Open Council

8th Meeting of the Infrastructure and Corporate Services Committee

Open Council

8th Meeting of the Infrastructure and Corporate Services Committee

April 30, 2025, at 1:00 PM

Original link

The meeting is called to order at 1:02 PM.

1.   Disclosures of Pecuniary Interest

That it BE NOTED that no pecuniary interests were disclosed.

2.   Consent

Moved by P. Van Meerbergen

Seconded by A. Hopkins

That Consent Items 2.1 to 2.9 BE APPROVED with the exception of items 2.2, 2.4, 2.5, and 2.7.

Motion Passed (5 to 0)

2.1   1st Report of the County City Liaison Committee

2025-04-04 CCLC Report 1

Moved by P. Van Meerbergen

Seconded by A. Hopkins

That the following actions be taken with respect to the 1st Report of the County/City Liaison Committee from its meeting held on April 4, 2025:

a)   the following actions be taken with respect to Public Health Funding:

i)   that the County/City Liaison Committee members recommend to their respective Councils that the joint advocacy approach to shared costs BE CONTINUED; and

ii)   that the verbal update from Deputy Warden A. DeViet regarding the Public Health Funding and the communication dated January 21, 2025 from the Middlesex-London Health Unit BE RECEIVED;

b)   clauses 1.1, 4.1, 4.2, 4.3, 4.5 and 4.6 BE RECEIVED.

Motion Passed

2.3   Court Security and Prisoner Transportation Program Transfer Payment Agreement

2025-04-30 Staff Report - Court Security and Prisoner Transportation

Moved by P. Van Meerbergen

Seconded by A. Hopkins

That on the recommendation of the Deputy City Manager, Finance Supports, the proposed by-law, as appended to the staff report dated April 30, 3025 as Appendix “A” BE INTRODUCED at the Municipal Council meeting to be held on May 13, 2025 to:

a)    approve the Ontario Transfer Payment Agreement between His Majesty the King in right of Ontario as represented by the Solicitor General and The Corporation of the City of London for the provision of funding for the Court Security and Prisoner Transportation Program (“Agreement”) attached as Schedule “1” to the staff report dated April 30, 2025;

b)    authorize the Mayor and Clerk to execute the Agreement;

c)    authorize the Deputy City Manager, Finance Supports to approve any future amending agreements between His Majesty the King in Right of Ontario as represented by the Solicitor General and The Corporation of the City of London with respect to the Court Security and Prisoner Transportation Program (“CSPT”);

d)    authorize the Mayor and the City Clerk to execute any future amending agreements between His Majesty the King in Right of Ontario as represented by the Solicitor General and The Corporation of the City of London with respect to the Court Security and Prisoner Transportation Program (“CSPT”) approved by the Deputy City Manager, Finance Supports; and

e)    authorize the Deputy City Manager, Finance Supports (or designate) to execute any reports required by the province under the Agreement.

Motion Passed

2.6   Employee Attendance 2024

2025-04-30 Staff Report - Employee Attendance Report 2024

Moved by P. Van Meerbergen

Seconded by A. Hopkins

That, on the recommendation of the Deputy City Manager, Enterprise Supports, the report with respect to the Employee Attendance 2024 BE RECEIVED for information purposes.

Motion Passed

2.8   Amendments to the Waste Discharge By-law WM-16 and the Wastewater and Stormwater By-law WM-28

2025-04-30 Staff Report - Amendments to the Waste Discharge

Moved by P. Van Meerbergen

Seconded by A. Hopkins

That, on the recommendation of the Deputy City Manager, Environment and Infrastructure, the following actions be taken:

a)    the proposed amending by-law, appended to the staff report dated April 30, 2025 as Appendix ‘A’, BE INTRODUCED at the Municipal Council meeting to be held on May 13, 2025 for the purpose of amending the Waste Discharge By-Law (WM-16); and

b)    the proposed amending by-law, appended to the staff report dated April 30, 2025 as Appendix ‘B’ BE INTRODUCED at the Municipal Council meeting to be held on May 13, 2025 for the purpose of amending the Wastewater and Stormwater By-law (WM-28).

Motion Passed

2.9   Springbank Dam Contract Amendment

2025-04-30 Staff Report - Springbank Dam Contract Amendment

Moved by P. Van Meerbergen

Seconded by A. Hopkins

That on the recommendation of Deputy City Manager, Environment and Infrastructure, the following actions be taken with respect to the construction tender and consulting engineer fees associated with the Springbank Dam Decommissioning project:

a)    Springbank Dam Decommissioning and Bank Restoration Project (RFT-2024-070) construction contract value with 2220742 Ontario Ltd. o/a Bronte Construction BE INCREASED by $1,649,048.54, including contingency, for a total contract value of $5,999,910.10 (excluding HST) in accordance with Section 20.3 (e) of the Procurement of Goods and Services Policy;

b)    the contract administration fees for Stantec Consulting Ltd. BE INCREASED in accordance with the estimate on file, at an upset limit of $221,458, including 10% contingency, excluding HST, from $1,056,385.43 to a total upset limit of $1,277,843.43 in accordance with Section 15.2 (g) of the Procurement of Goods and Services Policy;

c)    the post-construction monitoring fees related to the mussel relocation BE AWARDED to Stantec Consulting Ltd. in accordance with the estimate on file, at an upset limit of $113,600, including 10% contingency, excluding HST, in accordance with Section 15.2 (g) of the Procurement of Goods and Services Policy;

d)    the financing for this project BE APPROVED as set out in the Sources of Financing Report as appended to the staff report dated April 30, 2025 as Appendix ‘A’;

e)    the Civic Administration BE AUTHORIZED to undertake all the administrative acts that are necessary in connection with this project;

f)     the approval given, herein, BE CONDITIONAL upon the Corporation entering into a formal contract; and

g)    the Mayor and the City Clerk BE AUTHORIZED to execute any contract or other documents, if required, to give effect to these recommendations.

Motion Passed

2.2   Commemorative Naming of Streets and City Assets - Status Update

2025-04-30 Staff Report - Commemorative Naming of Streets

That the following actions be taken with respect to the report on Commemorative Naming of Streets and City Assets – Status Update:

a)    the report BE RECEIVED for information;

b)    the Civic Administration BE DIRECTED to apply the Ontario Human Rights Commission’s “Ontario Human Rights Based Approach Framework” (as appended to the staff report dated April 30, 2025 as Appendix ‘B’) for commemorative naming requests for new Streets and City Assets;

c)    the Civic Administration BE DIRECTED to initiate public engagement with the impacted neighbourhood to rename the (former) Paul Haggis Park and (former) Trooper Mark Wilson Park and;

d)    the Civic Administration BE DIRECTED to rename Trooper Wilson Place to Peacekeeper Place.

Additional Votes:

Moved by J. Pribil

Seconded by C. Rahman

That the following actions be taken with respect to the report on Commemorative Naming of Streets and City Assets – Status Update:

a)    the report BE RECEIVED for information;

b)    the Civic Administration BE DIRECTED to apply the Ontario Human Rights Commission’s “Ontario Human Rights Based Approach Framework” (as appended to the staff report dated April 30, 2025 as Appendix ‘B’) for commemorative naming requests for new Streets and City Assets; and

c)    the Civic Administration BE DIRECTED to initiate public engagement with the impacted neighbourhood to rename the (former) Paul Haggis Park and (former) Trooper Mark Wilson Park and Trooper Wilson Place.

Moved by Mayor J. Morgan

Seconded by P. Van Meerbergen

That the motion be amended to add a new part d) and amend part c) to read as follows:

c)    the Civic Administration BE DIRECTED to initiate public engagement with the impacted neighbourhood to rename the (former) Paul Haggis Park and (former) Trooper Mark Wilson Park and;

d)    the Civic Administration BE DIRECTED to rename Trooper Wilson Place to Peacekeeper Place.

Motion Passed (4 to 1)

Moved by J. Pribil

Seconded by C. Rahman

That the following actions be taken with respect to the report on Commemorative Naming of Streets and City Assets – Status Update:

a)    the report BE RECEIVED for information;

b)    the Civic Administration BE DIRECTED to apply the Ontario Human Rights Commission’s “Ontario Human Rights Based Approach Framework” (as appended to the staff report dated April 30, 2025 as Appendix ‘B’) for commemorative naming requests for new Streets and City Assets;

Motion Passed (5 to 0)

Moved by J. Pribil

Seconded by C. Rahman

That the following actions be taken with respect to the report on Commemorative Naming of Streets and City Assets – Status Update:

c)    the Civic Administration BE DIRECTED to initiate public engagement with the impacted neighbourhood to rename the (former) Paul Haggis Park and (former) Trooper Mark Wilson Park and;

Motion Passed (5 to 0)

Moved by J. Pribil

Seconded by C. Rahman

That the following actions be taken with respect to the report on Commemorative Naming of Streets and City Assets – Status Update:

d)    the Civic Administration BE DIRECTED to rename Trooper Wilson Place to Peacekeeper Place.

Motion Passed (4 to 1)

2.4   2024 Year-End Operating Budget Monitoring Report

2025-04-30 Staff Report - 2024 Year-End Operating Budget

Moved by Mayor J. Morgan

Seconded by P. Van Meerbergen

That, on the recommendation of the Deputy City Manager, Finance Supports, the following actions be taken with respect to the 2024 Year-End Operating Budget Monitoring Report:

a)    the 2024 Operating Budget Year-End Monitoring Report for the Property Tax Supported Budget, Water Budget, and Wastewater and Treatment Budget BE RECEIVED for information. An overview of the corporate positions are outlined below:

i)    Property Tax Supported Budget surplus of $58.8 million;

ii)    Water Rate Supported Budget surplus of $0.7 million; and

iii)   Wastewater and Treatment Rate Supported Budget balanced at year-end after drawing $37 thousand from the Wastewater Budget Contingency Reserve;

iv)   Notwithstanding the Surplus/Deficit Policy, Civic Administration BE DIRECTED to allocate the Property Tax Supported Budget surplus as follows:

  1.    $16.6 million to be retained in the Operating Budget Contingency Reserve in accordance with Surplus/Deficit Policy section 4.1.2 b) to be utilized to finance the 2024 cost of statutory development charges exemptions and discounts in excess of budget;

  2.    $25.3 million to be contributed to the Debt Substitution Reserve Fund in accordance with Surplus/Deficit Policy section 4.1.2 c) i) to reduce future debt issuance;

  3.    Remaining $16.9 million to be retained in the Operating Budget Contingency Reserve, to be applied evenly as tax levy mitigation in 2026 and 2027 through a budget amendment in the 2026 Budget Update.

it being noted that the Water, and Wastewater & Treatment Budget surplus will be allocated in accordance with the Council Approved Surplus/Deficit Policy;

b)    the request for RBC Place London to transfer $200,000 of their $217,644 Year-end Operational Surplus to their Reserves ($100,000 to the RBC Place Renewal Reserve Fund and $100,000 to the Operational Reserve) BE APPROVED; it being noted that the remaining $17,644 surplus will be retained as working capital by RBC Place London (see Appendix ‘B’, as appended to the staff report dated April 30, 2025, for the letter from RBC Place London);

it being noted that the reported year-end position is subject to completion of the 2024 financial statement audit;

it being further noted that the Infrastructure and Corporate Services Committee received a communication dated April 26, 2025 from C. Butler and a communication from Mayor J. Morgan and Deputy Mayor S. Lewis with respect to this matter.

Motion Passed (5 to 0)

2.5   2024 Year-End Capital Budget Monitoring Report

2025-04-30 Staff Report - 2024 Year-End Capital Budget

Moved by J. Pribil

Seconded by A. Hopkins

That, on the recommendation of the Deputy City Manager, Finance Supports, the following actions be taken with respect to the 2024 Year-End Capital Budget Monitoring Report:

a) the 2024 Year-End Capital Budget Monitoring Report BE RECEIVED for information; it being noted that the life-to-date capital budget represents $4.0 billion with $2.3 billion committed and $1.7 billion uncommitted; it being further noted that the City Treasurer, or designate, will undertake the housekeeping budget adjustments identified in the report, in accordance with the Multi-Year Budget Policy adopted by amending by-law No. CPOL.-45(c)-209;

b) the status updates of active 2021 life-to-date capital budgets (2021 and prior) having no future budget requests, as appended to the staff report dated April 30, 2025 as Appendix “B”, BE RECEIVED for information;

c) the following actions be taken with respect to the completed capital projects identified in Appendix “C”, and the budget adjustments in Appendix “D”, as appended to the staff report:

i) the capital projects included in Appendix “C”, with net surplus funding of $13.7 million, BE CLOSED;

ii) the capital funding identified in Appendix “D”, Table 1 and Table 3, with net surplus funding of $5.2 million, BE RELEASED;

iii) the Civic Administration BE AUTHORIZED to execute the required capital budget adjustments identified in Appendix “D”, Table 2, noting that $36.9 million of capital funding is deferred to 2028;

iv) the following actions be taken with respect to the funding associated with i) and ii), above:

Rate Supported

A) pay-as-you-go funding of $1.6 million BE TRANSFERRED to capital receipts;

B) authorized but unissued debt financing of $0.9 million BE RELEASED from the capital budget; 

C) uncommitted reserve fund drawdowns of $8.3 million BE RELEASED back into the reserve funds which originally funded the projects;

Non-Rate Supported

D) uncommitted reserve fund drawdowns of $7.7 million BE RELEASED back into the reserve funds which originally funded the projects; and

E) other net non-rate supported funding sources of $0.4 million BE ADJUSTED in order to facilitate project closings.

Motion Passed (4 to 0)

2.7   Delegation of Authority By-law Update

2025-04-30 Staff Report - Delegation of Authority

Moved by A. Hopkins

Seconded by P. Van Meerbergen

That, on the recommendation of the Deputy City Manager, Environment and Infrastructure, the proposed by-law, as appended to the staff report dated April 30, 2025 as Appendix ‘B’, BE INTRODUCED at the Municipal Council meeting to be held on May 13, 2025, to amend By-law A.-8386-153, being “A by-law to delegate the authority to bind The Corporation of the City of London in defined instances to identified positions within the Civic Administration”, to repeal and replace Schedule ‘A’ and to add the new Schedule ‘B’.

Motion Passed (4 to 0)

3.   Scheduled Items

None.

4.   Items for Direction

None.

5.   Deferred Matters/Additional Business

None.

6.   Confidential 

None.

7.   Adjournment

Moved by P. Van Meerbergen

Seconded by A. Hopkins

That the meeting BE ADJOURNED.

Motion Passed

The meeting adjourned at 3:48 PM.

Full Transcript

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

View full transcript (3 hours, 6 minutes)

[20:07] Good afternoon, everyone. I’m looking to call the eighth meaning of the Infrastructure and Corporate Services Committee to begin. It’s April 30th, and I want to thank everyone for joining us today in Council Chambers and online. The city of London is situated on the traditional lands of the Anishinaabak, the Haudenosaunee, the Lanapawik, and the Adawandran. We honor and respect the history, languages, and culture of the diverse indigenous people who call this territory home. The city of London is currently home to many First Nations Métis and Inuit today. As representatives of the people of the city of London, we are grateful to have the opportunity to work and live in this territory.

[20:45] So I want to start this today’s meeting. Just, there’s a lot of members of Council here. I won’t go through and name everyone. Many here in person and many online as well. Just tells you that we have quite a media agenda as well. So what I will look to do first is disclosures of pecuniary interest. OK, seeing none, I’ve been asked to pull items 2.2 from consent and 2.4.

[21:19] Are there any other items that members of the committee are looking to pull? Council approval? 2.5 and 2.7. Thank you. Thank you. OK, seeing no others, I will look to put items 2.1, 2.3, 2.6, 2.8, and 2.9. Forward for our discussion looking for a mover.

[21:54] Councilor Van Mirbergen, seconded by Councilor Hopkins, and looking for any discussion on those items. Councilor Hopkins, go ahead. Yes, thank you. I just have a couple comments on a few of the consent items. The first one is the Court Security and Prisoner Transportation Program Transfer Payment Agreement. I just want to make a comment. I know where a comment around the work that the province and AMO have undertaken the past couple years and the province taking on that increase and really want to acknowledge that work.

[22:45] We are a conduit of the transfer of money as a city. Madam Chair, maybe through you, a quick question about the risk to the city of London. There is a comment in the recommendation about indemnifying requires the city to indemnify the province as much as I just want to have a better understanding about any risk to the city. Mr. Murray, where would you like me to go to answer that question?

[23:19] Just to you, OK, Mr. Murray, go ahead. Thank you, and through you, Madam Chair. Yes, this is a bit of a unique agreement, as you have noted, Councillor, in the sense that we are effectively the conduit in this case. So we essentially receive the money from the province and then flow the money to the London Police Service. So ultimately, it is the police service who is responsible for administering this program, delivering these services. And we are strictly a provider of funding, essentially, to the police service.

[23:51] So it is a bit of a unique arrangement. And certainly, because of our lack of control, I guess you’d say, over how the services are delivered, we do typically note this risk does exist, given the lack of direct management over the services that we have. So we do note that in the report. I would not consider the risk to be significant or unusual. This is a pretty standard indemnification clause in most transfer payment agreements with the province as well.

[24:25] So it’s nothing unusual, but it is a bit of a unique arrangement that we have in this particular program. Thank you. Councillor? Yeah, thank you. And it’s always nice to know it’s not a big risk to the corporation and just wanted to make sure I understood the— just getting a better understanding of exactly what we’re doing here as the city. So moving on to the next item of consent, which is the Spring Bank Dam.

[24:57] That is, I guess, Councillor Lehman and I kind of share that dam. I wanted to— I’m OK with sharing it, but I do think it’s more in Ward 9 than Ward 8, but anyhow, I know it’s a big project and staff. And there is an increase to the work. I do want to make sure we have an understanding when we look at the increases to the work that needs to be done, that we are looking at the safety aspect.

[25:36] And maybe through you, Madam Chair, again, going to staff if we can have a further explanation why this deck is going to be removed and the reasons going forward as well on keeping that dam going. Thank you. I’ll go to Ms. Ramaloo, please, for your comments on perhaps not keeping it going, but your comments on where we go from here. Thank you. Thank you, through the chair.

[26:08] Yes, admittedly, I had hoped to never have to speak at committee about the Spring Bank Dam again, but here we are. The insured— so as we’ve been doing the construction work, we had initially had a cost of about $100,000 to do some repairs to the deck. The intent was that the concrete deck would stay in place at this time and be either repurposed in the future or removed with the final removal of the dam. So these were the two potential outcomes of the EA. However, as the contractor got on site, did additional inspection repair work, preparing for that repair work, we discovered it was going to be at least an additional $500,000 in repair work.

[26:47] And it’s expected that it would only last about five years. Now, in addition to the cost of the repairs itself, you would have the costs for mobilization, dewatering, et cetera. So it raises those costs to about $1 million to do repairs that will only last maybe about five years. We would also have to erect netting and so on underneath because of potential still-falling concrete, just because of the uncertainty of the integrity of it. So then what we did was we went back to the contractor and said, OK, if we’re going to spend that much money for something that’s not going to last that long, how much to remove the deck in its entirety at this point?

[27:25] And that’s the cost that you see before you today, that $1.6 million. This will ensure that the structure that is remaining in the river is safe for passersby, for those kayakers, for those using the river. It’s a popular spot for fishing. And we want to make sure that that’s safe, that there’s not netting that’s catching wildlife and so on. So we do think that this is the better solution. I’ll be at the more expensive solution, but it does get us also further towards that ultimate removal of the dam. Thank you, Councillor Fillewell. Yeah, I really appreciate that information.

[27:57] I know I’m going to have residents asking a little bit more about why we’re doing this and the reasons why and one thing. And it says in the recommendation, looking into the future of the infrastructure of the dam, that it will last 15 plus before we have to make further decisions as opposed to just temporarily keeping it going for the next five years. So appreciate the work the staff have done. It’s a major project. And thank you.

[28:31] Thank you. I’m looking to Councillor Pribble next. You had questions about the consent items? Yes, thank you. And my first one is 2.6 employee attendance. And when I look at the charts that we have in front of us, they’re kind of in line when I look at if I take out the pandemic years, they are pretty much in line. But when I look at by the group, there are quite a bit of differences among the 2, 4, 6 groups that we have. Is it the difference mainly between among these groups because of the number of employees, because of the risk in the job they are performing?

[29:12] Or how do we evaluate it? How do we learn or these potential groups learn from the best practices? Thank you. Thank you. So for item 2.6, I’ll go to Mr. Parity and any of your team to provide feedback. Through the chair, thank you. So you hit on the two main ones, both the size of that area, where the higher numbers are, and the risk of the job. And for the other questions that you have of how that’s balanced, I’ll turn over to our manager of health, safety, and wellness, Chris Goodall.

[29:53] Thank you, welcome, Mr. Goodall, please go ahead. Through the chair, could you please repeat the question? Councillor Pribble. First of all, we’re answered by or repeated by Mr. Parity. The only one is, how do we learn from the best practices among these different areas? Are there certain practices being shared? So we learn from the best. Or because if I look at them currently, these six categories, there are quite a bit differences between them.

[30:27] And I do realize one of them is the size. The second one is the risk of the job. But is there something potentially, how do we learn potentially that there are certain areas that might have better, higher success with certain things? So is there something we do kind of to learn from the best practices among these groups? Go ahead, Mr. Go. Thank you, through the chair. I would say that we belong to a number of groups and discuss these with other municipalities as well, to see what’s working well and what’s not, to try and improve things that way, as well as the information that we get through our insurance providers in WSIB.

[31:09] Councillor? OK, thank you, I have no more questions. My first one was actually the bigger one. I just want to verify that my understanding was correct, that the two biggest effects are risk of the job and also the number of the staff in each area. Thank you. Councillor, do you have questions on any other items on consent? No, the other ones, they were pulled out. Thank you. Thank you. OK, so on any of the other items here, questions or comments from members of the committee for visiting council?

[31:45] OK, Councillor Palazzo, go ahead. Thank you, Madam Chair. Question through you to staff, following up on the Spring Bank Dam questions, that Councillor Hoppe started in regards to Part C for the relocation of the monitoring post-work for the muscles. I need to see that a firm, Stantak consulting, is recommended. Looking to see— I’m not all meant. I’m not familiar with the legislation. Is there any opportunity for post-secondary education institutes to do part of this work or do it? Just recognizing there’s great environmental programs in London with universities.

[32:21] Is there an opportunity for them to do the work on that behalf instead, or is there an opportunity for them to even get an experience doing field work, watching this work being done? I’ll go to Ms. Ramaloo, go ahead. Yes, thank you through the chair. So yes, recognizing, yes, our post-secondary facilities that have great research, however, there is in-water work involved in this work. So there are safety components, as well as the specialization. The identification of some of these species is very, very specialized. So there is often a very select few who can actually do the work.

[32:55] Councillor? Thank you. Just realizing that it’s a great project, hopefully. I can’t even say once in a council term, because it goes on multiple terms. But just great opportunity for in-field work, or even for people to follow the case study of what’s happening. Thank you. Thank you. OK. Any others on items in front of us? Seeing none, seeing no one online, I will look to close in the vote. Motion carries.

[33:34] 5 to 0. Thank you. We have no scheduled items. We’ll move to items for direction, and we’ll go in order of those items that were pulled. So we’ll look to item 2.2 first for the commemorative naming of streets and city assets status update. I’ll look to committee for— to put the original staff recommendation on the floor, or propose something else. Councillor Per beau?

[34:09] Thank you. I would like to put the staff recommendation forward, but I would like to amend it by amend the motion and staff recommendation by removing clause C, please. Sorry, Councillor. Were you asking to put the staff recommendation on the floor without D or without C?

[34:49] No. I was putting on with the amendment. I don’t have the procedure, but we need to put it staff recommendation. But my personal is put it forward with the amendment of eliminating C from the staff proposal. So you’re looking to— I’m just going to read what part C was. So part C, just for those maybe that watching online, is the civic administration be directed to initiate public engagement with the impacted neighborhoods to rename the former Paul Haggis Park and former Trooper Mark Wilson Park and Trooper Wilson Place.

[35:29] Go ahead, Councillor. I’m sorry, Dean, but I must have a bottom line is no. It’s not C. It’s D. Thank you. So you’re looking to put the original motion forward and to remove part D in that original. So you’re looking to put that forward. I will second to put that on the floor for discussion with the removal of part D. Looking for speakers to this item, I have Councillor van Mirberg in. Councillor Per beau, did you want to speak to it?

[36:03] Did you put it on the floor? I’ll pass for no. OK, I’ll go to Councillor van Mirberg in, and then I see a number of visiting Councillors that also want to speak on this item. Good chair. I totally support the removal of part D. I mean, we have to ask ourselves, what does this name plantation mean? So usually a point of order comes from a member of the committee.

[36:42] I agree with my book, and Paul saws the mic. OK, thank you. I’ll hear your point of board. Thank you. Just realizing Councillor Per beau excluded D when you put it on the floor, so part D is not actually on the floor. Thank you, and that is heard. So the report is still in the recommendation.

[37:23] Therefore, every aspect of the report is still contained in the motion, so I’ll hear any comments or discussion on plantation road as well. Go ahead, Councillor, where are you? Thank you. So we have to ask ourselves, what does this name plantation mean? So naturally, I went to the Miriam Webster dictionary. Plantation is a noun, and it’s defined as a usually large group of plants, and especially trees under cultivation.

[38:00] It also can be a settlement in a new country or region, and also a place that is planted or under cultivation. So this name has been part of the London fabric, this street along with its name, for decades. And now, all of a sudden, I don’t know if it’s the rise of wokeism or what it is, but we need to get rid of it. And the question is why?

[38:36] Plantations are found around the world to this day with a variety commodities, such as coffee, tea, and so on. It’s an important part of the agricultural sector in the world economy helping to feed humanity. So what is driving to remove this, at some expense, to London taxpayers, we actually do have to change the name, or recommend to change the name, along with a lot of downside negative consequences for many, especially those who live on that road, who have to change their addresses in a multitude of uses and ways.

[39:29] So it just begs the question, why? So for these reasons, I will definitely be supporting its removal from this particular recommendation, this particular motion. I mean, I suppose another way to look at it is cotton. Yes, cotton was picked. And yes, at the time, a couple of centuries ago, slaves did pick cotton, and they did live on a plantation. But this again begs the question, should we be boycotting cotton today?

[40:10] Should we not wear cotton clothes? These are the substantive questions that we have to ask ourselves. At what point is it an overreach? So thank you, Madam Chair. Thank you. I will look to other members of committee before visiting counselors to speak on this item. Councillor Hopkins, go ahead.

[40:46] Yeah, I was hoping I could hear from the counselor who has made the amendment to D first before I make comments. But just so I can listen and understand the debate here, why it is being removed before I make a final comment. I don’t want to have my time taken away from me. So I don’t know if I want to, Madam Chair, if you want to go to the counselor or I can make my comments, and hopefully I can come back to further comments. So I see there’s no movement there.

[41:23] So I’ll make my comments. And if I need to, I’ll follow up. Thank you, Councillor. And just so we don’t engage in cross debate as well, I’ll allow you to continue. And of course, you always have the option to speak again. Okay, yeah, thank you, and I’m going to speak to the recommendation and speak to A to D. I am supporting all of those items, even though I have reservations about them. And I’m supporting C and D in particular, because we are going to a public engagement process.

[42:02] And I think that’s really important. I don’t want to sit here and suggest that I have all the answers and I know how other people feel. And I know what’s right. I would rather have more of a fuller conversation with the community about it for both items. And I say this because I may have a certain perspective, but I want to hear other perspectives to determine how I am eventually going to vote on this. I think it’s really important.

[42:36] I was on the previous council when we’ve had debates on this. And I go back to the, I think, two councils ago when the Paul Haggis Park debate came forward. And at that time, I know it’s in Councillor Palose’s ward now, but at that time it was in my ward. And I know things change throughout the years, but I think it’s very, very important if we make changes that we really fully understand the implications of these changes, not only to the name of that person or the word, the noun that is out there, but the implications to that family and to people that are associated with these names, we’re not, we have to really understand what we’re doing.

[43:33] I’ll make a comment now. I just want to go through you, Madam Chair, to staff. I know we’re going through new changes to the framework. I’m really glad that we’re going to be doing that. So we do not find ourselves in these sometimes complicated situations. So I will be supporting the recommendation, but listening very intently to the reasons why we should take out D and not C. I’ll put it that way. Thank you, okay, I’ll look to visiting the members of council.

[44:11] I had Deputy Mayor Lewis and I had Councillor Lehman to speak to this item. I’ll start with Deputy Mayor Lewis and then over to you Councillor Lehman. Thank you, Madam Chair. So first of all, I would support what Councillor Pribble has proposed. My issue, however, is with clause C. And I’m gonna speak specifically to Trooper Wilson Place. I’m not here to speak to the parks. The names have come down. The parks need new names. That is what it is.

[44:45] My frustration with this recommendation and with where we are coming forward today, with Trooper Wilson Place and another public engagement and a theme around potentially something related to Vimy Ridge. Madam Chair, two years ago, when this issue came up in the last term of council, despite the fact that residents were furious about it, I knocked on every door on Trooper Wilson Place. I did the public engagement.

[45:17] I shared that feedback with staff. And there was actually about 80% of folks who even though they weren’t happy about the name change in general, were willing to accept Peacekeeper Place, which was one that came up through the first round of engagement I had. I did two rounds of door knocking to get people’s feedback and then went back on the second round and said, this is the name that’s come up a couple of times. What do you think? And there was generally support for it. And then time passed and time passed because staff rather than advancing forward.

[45:55] And I understand there were a number of issues happening. So I get it, but this got dumped into a process when there was already community engagement done and a general level of support that was there for a change. Now we’re being asked to consider something Vimy Ridge themed. The area does have Vimy Ridge Park designated already. It also has the Charlie Fox Memorial at the Hale and Trafalgar roundabout, a World War II veteran monument. And the thought of Peacekeeper Place was that we are honoring veterans who have served in different conflicts in this area, not exclusive to Vimy Ridge in World War I, because we have a World War II monument there as well.

[46:37] So I’m very frustrated with the fact that we’re now getting a report back saying, do another round of engagement. Go knock on people’s doors again. You know, honestly, make them upset again that you’re gonna change the name of their street after they’ve already given their feedback twice. And, you know, some residents may have changed. But if we had just dealt with this in the moment, we wouldn’t be here today. So when this comes to council, I won’t be supporting the portion of Part C that includes Trooper Wilson Place.

[47:12] I can support the rest of what Councillor Pribble has put on the floor, but I wanna share right now that I’m not okay with where we are on the renaming of the street. And for residents who have to change their addresses and I know that they’ll get some small compensation for their costs, but they’ve gotta go through all the work of changing their addresses, you know, drivers license changes, all of those things that happen. We could have dealt with this in a more timely manner. And to suggest now that we need to go back and do another round of public engagement, I just, I’m not supporting that.

[47:50] Thank you, okay. I see some other hands going up. I do have quite a speaker’s list already. Councillor Hopkins, I will add you to that list. I’m gonna go to Councillor Layman next and then from there, Councillor Stevenson and Mayor Morgan. Thank you, Chair, for allowing me to speak to the committee. I wanna speak specifically about the plantation road now. Thank you to Councillor Pribble for amending the staff report. Plantation Road is a small street in the middle of Oak Ridge subdivision.

[48:29] There are 32 houses on that street and was built to around 1959, 1960. So like the deputy mayor, I have canvassed the street to get an understanding of their thoughts on this. I was able to speak to just over 60% of the residents on that street. And two, plus the one family with the young lady who initially brought forward the petition that started this conversation five or six years ago were in favor of the staff report and think that the name should be reviewed for change.

[49:12] Two were ambivalent, they didn’t care one way or another. The rest of them, 18, didn’t wanna see the name of their street changed and they were fairly passionate about it. And I wanna share the three major reasons of why. The first one, and it has been touched on by other Councillors, they’re worried about the administration, the cost of the name change. Government documentation, utilities, banking info, legal information, mortgages, deeds, wills, and the many unknowns that they don’t see.

[49:46] There’s a number of seniors that live on that street that are very concerned about this. This is what I expected, this came as no surprise, but the next two things were something that I really wasn’t aware of or didn’t anticipate. The first one is the attachment they have with the history of the street. This originally was a grove of trees, with tree plantation.

[50:22] And the developer wanted to acknowledge that by naming the road after the tree plantation road. And you can see in the surrounding streets around it are named by the trees. So we have a viscous mahogany cypress to name a few. The folks on the street take this pretty seriously. The proud of that heritage, they are all aware of it. I heard from many about this, which I wasn’t aware of it, is part of who they are and what they are on that street.

[51:01] The third thing was interesting to me as well. Many have lived on that street for 60 years. Some, when there was second generation. So this name is more than a signpost at the end of their street. It’s part of their identity and heritage. It’s where they raise their kids. It’s where they have reunions. It’s part of who they are. So they’re very passionate about the name. It’s not like first half.

[51:32] This is part of their identity and they take it very seriously. So they’re quite frankly a little baffable. Why this small street is now a lot of streets in London. This is the one that’s being looked at. They’re very concerned that with their reaction this, they don’t want to be seen as racist. But they feel if they speak out in opposition, they will be. They don’t know if this is the best way. They understand racism and they totally support.

[52:10] We all are trying to do to address that. But they just wonder is this the appropriate way to do it? So based on what I’ve heard from residents, I’m asking the committee to support the amendment made there for the administration in cost, the history of this, of the tree plantation in the area and the land it’s on and the way that the residents identify with their street. Thank you very much, Chair. Thank you.

[52:43] Okay, so next on my speaker’s list, I had Councillor Stevenson. Thank you and I’m grateful as well to Councillor Pribble for removing D for the reasons already stated. I’m wondering if we can get through you to staff, just some clarity on what the approval of B will mean. Because I noticed when I read through the report that there was a moratorium on accepting new request to change names that happened until a new policy was developed.

[53:18] And so I’m wondering if we go ahead and do this and come up with a new policy or we then reopening ourselves to many future conversations around this. For the chair, I can speak to that. So the recommendation from Council December 7th, 2021 was respect to existing streets, existing city facilities. The recommendation that’s being brought forward in clause B is for new, like new streets with respect to new facilities, new developments where new public roads are being created.

[53:49] So that’s the distinction. Councillor? Thank you. So it sounds safe to assume that moratorium will continue until it’s changed. To staff? Through the chair. Yes, that’s correct for existing names. Councillor? I think that’s good for now. Thank you. Okay, I have Mayor Morgan next and followed by Councillor Pribble and then Councillor Hopkins for her second time. Sure, so I’m not gonna speak to D, there’s no D on the floor, on C.

[54:24] I wonder if through the chair, if you’ll allow it, I wouldn’t mind asking the deputy mayor, he’s not a member of the committee, given his engagement with the residents already, given the previous council direction to make changes to both the parks as well as the specific street trooper Wilson Place. I wonder if you could ask if he, based on his engagement has any objections to us just changing the name now, like just providing the direction to proceed with Peacekeeper Place. It’s in line with the council direction. It avoids the continued or a renewed additional as the deputy mayor said, unnecessary public consultation, given the two rounds of consultation he’s already done.

[55:06] And I think, you know, the sooner we can deal with that, probably the better. So I’d be happy to provide that direction, but I wanna check to see if that aligns with the deputy mayor’s desire. She’s not a member of the committee, but rather than wait to council for him to have to do that, I don’t mind putting that on the floor at committee and us having the debate here, rather than a lengthy debate at council. Thank you. Appreciate that we’re doing committee work at committee. So I’ll go to the deputy mayor if he’d like to respond to that at this time. Well, thank you Madam Chair. And thank you Mayor Morgan. The short answer to that is yes.

[55:38] I tried to bring a motion to that effect over two years ago and I was told it wasn’t in order at the time. So I’m happy to me, that would be something I could support a council. Okay, thank you back to you Mayor Morgan. So given that and to deal with that specific matter, I’d be happy to make an amendment to see, to strike, to basically add after the end, to proceed with the renaming of Trooper Wilson Place to Peacekeeper Place.

[56:16] Councilor Biermeerberg, can you look at a second that? I’ll second that. Just a moment while we straighten out the language. Mayor Morgan, I’m gonna ask you for some clarification here if you don’t mind.

[57:23] Okay. So the motion reads that civic administration be directed to initiate public engagement with impacted neighborhoods to rename the former Paul Haggis Park and former Trooper Mark Wilson Place and Trooper Wilson Place. And you’re adding to that the name. So I guess you could strike, whatever way the clerk wants to do it, you could strike and Trooper Wilson Place to that, then you’d add an additional direction to just proceed with the renaming and undertake all administrative acts to do so, whatever the language needs to be. So my concern is that it’s still asking to initiate the public engagement portion in that.

[58:00] So it’s almost counter to Part C already. So I’m just wondering, do we need to defeat and then amend? So I guess what I wanna do is strike that last piece from, I’m happy to proceed with the consultation on the parks. So I don’t wanna eliminate that piece, but you don’t need to do the consultation on Trooper Wilson Place. So that can be struck. And then if you need a new clause, whatever, I could add that, but whatever way you wanna do it. I don’t wanna, if you defeated the whole thing, then I’d come back and add back in the parks. So I just, whatever your discretion is, Chair.

[58:36] Okay, just give us a moment. Okay, so if everyone wants to refresh and take a look at what’s on the screen, Mayor Morgan, if you could take a look at it and let me know if that language is suitable for your intention.

[1:00:19] So as long as you don’t need to do consultation on the renaming of Trooper Wilson Place to Peacekeeper Place, as long as that piece is proceeding and that’s what staff is going to do, I’m fine with it. Again, it depends on how staff operationalizes that. I agree with your initial concern about the way that it’s worded, but I think given it ends, and as long as they see the second and two renamed Trooper, Mark Wilson Place, two piece Keeper Place as an action that occurs without the need for further engagement on that street, I’m fine with it.

[1:00:55] If they’re going to go out and engage on that, that’s actually not what I’m intending. Mr. Mayders, would it be possible just to ask you if how you interpret that direction as written? Through the Chair, so my interpretation would be that Place, so I just would want to confirm that you don’t want public engagement on Trooper Mark Wilson Park.

[1:01:50] ‘Cause it sounds, it looks like you may want engagement on the park, so if you remove, maybe strike that one as well. And sorry, you do want that. Thank you, Mayor Morgan. Yeah, so I think it might just need to be a separate line just for clarity purposes, just to make sure that the direction is clear, and with this naming and nomenclature around a park and a place, and we also have a stormwater management pond that’s connected to the place that also is named that, so I do think that it helps with clarity. I totally agree, because the way Mr. Mayders was about to interpret it, yes, do the consultation on the parks.

[1:02:30] The parks don’t have a name right now, like neither one of them do. That’s the previous direction. We need to consult to rename those parks. The street has not been renamed despite the previous council direction to do so, so given the deputy mayor’s engagements two times on this, and the relative support on the street of the 12 houses that are there, sounds to me like we can just move forward with that, and not have to go out and bother those folks again. So if that needs to be a separate line, then let’s do that. Okay, if you want to refresh again, the updated version of what that might look like, hopefully addressing those concerns and clarifying direction is in front of you, Mayor Morgan, can you confirm that that is what you’re looking to put on the floor?

[1:03:43] And Councillor Van Mirbergen, as a seconder, can you confirm that you’re okay with that? I’m good with that as long as Mr. Mayders gets the direction he needs to proceed in the way that I intended, and the deputy mayor intended. Okay, thank you. I’m seeing nods in the room. I’m seeing clarification that that’s the way the language is intended for this part of the motion. Just a moment. Okay, so we’ll treat this item as an amendment, and therefore I’ll look for any debate or conversation on the amendment.

[1:04:24] Councillor Hopkins. So this is only on C. This is only on the amendment to C. Yes, I have a question through you to staff. It was suggested at the time that it wasn’t in order to do this, we’re doing, we were renaming here a committee. I’d like to maybe ask the question first, what does the public engagement look like in terms of the process going forward on all these renaming items?

[1:05:01] And maybe, I’ll just start with that, the public process going forward, and why is this in order now? Thank you, I’ll go to you, Mr. Brown, you go ahead. Through the chair, with respect to the public consultation for the renaming of the names that staff have suggested, we work with our communication team, develop a communication strategy, which would first look at determining the neighbourhood, the impact of neighbourhood, and then from there we would likely either do door knocking or phone calls or some sort of direct consultation with residents to determine next steps with potential naming suggestions, and then after that we would come back to council with potential naming recommendations.

[1:05:54] Councillor. And with that, your recommendation coming back would be what the community has suggested, or would you just come back with one name and we would just approve it? Through the chair, with our equity diversity and inclusion team, we’d look to also the Ontario Human Rights Commission framework to help select our own names, and then through there the neighbourhood vote on those names, which staff feel are equitable and inclusive to the neighbourhood, rather than the neighbourhood selecting certain names.

[1:06:31] Councillor? Yeah, thank you for that, and I want to thank the Deputy Mayor, I know he’s done a lot of work and engagement on this, and my concern is here, if we do this for one and not others, I am going to have difficulty with the, just the fairness of it, not taking away the work that the Deputy Mayor has done, but I would prefer going forward with the process and will not be supporting the amendment. Thank you, any other members of the committee before I go to visiting Councillors on this item?

[1:07:09] Okay, I’ll go to Councillor Palosa on the amendment. Thank you, Madam Chair. Also, no doubt, Deputy Mayor, those have spent multiple rounds on the street engaging with residents, and grateful for that, and my concern follows out of the former speakers that we waited five years to get this framework back, and held off renaming for this. I would have no problem with that framework being applied to looking at Peacekeeper Place. I know, and that’d be the consideration that I look at.

[1:07:44] I have absolutely no problem with that. If that’s what the community has already shown a tendency towards, just mindful as the Councillor has already laid out that there might be new people on that street who’d understand why we’re doing this, that people will have come and went, and also making clear that they are going to be financially compensated to a small degree as well for their time and changing address, and that’s just clearly communicated. I know we’re a little bit different as elected, but we always allow staff to go out into that engagement versus neighbor to neighbor, realizing town at the door could be different, certainly not insinuating anything of the Deputy Mayor, but just that that’s usually the process that people are used to, and just that mindfulness of buying away from the process once established, and the naming policy is we waited five years, and it’s just back before us now.

[1:08:38] But no issue with, personally, with Peacekeeper Place, and grateful for the work that the Deputy Mayor has put into this already with residents. Thank you, I’ll go to the Deputy Mayor. Thank you, Madam Chair. I just wanna share two quick thoughts, and first I’m gonna point out in section 2.2 of the staff report, it already indicates, and Trooper Wilson Place should consider names related to Vimy Ridge. Staff are already providing a direction towards honoring our military history, and if folks are concerned about the reception or the response that people might get at the door, I can tell you that the response our staff are going to get at the door will be hostile.

[1:09:21] People are not happy about this in the first place. I experienced a lot of hostility about the discussion, and quite frankly, I don’t wanna subject our staff to that, but I will say I’m also not going to subject myself to it again either, and so I will not participate in another round of engagement around this issue. I have dealt with the hostility, I have been diplomatic about it, I think that the Peacekeeper Place name is consistent, or is not so divergent from what the staff are saying around should consider names related to Vimy Ridge, which I will say staff did not touch base with me about a theme around Vimy Ridge, and if they had, they would have heard that military history would be a better theme to fit with the Charlie Fox Memorial, and other features in the area.

[1:10:10] So for both of those reasons, I’m gonna be encouraging colleagues to support the mayor’s amendment. Thank you, looking for other speakers. Okay, Councillor Per bevel, go ahead. Just making a comment based on what I heard from the mayor and the work that was done previously, I will certainly be supporting this motion by the mayor, and because there will not be a chance, but there was a discussion, and I just want to say that my base, one of my colleagues asked the reason for me leaving one of these points out, and it was based on the discussion I had with the City Council and the feedback from the staff, sorry, sorry, and the feedback from the residents.

[1:10:53] So there was my base for it, and I do appreciate the work that was done by both Councillor and the Peter Mayor in both of these supporting it. Thank you. Thank you. Any further comments and questions on the amendment? Councillor Pluzza. Thank you. Recognizing this week is a bit much next week, is lighter looking to see through you if staff behind the scenes could look at Ontario, rights code, or the diversity inclusion stuff, with Peacekeeper Place, and just follow up with Council before the decisions made at Council, should they have any concerns, which could very well get the new policy in place and looked at and recognize Deputy Mayor Lewis’s comments about residents.

[1:11:39] Thank you, Mr. Mathers. Through the chair, I think you can do that. That’s very, we’ll work with our other areas, of course, in the city as well, and just take a look at that from a perspective of that new framework, and be able to provide you some feedback before Council. Thank you, appreciate that, Councillor. Okay, so seeing no additional speakers on this item, I’ll look to call the vote, open the vote on the amendment. Closing the vote, motion carries, four to one.

[1:12:30] Okay, so we’re back on the main motion as amended, with the same mover and seconder. I’m looking for speakers on the main motion as amended. Okay, Councillor Pluzza, oh, I have Councillor Hopkins, sorry, she had her hand up for her second time on this item, and then I will go to Councillor Pluzza. Yeah, just a question through you, Madam Chair, on the comments that I’ve heard around the costs of renaming plantation.

[1:13:07] I wonder if staff can assist in giving us any idea, when we rename streets, the costs incurred. Thank you, I’ll go to staff for the answer. Through the chair, the costs that occur typically depend on the length, the row, the number of intersections, but for plantation specifically, with there being 32 homes identified on the street, it’s actually $100 per household. I might have wrongly emailed the Councillor saying it’s $100 per resident in that household, but it’s actually $100 per household.

[1:13:47] This is just based on a previous commemorative naming changes that we’ve utilized that figure. And then for foreign signblades specifically with respect to plantation, it’s roughly under $1,000. So the full costs would be, I think, under $5,000 if you’re not mistaken. Thank you, Councillor. Okay, I have Councillor Pluzza next. Go ahead. Thank you, Madam Chair, and grateful to staff.

[1:14:23] I touched base yesterday as well as another Councillor with some questions, realizing the limited number of residents on that street had also dug in. I’m listening to Councillor Layman’s feedback. I absolutely share the concern of what the cost of a name change will cost to residents, just for a reminder for everyone in the public that to change your address on your health card, it’s free of charge and can be done online. Driver’s license, free of charge can be done online. Vehicle permit, also free to change it as long as you have your original permit with you.

[1:14:58] Mortgage change of address, or anything like that with the banks, also free of charge. And driver license or Canadian passports don’t have your address on it. Just as we have that conversation. For colleagues, realizing this conversation started back in 2020 and it has spent a couple years, or a couple terms of council, grateful that it has already been implemented for civic administration for the missable addressing advisory group to look at names of the diversity lens of just having these considerations going forward, realizing the street is from the ’50s and ’60s.

[1:15:34] And even though the attention might have just been plantation growth at trees, it certainly has other connotations rooted in colonialism and slavery. Also mindful, just like when we have anyone who’s been around for all the sidewalk exemption conversations that they come through council, sometimes by sidewalks, that decision point when it gets made, residents who are on that street, they come and they go. Whereas the street names are long standing in the neighborhoods.

[1:16:07] This is a decision point for not just the 31, 32 homes that are there now versus going forward for residents who will then come to call that neighborhood home. Have heard from some in the community that they don’t feel comfortable walking their children in color down that street ‘cause their family does have a attachment that is part of their family’s history rooted in slavery and that they would like to see it changed. Attacks in the appendices today, just highlighting that we have a letter of support for the change from the London Black History Coordinating Committee and the African-Canadian Federation of London and Area.

[1:16:48] I’m not sure what they would see council’s message being back if we don’t have that conversation that 30 residents who would be financially compensated don’t wanna do it versus how the community at large feels about it, realizing not every person in that group feels the same way, I’ve certainly heard from both sides, but just mindful that if we’re gonna have policies on the books and we’re not gonna potentially take action when sectors of the community raise concerns of the value of having those policies or groups or staff members in the first place.

[1:17:22] Thank you. Thank you. I’m going to add myself to the speaker’s list and because I’m a member of the committee, if you don’t mind, Councillor Stevenson, I’ll speak before you and I’m going to ask Councillor Hopkins to take the chair. I have the chair, Councillor Ralman. Thank you, much appreciated. So I wanna weigh in on this discussion, which is part of the discussion right now because it is in the staff report on the renaming of Plantation Road.

[1:17:54] And first I wanna start by thanking the young lady who brought this conversation forward and did so by connecting with Councillor Palazzo as well in order to bring these concerns forward as a resident of the road. One of the things I noted when I looked at this discussion from the perspective of the media articles that were provided and the minutes of that meeting and then the subsequent report that’s here right now is that there was some engagement done and the engagement was done from the lens of some of the supporting letters that came in from the Black History Coordinating Community and Aqfola, I’m just wondering if other diverse communities in London were also engaged.

[1:18:52] I’ll go to staff on that. For you chair, yes, we did some outreach with equity, historically equity denied community groups in the city of London. It wasn’t just those two that were attached. Councillor. Thank you and can you share the feedback? If there’s any additional feedback on that? Yeah, through you chair. We do have some of the thematic elements that were received through the groups that did provide feedback to us.

[1:19:30] Important to note is that at these feedback sessions, city staff were not present. These feedback sessions were run by the groups themselves with their own invited attendees that represented their equity denied groups. Things that we heard, thematic elements such as a direct quote is naming tends to be used as a reward. That’s something that was noted. Also, a very good quote stated, I feel like there is no street or place in London that gives me a sense of glory or connection to my established community in the city.

[1:20:07] There is a desire for more clarity and education around both existing names and future namings. I mentioned several times was the importance of engaging youth and other school groups. Focus on uniqueness and names that represent the diversity of our existing community. There’s a general confusion around the existing naming process. I’ve got more here, but I think that paints a very clear picture. Thank you, comes for a moment.

[1:20:41] Thank you. That’s very helpful from the perspective of our naming policy in general. Specific to plantation road, was it considered because in the communication that I reviewed, it seemed as though the conversation was actually about replacing the name of plantation road with that of a historic black Londoner. And now we’re proposing renaming it after a species of tree. Was that part of the discussion that was originally held with those groups and around the renaming?

[1:21:18] Mr. Shaughnessy or yes? Through the chair, thanks for the question. Through these community sessions, we developed a toolkit that aligned criteria goals for these sessions to focus on. And we did not have a focus on plantation specifically. But in saying that some of the feedback we did received mentioned not necessarily naming names after people, but like thematic elements. So that’s why we’ve touched on that within our staff report.

[1:21:52] Thanks, Mr. Cavick. I have a hard time seeing you, I think it is you. Yes. Councillor Robin. - Thank you. So, I mean, one of the things that I wanna bring into this discussion is the diversity of perspectives on this matter around plantation road. I’m a direct descendant of people that worked on plantations in Guyana, South America, where my family is from. My grandparents both grew up and worked on plantations most of their life.

[1:22:27] They started out as child laborers. So they would have been indentured laborers, but they would have not been of an age to sign a consent to say that they can therefore work on a plantation and have some agreement to be repatriated or brought back to their home country of origin, of which they had no connection at that point anyways. So plantations can have different contexts to different people in different groups. From my own country of origin, well, I was born here, but my parents’ country of origin, plantations were occupied by the black community.

[1:23:09] They were occupied by the Indo-Canadian or the Indo-community, the Indo-Caribbean community. They were occupied by the Chinese community. I don’t know that we’ve been broad enough and vast enough in our engagement around this topic to have a fulsome perspective of how it impacts and who it impacts. And from my understanding of where we’re heading with the direction, I wanna see us name places of significance in the city around historical black figures from our community and indigenous persons in our community.

[1:23:48] I don’t know that renaming this around a tree will address what the original intention was. And I think that’s my concern, and that’s why I’m asking for it to be removed at this time. We’ll return the chair and as a councilor Stevenson, it’s on the list. Thank you, Councillor Hopkins. I’ll go to Councillor Stevenson. Thank you, some of this might lead into what I was gonna say. Through you, I’m gonna ask to staff what the consequences would be of us not supporting B.

[1:24:24] And the reason that I’m asking that is for a few reasons. One, we’re just coming off of property tax rate increases of 8.7% and 7.3%. And this is costly, and it takes staff resources to develop this. We are moving forward, or if this passes, we’re moving forward with the renaming of a couple of perks. And we seem to have a strategy to move forward. Made debate whether it’s good enough as it is.

[1:25:00] But I’m just wondering what the consequences of not supporting it, because we are not waiting for this new framework. We’re going ahead and moving forward right now. And the new framework is gonna take staff resources and time. It’s not gonna come back to us ‘til next the Q2 of 2026. And at that point, we’re going to end up again. This is a tender topic. And when we talk about it in the public, then we’re gonna say, okay, we have this human rights-based policy, but we’re only gonna imply it going forward. I don’t know that that’s gonna satisfy.

[1:25:36] So I’m just wondering through you to staff, if we were to say no to be what staff’s comments on that. Thank you, I’ll go to Mr. Mather. Through the chair. So there’s a couple of directions you can take that if we remove that element. So one is, and we’d be looking for some council direction on this ‘cause we have some previous directions. So we’ll just be able to replace it. So one element might be to just retain our current policies and procedures related to the naming of new streets. Or the second piece would be that to go back and look for a different way to be able to structure those renaming’s moving forward.

[1:26:18] So it would be very helpful to have, if you are going to remove that item, to replace that with take no further action on this item, or just continue to use our current policies that are established. Councillor? Thank you, so I’ll follow up through you to staff. Then given the fact that we are proceeding with our current policy on the renaming of the two parks, I’m assuming there’s no issue with us retaining our current policies and moving forward. I just want to confirm that. I’ll go to Mr. Mayor.

[1:27:03] Through the chair. So the original reason why we were reviewing these policies was it was a direction for council to just to take a different lens and looking at how any kind of concerns or issues with the policies. The first piece of that was to just understand the framework and we now have a framework that’s been provided by the Ontario Human Rights Commission to be able to use to do that review. We haven’t completed all aspects of that review, but if you wanted to continue to use the current policies, we reviewed those on a bi-annual basis, so they would be reviewed as part of that process, but we just wouldn’t be using the Ontario Human Rights Commission’s approach for that review.

[1:27:50] Councillor? Okay, thank you. And as I said, we are proceeding, we’re not waiting. There was some talk of that we’ve been waiting years for this new framework. That’s not what I’m seeing here. What I’m seeing is that we are moving forward with the renaming of two parks with the current policies. So I’m assuming that they are adequate and I’m not going to be, where I’m leaning right now, I don’t get to vote today, but I wouldn’t be supporting me. And I’d be saying just continue with our current policies so that we can not open up the moratorium that we currently have on what is existing in our city right now.

[1:28:33] Thank you, I’m looking for any other speakers on this item, Councillor Hopkins. So we’re on the main motion with the amendment of removing D, come from that. We are on the main motion as amended for part C regarding trooper Wilson Place, and then we’ve already had D removed, yes. So I’ll just make my final comments, Madam Chair, and maybe I’ll just start off with the process that we’re here today.

[1:29:07] So I went kicking and screaming, not supporting any of these throughout the years. I do think it created a bit of an anxiety in the community and a fear that we will get ourselves more and more into analyzing every word and really having a number of complications. I don’t wanna see our parks named 123 or ABC, and I am glad that we’re going forward and looking at a new framework that we won’t go down that path.

[1:29:48] But we are here with the renaming and the public engagement piece that I think is very important to that process. I wanna thank Councilwoman for your comments. It sort of made me wonder why am I supporting this recommendation, and it made me pause to think that we have changed as a city, we’ve come a long way when we are changing as a city and we need to reflect these changes, and as much as that may create some concerns, not to change and change is always difficult, it’s difficult for me as well.

[1:30:29] But we do need to be a city that is diverse, looking at other names, other opportunities. I know even creating that indigenous conversation on how we can implement those names to the changes that we do need to make and that we do have to hear from not only the residents in these areas, but the groups and organizations in our community, the costs I think are well worth it to show that we are a changing city and we wanna reflect that.

[1:31:04] So I guess we will not be supporting the changes to this and I am supportive of the recommendation going forward, if it does, of staff’s recommendation. Thank you, Councillor Hopkins, if I can return the chair to you for a moment of patience. Thank you, I had to rethink what we were deciding here. I’ve got Councillor Rahman. Thank you, and I just, in through you, I just wanted to take a moment to speak to the public engagement around Trooper Mark Wilson Park, which is in my ward.

[1:31:41] And so I wanna speak briefly to kind of what’s happened in the interim between the discussion on renaming this and where the park sat with no name. So when the park didn’t have a name, I guess it started to be referred to as Wallingford Park because it’s on Wallingford and Eagle Trace. And so that has kind of become what it’s being called. There was also a neighborhood decision-making request on in this park.

[1:32:18] And I think there was a little bit of confusion around the fact that the park didn’t have a name and there was a request for a neighborhood decision-making item and people couldn’t figure out which park we were speaking of and it went out as Wallingford Park as well. So I just wanted to share that. I know that the engagement says to name it something connected to Vimy Ridge. My understanding as Wallingford has this World War II connection, but I’m not sure exactly if it’s going to fit within the criteria. I’m not sure if staff can comment on that.

[1:32:52] Go to staff. Through the chair, if you’re looking to consider like more World War II, less of Vimy Ridge, you might want to adjust the direction slightly, maybe a recommendation. So if I can go to Mr. Mathers.

[1:33:29] Through the chair, the direction that we’ve provided for you doesn’t have specific language about ideas. So if that is a very meaningful idea to that community, then that’s very likely to come up at the meetings and we’ve heard it from the Councillor. So I think it’s very much would be on the list of items to consider and given a significant amount of weight to make a vote for that engagement. Councillor, are you satisfied? Thank you. Yeah, I’m satisfied to let that play out, the engagement play out. I do think that the structure of just being allowed to have an open conversation around the name will help.

[1:34:05] Thank you. Thank you. And with that, I see no other speakers. So we turn the chair. Thank you. And just taking one last look online, seeing no speakers there, looking around, seeing no speakers in request in the room. I’ll look to open the vote. I’ll look to open the vote on the motion as amended. Just Councillor Hopkins? Yeah, sorry, as amended. So I wonder if we can pull A and B, I am not supported.

[1:34:42] So I’ll just leave it and make sure I’ve got it right before Council. Do you wanna do A and B together? So receive the information that civic administration directed to apply the Ontario Human Rights Commission approach and framework going forward for commemorative naming requests for new streets and assets. But you’re looking to vote differently on C, is that my understanding?

[1:35:17] Do you want A and B together? Yes. Okay, we’re gonna open A and B. Close in the vote.

[1:35:55] Motion carries. Aye to zero. Okay, we’ll look to open part C, just C. Okay, C is open for Councillor Hopkins.

[1:36:41] And is there a D to this as well then? I just wanted to confirm that, thank you. Close in the vote, motion carries, five to zero. Okay, so now we’re opening the amended version, which is D, that’s a civic administration be directed to rename Trooper Wilson Place to Peacekeeper Place, and that is open.

[1:37:36] Close in the vote, motion carries, four to one. Okay, thank you. With that, we’ll move to item 2.4, which is the 2024 year-end operating budget monitoring report. I will go to Mr. Murray first to help frame the conversation, and then I understand that there’s, well, there’s the added report and then some motions. Thank you, Chair, and I really appreciate the opportunity to provide a few comments on the 2024 budget monitoring reports, and specifically I’ll focus on the operating monitoring report at this point.

[1:38:18] So as is outlined in the report, the 2024 surplus for the property tax-supported budget is 58.8 million. The water budget had a small surplus of $700,000, excuse me, and the wastewater budget actually had a small deficit of $37,000 approximately. With respect to the property tax-supported surplus, I do want to acknowledge that this is certainly higher than we would like to see. I will point you to table one in the report that I think summarizes the factors contributing to the surplus quite well.

[1:38:54] I will highlight a few of those factors in particular. Firstly, I’ll point to $10.5 million of the surplus that is attributable to investment income that was higher than we had budgeted, and that is largely attributable to higher than anticipated interest rates in 2024. I do want to point out as well that that item has already been right-sized as part of the 2025 budget update. I do not expect us to surplus to the same degree, if at all, in our investment income budget for 2025.

[1:39:32] Rates have come down significantly over the later part of 2024 and now into early 2025, and we also now have a higher budget in that line item as well. Secondly, almost $11 million of the surplus is from a lower than anticipated provision for tax appeals and uncollectable taxes. We are required to set aside a provision for property taxes that may be reduced due to appeals of assessed value. That is a year-end calculation to determine that amount, and it’s driven by the amount of assessment at risk.

[1:40:10] So, in other words, basically, the amount of ongoing appeals that are going on. And we have seen a substantial decline in the amount of assessment at risk in 2024, and that’s largely because the province-wide reassessment cycle has not yet resumed, and the outstanding appeals, as a result, have come down significantly. So, once the property reassessment cycle restarts, we would expect those appeals to normalize, as well as our assessment at risk to normalize, and that will then drive an increase in our provision going forward as well.

[1:40:50] So, in the short term, we are looking at this particular line item as to whether there are any right-sizing opportunities in the next little while, but again, longer term, we do expect that to rebound to more normal levels once the reassessment cycle resumes. There are also a number of other one-time factors that I want to point to, as well, that are driving the surplus higher this year. For example, the implementation of new accounting standards that we were required to implement related to revenue recognition this year, as well as a handful of 2023 revenue adjustments that we didn’t find out about until 2024.

[1:41:34] Those factors combined resulted in about five and a half million dollars of surplus across a variety of services. Again, this is a one-time impact for 2024. We would not envision that recurring for 2025 or future years. So overall, I would say there are a number of unique factors that would drive the surplus higher in 2024. Now, we are fortunate that we did have a surplus. We had 16.6 million of legislative development charges exemptions and discounts that were in excess of our budget of 3.2 million.

[1:42:09] So, we are fortunate that we had a surplus to be able to offset those impacts as well. I also want to highlight that we are already working on identifying budget right-sizing opportunities as part of our 2026 budget update process. Our next update on this work will come at the May 22nd Budget Committee meeting. And we’re really focused on looking for those budget reduction opportunities that are sustainable and provide future tax levy relief to Londoners.

[1:42:44] So we’ll continue that work over the coming weeks and certainly through the spring and summer as we lead up to the 2026 budget process. I also wanted to speak just briefly as well on the change in the surplus from mid-year to year-end. I’ll first acknowledge that we’re not satisfied with how the surplus has grown so much between mid-year and year-end. There are a few factors that I do want to highlight that are contributing to that this year. The issue related to the provision for tax appeals, that is driven by the number of multi-year appeals that were processed and removed from our assessment at risk this year.

[1:43:26] That was not known until the second half of the year. And in fact, a large appeal, individual appeal of more than $4 million was just resolved in December of 2024. So that was not something that we knew about at mid-year. We did not finalize our allowance until our year-end process in early 2025. And that is what confirmed the significant reduction in that provision. For social and community support services, additional provincial subsidy and 2023 revenue adjustments that I alluded to earlier, that totaled $4.3 million in aggregate.

[1:44:04] Those were not known about until after the mid-year report was published. And similarly, the implementation of the new accounting standards that I spoke about earlier as well, that work did not start until the fall of 2024. And we actually did not know the amount of that impact, which was $4 million. We did not know about that until last month, March of 2025. So a number of unique factors that drove the change in the surplus from mid-year to year-end. But having said that, we are certainly committed to looking at process improvement opportunities going forward so that our year-end results do not deviate as much from our projections at mid-year.

[1:44:46] So with that chair, I’m happy to take any questions on the report in front of you today. Thank you. So thank you. I’ll go to Mayor Morgan. Yes, so I’m happy to put the staff recommendation on the floor.

[1:45:20] But with the addition included in it under A, which would be an additional clause, IV, which I’ve circulated in the— or as well as actually on the added agenda, so I’ll put could read it as well. I’m happy to read that out if you like. But if I have a seconder, which I believe I do, I’ll put all the recommendation staff have made. But with a slightly altered version of the allocation of the surplus, predominantly like staff did, but with one adjustment to provide some tax relief as well. Thank you.

[1:45:52] So this would be to move the staff report and then as amended with the amendment you’ve circulated. So I’ve got Mayor Morgan looking for a seconder. I’ll go to Councillor Van Mirken as a seconder. OK, Mayor Morgan, would you like to speak to it? Yeah, I’m happy to speak to it. First off, I want to thank Mr. Murray and the entire team for the work they’ve done in putting the report together. And the engagements, I know that you probably had lots of questions. I know Mr. Murray answered many of them here for colleagues about the difference between the mid-year monitoring report and where we are today, what’s driving the surplus and the various components of it, what we knew about and what comes as a surprise late in the process.

[1:46:34] There’s a couple of pieces though that I think are really critical. First, I agree with staff that the $16.6 million that we have to put in, the Development Charges Reserve Fund, has to be done. It’s a bill that has to be paid until the province gives us legislative relief and it requires a legislative change on backfilling those provincial exemptions. We actually have to backfill them legally under the Development Charges Act. And so that $16.6 million is not available for us to use. We need to put it in the DC Fund. Now, we could use it in the future should the province give us relief from those deposits into the DC Act, which, as you know, is an act of lobby position of both this council, myself, and other mayors in the province.

[1:47:13] I also agree with staff about the importance of debt reduction. $25.3 million to be contributed to the debt substitution reserve fund in accordance with the debt surplus policy. I agree with that amount completely. I will say that amount is expected to provide about $3 million of avoidance of principal and interest costs on our debt, which would be built into future-based budgets of municipality providing ongoing savings to taxpayers in the future. And I’ll comment that under two successive multi-year budgets, we have now put before this $25 million, $61.4 million into debt reduction, two multi-year budgets.

[1:47:54] Now that that total will come to, if this is approved, by a committee in council, $86.7 million of debt reduction. The amount of principal and interest that we are avoiding by going down this path is a principal reason why we maintain a solid AAA credit rating. Not the only reason, but one of the many reasons. These are strong fiscal policies that we need to continue to adhere to, like we did last year. Now, with the size of the surplus, we have the opportunity to do both of those things that are staff recommended. And I believe offset some of the future costs in the multi-year budget that we are working to bring down as a council through the budget process on a temporary basis for the remainder of this multi-year budget, knowing that we will have to find the savings, and knowing that actually paying down the debt provides us with a bit of a cushion on that because it will remove the principal and interest payments on the back end in future years by avoiding that debt allocation as well.

[1:48:46] So I propose using $16.9 million of the remaining surplus to be spread evenly across the remaining two years for the multi-year budget to provide some tax relief and give us a little bit of a cushion there. Now, I will say I don’t believe that this is separate from the work that we’re doing on bringing the budget down through the service review work that staff is doing through our engagement supports and commissions. That work continues. Those engagements are going well. This is a one-time item that we have the capacity to do because of the size of the surplus, which we have not had in previous years. So I think we can be in a position to do it all this time around and I think that this is a responsible approach that pays respect to our obligations under provincial law, pays respect to the continued principle that debt reduction is something that we should be doing and provides ongoing permanent stable savings to taxpayers and recognizes that the upward pressure of the budget in the last couple of years has resulted in a financial burden on Londoners that we’re working to bring down.

[1:49:46] I will say out and remind colleagues as already once I’ve heard today, budget numbers that are correct but are not property tax numbers. Budget numbers go through tax policy and education taxes. 2024 was more like 7.4. 2025 was more like 6.5. The budget numbers were higher, but as we know, tax policy is complicated. We run it through that. That budget is spread differently across different tax classes. Education is taxing. I tend to use the numbers that actually comes out of people’s pocket and I’ll continue to do that. I know Councillor Pribble’s passionate about that as well in the way that charts are presented.

[1:50:20] So that’s the proposal I have on the floor and I look forward to the committee’s debate and discussion on it. Thank you. And I’ll look to committee for some discussion on this and then I will go to visiting Councillors. Councillor Van Mure, we can go ahead. Thank you, Chair. Happy to second this amendment. I think it’s very balanced, carefully thought out and it still gives relief to taxpayers and keeping in mind that the paying down of debt is in and of itself tax savings.

[1:51:07] So I think on the whole, this is very prudent and I’m happy to support it. Thank you. Any other members of committee before I go to Councillor Hopkins, go ahead. Yeah, thank you, Madam Chair. And thank you to staff for the update. And I heard loud and clear that this is an unusual increase that we’ve had for 2024. So I think that I’m very mindful of that.

[1:51:41] On the amendment that’s in front of us and just I’ve got a couple of questions, maybe to the mayor or whoever wants to answer it, but I was wondering, first of all, why this amendment is not through the budget process. Why is that here? I know we have a report here but wanting to have a better understanding why we’re making decisions on this today and eventually a council. Thank you.

[1:52:15] And again, because he’s the mover the amendment, I will allow it but typically we’ll try not to have cross debate. Go ahead. Yeah, so I’ll just clarify to Councillor Hopkins, the only part I’m doing different than what we normally do is actually going to come forward as a budget amendment. If you read the motion on the screen, the 16.9 million to be retained in the operating budget contingency reserve to be applied evenly as tax levy mitigation in 2026 and 2027 through a budget amendment in the 2026 budget update. That will come forward as part of the budget.

[1:52:48] I can tell you I’m going to put that adjustment in the budget because I’m moving it here. That should come as no surprise. And that has the ability to be debated, adjusted, changed given the circumstances at the time, but what we would be doing today is allocating it in that way so that it is contained within the budget documents as an amendment which will outline the exact numerical impact on the tax rate at that time. One staff would run those calculations but it would absolutely be part of the budget process. The rest of it is actually according to our surplus deficit policy which is done at this time of the year.

[1:53:26] Thank you for that clarification. And in particular the 16.9 at committee, what we’re doing right now when it comes to the tax levy mitigation that we’re bringing forward in 26 and 27, we’re not making any decisions at all as to how we’re going to spend it. That will be done through the budget process. I know you don’t want to cross debate but I just need that clarification on the amendment. Thank you. So this is an alternate motion that’s in front of us.

[1:53:59] And so I’ll go back to the mayor just to clarify again. Yes, so what’s going to happen is we’re not going to run that portion through the surplus deficit policy. It will be retained in the operating budget contingency reserve up until the budget is decided upon. So we will hold that 16.9 million. We are making a decision today to not run it through surplus deficit policy. That part will be reserved for tax mitigation, a tax mitigation business case in the multi-year budget discussion.

[1:54:31] So we are making a decision today. We’re not making the final decision on the application of that to the budget until the budget is approved. Thank you. Thank you, Councillor. Okay, any other members? I’ll go to Councillor Perbell. And then I have quite a speaker’s list from other members council that would like to speak to this. So I’ll go to Councillor Perbell, go ahead. Thank you very much. And I do see, I do like what I see in front of us. And I do think that they’re both parts. We are being very responsible.

[1:55:03] And we are also thinking of the taxpayer and including them in the surplus. My question to the staff through the chair. By the way, thank you. One of my questions was already answered because I was wondering why such a steep between mid-year and year-end surplus. So thank you for answering that already. Last year, there were few of us that were pushing kind of what’s in front of us this year. And we were pushing it in terms of, if I look at the percentages, they’re actually almost identical. And it was a lesser amount last year with the, in terms of the dollar signs, dollar amounts.

[1:55:42] And it was highly not recommended by the staff. Can you please tell me what is the position now of the staff of the part of the $16.9 million? And if the position has changed, did anything else change in terms of the policies, procedures, something from higher levels of government or whatever it is? If I can please get a feedback from staff. Thank you, I’ll go to Mr. Murray. Thank you, three, Madam Chair. So the principles have not changed over the course of the past year. I do think, and it’s important to acknowledge that this $16.9 million that is being contemplated here, it does represent one-time dollars that are being spread over the course of 2026 and 2027.

[1:56:28] If this ultimately passes and goes through, then those funds will be used for tax levy mitigation purposes against subject to the 2026 budget update process and the amendment that come through that process. But they will be used for tax levy mitigation purposes in 2026 and 2027. Come 2028, those funds will have been exhausted. And at that point, we will then have a gap in our budget of roughly $8.5 million give or take that will need to be dealt with at that point in time.

[1:57:03] So the same caution that we’ve provided previously as it relates to using one-time dollars to fund ongoing obligations, that caution remains. And as long as there is an understanding and appreciation of the impact of this and what it means going forward, that is what we as staff want to ensure that you are aware of here today. Councillor? Okay, thank you. Just kind of follow up on it.

[1:57:35] Last year when we did that, we were actually, there was a lesser amount that we were actually doing it and we were proposing over three years. So the dollar effect on the one-time funds would be even lesser. So actually, if I look at year-on-year, we are into more riskier waters now than we would have been, that we would have been last year. But my question is, I’m gonna look at the big picture and it’s going back again to this policy. And I really still don’t see an advantage of having a policy.

[1:58:08] We do have a, every year is different. I do believe that we should be located as the entire council and looking at not just savings, look at potentially where the needs are to be spent or potentially there could be certain services that are being underspent and then we have currently certain savings. And I really don’t believe that we are maximizing our opportunities and I hope in future, if we stick with this policy, we are actually, I hope that every year when there is a surplus, it will start understanding our policy.

[1:58:42] Because I think that whatever is in front of us is kind of what some of us wanted last year. I do believe it’s a step forward. I think it’s much more fair approach. But on the other hand, I don’t see the input of all the councilors, even though yes, strong mayors, powers, mayors put shit through. On the other hand, I have to say that mayors so far hasn’t gone once, if I remember correctly, once against us. As a group, as a council, what we have decided, he 100% supported, as well as I remember correctly, as this is part of the motion that’s in front of us.

[1:59:19] And I know only last part, it’s has 26 and 27. Let’s see if this was referred to the budget committee, where every council has the opportunity to speak to it, not just at the council, but at the committee. Is there anything that will potentially delay or make the next future month of our corporation, jeopardize or something slow down? Mr. Murray. Thank you, through you Madam Chair. So no, this is something that can be dealt with through the 2026 budget process later this year.

[1:59:56] It is at this point framed as tax levy mitigation in 2026 and 2027. However, when that budget amendment does come forward as part of the budget process, there is the opportunity at that point in time to decide at that stage, whether that remains the appropriate course of action or not. There are no, in my view, no risks related to simply parking this 16.9 million in our operating budget contingency reserve, until it is dealt with as part of that budget amendment in the budget process.

[2:00:31] Councillor? Thank you, and I will do one more question, and I’ll leave it to my fellow Councillors, but not just the story, 16.9, but even the 16, 6, and 25, 3 in the first two parts. And it’s not that I don’t wanna be responsible pay of debt. Yes, I see tremendous advantage of it, advantages in it, but the question is, if you were to delay even these two parts to the next budget committee meeting, will there be any negative effects? Mr. Murray? Three, Madam Chair.

[2:01:04] So this is the typical time of the year and the typical committee and process that we go through to dispose of the year-end surplus. The, as you know, Council just recently approved an updated surplus deficit policy back on April the 1st. And the allocations, at least these portions related to 16.6 million and 25.3 million are intended to flow according to that policy. Having said that, the surplus does not necessarily need to be dealt with through this committee today.

[2:01:45] It could be dealt with at the budget committee meeting in May, but this is the typical process, the standard process that we go through for dealing with these surplus. Councillor? Thank you, the last comment I’ll make. I wish we had a process that we actually, as our committee or all Councillors, whichever committee it would come to, and we look at the previous year in terms of the surplus and the areas that we need to address. Based on our agreement around the horseshoe, we will give it back to the staff, and the staff to come up back with these scenarios of the financials and what effects it would have.

[2:02:27] And when I say scenarios, I’m not talking about 100 scenarios, but it will be three-four scenarios based on the Councillors, what they feel is urgent. So that would be, let’s say, the step now, if all of us were around here and asking staff, please develop three to four financial scenarios and give us the opportunity to pick the one we feel will be most satisfying for the half and land of Londoners. I will leave it for now, I’ll leave it to my colleagues. Thank you. Thank you, I do have quite a speaker’s list going. I just wanna deal with comments from committee members first before I move on to visiting Councillors.

[2:03:04] Councillor Hopkins, I’m wondering if you could take the chair. I have the chair, Councillor Wong. Thank you and thank you and through you. And I just wanted to have an opportunity to speak before this goes to visiting Councillors. So first, I appreciate the conversation here and I really do find it helpful to have this discussion around the significance or plus. One of the things I am challenged with is the way that this comes in because of the policy that we have in place that it comes in as an item to be received and I do believe that it is appropriate for us to be providing direction on this item.

[2:03:50] And so I thank the mayor for his amendment because I do think it gives us an opportunity to have more of a discussion on that. With that said, I would like to know, I guess one of the things I contemplated when I read this report was there an opportunity to provide any savings on this year’s current tax increase. And even if it, I’m thinking about it in the context of the fact that the mayor’s provided direction to agencies, boards and commissions to find savings already for the upcoming budget update.

[2:04:30] So for me, this looks like an opportunity to not only do that, but also return some savings for this year and I’m just wondering what the challenges are to do that. Mr. Murray. Thank you and through you. So in respect to the first question, this is coming forward as it is because the recommendation is an allocation in accordance with councils approved surplus deficit policy.

[2:05:04] So that’s why we are not seeking the direction of council on a different allocation. So that’s the first part of the question. In terms of the ability to benefit taxpayers in 2025, unfortunately timing is not on our side in that respect. Final tax billings are in the process right now of being created and our intention is to have those out imminently because as you may be aware, there is the potential for another Canada Post work stoppage coming up later in May. So we really would like to get those tax bills out sooner rather than later so we can avoid any potential delays or impacts associated with that.

[2:05:47] There would similarly not be any ability to simply issue payments to taxpayers in the form of a refund or a return of tax dollars. Unfortunately, there are approximately 170,000-ish tax accounts, which is more than 10 times the annual volume of check payments that are accounts payable office processes. So considerable effort and considerable resources would be required if we were to even contemplate that.

[2:06:24] Not to mention this would be entirely new ground and something that would take considerable time to implement. So unfortunately, as it relates to any kind of reimbursement in 2025, that’s just simply not possible based on where we are as first timing. Councillor ramen, are you satisfied? I know you had a question around the ABCs as well and are you satisfied? Thank you. Yes, that was very helpful just to frame the conversation of why that couldn’t be done in 2025. So I support the direction that we’re moving in here with doing this in 2026 and 2027 being that there isn’t a possibility to do that right now.

[2:07:08] The one thing I wanna ask about is just with respect to the community investment reserve fund. So in the current policy, I believe it was 1.3 million was to go do the community investment reserve fund in the amended version. It looks like that isn’t there. I just wanna confirm that. Mr. Barry. Thank you, through you, Chair. That is correct. So what is proposed here is that the 3% allocation to the community investment reserve fund, the 17% allocation to the unfunded liability reserve fund and the 20% allocation to the capital infrastructure gap reserve fund are instead allocated to the tax levy mitigation.

[2:07:56] That is the 16.9 million figure you see in the amendment here. Councillor. Thank you. So I’m not, I’m sorry, I didn’t send this in advance. So please feel free to just send it to me afterwards. And that’s, that’s perfectly fine. I’m just wondering what the balance of the community investment reserve fund is if we have enough for allocations based on, on what we’ve committed to with respect to community grants. Mr. Murray on the balance.

[2:08:34] Thank you, through you. So the current balance of the community investment reserve fund is approximately at this point, about 2.4 million. It does have a low point next year of 1.4 million. So above the million dollar threshold still that was tied to previous resolutions. Thank you. Councillor. Thank you. And I’m just wondering if you might be able to comment on the other allocation that you spoke of, particularly around the unfunded liability reserve fund. I remember that there was a deficit, I believe in that fund.

[2:09:15] I’m just wondering what that, what that might say that. The unfunded liability reserve fund, Mr. Murray. Thank you and through you, Chair. The current target balance of the unfunded liability reserve fund is approximately $266 million give or take against an ending balance in the ballpark of approximately $168 million currently.

[2:09:56] So we do have a shortfall approaching $100 million on that reserve fund currently. Councillor. Thank you. And again, my apologies for not sending this in advance to you and thank you for having those numbers available as if you read our minds to know what we’d be asking. So appreciate that. So again, I’m supportive of the direction right now of the of what’s provided and the alternate motion that was provided by the Mayor.

[2:10:29] My concern would be or no, my hope would be is that we can still find the savings and efficiencies that we were still looking for anyways, and that therefore we may be able to allocate this differently at the time of the budget because of some of the other savings and efficiencies that I’ve found. Thank you. Thank you, Councillor Ramen. I’ll return the chair. Thank you. Okay, so on my speaker’s list, I have Deputy Mayor Lewis next and then I had Councillor Layman and then Councillor Stevenson and Councillor Chaucer and Councillor Plun.

[2:11:12] Deputy Mayor Lewis. Thank you. I was just waiting to see if there were any other names on the list that you wanted to read out there. It was getting quite extensive. So thank you. I may want to come back, so I’m going to try not to use a full five minutes here. I do think that and obviously having cosigned the letter, I think this is a prudent approach for right now with what I’m going to call an unprecedented surplus, although I recognize there are some reasons why and I appreciate Mr. Murray expanding on those a little bit.

[2:11:47] You know, for me, it comes down to three really key principles, absorbing the provincial downloading on the DCs that we have to do. It’s required, it’s provincial downloading. Quite frankly, at the end of the day, I think it sucks, but we have an obligation to backfill that downloading deficit that we have in the DC fund. Hopefully the province will consider some policy changes that will provide some relief to all municipalities on that, but I know that both the mayor and I suspect Councillor Hopkins through AMO continue to have those discussions with the province about financing fairness around that.

[2:12:23] With the debt servicing, obviously, you know, when we can implement that kind of permanent savings. And it’s no different than what we do at home. When we have a balance on the credit card, the sooner you pay it off, the less interest you pay and the sooner you’re out of debt and into the black. And that is what’s being suggested here, except when we apply it to our debt servicing, it’s actually a permanent ongoing savings through budget cycles into the future because we’re carrying less debt permanently because we’ve got that fund that we can draw from either for early pay down of debt or from the avoidance of debenture issues entirely, depending on the situation at hand.

[2:13:06] So, and, you know, rough, very, very rough, I’ll admit, back up napkin math for me says that that’s going to save about somewhere between 0.3 and 0.4 in terms of the tax rate. Mr. Murray’s math will be far better than mine, but I, again, just ballparking it for now. And then taking the 16 million 0.9 relief for some tax relief in the remaining two years. And for me, a key feature of this is the remaining two years of a multi-year budget cycle.

[2:13:42] It’s not going to create one of these bouncing ball budgets where the number comes down this year and then bounces back up next year. It’s smoothed across a two-year timeframe. And it gives us two years of runway to pursue further efficiencies and savings. And I’m going to use an example from the staff report. There were some savings in terms of staff vacancies. Now, some of those vacancies absolutely need to be filled. It does give us an opportunity to look at some of those and say, are all of those positions still required in the same way that they’re in the organizational structure right now?

[2:14:20] Or is there a way that there may be some efficiencies to be found here? Because despite the vacancies, and I know in some cases it’s simply been staff working harder and longer to get the work done, but the cities continue to function. And so evaluating which of those are mission critical and which of those perhaps are there because we’ve always done it that way and maybe we don’t need to continue to always do it that way. I think that two-year sort of runway that we give ourselves this way is helpful. It really for me comes down to those two things and the fact that our residents need some tax relief through the remaining two years of this multi-year budget.

[2:15:00] And I agree with and I underline the point that the mayor raised in his comments. That doesn’t mean we’re not going to continue to pursue savings with ABCs. It doesn’t mean that staff are not going to continue to do their work on the annual service reviews as well and find additional savings within the city. The mayor set a target of 5%, but if we layer this on, and again, very rough back of napkin math and recognizing that if we’re going to maintain the savings over the remainder of the multi-year budget, we actually have to have this year’s savings carried over onto the 20 or the sorry, the 2026 savings carried over to the 2027 and if we want to see some relief in 2027 as well, we have to have an additional contribution to lower that.

[2:15:51] So we actually have to have three contributions, but this to me has the potential to lead to something around 4% rather than 5%. And that’s not an insignificant savings for taxpayers. Now again, that’s very rough back of napkin math and through the development of a budget business case, Mr. Murray and his team and Ms. Barbona and her team will bring forward more accurate numbers. Math was not my best subject in high school, so I’m not going to pretend that those are perfectly precise ‘cause they are guaranteed they’re not, but that’s where I come in.

[2:16:24] Seconds. That’s where I come in with that ballpark number. So for me, this surplus isn’t a time to come up with spending sprees or new ways of spending, but also not everything, both assessment growth and budget surplus policy happen outside of a budget process. And I think we need to keep that in mind that not all of those decisions come through the budget. Thank you. - Thank you. Okay, I have Councillor Lehman next, then Councillor Stevenson. Thank you, Chair. I’d just like to briefly address the size of the budget surplus.

[2:16:58] So through you, Chair, I could ask staff, what percent is that surplus of our budget? To Mr. Murray. Through you, Madam Chair, that is approximate, a little over 4%, but 4.4% of our total budget. Councillor. Thank you. Chair, that, you know, I think that puts a bit in perspective, it’s a big number, but when you’re looking at a big budget, obviously we’d love to get zero, right?

[2:17:41] Like that would be a budget perfectly. What is your target? Like, what are you comfortable with in charge of our finances as two? Obviously, I’m happier it’s on this side of the ledger, not on the other side, because then we would really be in trouble. Where are you, when you budget your numbers and you monitor them, where are you comfortable with as far as the surplus is concerned? Mr. Murray. Thank you, through you, Madam Chair. So Councillor, it’s a very challenging question to answer because I would say each year is unique and each year is different.

[2:18:17] And as we’ve seen, you know, even in the course of say the last five years, unique circumstances, you know, such as a global pandemic can greatly change the math in terms of the budget for the year. So I’m not sure that I would put a specific number or a specific percentage on it. As you have rightly noted, we are certainly, we definitely prefer a surplus over a deficit. And, you know, in the context of what’s almost a billion and a half dollar a year annual budget, you know, it is, you know, it needs to be understood in that context.

[2:18:57] Having said that though, and as I noted in my earlier remarks, it is higher than we would like to see it. We would like to be a little closer to net zero than that. And that’s what, you know, we’re gonna work on going forward through our budget right sizing to identify opportunities to get us closer to net zero going forward. Councillor? Thank you. My experience here, that’s, you know, if the finance department has done a bang up job and administering our, you know, a very important part of our operation here.

[2:19:35] 4.4%, yeah, probably on the high side. But I think understanding and hearing your explanations, not totally off side, but I’m glad to hear that you’re looking to, you know, let’s make sure that best as possible is to kind of get it reduced a bit, but I understand these circumstances for this year. I just wanted to briefly touch on the, you know, the amendment on how to deal with that surplus. Totally in favour of all of them for reasons expressed earlier.

[2:20:10] Just when you put money towards a debt, it’s the gift that keeps on giving. It will take tax pressure off future taxpayers, just as adding to debt as the opposite. Just wanted to highlight, I’m very pleased with, you know, the proposed budget amendment for the budget update of 16.9 million going to property tax relief, and I will fully support that at that time. And I’m also very pleased to hear the mayor’s comments about not taking his foot off the gas and achieving without this, getting taxed, you know, proposed property tax increase down to 5% for 2026, this will definitely add to that, but I still want to encourage the mayor and various departments, et cetera, to keep focused on that.

[2:21:06] Because inflation, although inflation’s coming down, prices are not, all inflation means that prices aren’t going up as much as they were. We’re still dealing with the costs that have dramatically increased in the last four years. I still gassed, but the cost of two bags are groceries. So when I go and pay it, I can’t believe I’m paying $80 for a couple of bags. So our property taxpayers need as much help as we can give them for the upcoming, you know, proposed tax rates, and I am fully aware of that. And I will encourage the mayor and council to do what we can to mitigate the tax pressures on the property tax bill, thank you.

[2:21:53] Thank you, I have Councillor Stevenson next, followed by Councillor Trossa. Thank you, I agree with everything that my colleagues have said here, but forgive me if I laugh a little bit, because I sat here in this chair last year, while a few of us made these same suggestions. And I had to go back and listen to the committee meeting to be sure that I didn’t miss to remember what felt like almost lecturing or chiding. And then I listened, so it was April 15th, the corporate services committee, and it was the April 23rd council meeting.

[2:22:32] And I even heard myself say at the April 23rd council meeting, like the languaging around prudent and responsible, and all of this kind of thing makes it sound like anything else that is suggested is irresponsible or not prudent. So this is a 180 degree flip, and it has nothing to do with the size of the surplus. So be to see it, not happy that last year, we several of us asked questions, how could we help taxpayers at a time when tax rates had been so high?

[2:23:14] And there was a motion made to take 3.5 million from the Community Investment Reserve Fund to alleviate the next year’s taxes, and the explanations really are worth listening to, why that couldn’t be done, shouldn’t be done, absolutely not. So we went with the policy as written as a council, and then in August it was brought forward to take 3 million from the Community Investment Reserve, but not do a 3.5 million dollar hit, we would spread it out over three years, 1 million at a time to keep the numbers small, to try to get agreement from our colleagues in support of giving some relief back to taxpayers.

[2:24:00] So we get to remember that we already have this little 1 million coming forward in 26 and 27, and now all of a sudden it’s okay to do 8.5 million a year. Happy to hear it, happy to hear it, but I have a hard time just not saying wow, like amazing, the change that can happen in 12 months, that has nothing to do with the size of the surplus. The other thing is if this were to go through with the staff recommendation, and then it be done under strong mayor powers, or by asset budget committee, we would actually be, ‘cause this, our new policy has 7.2 million, or this current policy as we’ve approved just April 1st, has 7.2 million going to the unfunded liability reserve fund.

[2:24:51] So if we were to, we had two choices, we could do this amended motion, or we could apply the policy as written, and then make changes at budget time. If we were to do that, we would be taking the money from the reserve fund right now, we’re just not putting it in. But 7.4 million to the unfunded liability reserve fund, and I made a suggestion, or I moved a motion the last day, the last afternoon of the budget committee, about possibly taking, I think it was, I can’t remember the exact amount, from the unfunded liability reserve fund, and the response was practically panic.

[2:25:28] So again, just, that was only last November, and all of a sudden now it’s okay that we don’t put a payment down, and we’ve gone, it’s a target balance, but we were told, and it’s true, that unfunded liability reserve is money, we owe that $100 million. So, like I said, to have a hard time not just commenting on it. And it is political decisions, this is all politics, this is, we all support the staff recommendations, and that we just recently changed on April 1st.

[2:26:06] I did have a couple of questions about the details, so there’s about almost a $10 million surplus, for the social and community support services, and I did see the explanation here, but last year we had the same thing, like very similar, it was $10 million surplus, and I’m just wondering, when we have a surplus on Ontario Works, maybe just, can someone explain to me how we get to actually make money on that? I would have just thought if we had a surplus, we would have to give it back, but this is two years in a row now, that we’re netting a surplus of millions of dollars from Ontario Works.

[2:26:44] Thank you, I got it, Mr. Murray. Thank you, and three, Madam Chair. Ontario Works, that service, at least in terms of the benefits themselves, that are provided to participants in the program, are 100% funded by the province, however, there’s a significant administration component to that program, and that is cost-shared 50/50 between the province and municipality. So what you’re seeing is the municipal side and the municipal surplus associated with that. Okay, thank you, I’ll go back.

[2:27:15] Council, you’re about 30 seconds. Okay, thank you. So the surplus was really 8.4 million. Our portion was 4.2 million. There’s a lot of personnel savings for millions and millions. Are these unstaffed positions, or are we running short staff, or how are we having that? Mr. Dickens, go ahead. Thank you, and through you, Chair. Yes, these are vacant positions. We did in the last two years see a large number of retirements occur.

[2:27:53] We were also, over the last two years, going through some pretty significant and unpredictable system transformation with the introduction and onboarding of the Employment Services transformation. And so we purposely left some positions, or staggered the recruitment on some positions, as a contingency in the event that there was a significant funding reduction. London was also unsure of when we would be adopted into social assistance transformation, milestones such as centralized intake, and some of the centralization of the payment control matters.

[2:28:27] So again, we wanted to air on the side of caution, and we’re very cautious with when and how we filled vacant positions. We’ve also gone through some restructuring at the management position, but at the management level, over the course of 2024, and there is certainly a time lag when it comes to recruitment on those restructuring efforts. So it’s a combination of safeguarding, ensuring we maximize all provincial funding before municipal funding, and yes, running short staff. Now we have taken significant steps over the latter part of 2024, and the early parts of 2025, to start filling a lot of those positions, and recognizing the need to meet the needs in our community.

[2:29:11] Thank you, Councillor. Thank you, that’s really helpful. I wondered through you to staff, is it possible to get a list of the properties for these DC exemptions that we have to backfill, maybe before the council meeting? Thank you. I will go to Mr. Murray, who’s thinking this through, and Councillor, that would be your time as well. So I’m just gonna Mr. Murray, go ahead. Through you, Madam Chair, we’ll have to look into that.

[2:29:45] I’m not sure that say list that we have, first of all, is readily available, or in a form that can be distributed, but we will take that back and see what is possible. Thank you. Okay, I have Councillor Trossa, then Councillor Palosa, and Councillor Hopkins. Thank you very much through the chair. I have quite a bit. I’m gonna try to do it in five minutes. I’m not a member of this committee. I’m gonna talk fast. I don’t have the opportunity to put forward amendments. I wanna start by saying, I would much prefer, even though we typically do this here, I would much prefer this entire matter to be not deferred, but referred to the budget committee.

[2:30:27] And the main reason for that is, we get to hear from the public at the budget committee. We don’t get to hear from the public here. And I think there’s quite a bit that’s been raised on the floor today that I would like to hear from the public for. And it goes beyond just sort of technical allocations to particular reserve funds. The second point I wanna raise really quickly, so I’m gonna save this for the last one, is I wanna speak to the ABC savings and efficiencies. I think under the circumstances, we should not be going to the small, I mean small, ABCs, who all feel that they’ve been underfunded to try to get more savings or efficiencies from them.

[2:31:12] And I will certainly address that during the budget process with respect to every one of these committees, but I just feel that we should not be trying to squeeze the small and already perceivably underfunded ABCs from more savings. Okay, this is the big one. I think that there’s a third bucket here that we could and should be looking at. And that’s, are there potential to spend some of this? Are there things that this city needs badly that would be appropriate at this point to use some of this money for?

[2:31:55] I’m not making particular amendment right now, but I’m looking, I’m looking at Appendix A, and I’m seeing that road roads, 1.4 million, social community services, 9.6 million, by law enforcement, 1.9 million, garbage recycling, 2.8 million. I just wanna know before we close this, and this is why I think it’s important to hear from the public. Are there things that we could moderately and responsibly spend this one?

[2:32:30] And I understand we can’t add to base, we cannot add to base allocation. So I’m not talking about hiring another inspector or things like that. I understand that this has to be a one-off, a one-time something very, very limited. And I’ve been trying to ascertain from staff members what different things would cost. And I would just like to throw out a few examples of targeted spending that I think would be appropriate, and that what I’m hearing from people they want have, they want to have done.

[2:33:04] Number one, on the roads, we just had another cycling death. Is there something that we could be doing more immediately to be getting towards our goal of vision zero? Perhaps we could order a few more, perhaps we could order a few more red light cameras or speed issues or something. And again, I think that could be done in a way that doesn’t go into base allocation. By-law enforcement. Well, I’m gonna need more than five minutes for that, so I’m just gonna keep it very, very, very brief.

[2:33:39] I know that the by-law department has been doing what I think are very effective and very welcomed. Special visits to targeted rental buildings on Saturdays. And these are one of the things that they schedule. I’m trying to find out how much each one of those costs. And I’m wondering, could we spend some money to add to the number of special off-site, well, special on-site at special places inspections? I am particularly thinking about certain London middle-sex housing properties, but it could be anywhere.

[2:34:23] And if staff could respond to this, that would be great, you don’t have to, but I just wanna say one more. And that is, I think that we could add a little bit of money to our homeless issues programs. People want us to deal with this. People want us— - 30 seconds. People want us to do this. My question is, could we allocate some money to warming centers on a per day basis without it going into the base budget?

[2:34:57] So I really can’t support this right now the way it’s written. I wanna see more discussion about this. I think it should be after a public meeting. And I am gonna be raising this in some greater detail, perhaps with some amendments at council. And thank you very much. Thank you, and that’s your time, I’ll go to Councilor Palosa. Thank you, Madam Chair. And on this, always grateful that it’s a surplus versus a deficit in realizing that it was a multitude of contributing factors to this. Also had some shared concerns about not being able to get money at the door fast enough to deliver on services that we’re trying to do, but there seems to happen with employment, funding factors.

[2:35:37] So I just appreciate the transparency and acknowledging where we’re trying to go. Note that as we discuss community need hearing from some residents, I need tax relief, but I also need that friggin pothole fixed and can someone please come. I also need to see more people in housing in the city. I also need cleaner park and shared spaces in our community, which would tie into former comments we’ve heard as well. Also mindful that the mayor and I have been busy out doing engagements with agency boards and commissions with multiple prong approaches and conversation points, Councilor Troso will get to hear me this evening.

[2:36:17] So mindful of our time to get to museum London. And those reports will come back the boards just for committee’s information as public letters through the budget process. You’ll see what each different board is looked into as we come with that. A question through you to staff. It might be a committee clerk-y question, but behind the scenes, not necessarily a Mr. Murray issue, just even from the city’s website, it cites the budget committee will oversee all budget matters, especially as they relate to the multi-year budget. Realizing traditionally, the budget committee has not sat throughout the year.

[2:36:51] Traditionally, it was just up and running in the fall duration, looking to see if reports like the mid-year and end-year operating budgets would be more appropriately fit there going forward versus here realizing that’s been a change in our structure. That’s somewhat recent. So just looking for comment on that. Thank you, I’ve got a Mr. Murray. Thank you, three Madam Chair. I would say as the Councillor has rightly noted, the budget committee is a relatively newer creation.

[2:37:26] At least to date has been more limited in its mandate in practice. Traditionally, our mid-year and year-end monitoring reports have of course come to previously the corporate services committee, now the infrastructure and corporate services committee, but certainly going forward, I can take that away and work with our clerks team on the best committee for this report. And of course, the mid-year report as well going forward. Councillor?

[2:37:57] Thank you. I can bring an amendment or wording to council just to make sure that’s on the docket as it comes back of the questions of where it’s best situated, realizing we meet year round now. A question through you to Mr. Murray. Part three, this reads that the 16.9 be retained to the operating budget constituency reserve to be applied the intentions evenly for a mitigation throughout 2026 and then come forward as a budget update. At that time, shall other Councillors have a desire of where a portion of that 16.9 could potentially be spent elsewhere is the budget update.

[2:38:37] Once we get into October, November, December be the appropriate place for them to have those conversations. Mr. Murray. Thank you, three, Madam Chair. Absolutely, as I think was noted earlier, this will be brought forward as a budget amendment in the budget update process this fall. Council can then have a full some conversation as part of budget deliberations on this specific 16.9 million under consideration. You know, I would also note that as there are one time needs that occur during the course of any year, we have the opportunity and the ability to work with service areas to identify a suitable funding source for any of those needs at that point in time.

[2:39:25] And those can be brought forward through the appropriate standing committees as committee reports. We can identify an appropriate source of financing to fund those needs if and as they exist. And we have a variety of one time funding sources that we have at our disposal to suit the particular need depending on the nature of whatever it is. So we have the ability then to advise on what the appropriate source of financing would be for whatever the matter or issue is under consideration. So I don’t think it necessarily needs to be dealt with as part of this process.

[2:40:02] We have the ability, you know, whether it’s through the budget process or through the ongoing committee and council cycle to address those one time needs as they come up. Thank you, Madam Chair. Thank you. I’ll go to Councilor Hopkins next. Yeah, thank you. And I think I have about a minute or two left with my comments on the report and on the amendment. Councilor, you have about four. Oh, oh, I can take a deep breath then. And I’m on the edge here.

[2:40:41] I wanna support the amendment retaining the reserve fund, 25.3 million, the operating budget contingency reserve of a 16.6, but here is where I get stuck. And it’s the 16.9 in tax relief. And are we boxing ourselves up today at committee that we are sending a message out there how this money is going to be spent. And I’m not sure that I wanna box myself in.

[2:41:16] So I’m being, I’m flip-flopping back and forth here, wanting to support part of the amendment. I can pull three out. But again, I understand that it’s going to be probably another conversation at Council. So I’m not gonna get too hung up here at committee, can always change my vote. So I’m just trying to maneuver my way through here. And I’m just being very, very cautious. And I think we need to be cautious because of the many, many challenges that we are faced here in the city.

[2:41:53] So I’m not sure what I’m gonna do because pulling bits and pieces of this is really not the way to do it. I would have liked to see this 60 million surplus go to the budget process. To me, it, and then have that public debate and conversation. And even opportunities for more business cases, I don’t know, but I’m just being very cautious here. I wanna thank the deputy mayor for the reminder of the DCs and the importance of AMO efficacy.

[2:42:32] I know it is a big conversation at AMO, but we were told by the provincial government that we were, as municipalities, going to be kept whole. And I just think that is really important to keep that conversation going because it is a lot of money. And we’re all faced with these challenges. What we’re gonna do, it’s great, we’ve got a surplus here, but it still is something that I’m very, very hesitant about. So with that, I’ll be supporting it, but boy, oh boy, am I ever open to other opportunities of, I would have liked to have just seen this referred to the budget process.

[2:43:23] So I think we’ll have a further conversation at council as well. Thank you. Looking for any additional speakers, council approval. Thank you, and I just want to clarify one thing with Mr. Murray. You have 15 seconds. How long? 15. 15 seconds. I never got 30 seconds morning. You’re using your 15 seconds? Go ahead, councilor, I’ll be meeting you.

[2:43:58] We decide today, when we go back, and potentially we would want to tap into these amounts. Will this be considered decided matter of council? Mr. Murray. Just for clarity, councilor, are you referring specifically to the 16.9 million, or are you referring more broadly, just the 16.9? From our perspective, the 16.9, just to be absolutely clear, it will be retained in our operating budget contingency reserve until the budget process, at which point there will be a budget amendment that comes forward that you will see that will identify a reduction to the tax levy, utilizing that 16.9 million.

[2:44:44] Through the budget process, council can then deliberate on that amendment, and whether you wish to support that or not, and you would have the ability at that point in time to move an amendment to the mayor’s proposed budget through the budget process. Councilor? Thank you, no more questions, last comment. We’re very pleased to support what’s in front of us, because it’s virtually what we wanted to do already last you, but very, very supportive of what’s in front of us. Thank you. Thank you, Mayor Morgan. Yes, so this is different from last year, I’ll tell you why, because there’s more surplus this year.

[2:45:23] You can actually pay down debt this year, you can put them outside the money for the obligations to have, and we can do something different, how much, 10 seconds. So you can do it all this year, and last year we paid down $17 million of debt, this year will be 25 million. It’s a very responsible thing to do, I think people should vote for it. Thank you, okay. Being that most of us are at a time to speak anyways, but if there’s any final comments? Okay, seeing none, we will open that for voting. Using the vote, motion carries, five to zero.

[2:46:20] Okay, we will move on to item 2.5, the 2024 year-end capital budget monitoring report, Councilor Pervil, you pulled this item. Would you like to speak to it? I could ask the staff through the chair, kind of same thing where it was done with the previous item, kind of a brief overview, thank you. I’ll look for an overview, and then I’ll look for a mover and seconder. Thank you, and through you, Madam Chair, I’ll be more brief on this one. I think this is generally a great news story through the year-end capital budget monitoring report.

[2:46:56] We’ve had pretty considerable success in closing down outstanding capital projects. Through this year-end report, we’re proposing to close 107 capital, individual capital projects that are now complete or no longer required. Those capital projects represent a budget of about $130 million, and we’re releasing approximately 13, almost $14 million of surplus funds back to the original funding source that originally funded those capital projects, whether that was a reserve fund or debt or whatever the case may be.

[2:47:38] That is an excellent result, I would say. That is actually in terms of the number of projects being closed, actually tied with the 2020 year-end report as the largest number of projects being closed as part of this report, at least in the last five years. So that’s a great story. I’ll also note that this report also addresses the previous council direction to report back on further information with respect to our debt going forward.

[2:48:09] So we’ve included a more fulsome section in the capital budget monitoring report that speaks about our debt projections going forward, as well as the principles and strategies that we utilize to address our debt as well. Lastly, maybe I’ll note that we have included a brief discussion around the potential impacts of trade policy and tariffs, as that may impact our capital plans going forward as well. So with that, Madam Chair, I’ll pass it back over to you. Councillor?

[2:48:42] Thank you, Mr. Chair, and— Sorry, do you mind, do you have a motion to put on the floor with this item? ‘Cause I should ask for a motion before we continue. I would like to put a staff recommendation forward. Thank you, I’ll look for a seconder on the staff recommendation, Councillor Hopkins. Okay, go ahead, Councillor. Thank you, Mr. Chair, to the staff, figured through the capital source financing is the Sanqui diagram by classification. When you look at the left and the right side, is this kind of what is kind of expected? And, or is it something that you believe that, let’s say, the Lifecycle Renewal Growth Service Improvement would be funded through different sources or this, do you believe that the Sanqui model is the right fitting one, or do you believe that there should be certain shifts?

[2:49:34] Thank you. Mr. Murray? Through you, Madam Chair, no, I do believe this is absolutely the appropriate model for funding our capital program. Going forward, this is informed and based on our capital budget and financing policy. Couple of key things to highlight. Certainly, we are trying to utilize as much as possible. Pay as you go financing for Lifecycle Renewal. So, in other words, the upkeep of our existing assets. We have gotten away from the use of debt financing for ongoing Lifecycle Renewal and debt financing is now specifically utilized for growth primarily, but as well, service improvement projects as well.

[2:50:24] And we are focusing on the use of capital levy and reserve fund funding for that ongoing maintenance of Lifecycle Renewal Capital, consistent with the principles of intergenerational equity. So, I think that’s a very positive step that we’ve been able to make the past few years. We are, of course, always trying to secure as much other government funding as we can to offset our municipal costs associated with our capital plan and where those opportunities exist. We are constantly reviewing those and where we might have an appropriate fit for a project within our upcoming capital plan.

[2:51:02] So, all in all, Councillor, I would say it’s a, I think, a very good funding mix and very much aligned with our capital budget financing policy. Councillor? Thank you very much, Mr. Murray. No more questions? Thank you. Looking for any other questions from committee or visiting Councillors on this item? Councillor Stevenson. Thank you. And I just wanted to thank staff because the graphs are on page 87 as I asked for in a previous committee. I just wanted to go over them a little bit for any of the public that’s looking at them.

[2:51:38] I just want to confirm that the dotted line is the debt cap and the black line through the bar chart is the debt servicing as a percentage of tax levy revenue, Mr. Murray? Thank you, Madam Chair. Yes, I’d be happy to elaborate on figure three and four, which I believe that you’re referring to, Councillor. So, the bars themselves, the green bars you see in the report are the projected debt levels the outstanding debt that we forecast over the coming years. The solid, I guess it’s blue, but it may show up as black line that you see is the ratio of our projected debt servicing costs as a percentage of our tax levy revenue or in the case of the figure for the wastewater, that would be our wastewater rate revenue.

[2:52:33] So you can see kind of how that is trending. And then the gray dotted line represents our respective debt caps that we’ve established for both of those budgets. So in the case of the tax supported budget, we’ve set that at seven and a half percent. So debt servicing representing up to seven and a half percent of tax levy revenue. And similarly, on the wastewater budget, 10% of wastewater rate revenue in recognition of the more capital intensive nature of the wastewater utility.

[2:53:07] So that is what those graphs show and we will be refreshing these projections again as part of developing the 2026 budget update. Councillor. Thank you and I appreciate that ‘cause one of the things I had mentioned at budget time is that, and I provided graphs similar to this to council is that we had approved significant amounts of debt in the 2020 and the last multi-year budget. And we never really talked about it. We didn’t, I don’t think we talked about it at all. And so when we see this, just a couple of questions, I didn’t realize we were projected to go over our debt cap.

[2:53:45] So I’m wondering what implications if there are any for that. And also is it fair to say that the increase in percentage would then in terms of debt servicing where we see that line go up and it’s going up from 3% up to seven or 8% that that would be as a ballpark of 4% increase in property tax if we were going from three to seven. Mr. Murray. Through you Madam Chair. So the debt caps themselves are internal debt caps to be very clear we have a separate legislative debt cap that is prescribed by the Ministry of Municipal Affairs.

[2:54:25] That is a much higher number and quite frankly, not one we would be ever comfortable going anywhere near. So this is our internal levels that we’ve set being mindful of our AAA credit rating and ensuring that our financial stability going forward is maintained. They are not hard caps in the sense that if we were to go to 7.6% instead of 7.5%. We’re in the ballpark, that’s what we’re managing to. We do not really want to go appreciably over that but it’s not a hard cap so to speak.

[2:55:02] What you see here and to your earlier point about the approval of additional debt through the multi-year budget, you can see that reflected in the projected growth in the debt here and I do not have the specific numbers in front of me in terms of what that would mean as far as a specific tax levy increase but certainly an increasing debt burn means increasing debt servicing costs going forward which would require funding through the budget and represent a tax levy pressure all else being equal. Now having said that, of course, that highlights or emphasizes the importance of continuing to chip away at the debt and avoid having to issue this debt in the first place to avoid that future debt servicing costs coming online as well and that debt servicing costs is obviously what drives the tax levy impact.

[2:55:50] So I think as we continue to chip away at this, we’re hopeful that we see the line’s trend downwards, the line and the bars trend downwards and we can continue to make a appreciable impact on our future debt projections. I do wanna emphasize as well an earlier comment was made about repaying debt early. Unfortunately, our debt once we issue it is non-callable. So our opportunity to avoid debt is to actually substitute it up front once it’s been issued. We can’t call it, we can’t repay it early.

[2:56:24] So that’s why we have to do it ahead of time in order to avoid that debt. Councillor Stevenson. Thank you, and through you, thank you for that. Both of those are great. I thought of that too when I heard about the repayment that it’s actually just a not issuance of it. And I was aware too that the debt wasn’t anything to be concerned about, but now that this goes out into the public, I just wanted them to be sure too that rising above that wasn’t gonna be an issue. When you see the graph and it goes up pointed a bit and now we are looking at adding the bump or the bomb like to bomb or whatever it was, people were calling it to the 2728, we can see that we’re adding it into a time of already hitting the impacts of the debt.

[2:57:14] Does that, any cautions around that or is it all manageable in the same way we manage other things? Mr. Murray. Through you Madam Chair. So our 2025, 2026 and 2027 budgets and our debt servicing budgets incorporated within them already incorporate these projections. So this is what our budgets are based on as we continue to make progress with respect to our debt substitution. And we bring down the amount of debt that we’re actually issuing.

[2:57:48] That gives us the opportunity to then on an annual basis, look at right sizing our debt servicing budget and hopefully bringing that down as part of a budget amendment through the annual budget update. So we’re hopeful that we can make progress in actually reducing the budget of debt servicing costs over the next coming years. Councillor Simonson. Perfect, thank you. And I haven’t heard any disagreement on that. We all seem to agree with paying down the debt, no problem there. And I do appreciate the graphs. There’s a couple of things in the reports that I just wanted to ask questions to help the public to if they’re reading it.

[2:58:23] When we talk about 1.7 billion in uncommitted capital budget, the public may say, well, if we have all that, you know, what’s the trouble? It sounds like we have lots of money. So if there’s anything you could add there, Mr. Murray? Thank you, through you, Madam Chair. I think that’s an important point to clarify for the public. When we say uncommitted, we are taking an approach of defining commitment as a formal purchase order, having been issued against that specific project.

[2:58:57] So if we are not yet at the point where we’ve made that formal procurement commitment, it shows as uncommitted. That does not necessarily mean that that project is not underway or being worked on. It just means that we haven’t actually formally issued the purchase order against it. Councillor Stevenson. Thank you and through you, that’s perfect. Another question I had is I see we’re taking out the weeping tile, it’s on page 110. There’s several million there for the weeping tile disconnection. And my understanding was that was all around trying to keep the sewage from going into our river.

[2:59:35] And I’m just wondering if somebody sees this again and is concerned about that, do we have, and I know there’s a write up there, but I just wondered if I could get staff comment. Thank you, I’ve got Ms. Remlou. Thank you, through the chair. Yes, that is a program that we had set up to fund weeping tile disconnection 100% so that we could target an entire street. Unfortunately, we had difficulty getting buy-in into the project, so we are still continuing with weeping tile disconnections, just not through that particular program.

[3:00:11] Councillor? Okay, thank you, that sounds great. And I think my last question is regarding, well, I will ask one other one. I noticed the deficit of 225,000 for the basement flooding grant, but I’m assuming that that didn’t come to council because there was a budget available elsewhere? Ms. Remlou. Yes, thank you, through the chair. So we also have a reserve fund for the basement flooding grant program.

[3:00:46] So with the significant flooding last summer, we did have a significant increase in uptake on the program, so hence that’s the first time we’ve actually ever gone into the reserve fund for that program, but that’s what it’s there for. And then as we rebuild, we’ll look to rebuild that reserve fund again. Councillor Stephens. Thank you, and through you. My last question is on page 107, and it talks about the daytime resting spaces in 1,100,000. I’d asked about this last year, it was scheduled to be late this year, and now I see it’s not being needed.

[3:01:22] It says there was a change in scope, and the agencies did not need the capital investment as they were able to rent locations that met the needs of the program, therefore the capital aspect of this project did not need to come to fruition. And I’m just wondering if we can have details on what was intended and details on that, the agency or the program that that’s involved. Thank you, I’ll go to Ms. Stater’s Fair. Thank you, Madam Chair. And my apologies, Mr. Dickens has stepped away. Through to you, to the Councillor, we’re happy to get you that information.

[3:01:58] I just don’t have it with me currently, but we’ll absolutely get it for you, okay? Councillor, you have 30 seconds. Perfect, thank you, and that’s, I’m complete. Thank you, looking for any final questions. Okay, seeing none, we’ll open that for voting. Motion to vote, motion carries, 4-0.

[3:02:37] We’ll move on to item 2.7, which is the delegation of authority by-law update. I will look for a mover and seconder on this item, and then look for questions. I’ve got Councillor Hopkins and Councillor Van Mierbergen and any questions on this item. Councillor Provel, I see you shifting for some pages, but I know you have some questions, go ahead. Yes, I did, and thank you. I’m sure to check the staff on this 2.2 proposed changes. This category of delegation is low risk and low cost and legislatively required.

[3:03:19] My question is, what is it currently and what is proposed? If I go through the appendix, and then there is, for example, a amount, $6 million, and it’s associated with the director, division manager not available. So if you can please let me know, kind of, what are the current limits? And in the text, by the way, I didn’t find any amounts, but I could have missed it as well. So what is considered low on what it would be, what is it now, or what it potentially would be?

[3:03:52] Thank you. Thank you, I’ll go to Ms. Ramlago. Thank you, through the chair. So we’re not changing any of the dollar values that are there, so those are remaining the same. So these are within the existing, that’s $6 million that can be directed. That’s actually aligned with the procurement policy as well. So those are staying the same. The only changes that we’re making here is the regulatory applications and the applications to the Upper Thames Conservation Authority can now be delegated to division manager level, rather than the director, because they are closer to the work technically.

[3:04:32] Councilor Pervall? Thank you. So currently, when it goes potentially, if you approve it to division manager in the report, it doesn’t say any amounts with the division manager. So will there be a sign, or is the $6 million currently this director is gonna be a limit for the manager? Thank you, I’ll go to Ms. Chair. Thank you, Madam Chair. These are not financial applications that we’re delegating to a lower level. These are with respect to various types of permits that we apply for with regulatory bodies. All of our financial approvals are in line with the procurement policy, and those are remaining unchanged, those amounts.

[3:05:11] Councilor Pervall? Perfect, thank you to answer so much question. I just, when I saw the low cost there, that was the only thing is what I was questioning. But thank you very much. All my answers have been, all my questions have been answered. Thank you. Thank you. Any other questions on this item? Hey, seeing none, we’ll open that for voting. Closing the vote, motion carries, forward zero. Thank you.

[3:05:45] We have no additional items that I’ve been made aware of on additional business or deferred, oh, okay, okay. Sorry, I was just moving to adjourn. As additional business or, okay. So with that, we will look to adjourn. Thank you, Councilor Van Meerberg and Councilor Hopkins, all those in favor. Thank you, everyone, have a great. Motion carries. Thank you, have a great day, everyone.