So because of that and because of just my experience and knowing that if we get into these weeds and we really start mucking things up and what we saw in the past hell, things departed from the direction we wanted to go and gotten, in my opinion, a little bit worse, I really hesitate to support this motion. And that’s just because of my experience so far. So those are my comments that I would have to say. Like I totally get where you’re coming from and we’ve kind of been in this situation before and I’m just worried of what the outcome will be and I’m worried it will be worse.

So for someone eager for a break, Councillor, you were five seconds away from getting the warning that your time was running out. I will look to see if there are other speakers to this. Councillor Trussau? Yes.

Thank you very much through the chair. I’ll keep this very short. I fully agree with what the last speaker just said. I mean, we’re just getting things thrown at us on the fly and it’s changing.

I don’t think this was well thought out. And I don’t think that the history of what’s happened up to now is necessarily arbitrary. Did this list, these numbers, came from someplace. And I don’t want to unnecessarily repeat what’s going to happen later when we talk about the main motion, I guess this evening.

But I guess I need to ask staff or the consultants who wrote the report. I mean, have these issues been looked at? Has the question of alternative depots been considered? Have these numbers been given any reasonable consideration?

Or is everything before us arbitrary? I just need to have a better understanding of what it is we’re trying to fix other than the fact that the result is not what people want. But I just think that we are under obligations to do certain things that might not be the most pleasant thing we do. So I want to turn this back, if I may, for a moment to maybe Greg and Chantel or staff, to talk about what the background is on this.

Because I don’t think the selection of these sites or these numbers was at all arbitrary. So, Council, we’re not going back to Greg and Chantel. We’ve had their presentation. This is not the first time they’ve been before us.

These are coming from the whole of community encampment response table. And I think that that’s clear in the report. We are now, however, making political decisions based on feedback Councils have had. And that’s why they’re suggesting changing numbers.

So, I will see if Ms. Dater’s beer wants to comment from a staff perspective. But we’re not going to go back through the presentation. Through you, Chair, thank you.

I think well said, this is a representation of work that has happened in the community. Staff bring this report forward and bring forward a recommendation. And that recommendation has been informed by the folks that have been doing the work that have been looking at spaces, which parks front on to certain streets in certain areas and what have steep inclines and which ones might be more suitable. So, there’s been a lot of thought put into this absolutely, but that is captured in the report.

And we’ve brought forward the recommendations as such. If I could follow the chair, then that’s very helpful and it reinforces that I’m not going to be supporting this motion. From the beginning, there has been a hesitancy for individual Councillors to second guess what’s come up through the tables. And I think that that’s what’s happening here.

I guess the only other question I have to ask, maybe this is for the clerks. Maybe it’s for civic administration. If we defer this as requested, what is the downside of doing that in terms of it’s not being able to meet service commitments and in terms of the delays that it’s going to cause? And I think that’s a reasonable question.

Mr. Dickens. Thank you, Chair. So, we would look to maintain services throughout this process.

A depot is not to oversimplify it, but it’s a port-a-body on a folding table, garbage collection, garbage bag distribution, checking on individuals, providing a meal kit, which provides the daily caloric intake for individuals. So, we would need to maintain that services throughout this period. And I would look to my team to nod that we can still do that. If there’s a delay, which is good, that’s a good nod.

And so, we would maintain the existing depot services and then go and do this work and report back. So, I would not look to have a break in supporting individuals at this time. Councillor. That’s it for now.

Councillor Robin. Thank you, and through you. So, a couple things on this amendment that’s in front of us. At this time, I can’t support it, mainly because I don’t think we’re talking about the crux of the issue.

What we have in front of us in the entirety of the report is whether or not we support the base funding request that is in front of us. So, if we’re going to be deciding on service depots in this case, we have not even come to terms with how many service depots we are actually looking at. So, to say to staff and those involved to say, bring us back some other locations, doesn’t help if we don’t define what numbers we’re looking at. And when we have 18% of potential lands available and left, to make those decisions, can we actually recommend service depots at the number of four, for instance, right now, if that 100-meter distance is there.

So, that’s one of my concerns. The other is, I don’t believe we’re actually allowing for additional consultation at the time that we have this discussion at the November 19th SPPC between then and the 26th for a decision point at Council seven days. I can’t get out to my neighborhoods if this wasn’t one of mine to have those discussions in seven days in a constructive way that takes their feedback into this process. So, I understand the intent, but I don’t think that it actually meets the need.

And it also, I think, doesn’t address the concern around depots being really about putting the services where they’re needed, not just a recommendation for anywhere and everywhere. If people aren’t there, then why would we stand up a depot? So, again, we’re going back to this conversation of what’s the support. The other piece is, again, on the funding component of all of this, if our intention is to go to where the funding is and what the funding support services is actually the last thing that they mentioned.

They talk explicitly about indoor spaces. They talk secondary about other kinds of housing supports in terms of shelter spaces. They’re not talking about services as definitively in the funding. So, I need that clarification.

If that’s what the government’s actually looking for us to come back with, is it really this plan? Is it at this level? And what are we being asked to support? Because, again, at this time, we’re talking about the plan that we want to bring to other levels of government.

And I don’t think that that’s actually fully defined yet, but yet we’re making decisions based on what’s in front of us. And I think we’re complicating matters more than we need to at this point. I’d support a deferral if we went in that direction, because I don’t think we have enough information to make the decision today. Thank you, Councillor Robin.

Councillor Hopkins, you are next. Yes, I’ll be very quick. I won’t be supporting the amendment, even though I do agree on the concerns the Councillor has and the challenges that he has in his community as well. The chair reminded me of what we’re doing here.

This is a whole of community system response. This information has come to me to us from the work that the community has been doing. I do think we’re complicating things. If we start changing things, I don’t think there’s enough time.

I am not able to have an informed decision or make an informed decision based on this amendment. There is one part that I completely agree when it comes to the amendment, and that is the notices. That should be sent to the community wherever these depots go. I do think as a city, we should be doing a better job communicating that information.

The question is not where should the depots go. It really should be about the decision of where the best place the depot should go, and then informing the community that that is where we’ll be putting them. So I won’t be supporting the amendment. Thank you.

Thank you, Chair. I’d like to make a friendly amendment, if I could, on three, and change it back to 100 meters, and I have a seconder for that. That is not a friendly amendment, Councillor. That would be contrary to the motion.

And there is procedurally no such thing as a friendly amendment. I was trying to be friendly, so thank you, Chair. So can I move? Councillor, you procedurally, you can move an amendment to change part three back to delete 50 meters and have it just read 100, if that’s what you wish to do.

I think you will only be prolonging the debate, but it is within your prerogative to do so. Just, is we’re going to remove the 50 to go back to 100? And is there a seconder for that? Councillor Layman seconds.

Okay, so we are on an amendment to the amendment now, and I will look to speakers to that. Councillor Palosa. Thank you. As I think we’re going to be in this in a while, my question but a break still stands, but for question three, that 100 versus 50, it was still deferred to the consideration for the November 19th meeting.

My question is still relevant, which is great. Through you to the clerks, I don’t know what else is on the agenda for the 19th, but I know we have a budget PPM at four o’clock that night, so are we going to deal with this and whatever else is there in time? Because I know we can’t push a PPM if everyone’s here for it. So in very quick consultation with the clerks, we don’t even have the title deadline for the next SPPC yet.

However, we can take into consideration that if this is landing there, if there are other items that are less time sensitive, that perhaps they might be deferred a cycle so that we can manage the agenda weight appropriately. Any other speakers on the amendment to the amendment? Councillor McAllister. Because I’ve heard this a few times, could we not just push it to the December 10th cycle?

Hold on. Okay, Councillor, you cannot amend an amendment to an amendment, so you are too far down the chain to make any further amendments at this point. We have an amendment to the amendment on the floor that has to be dealt with before anything else. We will have to ask members of the gallery, please.

It is not a commentary gallery. It’s to sit and observe. I really don’t want to have to ask anybody to leave, so please just keep your comments to yourself. On the amendment to the amendment, Councillor Frank, we are allowed to do an amendment to an amendment.

We’re not allowed to do an amendment to an amendment to an amendment. The amendment is to delete the 50 meters and only have the 100 meters. Anyone else on that? Seeing none, I’m going to ask the clerk to open the vote.

Bozing the vote. Motion fails six to nine. Okay, now we are back on Councillor McAllister and Councillor Stevenson’s amendment and Councillor Frank, it’s your turn on the speaker’s list. Thank you.

I was just asking if we can split these because I heard from some Councillors that they’re supportive of some parts and I, for example, I’m supportive of part I and II. I do think it would be great to provide communication to residents in areas with service depots. I would love to also, I’m not going to do it because I don’t want to waste more, I don’t want to add more time, but it would be great if we could invite MPs and MPPs to these meetings given that we’re trying to get funding from the province and the feds and I think it would be nice if they were also well informed as the local issues are occurring. But I would like to have the clerks if possible split up the three amendments we can vote separately on this.

May for just one moment. So, Councillor, do you want parts one and two of F together and then part three separate would that satisfy your, so that’s the notices and the community meetings voted on together and then the deferral to the November 19th voted on separately. Okay, the clerks can arrange that. Anything further, Councillor Frank, any other speakers?

Councillor Stevenson. Thank you. I just wanted clarity because it was mentioned that we didn’t have enough information and yet if I understand if this amendment doesn’t pass, we are choosing the preferred locations tonight, is that correct? If this amendment does not pass, then we would have to do something with the original clause F, yes.

Right, so I would think that would be a reason to support the amendment is the fact that we don’t have enough information right now and I think, you know, when you look at the service depots, again, it’s central and east. There’s nothing in the north, nothing in the west, nothing in the south and, you know, it’s difficult to explain to people in the east, London, why their area is the only area for these things. It really is difficult to defend that. And so I think giving it the opportunity to have more options or be able to have the reasons why there aren’t any more options.

And the other thing is I heard a colleague say, you know, we need to put the depots where the people are. Well, we have all the services in one spot. So this is, this is an argument that just isn’t working anymore. We said we were going to be dispersing things.

We said we had needs throughout the community. And I think this is an opportunity to show that that’s possible or have the reasons why it isn’t. Thank you, Councillor Stevenson. Any other speakers?

Councillor ramen, can you take the chair again, please? Thank you. Go ahead. Thank you, Madam Presiding Officer.

So through you, I will support this amendment. I will say that I share the Presiding Officer’s concerns about we actually don’t even know how much funding we might get for how many depots. So we may be identifying in on November the 19th for locations. And then we might get funding for two.

And I think we’ll need to be able to adjust that plan with civic administration, depending on the level of funding that comes from the senior levels of government. However, I agree with what Councillor Stevenson has just said, when you put all of the services in one area, you create a self-fulfilling prophecy of what the services where the people are, because they’re all there accessing the services already. And I do think that having a little more time to look at some things, notwithstanding what was in the previous encampment buffers, a little bit broader list of locations. I’m willing to take a look at that new list.

I wouldn’t want to be kicking this too far down the road, because I think at some point we are going to hear from our federal partners as to how much money they will give us. Hopefully it is sufficient, but it may not be. We may still have to scale back even on what we have in this plan today. So I’m willing to support this.

We’ll see where the vote goes. If it is not successful, then we will have to do something else tonight. And I’m not sure what that something else would be. So that’s why I’m going to support this amendment.

Thank you. I’ll return the chair to you. So I have no one else on the speaker’s list. I don’t have anyone else online, Councillor ramen.

Thank you and through you. So I hear my colleagues saying that we don’t have a lot of options in front of us as to what to do tonight. But I do think that we’re almost in a way, in a way, putting the cart before the horse on some of these decisions. And so for that reason, I’m prepared if this doesn’t pass to move a separate motion to refer the matter until such time as we receive funding in order to decide how to align our funding or actually funding criteria to align our funding criteria with our next steps in our plan.

So that’s why I won’t be supporting this. Thank you, Councillor McAllister. I’m going to come back to you. I’m going to let you know you’ve spoken quite a bit on this.

Some of that was rationale for your motion. So I didn’t count that against your time, but you’ve got 16 seconds left. Okay. Thank you.

And I’m going to be really quick. If we have that discussion in terms of not having the money for locations, I think it’s fair to the residents who live along Watson to not have that as a fixture because they’ve already had it for a number of years. If we only have funding for one, it shouldn’t be static and stay in the same place forever. Thank you, Councillor.

I have no one else on the speakers list. So before any of you can put up your hand again, I’m going to ask the clerk to open the vote. So we’ll be voting on part I one and two first and then three. Housing the vote motion carries 15 to zero.

And now we will put part F three on the floor. Housing the vote motion carries eight to seven. Thank you, colleagues. So that concludes part F.

I’m going to look now for a motion to take our 15-minute recess. Councillor Palosa and Councillor Hopkins. Colleagues, we are part way through item 4.1. Please, while we are on our break, do not discuss the remaining clauses of 4.1 or other items on our agenda tonight.

And I will ask the clerk by hand to record the vote all in favor of a 15-minute break. Motion carries. Thank you, colleagues. It is 4.35 here for 450.

Okay, colleagues. I’m calling the meeting back to order. Our Councillors who are remote are with us and everyone else is back in chambers. So we’re going to resume our deliberations on the remaining clauses of 4.1.

I’m going to next go to the coffee house. That is the clause H, which is a separate funding matter. We should, in my estimation, deal with the funding allotments before we deal with the housekeeping matters that direct civic administration to go in and execute whatever acts they need to execute for what we’ve approved. So clause H is on the floor now for any discussion, amendments, debates.

And Councillor ramen, I’ll go to you first. Thank you and through you. So this is one that I have personally struggled with as we’re looking at this from the perspective of cold weather response reallocation. And at the time that we had agreed to this initial funding with the coffee house location, it was part and parcel to do with some overnight spaces, as well as some other beds that were also allocated.

So right now, again, where I’m struggling is we are going to be looking for funding for how we move forward with the winter. This is one of a few drop-in spaces that we have remaining yet. We have not clearly identified any additional indoor spaces that are overnight. And so at this time, I need to personally, I’m trying to figure out how to prioritize and really signal that we need those overnight spaces to materialize.

We need places that people can be out of the cold at night. And so any surplus, any additional funding we have, I personally believe that we should be looking to find opportunities to use that for that purpose. And so I won’t be supporting this at this time. As I mentioned, we’ve received a request for funding through the multi-year budget for arcade.

My plan is to look at ways to utilize surplus, to be able to fund those spaces to continue to be open. And so any additional surplus I’m looking to use for that purpose, and that’s why I won’t be supporting this. Thank you, Councillor Ramen, looking for other speakers. Councillor Palosa.

Thank you at this point. Can someone just remind me what the remaining operational surplus is for the numerical value that we’re talking about? Mr. Dickens or Ms.

Barwon? Through you, Chair, the anticipated surplus at CMHA’s experience is roughly $96,000. They’ve been able to leverage other in-kind contributions and other funding sources, and anticipate they’ll be able to do a little bit of that. Going forward and stretch, the funding they’d already been allocated to keep services open longer.

Councillor Palosa. Thank you. Knowing that it’s $96,000, they’ve done their work to try and make things go as long as possible and leverage everything they could. I don’t want to ever make it seem like we’re penalizing an organization for not spending what we did up front and that they can find opportunities and savings and come back, and that for me it would be important to support them continuing to do the work.

Though I completely respect Councillor Ramen’s comments of we really need federal and provincial help. Being for other speakers, Councillor Stevenson. I agree with both of what my colleagues just said. Last year we did use it for day and overnight, and I did ask about whether, because my understanding was that arcade had not been able to assess that location for overnight spaces, but I wondered if maybe a question to whoever might be able to answer it.

Is it an option to have overnight spaces there? Is the agency willing to do that? I heard something about it might be five beds that could be done with that money. Just a second.

Councillor Stevenson, and we’ll go to staff for that. Mr. Dickens. Through you chair, neither organization has brought that forward as a potential use of that space or the continued use of that space.

So I wouldn’t go to speak for CMHA on that. Councillor Stevenson, nothing further. Okay. Any other speakers?

I’m seeing none. So I will Councillor Sine. I’m a bit confused because we’re just doing amendments, right? And there doesn’t seem to be an amendment on this one.

Sorry, there’s no amendment on this one. I was treating it as the clause as put forward, but you’re right. That’s actually contrary to what I laid out at the start. So thank you for catching that.

Break is clearly out of my brain. I thought there might be an amendment on each, but that’s not coming forward. So that means we can move back to the main motion. Oh, Councillor Stevenson, you wanted to bring forward another amendment?

I do. I have an amendment for B, which is just to change the amount from 141,400 to 99,700. Okay. So this is the B that we dealt with earlier, which changed the source of funding and you would like to change the amount now.

Is there a seconder for that? Councillor Cuddy. Okay. So that’s been moved and seconded.

Can we just get the amount again for the clerk? Yep. 99,700. Thank you for that.

I can give my reading. Do you want to do your rationale now? Yeah, I just quickly wanted to say we’ve been paying $12,000 a month for transactional outreach for July, August, September, October. That amount is tripling for each of the months of November and December.

I believe for transformational outreach, but we don’t have any new housing in November and December. So my understanding is we do have increased and maybe cost that have exceeded what we planned in terms of clean cleanups in our core. CIR type things like we are having an overwhelming issue in terms of encampments in the core. My understanding is we’re running out of money there.

So I would prefer to keep it at the same amount as it’s been and let the higher amounts come later in 2025. Thank you, Councillor Stevenson. Before I look for any other speakers, I just want to go back to the motion, the amended motion that was passed earlier, which read that civic administration be directed to reallocate up to 141,400 from the surplus for 2024 housing stability services to fund the basic needs provisions for a period of November 1 through December 31st. So I hear what you’re saying, Councillor, but I want to go to staff in terms of because it’s been raised that transactional and transformational have two different price points and that what we have approved earlier is basic needs.

So does staff interpret that as both transactional and transformational or would basic needs only be transactional? I’m going to defer this to Mr. Cooper or to Ms. Debbie Kramer, who’s also here to answer that.

Well, we’ll go to both Mr. Cooper and Ms. Kramer’s and you’re certainly welcome to both weigh in on this if you wish or if one wants to lead and the other’s just going to be a consultant, that’s okay too. Thank you and through you, Mr.

Chair, the cost would be all for transactional services. Thank you for that response. Councillor Stevenson. Mr.

Cooper, can we get you a mic, please? Thank you. Then maybe just an explanation why it’s going from $12,000 a month to $32,850 a month for the same basic needs services. Mr.

Cooper. Thank you and through you, Mr. Chair, I’ll start this response and then turn it over to Ms. Kramer if I missed anything.

The $12,000 right now is what we’re paying to an organization to support the transactional piece. A number of the existing funded contracted agencies are providing deeper operations as part of services like that they’re basically not doing transformational outreach and doing transactional outreach in these deeper locations. There’s a number also a number of agencies that are providing the service in kind that will end. So that’s why the cost for the outreach piece went up because we were looking to have another organization come in to basically feel that outreach need at depose and then have those organizations that we contract go back to during their contracted items.

Councillor. Thank you. I’m, you know, if my second earlier, I’m still going to leave it on here. I feel like it’s a lot of money, $32,000 a month to hand out $33,000 worth of food.

And I understand there might be more to it. But we have people in desperate need in housing, in shelters, in all kinds of places. And I’m really uncomfortable with spending all kinds of money in this area. So I’m going to leave my motion the way it is.

I think if we’ve been doing it for $12,000 a month, we should be able to find a way to continue to do that for two more months. Thank you, Councillor Stevenson, looking for any further speakers, seeing none, then I will ask the clerk to open the vote on the amendment to the amended part B. Be votes, yes, closing the vote. Motion carries nine to six.

Okay, colleagues, that completes the list of amendments and requests for amendments that you all had notified me about. So that brings us back now to the main motion as amended. I know that there was discussion right at the start about Part A. If you want to keep the 100 meters, then you need to defeat Part A.

If you are okay with the 25 meters, then you support Part A. We will call these votes separately, but we are on the main motion. So there is still an opportunity to debate the main motion for those who wish. Councillor Truss out.

I feel we’re making progress tonight because this is sort of like the main thing I can’t be prepared to talk about and ask questions about. So I read these reports very carefully. I’ve read all of the reports that have come before very carefully, and I need to understand, and I know I can’t ask the consultants, so this will be filtered through staff. And as I understand the hierarchy of the reporting, it goes from the tables to our staff to us.

What is the reason? And it was referred to in the report, but there was so much controversy over this that I get the sense that it could have been communicated a little more clear. So I would just like to better understand for myself, for my colleagues, and for the public. What are the operational reasons why we’re seeking to go to 25?

Mr. Dickens. Thank you, Chair, and through you. There were a number of reasons.

So when the original staff report came forward, when the original and came and planned came forward, there was a set of recommended proximity buffers, and those were amended and changed. And what part of the direction was was use some discretion. Use your discretion, how you enforce it, but we would like to see certain distances from certain elements and community spaces, but use your discretion. I would say what is transpired is that the discretion wasn’t necessarily adopted by the public.

Very little discretion in terms of how far or close an encampment might be to an amenity or a property line. And so while the team has, we’ve documented this, has received increasing calls, we know what we’re proposing doesn’t eliminate that problem. But what we are seeing are the impacts of a drastic shrinking of potential green spaces, potential areas, where a person who has nowhere to live has been setting up their encampments. And that shrinking of that space has moved encampments away from discrete locations.

It’s moved them out of tree lines and protective areas out by 100 meters into open spaces, more in the elements, less shade, less protection from weather, that sort of thing. What it also does is it shrinks the footprint on where an encampment might be able to stay for an interim period of time. And I want to remind Council that we still approach all of this with a lens on health and safety and some safety protocols. Whether you’re 105 meters away or you’re less than that, if there are major safety concerns, we have to address those and you may be asked to relocate.

But what it’s done is it shrunk that footprint so small that we start to see people trying to get to those spaces as fast as they can, knowing that that might be the space that they’re allowed to stay a little longer. And it creates a lot of competition for that space. It can put staff in direct conflict or in conflict situations when we’re having to enforce these new proximity measures to the best of our ability. So the expectations went up for the enforcement.

The scope in which we must now enforce those spaces has increased significantly. And it has led to competition for space, safety concerns with staff. And it has also led to a greater visibility of homeless encampments. So when there were instances where people were tucked away, hidden, and maybe not a lot of people saw them or could tolerate them, they’re now open wide open in the green space where the public would be more inclined to use that space as instead of walking through the the tree line and the protection.

So that is a lot of the rationale for why the community has suggested that there be a relaxing or relaxing of that buffer distance down from 100 meters. And I think if you were through the chair, I think if you were present at these discussions at the tables, Mr. Dickens, through you chair, I am one of the co-chairs of the strategy and accountability table. The strategy and accountability table did receive this report before it came through to be an appendix on your committee report.

Fortunately, here at the city, I have a very robust team of folks that attend some of the operational meetings and provide that input, including members of our coordinated informed response team. Okay, what’s very important for me is to get a full understanding and accounting of what risks in terms of liability, in terms of health and safety, and in terms of the general public welfare. What risks is the city undertaking if we set the buffer too high? My understanding of this is, and you can correct me if I’m wrong, is that we are, as a city, we are under constraints.

For example, we don’t have the discretion to just say, we’re just not going to allow any encampments because we think they’re a problem and people don’t like them. And there would be implications for doing that. And I’m getting, I think I may be getting close to a question for the solicitor, but at what point do we cross the line into being so restrictive with where we allow the encampments that we might have a Waterloo problem? And the reason why I feel comfortable saying Waterloo problem in public session is when you think back to the report that we received a few months ago, there was an addendum to that that talked about the legal environment in open session in the report, and it did refer to the Waterloo decision.

And one of my worries is, if we’re too restrictive, we might be going into some territory that could be perilous. And I’m just wondering if anybody on civic administration, including the solicitor, would feel comfortable addressing that. All right. Thank you.

Thank you. And through the chair, if you’re looking for an opinion in terms of liability, I would have to go into closed session. But the bulk of the case law currently, the Waterloo decision and several other decisions are fairly clear that you can’t simply get rid of an encampment. It is a basic human right according to the charter of rights and freedoms.

And unless you can show that you can provide alternate shelter that is truly accessible, courts, by and large, are not permitting encampments to simply be taken away. Thank you, Chair. I appreciate that very frank, and in my opinion, very good response. I’m not going to give my opinion on what I think would happen, but I think we need to really be careful.

Now, the other thing I want to stress is I’ve heard a lot of people, and I see a lot of this online. I hear a lot of people saying, we really need to reject the human rights approach, because what about everybody else? And we’re paying too much attention to the human rights under international principles to certain principles. The city of London does not, and province of Ontario for that matter, does not have the legal discretion, in my opinion, correct me if I’m wrong, to say, you know, we’re going to depart from this human rights lens and use something else.

These are matters of well established international law and federal law, and the city of London is operating within certain constraints. And again, I feel comfortable talking about this in open session, because this is exactly what was reported to us in the first report. Unfortunately, there was not a lot of discussion about all the other things that were going on in that initial report. People went straight to the numbers, and I think we’re doing that again.

So I’m just going to close by saying I am supporting the staff report to the extent any of it’s left, but certainly certainly the first part of it is. And the reason why I’m following the staff report is from the beginning, from the beginning, it was made clear to us as Councillors. And some of the Councillors didn’t like it. Most of us just went along with it, but it’s like this community response is going to be centered in tables where we draw on the expertise of the community, and everything that’s done is evidence based.

This is not arbitrary. Nobody is sort of substituting their own personal judgments for what they think the respective rights and obligations of local residents, businesses, and encampment residents are. Please, I just don’t understand why I have to be sorry. Councillor Truss, please just hold your comments.

This is the second time comments from the gallery need to be kept to themselves. Otherwise, you’ll have to leave. There won’t be a third warning. You’ll just be asked to leave.

Councillor Truss, you’ve got about 20 seconds left to go, so please go ahead. Okay, so I think that there are forces at work here that go beyond the ability of the City of London to come into a council meeting and play with numbers like this, and I really want to urge my colleagues, I really want to urge my colleagues to be careful about this. I think that we’ve taken a good approach so far, and I’ve said so in terms of all the other reports that we’ve had come in. I firmly believe that we should stick to the staff recommendations.

These were not arbitrary, and they were based on the accumulation of a lot of expert. Councillor you are at your time. A lot of experts. Thank you.

Any further speakers? Councillor Stevenson. Thank you. A few things to say about that.

So, I don’t see anything in the report actually that states anything like that. It doesn’t say that we have no choice, that we have to do it, that it’s a human rights issue. It says the impact of the council endorsed encampment buffers, and it lists several of them, and one of them is a requirement for alternative locations. Alternative locations would need to be found for people to reside safely and within permissible distances.

I like that. Increased administrative complexity, the process of moving encampments and finding alternative locations to adhere to the council endorsed encampment buffers would require significant organization and support from the coordinated informed response teams. I do hear that, and I do think that’s what’s needed. Increased encampment resources, individuals living unsheltered will be moved to the outer limits of the city, which will increase the need for more vehicles, staffing, and garbage program resources and increased basic needs.

Increased enforcement resources, education, notifications, and enforcement would need to increase in proximity restricted areas. Currently restricted perks require a significant amount of time. Endorsed encampment buffers cannot be enforced with the current staff complement. That is the experience.

We need more enforcement. It’s not working. What we currently have, even with 100 meters, is not working. So, no, this is the direction we need to go.

We need more enforcement. We need to find other locations. And if you truly believe it’s a human rights issue, then let’s get them housing. I don’t understand why we don’t hear, like, how can we get them in warm?

I’m not hearing. Give us the crazy ideas that we can’t fund and give us a chance to figure out how to do it. There’s ways to bring people indoors. Last year, we had a building that could have brought 100 people indoors, and we were told there wasn’t an agency or the staffing to do that, which was sad.

But here, we’ve got enough staff to go around the parks and to have a one to 12 ratio and to try to bring people into housing. Do we not? Could we not use that staff and get volunteers? There’s so many people in the community who would be happy to help with this crisis.

Londoners are asking me, are you telling me there isn’t a building in the city, and there isn’t some staff and an ability to get together, volunteers the way arcade does, and bring people indoors this winter. It is a human rights issue. Let’s address it. Let’s figure out how to do it.

And let’s not tell other Londoners here that they have to have unsafe situations right near their home. People are struggling. They’re going through all kinds of things we can’t even imagine. Let them have the same city of their own home, their own park for people who live in apartment buildings and stuff to be able to go for a walk and let their kids play.

Free of drugs and tents and stuff like that is something that this Council I believe is committed to. It was in our strategic plan, and I think forcing us to do what we should do is a great thing. Thank you, Councilor Stevenson, Councillor Layman. First question, Chair, are we pulling in and calling that separately?

Yes, we are debating the main motion now as amended, but when the votes are called, I will be calling them separate. I want to speak to A, is this the time to speak to it? So there’s no amendments to A, so now is the time with the main motion on the floor to speak to it. Okay, I will not be supporting A.

It feels to me like this is a reconsideration. All the comments, both from Council and staff, have been when I heard when we first debated this. It’s a question of balance between both communities, homelessness and residents, and I think it’s been working well. There is indications, there was a mention made from staff about reducing out of sight.

Well, I had situations like that, the reverse, and because of this, that situation has been cleared up. I’ve had good feedback on the direction that we went earlier this year when we put those setbacks in, so I will not look to change that. So I’ll be voting no on A. Looking for other speakers, Councillor Pribble.

Thank you, sir. Chair, question to the staff. A couple of months ago, when this came forward, maybe three, four months ago, I really thought the staff proposed 50 meters, and I overheard about an hour ago, there was a mention of 10 meters. Can you please clarify if it was 50 or 10, and let’s say if it was 50, why now 25?

Thank you. Mr. Dickens on the original recommendation from June. Thank you, Chair, and through you, the original recommendation of June was 10 meters.

Staff have not recommended 50 at any point. Councillor Pribble. Thank you. No more questions.

Can you further speakers? Councillor Stevenson. I forgot. I did have one question on G, which is the IHAP funding.

I noticed that when we put the claim in, it’s for hotel and for shelter. Is there a lack of capacity for hotel spaces? Is that why we’re having to use shelter spaces? Because with beds being so few and far between, I would prefer, if we’re getting reimbursed, not to use any of our shelter spaces and use all hotel, so that we’re not losing shelter spaces.

I know we appreciate getting the money back, but I think we need beds this winter more than we do money. So I was just wondering, is there a lack of capacity in terms of hotel beds to accommodate that need? Mr. Cooper.

Thank you, and through you, Mr. Chair, our hotel response is actually for families. So it would be a silent claimant families to help reduce the burden on our limited family shelter, which is Roth home. Singles, we have not considered offering hotel rooms given some of the staffing challenges that might be for oversight.

And we’ve used the existing shelter system as such. Just one quick follow-up to that then. We used hotels before in COVID. It was before my time, but I just wondered as well, like when we look at this $2,300,000, if we have 350 people living unsheltered, that’s about $538 a month per person that if we just gave them the money and didn’t do any of this, potentially with their OW or their ODSP and joining with a friend, they could get a hotel and people could be indoors.

And I just wondered, is that something that’s been explored at all? Mr. Dickens. Thank you, Chair, and through you.

I don’t know to what extent it’s been considered to just social assistance as a provincial program, quite heavily regulated in terms of eligibility and what entitlement you receive in terms of your shelter costs and your basic needs. And when you move into a place with a roommate, you need to claim that on your file. And I don’t know to what authority or what, through what program we would have the ability to just hand people the 500 and some odd dollars and have them pair up with somebody and start applying social assistance to a hotel. That is talking about crazy ideas.

That might be one of them. So I don’t have a lot to offer you in terms of that situation. I think it’s well beyond the scope of our programming here at the city. Councillor, I saw you nodding that satisfies her.

Okay. Other speakers? Councillor McAllister. And so I can speak to, we’re in the main motion.

We’re on the main motion as amended. Okay. I go some of the comments colleagues have said on A, I can’t support the 25 meters. And this is a reflection of conversations.

I’ve had a number of board residents, whether that be on Adelaide, Missioners, Bond Mills, Wellington, Hamilton Road. A lot of my ward is impacted by this. Spending a lot of time dealing with it. I would say the majority of my time.

I understand in terms of what I read in the report, but to what Councillor Layman said, we do have to strike that balance. It’s a difficult path to walk. I understand the struggles of both sides. I really do.

And I feel it on a daily. But I think we also have to acknowledge that this is having an impact on residents of the city as well. And we do have to find, as the Councillor Stevens has said, we need to get people housed. I do think that’s the end goal.

I know we had previously talked about the depots and having those places as entry points. We have our shelter services. But right now, the tension I’m seeing in neighbourhoods is not good. I think reducing the distance will probably boil over the kettle.

And I can’t. I can’t do that at this time. King further speakers. Councillor ramen.

Thank you. And through you on the main motion. So I’m still struggling in terms of our direction on this main motion now. As we continue to move through different clauses in the main motion, one of the things I don’t think I’ve seen full clarity on yet is what we are fully willing to support.

So what we’re ending up with is, in my opinion, is some challenges in terms of the direction because we haven’t identified what the community encampment plan should be stood up with. And then when it comes to that funding piece, whenever we find out from the federal government what the parameters are of the funding, then what other supports would go along with this. So again, my priority is to find more indoor spaces and look to utilize any additional funding that we receive for that purpose. Any surplus that we have, I’d like to see us use for that purpose.

So for that reason, I won’t be supporting H for that reason. For A, I won’t support the change to the distance. I believe that we had a fulsome debate on that matter and support my colleagues and their comments on that as well. I do think it’s important that we also discuss the transformational transactional components because I’m struggling with how we’re endorsing how we go forward with the transformational aspects of this report at this time when we don’t have enough pathways to housing for people.

So in terms of that transformational piece, if it’s an action-oriented item for readiness to housing within the hundred or so spaces we talked about for 2025, is it that we are only using that priority for those that are currently in encampments? Or are those that are perhaps in other shelters and other spaces being considered as well? So I’m trying to understand that. I do see the need for some transformational support.

I just want to make sure that it aligns with what we have available and that’s where I’m struggling with the costing. So if more clarity was provided within this motion to say that action has been taking regarding the whole of community system response, community enhancement transactional plan, I would be more inclined to support all of it. But at this time, I think it’s too general and too broad for us to put forward as our best example of what we’d like funded at this time with so many unknowns. Thank you, Councillor ramen.

I’m going to ask you to take the chair one more time so that I cannot on this item. I’ll ask you again later. So I cannot for my comments. Thank you.

Go ahead. I have the chair. Thank you. So not to belabor the point but I will not be supporting a either.

For me, the setbacks have been in place for a full quarter now and then some. I recognize for staff there are more operational challenges to dealing with these increased setbacks. I fully recognize that. And I continue in my own messaging to residents to say I’m not coming out there with a tape measure and finding that it’s 97 meters and doing something about it.

There’s got to be some discretion, a little bit of discretion involved there. I hear what staff are saying that the public is not reading it that way. But that was, I thought, very clear when we provided those directions earlier in the year and I stand by those. I also think that and it’s been mentioned by multiple members of council.

I’m going to pick up on Councilor McAllister’s comments in particular. I have residents who back on to Kiwanis Park North. They should be able to go in their backyard and not feel at risk because of what’s going on in the park immediately behind their backyard. And there does have to be a balance in how we approach this because the residents of those homes have rights to.

And that I think has been largely overshadowed in the whole of community response. I really struggle with the label whole of community response now because I don’t think we’ve included the whole of community. I think we have some people with some expertise in delivering services and helping those in need. I think we’ve even consulted with those in need.

But where I don’t think we are doing a good job is listening to the impact it’s having on the rest of the city and the residents in their homes on the residents when they take their child to a splash pad in our park where they walk them home from school or the business owner who has to have their front door blocked every morning by somebody there. I don’t think we are listening to those things and I don’t think that we are getting a really thoughtful response back in terms of recognition that budgets are not unlimited either and that particularly at the municipality we just can’t do everything. But we keep seeming to be asked to do everything. I am satisfied with the setbacks that we had established earlier in the year after a fulsome debate at a prior SPPC in council.

And while I agree with Council Raman that I’m still not sure exactly what the federal government is going to fund and how we may have to move some pieces around. We’ve moved pieces around before so I do have confidence that our staff will do their very best and that they’ll be successful in in reallocating and moving pots of funding where they need to to deliver on the things we’re asking them to deliver. But for me it comes down to people do need to have their own safety and security in their homes respected as well. And I feel like that is something we are continuing to swing and miss at.

But I think that the buffers that we approved earlier this year are doing a better job than what we had before we had them. I will also say I agree with Council Raman on H. I appreciate the the coffee house wanting to continue to provide some drop in day spaces. But for me I would rather be spending that money on beds overnight.

That’s when it’s truly coldest. And I and I truly believe that the folks at the coffee house have done some really good work at operating day spaces. But if it’s beds or a warm place to sit in a cup of coffee at one o’clock in the afternoon I’m going to choose the overnight bed. So you know I’ll go back to what I said earlier the the buck stop somewhere.

Well you know any look at our municipal budget earlier today in our previous meeting says we’re out of box. The only way to find more boxes to keep adding to the property tax base and that is the least fair form of taxation we have. It’s time I’m going to say it again for the other levels of government to do their part. They have not so far in my opinion individual members may have tried but as a collective they haven’t.

So for me I’m done doing the back filling from a city level. They’ve got to step up and do it. So that’s why I’m okay with where we’re landing today. Thank you returning the chair to you Councillor Hopkins unless thank you Councillor Raman for covering that and I will go to Councillor Hopkins next.

Thank you Mr. Chair I have a question I know we were just speaking to A if we should support it or not but I’d like to know where we are in this whole recommendation and are we approving the amendments because I voted in a different way and I’d like to. So Councillor we are right now debating the main motion as amended when it gets to votes I’m calling those votes separately. Thank you for that and I’ll speak to A since we are discussing the 25 meters and I will be supporting the recommendation.

I know when we had this conversation many months ago the 25 meters was suggested it is not there’s opportunities to move that around be it 25 or 30 meters but I do think we’ve heard loud and clear that going the 100 meters will not give us the options that a number of Councillors would like to have when it comes to these depots. So that’s why I’m supporting the 25 meters it’s that simple we’ll have more opportunities more options to move these depots around so I’ll be supporting that and I’m glad you’re pulling all the other items when it comes to voting thank you and I’ll go now to Mayor Morgan. I’m sure thank you so I won’t support a either a 25 meters now I would say probably is a number that is less than a hundred that I would support because I recognize the pressure that our staff have but I think it’s pretty clear that there are significant concerns within the community but the 25 meter mark and significant concerns and I always try to listen to colleagues around this table in the way that that 25 meters would work in different parts of the city right it’s very hard to create a cookie cutter approach the reason why I’m willing to move on the 100 is we basically pick that number like that that number doesn’t have any sort of meaning aside from the fact that Council picked that to try it and I recognize what’s being said about that having some challenges around it and so whether we picked 100 or 95 or 106 you know we basically picked that number and so I would be comfortable with an adjustment to that I don’t know what the right number is but I won’t support a there are other parts of this motion too that I think it’s astute for Councillors to recognize that you know we’re gonna have a funding conversation and then we’re gonna come back to this and we’re gonna say potentially you know we might not be able to do it all or we may have to divide this between this sort of process and overnight bed spaces or something like that on transformational outreach I want to say actually support those components of the plan on transformational outreach I know transactional is important for basic needs but but if we’re not creating every point of contact with someone in an encampment to start to carve out a case file in a pathway that they get from being in an encampment into housing and housing with the proper supports because we’re not just talking about finding someone who is high needs but finding people who are just need some help with doing their taxes and finding first and last month’s rent and then connecting with the right housing service providers if we’re not out there any taking advantage of each and every contact to create a file in a case file in every individual so that when something opens up and yes we might not have all the spots now but when something opens up we know the types of individuals who could be taken from living outdoors and creating impacts on members of the community and bringing them into the space that is right for them regardless of what that space is and so and as we do that over time our encampment strategy should actually shrink like if we’re doing this right you know things should get smaller as we go on right this is this is a strategy that we fund and then should shrink over time as we pull people out of encampments find them the right space and support them in a temporary fashion to get them where we ultimately every single one of our plans leads to and that’s housing right at the end of it we want everybody to be indoors and house with the proper supports so I think we need to pass something I think there’s a lot of details we could debate but we need to have a structure in place that we can work with we need to get part of that funded with other levels of government appropriately so but ultimately all of our goals should be this is the one part of all the work that we’re doing that should get smaller as we go on right we might still need to do supportive housing we might still need to do affordable housing we still have to find pathways but encampments and encampment strategy and the work on encampments I think every single person including those doing outreach want to see this shrink over time want there to be less work to do want there to be less people out there living unsheltered and more people indoors and housed so I won’t support A most of the rest of this I’m supportive of I appreciate our colleagues comments but I recognize that we have to also have that funding discussion and then come back to this to a certain degree to find out what we can actually do and that might be a scaling of the size and number of things like service depots if we can’t do them all it might be not four it might be a different number so I’ll leave my comments at that mr chair and I’ll look forward to to the vote in any further discussion thank you worship looking for any other speakers seeing none so colleagues here’s how we’re going to proceed I will call the votes on A the setback B the funding until the end of December of this year C the mayor’s engagement with the federal government for encampment funding then we’ll go to F which was the depot referral motion then to H which is the coffee house and then we will deal with all other clauses which have not been touched and they’re primarily the administrative clauses giving administration the authority to execute what we’ve directed as well as continuing to look at interim housing plan other options of funding etc after that we are going to need a motion to extend past six p.m. so I’m going to ask the clerk to open the vote first on clause A and that’s the setback clause and this was not amended so I just want to be clear with people if you vote yes you’re supporting the 20 vote no you’re supporting maintaining it at 100 closing the vote motion fails five to ten and now clause B this is the funding as amended to the end of December of this year answer trust out in the vote motion carries 12 to three now clause C which is the mayor’s engagement and civic administration’s engagement on the federal encampment dollars closing the vote motion carries next will be clause F this was the amendment from councilor mccallister on the service depose sorry just this vote was separated different when it came through committee is it oh sorry that’s right we have our our colleagues wanting it separated still you did express your vote earlier in the meeting if you wish to express it again we will have the clerk separate that as we did previously we’ll do F1 and 2 together and then F3 separate closing the vote motion carries 15 to 0 clause F subsection 3 closing the vote motion carries 8 to 7 now we will move to clause H that is the coffee house funding closing the vote motion carries 8 to 7 and finally colleagues at the balance of the report that is clauses D E G I J and the receipt of the communications and the receipt of the verbal delegations Councillor ramen thank you do we still need clause D the civic administration be directed to seek out and apply for additional sources of funding to offset any municipal operating budget contingency reserve contributions so clause B was was or sorry clause C was specific to the federal encampment implementation but by leaving this in it doesn’t preclude seeking funding sources from other provincial or federal programming opportunities that may arise so I would suggest that we would like to leave it in and I’m seeing Mr.

Dickens nodding his head with respect to that because there may be other sources of funding that we wish to stack on this so perhaps it’s just removing the municipal operating budget contingency reserve contributions to Saranan I think that from a language cleanup because of the other amendments we made would be correct procedurally yes I will ask the clerk to do that Mr. Dickens we may offer a suggestion chair to just change it to municipal funding and not the source there’d be any means any municipal funding that sounds like a great suggestion and helps us on the wordsmithing side thank you okay that change has been made in e-scribe and we’ll get the clerk to open the vote on that. Seeing the vote motion carries 14 to 1 and that colleagues concludes item 4.1 of our items for direction uh moving on we have a number of other items for direction as well as deferred matters in additional business and a confidential session and before we can handle any of that we need a motion to move past 6 p.m. moved by Councillor ramen and seconded by Councillor Cuddy and I will get the clerk to open the vote.

I’ll be in e-scribe for that. Councillor Pribble, Councillor van Mirbergen posing the vote motion carries 13 to 2. Thank you colleagues we will now move to our next item on the agenda um this is the sprung shelter motion submitted by Councillor Frank and Pribble and I will look to Councillor Frank to introduce this. Thank you and um I appreciate if folks disregard the first one uh Councillor Pribble and I were a bit late on our updated one so hoping folks can um use the quick communities one as the one we’re discussing uh and I would be happy to give a bit of background um and I believe I still have a seconder in Councillor Pribble before I get into um a bit of the rationale and I’m just looking at the chair to confirm that you’re okay for Pribble.

Great okay um so essentially is highlighted in the letter uh I have and as well as Councillor Pribble heard from many residents their interest in us exploring the possibility of what we’re calling quick communities um because we don’t want to limit uh staff and the community’s ability to come up with creative and innovative ways of trying to get people inside including looking at sprung shelters tiny homes micro homes essentially quick housing structures that would provide rapid relief to the inclement weather that we’re facing in the winter but also in the summer and we have seen many examples from cities across Ontario and across Canada of this concept of quick communities which are intentional communities with small sleeping shelters laundry showers bathroom facilities um and they can also be piggybacked for example into a hub as we have with that losa who has some pallet structures as well as the hub that’s indoors I also recently learned through this motion of Fanshawe College and the London District Construction Association’s efforts to build some small winterized shelters and as you can see in the letter they’ll be hosting a career event at the Agriplex where they’re going to be building three shelters and they invite all of us to attend and check those out and my understanding is there has been examples in the past with Fanshawe College of building these small winterized shelters for about five thousand dollars each including also in the London Free Press article we saw that Andy Spreid also had designed four portable outdoor shelters that had been offered to arcade but they weren’t able to use them due to some zoning issues so I think that it’s important right now for us to exhaust all our options when looking at housing and when looking at these communities I think there are opportunities where there could be folks that wouldn’t necessarily thrive or succeed in an apartment building but would do really well in one of these especially when it’s wrapped around with some communities because a lot of what I hear is when people move into an apartment building they lose their community and so then there becomes some conflict with guest management because people really want to be surrounded with people that are their friends and have that sense of community and I think that with these quick communities that offers both shelter and that sense of belonging. Another example is we gave Unity Project about five hundred and three thousand for 26 spots so it was 13 units but they’re divided in half so 26 spots that’s about 20,000 dollars per spot in capital and that took less than a year to set up whereas chatting with local developers a local apartment building could take an average of two hundred thousand dollars per unit so that’s about ten times the cost and somewhere between four to eight years to bring online. So I think we also actually just heard from a lot of the encampment presentation and delegations there’s a strong interest for providing people with these options. People want to be compassionate and see everyone have housing and again looking into this and having staff look into providing these shelters that would be faster and cheaper than some of the other housing spectrum that we’re looking at I see a lot of benefits so I’m eager to hear others thoughts on this item because I don’t think we’ve really had a fulsome discussion at council or committee regarding these but I am interested in moving forward the motion that’s included in the quick community’s motion because I’m really hoping we can explore every option available to us.

Thanks. So Councillor ramen can I ask you to take the chair please. Thank you go ahead. Thank you I’m going to try and stick inside my five minutes here.

So I appreciate the Councillors trying to come up with new ideas. This is not a new idea for me. I actually first met with John Fleming about this when he was still director of planning and with with Mr. Mathers when he was still the director of water wastewater operations in 2019 and they said to me then this isn’t going to work it’s a really bad idea when we were talking about looking at doing some of these on a legion property on the whole the the tiny homes project and I want to address like the sprung shelter or whole community thing first which is what we’re really talking about on those in my opinion is a sanctioned encampment site and we just talked about how we don’t want to have encampments.

So I’m not supporting what is just a fancier version of an encampment but I want to talk about the tiny homes piece because this keeps coming up and they’re not as advertised and there’s a reason we haven’t gone down that route. Yes they are a great photo op and a feel good story in a smaller community where you can create 40 units but they’re not and and members of planning an environment committee will know that they’re not a good use of land in terms of the density that you can get from them then there’s the servicing for the sanitary water electrical it’s not nearly as efficient as an apartment building and so in general planning principal terms are not a good idea you just can’t fit the same number of units on the the same size piece of land as you can by building up and if we take a look at the St. Thomas example the Doug Terry homes piece that’s been getting some media attention recently that’s a 0.8 hectare property which if you do the 75 to 100 units per hectare zoning could have provided a six-story 60 to 70 unit apartment building on the same site as these 40 unit 400 and change square foot tiny homes but more importantly this project had local builders volunteering their labor at no cost you can’t scale up volunteers doing something for free on a weekend to do thousands of times over and it’s still with free labor costing 14 million dollars three million from the city of St. Thomas seven million from the province and feds and that doesn’t include the ongoing how ongoing operating costs that are needed to support the tenants in there in the long run divide that 14 million by 40 units it’s 350 thousand dollars a unit for four to six hundred foot square home with free labor building it you just can’t get that same the economies of scale that you get in a apartment building and I’m not going to just use the St.

Thomas example in Nova Scotia a 59 unit tiny homes project moved forward the province not the municipality put in 9.4 million that comes out to about 59 thousand a unit but that did not include the land costs and it comes with a price tag of 935 thousand dollars a year in annual operating costs to provide the on-site services so almost a million bucks a year to support the tenants living there so to me it’s really clear these are not economically viable without massive public subsidies and private sector builders would already be building these if they were now I know you’re not necessarily talking in quick communities about a tiny home with its own washroom with its own washer dryer but when you start to have people forced to use those shared facilities you’re creating opportunities for conflict as well there and more need for staff support more need for cleaning resources so that per year annual cost operate goes up even higher listen I recognize that the home builders wrote a letter saying oh we should look into it if they think we should look into it then really what we should do is just refer this to the housing supply task force to have a discussion because right now all this is is an idea coming from counselors that respectfully because I appreciate your sporting ideas but we’re asking staff to prepare a big long report when we haven’t actually consulted with the sector on whether these are economically viable or not I know there’s one member of the housing supply table up in the gallery tonight listening but we’ve got one representative who said it’s worth looking into the rest of the sector hasn’t been consulted but in the last five and a half years that I’ve been here I’ve had this conversation three or four times with staff with other builders and everybody keeps telling me the same thing they’re a nice feel good photo op but they’re not a good land use and they’re not economically viable without massive injections of cash we have neither the funding we just had a long talk about how we don’t have any money for anything nor do we have a lot of surplus land available to do these on I’m sure if you asked mr. yeoman or mr. mathers or mr. shear or anybody do you need that road widening for the transit lane yes I do do you need that new park yes I do so we were giving up something else to do this so I’m going to wrap up there I don’t support this if it was a referral to the housing supply task force I might but I’m not asking our staff to spend months on a long report to come back and tell us this isn’t economically viable I’ve already done my research I know it’s not thank you I’ll return the speaker the chair to you sorry with mare morgan on the list and councilor sorry I got mare morgan and councilor pribble mare morgan uh yes so um uh in a weird way and I know we’re not always on the same page but uh uh I actually agree with one of your comments that you made uh mr.

chair um I should say we are usually on the same page but um so I was very combative the way I said that uh I actually I actually support a number of the discussions that were made I think that there there is some interesting pieces that we could investigate I also recognize that these things have required substantive government funding and I was actually drawn to the letters of support as well particularly the offer by the home builders who expressed that their memberships had actual expertise in costing development construction and wanting to offer themselves as a stakeholder and then of course the London district construction associations support I don’t think the housing supply reference group I actually think it’s the other group that we put together the customer service process implementation reference group that would probably be best suited to take a look at this and provide us with some feedback I’ll tell you why that group has the home builders on it the district construction association the development institute the London area planner consultant uh the association of consulting engineers uh the real estate sector is represented and then uh architects are represented as well as the school boards which maybe that’s less relevant but I don’t mind and I’m happy to make the motion to refer to that reference group for uh for some feedback um before we make a decision to move forward or not with this because I think that that might be a way for us to uh take advantage of the expertise offered um and get some feedback from those community partners in the development construction and real estate industry uh on whether or not this could be viable in London I think there’s different opportunities and different constraints in different cities and we could figure that out in consultation with our staff so at the I guess now I’m happy to move a referral to the um uh what’s it called the uh customer service and process implementation reference group did you I have a motion that I passed the wording to the clerks because I can’t I try to be well prepared like I expect everybody else to and we’ve got a seconder and councilor Hopkins I just want to know if you want to or you maybe already have I just want to know if you want to check with Mr. Mathers on what which of the appropriate reference tables you want to send it to well I did check by Mr. Mathers and that’s why I’m recommending that one okay that was when he suggested given their workload and the time frame of their meetings that would be the most appropriate place for me to refer to then I won’t go to Mr. Mathers we’ve got a motion to refer and a seconder so now we’re on the referral councilor Hopkins yeah I’m happy to second this and I agree with you um um agree with the chair’s comments uh we’ve had these conversations in the past in in planning and I know there’s other opportunities uh but you know we just had a long conversation about our encampment strategy and the need for uh housing uh as well that we we need to put people somewhere and for me I still would have supported this motion even though I know there would be um there’s a you know there there isn’t a lot of opportunities but I think where there are opportunities are with the builders and the developers in the city because I have had conversations with them saying that other cities are doing a little bit more proactive work around tiny homes for instance so why not look into it and if there’s further opportunities so I’m glad that we’re referring this I would have supported the motion even though I know the chances of that going forward would have been a would have been a little bit more difficult so glad to see this go somewhere Councillor Preble and then Councillor McAllister.

Thank you. Even though I seconded this motion I’m okay with the referral. I just want to let you know a couple of things. We are all in terms of the highly supportive housing and supportive affordable housing we are all for it and uh I think we are on a really good track unfortunately these initiatives they are not finished over a month that’s really a kind of in number of years sometimes potentially a year and a half two years this is we are actually not that we are not a front runner in this and there are other places not just in Ontario not just in Canada but throughout the world that made it successful they’re brought the community together the builders and for us if we were to not to go forward with this I think it would be a uh it would be a really uh disappointment and shame that the other communities in the world that make it work they make it better and we would not even try it and you know there are always examples that uh uh any projects or anything they’re successful ones are done success ones but it’s about people it’s about how you manage it how you how you set up the initiatives and right now already being negative if something was never really pro there were conversations in the past you can have conversations hundreds of times and talk for hours and hours and you don’t accomplish anything but actually roll up the sleeves and really get it done and look into the option that’s the secret and that’s the secret of the success and right now we don’t have any options and exactly what was said you were just talking over the encampments and none of us want them and guess what the highly supportive housing it won’t be built next month so what are we gonna do so we’re just gonna say okay there’s nothing in between they see the encampments and then there’s uh permanent housing that’s not an option for me that’s not an option for me so i’m okay to go to the referral i’m okay with it but for us if you were to turn this down i would never understand it if other municipalities in the world can do it we can do it as well thank you Councillor McAllister thank you through the chair i’m happy this is coming back again i know on a previous item we talked about i brought up the modular building techniques i think was the language that the planning staff had suggested that we put in there i’m happy to support the referral um i’d love to see what they they come back with um to the deputy mayor’s point in terms of um you know better use or density i should say um there are other examples i like the idea of quick communities like that term too um the way i view this is there’s a lot of other parts of the world that are doing um very interesting like mid-rise or even high-rises i saw a really interesting one when i went to the housing conference last year in the uk and it’s a community housing project and it’s a high-rise that was completely modular uh and in terms of the density it’s the same that you would see with a traditional high-rise um but in terms of the speed and that’s really what i come back to and what Councillor purple is just saying it’s getting things built faster right and i think even the building community would agree that you know that’s really the goal we want to get these things built faster and so i’m curious to see what comes back in terms of you know the expertise and the recommendation um but bringing that to london um and i mean i don’t mind if we’re a pilot project and in the province and the country um to try uh one of these um modular high-rises i think even we both sit on community housing that’s something i don’t mind bringing up there i’ve talked with board members about that too but we really have to think outside the box in terms of the speed at which we can get these things built thanks and Councillor frank thank you and appreciate the conversation and i don’t mind a referral either i just um i’m not going to make a motion because i don’t want to spend more time on it but i will say over to um mr mathers if perhaps at whatever meeting this goes to um it would be great if uh there was some staff from mr dickens department who have maybe expertise in the human side of this discussion because i think it’s great to send this over to um people with experience and construction but um i think it would be missing about 50 percent of the equation if there’s not also discussion with relevant stakeholders with a social service experience but happy to see what comes back from those discussions thank you Councillor frank looking for any further speakers Councillor layman um yeah thank you i was on the fence on this one um as uh the deputy mayor um alluded to uh we have heard about tiny homes and um and had anecdotal feedback both from staff and in other areas um it seemed to be where it was happening a lot of um uh non-profits were involved in in getting it going so um it’s a cost of the build but it’s also the cost of the servicing once it’s up and running that we’re we’re concerning for me however uh with the the mayor’s uh referral here i am comfortable to go that direction just to finally talk about this thing you know one way or another let’s find out um where the pros and cons true costs etc let me get the the building community involved uh in that um because you know i’ve heard it long enough and with uh housing uh such the forefront of our discussions um i think let’s let’s just explore this and get an indication if there’s any any legs there that we should uh go on so i will support the referral any other speakers Councillor ramen thank you and through you just quickly i will support the referral but i do see the value in both motions um one the first motion that was coming to us uh looked more at the locations the costs the potential sources of funding etc that can move this forward quicker and the referral sends it back to the development community and construction real estate industry to provide their thoughts of which they’ve kind of already done in the two submission letters that are in front of us um so i i am i am supportive of referring it back to them for for another look i’m hoping they can quickly come back maybe through planning with some uh definitive support and then some help with how we move this forward with perhaps some evaluative tools on what is the best highest and best use of a piece of property for this purpose because to say generally that nothing would fit this because it’s not height specific we’ve got pieces of property maybe even that developers have that doesn’t fit perhaps with some of their other building plans but could fit with something like this or maybe if it’s housing that’s available to be moved it’s something that can be quickly operationalized used for some time and then perhaps used and moved to a different spot if that land then becomes developable for another purpose so there’s a lot of different ways to look at it i agree with my colleagues that we have to consider every and all possibility and this is a way to do so council trust out first of all uh to the counselors who brought this forward thank you very much i mean this is exactly the kind of thinking that we have to be engaging in and everything does not have to be according to the um you know industry standard model and i was really pleased to see the uh letters letters of support that said this is feasible so i’m glad this is moving forward um i do have one question though um with these with this type of construction you’re not going to be i’m trying to think of the right technical word but you’re not going to be digging down deep as much when you’re when you’re putting something like this in right because it can be moved is is is that correct mr mathers through the chair so there’s a few different types of structures that were referenced in the um in the the letter and the resolution so it will very much depend if you’re looking at a ten type structure then of course yeah you wouldn’t be requiring that type of excavation that you’d be required for different types of structures but i think that’s part of the value in in getting some um thoughts on the types of structures and some of the the um the requirements and the the either the opportunities that come out of them as well so that’s uh that’s what we’d be looking at and bringing back to the group and able to get some of those insights um that that’s great my next question through the chair is what i’m thinking of is is lots where would be unfeasible to to really to really dig down and put up a structure because of things that have happened uh on that property in the cost of remediation is it is there at least some potential that at some elementary level some of those properties could be used for this or once it’s a problem is it just all all out and also is this something that the the group that we’re referring this to will be able to look at mr mathers uh through the chair um so i think we when you’re speaking to that if you had like a brown field site or a site that possibly had some other disturbance in the past where they’re having a structure that didn’t require excavation may be easier to use or might have more potential and absolutely that that would be an opportunity if if you’re also looking at getting some some different opinions uh we could go to a couple reference groups we also have the affordable housing reference group that um that the same folks uh sit on as well and if we go to both those groups it’s really great because you would get the opportunity to hear from the development community but then also some of their partners as well so that might be able to to hit both the check a couple of boxes that you have i don’t think it was the finally i don’t think it would make the mayor’s intention to exclude other people looking at this i think in fact he was just trying to expedite it and i’m just going to trust in in good in good faith that um the the the proper people will be consulted on this so i’ll just i’ll just leave it at that thank you counselor any other speakers on this team none i’m going to ask the clerk to open the vote on the referral mr hillier sorry it crashed it’s resuming session i voted yes thank you closing the vote motion carries 14 to 1 thank you colleagues moving on uh our next item on the agenda is item 4.3 this is a motion from counselor frank and counselor ramen i will go to counselor to introduce this thank you yes and similar to last time i will probably just go right into introducing it because i believe i still have a seconder and i’m getting a nod wonderful so um through the chair um yeah so counselor ramen and i worked on this motion um at this time when we’re about to go into another budget update season it felt timely to have a bit of a discussion about setting a standard between agencies boards and commissions based on what kind of spending they use of public funds towards um influencing the decisions of municipal council for budget and i think now that um you know we are aware of some of the funding that was used from london police services board to hire an external consultant um i’ve heard a lot from residents who didn’t like that use of public funds but of course my understanding is it’s not prohibited but that being said people had concerns that now other agencies boards and commissions would engage in the same kind of behavior and there was a bit of a worry that this would continue to escalate and moving forward having more and more agencies boards and commissions use public funds to to influence these budgetary decisions so um in that vein this motion uh we want to circulate to discuss having a bit of a standard my understanding from staff is that we’re not actually legally able to require this from the abc’s but we are able to ask as council as we’ve asked abc’s in the past um for other things um so uh this motion is specifically to door towards directing civic administration to convey the sentiments about not using municipal funding to lobby council for public funds and i’m happy to explain more but uh i think the letter kind of sums it up as well so that’s been moved in seconded we’ll uh start a speaker’s list now on this item councilor trussow well first of all once again thank you through the chair thank you for bringing this up um we’re all getting a lot of email about this we’re all hearing a lot of frustration and what what i know i’m hearing a lot of is council needs to take some action on this either to forestall this happening again or or take some further remedies um there are a couple of things that that were in the letters that we received that i think warrant some additional um consideration so i’m just going to throw these out as really quick questions that uh to staff um first and first of all would we be able to use the budget the budget process to table a resolution saying we want this money returned would that be within something that council can do as the budget committee and then it’s council.

mrs. Berbon do you want to take the first response of this thank you through the chair um perhaps legal may wish to we weigh in too but essentially when the budget is set um given the strong mayor’s legislation we set this the mayor sets the budget council can make amendments to that budget and then there’s a process that follows to ratify the amendments so um council could put forward an amendment through the budget process to reduce or amend a budget but to use the budget process to request something different would not necessarily align with the budget process and the regulations. okay so mrs. bang on councilor please wait for me to recognize you mrs.

polyt um mrs. barbon suggested that you may have some comment as well so i’m going to go to you next thank you and through the chair um if we’re specifically looking at police as well there’s some restrictions within the police act about the way that municipalities can impact the budget as well. thank you mrs. polyt.

councilor trussow. okay so i’m not going to um pursue this to a full resolution this evening because i’m hearing some ambiguity here it would be my desire my intention to um work work with staff and and and legal to see if something could be tabled during the budget process that would be appropriate and i’m not going to ask for a ruling on that now i’m just going to say i think that’s something we need to at least look at but my second question through the chair goes to the content of the materials the exercise material the redacted materials that were provided to um to the newspaper now i understand certainly the newspaper would have standing with the information privacy commissioner to um seek a remedy for that for the for the redacting but does does would this council have the ability to request request um that the documentation also be provided to us so we could see exactly what happened mrs. polyt. thank you and through the chair i i think um council may have to go through the freedom of information act uh similar to what the the newspapers did um based on um the wording because the it is this it’s a separate entity the police services board so it it may be that certain information would be redacted or uh possibly would be something that we could look at in closed session okay that’s helpful because i think i think there is a um a taste from many members of the public for us to try to understand in some greater detail what happened and i i’d like to consider ways of ways of pursuing that i guess my next my next question is um i guess this is more of a statement i i feel really as a counselor who who is uh deliberating on the budget i really feel that there was information that i should have had as a counselor that i didn’t have and that is members of this council my colleagues who also sit on other boards knew that an expenditure was being made to lobby us and i didn’t know that and i really think i should have known that as a as a member of council and i haven’t said did you want to make a point we were not gonna have crossed debate please stop now counselor members of council when they are serving in their capacity on boards are still bound by confidentiality of the board so it is not their individual right to disclose any discussions that a board is having in closed session so with you not serving on the police board i am going to ask you to thoughtfully reflect on the comments you’re making and consider seeing them in a different way let me rephrase that then and let me rephrase that more directly what you just said makes a lot of sense and it raises the question of why was this confidential and it was it was this properly raised in a closed meeting and what would the remedy for that be now if i understand the ombudsman’s jurisdiction any interested person including a member of this council including this council through res resolution or including any interested resident of Ontario could could test that open meeting issue i for one really went through better understand why this was done in closed session and under what authority that was counselor stevenson on a point of order i’m not understanding how this is relevant to the motion before us well i will admit counselor i’m struggling with that too um the motion before us is with respect to providing some communication to our boards and commissions about spending decisions we are not revisiting past ones so counselor we are not debating the contents of the letter from a member of the public we’re debating a motion from counselors on the floor so again please focus your your comments on the motion that’s on the floor i’m focusing thank you very much and i will try to do that i’m focusing my comments on the entirety of this in time of this full incident which it which is on the table right now my feeling is while i support while i fully support the um the the resolution that’s on the table i would be remiss if i did not at this point also say i think that there are some other issues that need to be considered now if it’s the case that since this is on the floor and we’re dealing with the issue we either have to bring it up or we can’t bring it up later that’s one thing but i think i think it’s it’s it’s only in fairness for me to make these comments saying i think that there’s some other things that need to be looked at with respect to this motion and um given the time and given the fact that people seem to be impatient about going into other areas here uh i’m not going to i’m not right now going to seek to amend this motion to include other things but i do think the public is entitled to a better explanation than what they’ve got and i do intend to pursue this thank you mr hulkins yeah thank you mr chair and i want to first uh thank the two counselors for bringing this forward because i think it does give us an opportunity uh to speak to um the um the concerns that we’re hearing from the public so i heard uh loud and clear that we basically do not have um the teeth i guess to really um do anything about this uh other than asking civic um administration to uh work with our AVCs but i would like to further ask questions about the motion itself and my first question is really around um the the process that civic administration has with the police services for instance through the budget process so is it the same as all the ABCs that we work with the police service on their budget i guess it’s my first question just to understand this process mr barbone thank you through the chairs so the the generally and we bring forward the report to launch the process and that comes through council um there is a budget by law that council passed um i’m sorry i can’t remember exactly went off the top of my head but that was within the last number of years that does provide the guidelines and outlines that council sets the timelines and the form in which the budget will be provided to civic administration if for inclusion as part of the budget process so um that applies to all of the boards and commissions and uh ultimately at the end of the day the boards independent police other um ABCs that we have all have a board approval process and the board ultimately submits what they will put forward and as approval to be concluded as part of the budget um so that process is consistent across the board with the strong mayor’s legislation that information then is accumulated put all together and the mayor ultimately decides um what is put forward through the mayor’s budget which was released in part yesterday so and and walked through this afternoon or this morning so that information then is all accumulated in so it’s it’s up to the mayor for inclusion as part of what is now put forward through the strong mayor’s legislation but everything that is submitted through civic administration is ultimately based on the budget by-law that is approved by council and that provides the board approval and then that is what’s submitted but ultimately what is actually included is the mayor’s decision based on the new legislation.

That’s our options. Yeah thank you for that and if I can be a little bit more specific with my question when it relates to this motion that’s before us will civic administration how will they um how would they deal with this motion going forward with the ABCs and in particular with the police service? Ms. Barbara thank you third chair so based on the way it reads currently and the way I interpret that is that we would provide this resolution to all of the boards and commissions and ask them to consider this as part of the development of their budgets and as part of their spending throughout the year.

There is no way for civic administration to police this or to have a form that would identify because I think it’s certainly in terms of good faith and and obviously the board would be making decisions on spending and and how those budgets are ultimately put forward so certainly we would convey that information just like we convey all of the other decisions of council and process in terms of submissions timelines etc. Councilor Hopkins yeah and as a follow-up question to that then it as it relates to our policies then with our ABCs given that this has come forward as a concern that there was some potential lobbying and the reason I’m going to use the word potential lobbying because one of the challenges I’m having as a member of this council is that I really don’t know what if we were lobbied or not and it would be really great to get that report I heard from legal that we are able to do that as a council not sure I would assume it would be through that budget process I would like confirmation on that or first of all if I can have that question sort of addressed in when is the right time to ask for a redacted report and then the second question I had was around can we change our policies not to allow lobbying to happen but I think we really need to understand if we were lobbied or not and what is the and get that report Ms. Pollett I know you’ve answered this already can you repeat the process on a redacted report thank you and through the chair I think the first step would be through freedom of information because the police services board would have to ensure that it complies with the act before it discloses things so that request would have to be made that that could be made by individual counselors potentially the request could be made and the information shared within closed session as well counselor okay thank you for that and then the other question is can we change our policies on to strengthen the opportunity or not to be lobbied as we go through a budget process and I would think this includes all our UBCs but do we need policies there to to firm up the that this will not happen again if that is the case so I’m I’m gonna say what I just said about the redacted staff have already answered that we can send a resolution to our boards but that we cannot actually direct their decision making on how they spend their money and I think before we get into a cycle of the same question being asked again I’m going to point out to colleagues that in addition to the municipal funding a number of our boards and commissions have revenue generating funding purchase the service agreements user fees whether that’s the upper tems river conservation authority whether that’s the transit commission whether that’s the police services board and there would be this resolution speaks to municipal funding there would be nothing in this resolution that would prohibit them from spending their revenue stream on a communications package either so we keep asking the same question and the staff answer has not changed we can ask we cannot enforce so I’m not going to entertain questions that the staff have answered already I am going to go one time more to miss daters beer to see if there’s anything she would like to add but I colleagues respectfully I’m not going to ask staff to keep answering the same question through you mr chair and I think it’s fair to say that the governance for organizations sits with the governance of the organization so that means that in as much as we can send this resolution forward with your direction to do so ultimately the governance requirements are I guess the government the activities of the agency takes sit with the board about agency and so that is that is the that’s the reality of how these are set you asked about whether the policy can be applied to them they have their own policies you could ask them to develop a policy that says not to do that you could direct us to ask them to do that but ultimately it’s their decision they are a standalone organization with their own board yeah I really appreciate that information I think as a member of a board and I think we’re all members of boards here to our ABCs we can really ask that question of our boards to take a look at our policies and to make sure that this doesn’t happen again so thank you Councilor Palosa thank you I appreciate the sentiment of where this is coming from realizing that a lot of the ABCs has a member council on it but not all like the London Arts Council and Eldon House and so forth and I’ve just been Googling the difference of like what’s the difference of advocacy versus lobbying direct lobbying grassroots lobbying I think there’s a lot of gray area there and to the deputy mayor’s point that they paid for it but to find what pot of money paid for it earned revenue donations council money and I know that a lot of people’s comments tonight have seemed to focus around the London police but LTC had ad space on their transit that they for went revenue from and had ads up of come talk to us lobbyists other organizations put time and effort into mobilizing their contact list that they garnered for just general contact information that I’m sure people when they signed up wasn’t expecting to get go lobby city council and that would have taken staff time away from frontline services that council very well might have funded and thought it was going there instead so I was generally equally crispy across the board at some of just seeing the the ways things were done really there is ways to engage us there is public participation meetings um to just use those ways for realizing London doesn’t have a lobbyists registry that when they’re engaging with us that it’s public and we know who’s coming and who’s paid for it I think is fair questions and that’s things for us to take back to those ABCs that we serve on and drive those questions through a governance model there in our space so I cannot support this tonight but we’ll be doing work on ABC’s I serve on thank you thank you Councillor Palosa Councillor Lehman next thank you I’m gonna follow up kind up on that train of thought um communication in an organization is just as important as other departments human resources legal um you know business uh general business uh cons consultation etc and outside firms are brought in basically for two reasons one is there’s no expertise in house or two um it’s a very project driven specific thing that we’re after um that at the end of the day it’s more efficient to just bring in an outside organization uh to either bring in the skill set or to bring in because regular staff don’t have the time we’re lobbied or have advocacy as uh as a budget chair mentioned all the time when during the budget process I heard from all our ABCs who either was from management uh or as from board members and you know what I appreciate that uh that that’s an important part of the process is because it allows me to have dialogue and learn information that I might not see uh have I not had that contact context um and we got to remember here where we do it ourselves um we’re about in our city council budget to hire outside people to uh help us with our communication so be careful what you wish for here folks you know we have we can’t do everything ourselves um neither can all the boards many are volunteer boards there’s only so much time and there’s only so much expertise um do you want to go out and have you know the library board have to hire a full-time communications consultant the city is big as it is uh used communications consultant uh just recently to explain our housing strategy we use it when we’re hiring people to help us on the HR front um outside industries are important and uh so is advocacy and you can call it lobbying lobbying has this bad connotation somehow we’re tricked tricked into supporting something that there’s smoke and mirrors that uh communications firm is using to somehow um to bottle you into a certain decision well come on folks we’re smarter than that it’s um uh we use it to get information uh that we need uh to properly make a decision process uh through budget processes and through other times when we vote and other things uh in our job so I do not want to put those handcuffs on our boards and commissions going forward because I need to continue to have them uh reach out to me in a professional way they need some uh help in designing whatever it is uh some communication devices or talking points or what have you um by all means go ahead if you don’t have the expertise in house nor if no one on your board has a time where the expertise to uh to do it so I will not be supporting this thank you counselor layman looking for any other speakers counselor Stevenson thank you I’m just going to quickly say I’m not going to support this I I feel as though it’s it seems like this letter is just another way to continue to say the same things that certain counselors have been saying about a certain board and um you know there’s false assumptions in here even the way it’s worded it says uh that people be that we’re going to send this to our boards and commissions saying they’d be directed to work counselor Stevenson hold on please counselor Robin thank you being one of the movers of the motion one of the writers of the letter I’d like the uh I’d like the counselor to consider retracting her statement this wasn’t an effort to say the same things from two counselors okay I said it seemed to that way so she did say it seems um she didn’t say she didn’t say it was she did refer to some I think you said false assumptions and I’m sorry if I misheard that but um if that is the case I think that’s a different point of order because I think that that’s um they’re working on the information that they have um and if you feel that there’s an assumption that’s incorrect I think you should identify that a specific assumption may not reflect that um counselor ramen I think it’s okay for her to say that it seems to her that it feels that way but if you have want to expand on why you’re raising your point of order because there was multiple things in that sentence or those couple sentences there that so I’m gonna go back to you to just give you an opportunity to explain a little further what you’re asking to be changed in terms of how this is being addressed thank you it was the inference to me of assumptions being made around when accusations around false assumptions being made I think that the letter was clear in the intent for counsel to have a discussion here not individual counselors bringing forward something out of any personal priorities or personal feelings on the matter okay thank you for clarifying that and I I will say counselor Stevenson I would agree that it wouldn’t be appropriate to infer personal feelings from a counselor on in terms of why they brought this forward so I would ask you to phrase that in a different way please okay thank you I was more going from the conversation that we’ve had here this evening but it does this is a motion that says it’s going to our boards agent all agencies boards and commissions that they be directed to work in good faith in their interactions with the city I personally don’t need to say that to our boards and agencies and commissions I believe that they do work in good faith in terms of the way they interact with us and so yeah based on that I’m not going to be supporting this thank you other speakers Councillor Rhonda thank you and through you I appreciate the opportunity to have this dialogue tonight and one of the things I considered when I saw this article come forward was what if one of our other agencies boards and commissions had come forward with their request having used a hundred and four thousand dollars from their budget to be able to persuade members of council and the public as has been stated to support their budget business case and so for me the challenge was the inequity in the ability to use funds as well as the use of funds so although all of our organization agencies law boards and commissions are coming to us separately with different asks it’s to me the amount each of them have communications teams internal to them using internal staff and resources and and the supports they have I can understand it feels like almost somewhat of a more equal footing but when we start to entertain the use of outside firms for this purpose it does not level the playing field and so this is part of the challenge and with writing this I you know I read the comments in the media and and I support members of the police service board who said you know there wasn’t anything clearly stating that that this couldn’t be done so I think by setting a tone in a direction we’re saying going forward this is how we appreciate to be communicated to and I think that’s okay especially in light of again you know we’re facing tough budget discussions as we were the last time in this update and further updates so the opportunity to have a discussion where we don’t feel that pressure and going forward into the next multi-year budget we’re setting the tone for how these conversations should go forward and I think that that’s helpful it’s constructive it’s what I heard residents want to want to see ultimately in some ways it wouldn’t even have mattered the amount because residents are really concerned with how we’re spending every dollar right now and so I do feel that this is an opportunity again to level set and to say this is where we see things going as we move forward and this is the expectation and if we don’t set those expectations if we don’t bring these conversations back to our agencies boards and commissions then I do think that that perhaps we’re not fully hearing what residents are saying to us or at least sorry in the communication I received what residents are saying to me which is that they want to see their their dollars used in a way that’s responsible and provide the services of which that money was intended. Thank you Councilor ramen I’m going to ask you to take the chair one more time and I’m going to speak to this one and then we’ll see if there’s anyone else but at the moment I don’t have anyone on the speaker’s list so I’ll leave that to you to keep an eye for.

Thank you go ahead. So I too I’m not going to support this and I don’t want to project on either counselor or their intent I’m simply going to share how I feel which to me is that this is really a emotion that maybe feels good maybe has some virtue signaling to it from my perspective but actually doesn’t accomplish anything and I look at our our the diversity of our boards and commissions to begin with I mentioned in terms of the revenue generators but Upper Thames London Public Library London Police Services and Middlesex London Health Unit just right off the top of my list all have their own provincial acts involved in their existence they don’t exist just because we as a council decided to make one our BIA’s yes they get a transfer from us but the members pay the levy and I’m not going to tell BIA members who are paying for their levy through their businesses that they shouldn’t be allowed to create a communications package to lobbyists not just on the budget but on anything that they want to bring forward we just talked at planning committee last cycle about the Argal community improvement for Dundas Street they they’ve been doing outreach with businesses on that I’m not going to tell them they can’t spend money on that I know the letter of reference is navigator you know navigator does work for the safe consumption sites across Ontario too because they’re a legitimate communications firm whether you like them or not there are communications firm Councillor Lehman reference we’ve hired SageCom to advertise our whole of community response so this is a very broad motion that actually has no teeth at the end of the day because we cannot direct in many cases some of these boards and commissions we should not direct and I’m going to say you know very bluntly I never met with navigator they didn’t lobby me they may have provided communication packages to go out and meet with the public for police services representatives but they didn’t meet with me and I wasn’t influenced by that I was influenced by the fact that I sat down with our chief of police just like I sat down with our CEO and Mr. McCall from the London Public Library Board just like I sat down with Mr. Collier from the London Transit Commission I met with folks from multiple boards and commissions leading up to the budget to hear from them about their budget pitches because I think that’s my job as a counselor to listen to those representatives from those boards you know I personally did not find the LTC for going ad revenue and putting ads on their buses to be particularly tasteful but they did it London police don’t have the ability to put posters on the side of their police cars while they’re driving around they have to take a different approach to how they’re reaching out to us they don’t have 15 branches across the city like the London Public Library does to put up information flyers that people can read on the bulletin boards so again they had to take a different approach our boards and commissions do different things and they have different jobs and they have different roles but ultimately they’re overseen by their own board of governors our board of directors and we’ve put those people there and I think we’ve put some pretty smart people on quite a number of those boards and I don’t agree with them on everything they do this in fact there’s members of some boards I’ve never agreed with on an issue but we still put them there for a reason because they’re dedicated their community they’re smart they’re compassionate and they’re trying to do the best for London just like we are here so I’m not going to support this this to me is is just one of those ones and I and I got to say to add one other thing I’ve heard many people from the community counselors are feeling they’re being communicated with and and I just want to say my own experience is quite the opposite it’s all the same players that I’ve heard from in every budget cycle since the day I arrived at City Hall who are for lack of a better label defund the police advocates it’s the same people and I hear from them every year don’t support the police budget and it’s been no different this year I haven’t heard from a lot of other people and the few residents that did bother to ask do think it’s better to hire communications firm to do a project and be done with it and move on then to have a full time salaried staff person at you know 150 plus a year when you throw in benefits and pension and all that stuff then it is to do a contract and then let the professionals move on to a different contract so I’ve had those discussions with my residents I think that they’ve been satisfied by those and so that’s why I won’t be supporting this thank you I will return the chair to you with Mayor Morgan on the list and I’ll go to Mayor Morgan then thank you so first off to the counselors who brought forward the the letter I want to say thanks I I heard Council Raman say wanted to spark a discussion on this topic and I think that’s that’s a healthy thing to do in council chambers on the actual some of the commentary that’s been made and on the actual motion part of the the challenge that I have with some of the wording in the motion is prohibiting lobby efforts or communication materials that solicit engagement with the municipal council yeah I actually want lots of engagement with the municipal council particularly from the budget process and whether that’s through ads that’s an organization wants to purchase or whether that’s through utilizing your network to have people show up in the gallery to say we want you to speak on our issue whether that’s you know the arts council or the library or the grand theater or the police board or the transit commission or anybody else who had an active campaign to try to convince us on why there were merits to their budget I think that’s a great thing and and and all that that can be defined as lobbying but we get lobbied every day and everything in fact you’re everybody sending me out to go lobby the provincial government lobbying happens every day right so what I want to see is if we have a desire to be communicated with in a certain way like if we want to say to the boards and commissions hey it’s our preference not for you to go out and get all your your members to mass email us like come before us as a board or a board share and and share directly with us if that’s what we desire in in a budget process you know let’s just tell them that and and say you know come before us and let’s have a conversation about about your budget I think you know sending something like this out now to all the boards and commissions at the start of this budget process I want to tell you from my engagements with the boards and commissions all of the ones that I’ve engaged with I feel like we’re in a very collaborative spot right now where people are trying to execute on councils strategic plan on the envelopes outlined in the multi-year budget and and are looking to listen to us about about our our tax pressures which is why you saw multiple boards including two of the ones that were referenced today as us having a challenge with how they spent money returning sums that were far greater than what they spent with the the transit commission and the and the police you know everybody feels like they’re working on the same page on the police I’ll mention specifically we just had a delegation at the board from deputy mary lewis and councilor plosa which felt super collaborative and the board fully embraced what they were sent on behalf of municipal council to have us look into on reserve funds said for sure we’ll take a look into that and have our staff report back on adjustments to those targets you know I think we’re in a pretty collaborative place with our boards and commissions right now and so I worry about the expansiveness of this motion to say you know I actually want people to solicit I actually want them to go and have them encourage people to solicit engagement with us I actually want to know what people are thinking leading into a budget process and I and I have no problem with them using their networks or their organizations or the their connections or their board members or their board members friends to come out and say we think that this is an important service and you should invest in it and and that’s probably going to happen through this budget process probably going to have a ppm where agencies boards and commissions if they think that we’re going to make a cut to something that they have or they think that there’s something else that we should be doing beyond what’s in there you know they’re probably going to come and actively engage with us through the process so I you know having listened to the discussion I think there has been great merit in discussion I think all of the boards and all of the leadership in them have will have heard and see the the news stories on this and we’ll have gotten the message that we’re looking to be communicated with in a slightly different way than maybe has been in the past and I think that they’re they’re certainly respecting that and I think operating that way in this budget process but there’s no way I want to send the signal that I don’t want them to have their supporters come out and tell us that we should be supporting their organizations or their budgets and and all of that you know for me is internalized into what decisions we need to make as a council in in conjunction with our staff’s advice and frankly the opinions of all of you being mayor of the city your opinions and all of your words and what you’re hearing from your constituents directly you know I actually take that input as well into the decision-making that that I need to make when I cast votes in this chamber and in this process so so I don’t I don’t think I’m going to support the the motion because of the last piece of it but I certainly value the discussion that that was said here today and I and I just wanted to to emphasize that I feel like we’re in a really good place with a number of our boards and commissions right now entering this annual budget update to carve out a very collaborative process and executing on all the things that lenders need over the next little while and and I look forward to the process ahead.

Thank you worship. Councilor Frank. Thank you yes and just reading the tea leaves I don’t think this will pass so I just wanted to share some of my final thoughts in general as a counselor just towards agencies boards and commissions I’m also looking to be communicated with but please don’t spend a hundred thousand dollars to do it and use your existing resources thank you that was well within the time you had left counselor thank you any other speakers before we call the vote seeing none then I’m gonna ask the clerk to open the vote. Seeing the vote motion fails 5 to 10.

Thank you colleagues moving on our next item 4.4 is the 10th report of the diversity inclusion and anti-oppression community advisory committee I’m going to look to see if there is a mover and seconder for the recommendations in the report this is the recommendations for the 2024 awards councilor layman’s moving seconded by councilor cutty and we’ll look for any discussion I see none so we will ask the clerk to open the vote. Closing the vote motion carried 15 to 0. You colleagues moving on item 4.5 is the appointment preferences submitted by council members for the standing committees for the upcoming year as I indicated in my communication to all of council through the clerk’s office yesterday the mayor has as strong mayor powers do appointed the chairs and vice chairs of the standing committees so I will just remind colleagues planning an environment committee is uh councilor layman will chair I will be the vice chair infrastructure and corporate services committee this is our new committee uh that arose out of a committee realignment councilor ramen will be the chair councilor frank has been appointed the vice chair and at community and protective services uh councilor ferrera has been reappointed as the chair and councilor mccallister has been appointed as the vice chair that means each of the three standing committees uh has three spots open for members of council in your package there was the preferred list of appointments uh based on the rankings that you all submitted individually to the clerk’s office so with that uh we need to move on to the planning committee first as was outlined in your package and uh we had uh we have three slots available uh we had we have four councilors who had expressed interest in this as their first preference that is councilor hillier putty stevenson and polosa um i’m going to start by looking to see if you all wish to leave your name in to remain standing for that committee i’m seeing nods uh from everyone and thumbs up and a nod from councilor hillier online uh so we do have to have a vote on this there are four candidates and there are three spots available so councilor polosa are we allowed to make a little bit of a pitch of why i was just about to say uh before we go to the vote any councilor and i will come to you next councilor trussow any councilor who wishes to uh have uh opportunity to briefly express why they want to be on the committee um we’ll be able to do so uh but i did have a point of order from councilor trussow so i will go to him and then i will look to any of the four members who have put their name forward uh to see if they wish to speak councilor trussow on your point of order um are we not permitted to vote for a counselor who expressed the committee preferences their second choice so it’s been our past practice councilor that when there are counselors who ranked the committee lower and there are already enough people who have ranked at first uh that we have gone with the first place rankings however if another counselor wishes to put their name forward um now is the time to indicate that councilor hillier did you have a question i was just gonna make my pitch okay well uh we are at pitch point for planning committee so we will start with you councilor hillier thank you i’m hoping my colleagues will see fit to put me back on planning i believe my education in the past is related to this and my years on planning gives me the history for the addresses we’re all concerned with every day thank you thank you councilor hillier looking for other counselors who wish to speak to their desire to serve on planning committee councilor stevenson thank you i’ll make mine quick as well i did complete the amo planning courses the beginner and the advanced i do have a lot of developments coming in my ward in old east village along oxford street uh and along hybrid and i would like the opportunity to be on planning this year so i am asking for your support anyone else councilor palosa thank you mr chair um i find myself at the meetings now anyways um as there are so many developments coming to south london which is wonderful so looking to understand the process uh a little bit more as we go through it i’ll also note that after six years on council i’ve been on everything else and have chaired or vice-chaired basically everything else so uh why not get out and enjoy peck you know it’s wonderfulness so i would really like your support is it something that would finish helping run out my knowledge on council thank you councilor palosa and we will finish with councilor cutty thank you chair and through you i’ve attended most of the planning um committees uh this this year um and i think i’ve learned a great deal from them um and i think i could bring my experience as a business person to uh to committee so thank you thank you and hearing mr wallace’s laugh in the gallery if anyone wants to withdraw their name now is the time otherwise we are going to get the clerk to open the vote for planning committee okay i’m going to ask the clerk to open the vote but the votes concluded sorry the elections concluded with councilor palosa 12 votes or cutty 14 votes councilor halyard ten votes and uh counselor stevenson eight votes putting forward uh three names for appointment to planning an environment committee will be councilor palosa cutty and halyard and unless colleagues wish to deal with this um individually my intent is to look for a motion to approve all of the appointments of the committees at the end in one slate um moving on the next committee is the infrastructure and corporate services committee i’m sure this will be a fun year because this is a new committee uh and we have counselor ramen as the chair counselor frank is the vice chair and we had three other counselors popkins pribble and van mierbergen express this committee as their first choice so unless another counselor wants to put their name forward i would just uh suggest that those three complete are slate and we do not need to have an election and again we’ll just move those at the end uh for all three committees seeing no objections that will be our our infrastructure and corporate services committee and then our final committee is community and protective services committee counselor ferrera is the chair counselor mccallister is the vice chair counselor trussow has indicated this would be his first preference counselor pribble has indicated this would be his second preference uh i would note the counselor pribble that will mean you’d be sitting on two committees uh and i note the counselor stevenson uh you had this as your third but i know you don’t have committee yet so i’m gonna look first to you to see if you want to put your name forward uh for corporate or community and protective services do i have an option not to because i’m not on another standing committee other than audit uh well um you you i suppose any counselor could choose not to put their name forward to use not to you then counselor pribble you would be serving on two committees are you it will be my pleasure to serve for this committee and half and land of londoners thank you okay so we have uh one vacancy still on this committee we can’t move forward without a full slate so it’ll be a long night while we wait until somebody puts their name forward counselor palosa uh procedurally can we just leave that open for colleagues could to consider and put their name forward for council realizing they might need to check their schedule um and check meeting times as we move forward clerk needs to reference so the council policies and procedure bylaw says committee shall be five so we do not have a committee until we have a fifth member mr chair councilor palosa if this is procedurally where we’re at is it in order to remove i guess i can’t do referral and we deal with it at council instead of the next spbc i appreciate the stalemate and us holding out but can i um can i ask you to hold that thought the clerks looking up something else so the committee is not recessed or adjourned so i’m going to ask people to maintain decorum and order please appreciate your patience while the clerks reviewed several different subsections uh what i’m going to um share is that we can improve the two committees we’ve constituted tonight we can refer the uh constitution of the community and protective services committee to council however without five members that committee will not meet again until that vacancy is filled or until under strong mayor powers the mayor dissolves the committee and assigns his tasks to the existing committees so um there are potentially a couple of paths here from a clerking perspective but um until there are under the current composition until there are five members there is no community and protective services committee so the business of that committee would not move forward you can refer however the decision tonight to council and we can leave that decision point into council so uh i’m in your hands councilor ramen thank you if we were to move forward with that would it be possible to get more information because i can’t remember from our committee selection process so far to date whether or not um everywhere everybody sat so far because part of this is there’s the rotation yes so um but there’s also no obligation for councilors to rotate um we’re looking through the policies so um well there’s certainly more information there’s time for people to consider um if you refer this to council um individual councilors can ask questions of staff um but really the only way forward tonight is to approve the two committees that have been constituted and refer the third to council at this point in time councilor trussow well um thank you very much um i thought i would i thought i was going to have to campaign to get back when the committee because the first time i was very competitive um i really want to be on this committee um i want i want to just make the statement that we have a quorum of the committee even with the missing members and if there’s uh if there’s really a technical reason why we can’t continue meeting even though we have a quorum then i guess i would ask would it be proper for the for the mayor to just exercise his powers and say notwithstanding that this quorum will will will carry on until such time as um the the committee can be done in focus i don’t really think it’s a great idea to suspend this committee given some of the things that we have coming up bear bear with me councilor the clerks are just looking up something else um and i should say that the the current community and protective services committee does sit one more time before the end of this calendar year so there is one more meeting scheduled for the existing committee um again please be patient though additional information first of all uh councilor stevenson you mentioned audit committee um i’m going to read to you from the council procedure and policy by a lot while not to you to all of council standing committees are defined as uh one or more of the following committee’s community and protective services planning environment committee strategic priorities and policy committee and the infrastructure and corporate services committee audit committee is not defined as a standing committee um yes sppc is um it also under section 24.3 of the procedure bylaw says service every member shall serve on standing committees such that all positions are filled so we have some interpretations of the bylaw here that need to be given some more thought and consideration so uh i’m going to suggest at this time that unless colleagues want to sit here until midnight and have another motion to extend that we either well that the only option forward right now is to approve the two slates that have been approved and refer community and protective services committee to council uh for further discussion and councilor plosa you’re prepared to move that is there a seconder for that yes mr chair councilor cuddy um and as i mentioned and in conversation with the clerk the mayor also has the ability to change the composition of committees under strong mayor powers and there will be some further uh if necessary further discussion with the mayor about what those strong mayor powers entail for how he composes committees so we have a moved and seconded motion to approve the two slates for planning and environment and for infrastructure and corporate services committees and uh that motion is going to be an e-scribe it also includes the referral of the community and protective services committee member appointments to the november 5th meeting of municipal council so we’ll get that in e-scribe and we’ll open that vote motion carries 15 to 0 thank you colleagues moving on to item five which is deferred matters and additional business uh there is a matter of additional business uh counselor cuddy and i communicated uh to colleagues uh that because of the restructuring of the uh standing committees uh that the previous calendar that was circulated uh needs to be updated uh as colleagues will recall during the discussion on the changing of the standing committees um one of the hoped for outcomes would be that the clerks could incorporate a couple of additional meeting free constituency weeks um so in respect to that and the fact that the calendar needs to be changed anyway the clerks need some direction the motion is in e-scribe um this will allow them to bring forward a uh calendar to us i believe um in the next cycle of s ppc i’m just going to check with clerks for to confirm uh yes so one cycle from now we’ll have the draft calendar back to for council’s approval uh for any alterations um so that was all included in the communication uh since i’m chairing councilor cuddy are you willing to move that okay so that’s been moved and i need a seconder seconded by councilor palosa uh looking for any discussion on this councilor hopkins uh yes this is my first time reading this so forgive me but i cut question a constituency week what is that i’m just not that familiar with it uh it’s simply the term that uh has been used uh during the discussion to refer to a week that no standing committees are scheduled so that colleagues can focus on their constituency work or whatever else that they may have to do and if uh extra meetings are needed with this week be excluded uh we’ll go to the clerks for a response on that i think that’s probably the answer is not necessarily if an emergency meeting needed to be called but go to the clerks for confirmation through the chair that’s correct if there was an emergency meeting we we might look at that week councilor hopkins you’re good with that any other discussion seeing none uh then i will ask clerk to open the vote on that housing the vote motion carries 15 to 0 thank you colleagues we now have one item uh to deal with in confidential session uh so we will uh ask our guests in the gallery to leave we will have our staff who are not part of the in-camera discussion to leave uh when we return to the public session there will just be a brief report out and then uh we will look for a motion to adjourn so there’s nothing exciting to stick around and come back for when we come out a closed session so looking for a motion to go in closed session councilor palosa and councilor ferreira and we’ll get the clerk to open the vote on that in just a moment in favor i logged out closing the vote motion carries 15 to 0 thanks welcome back to open session i will turn to vice chair ramen to report out thank you i’m happy to report that progress was made for the items we went in camera for thank you vice chair ramen that completes our agenda this evening i am looking for a motion to adjourn does anyone want to adjourn go councilor frank and seconded by councilor trussow all those in favor by hand motion carries two staff for your patience uh with us tonight as we work through some fairly complicated agenda items.