Open Council

4th Meeting of the Budget Committee

Open Council

4th Meeting of the Budget Committee

October 28, 2025, at 10:00 AM

Original link

The meeting is called to order at 10:02 AM; it being noted that Councillor S. Hillier was in remote attendance.

1.   Disclosures of Pecuniary Interest

That it BE NOTED that no pecuniary interests were disclosed.

2.   Consent

None.

3.   Scheduled Items

3.1   Mayor’s 2026 Annual Budget Update

2025-10-28 Mayor

Moved by S. Lewis

Seconded by P. Cuddy

That it BE NOTED that the Mayor’s Proposed Budget was provided to each member of Council, the City Clerk, and the public on October 27, 2025.

Motion Passed (15 to 0)

3.2   2026 Annual Budget Update Administrative Matters

2025-10-28 Staff Report - 2026 Annual Budget Update Administrative Matters

Moved by S. Lewis

Seconded by S. Franke

That, on the recommendation of the Deputy City Manager, Finance Supports, the following actions be taken:

a)    the Reconciliation of the Property Tax, Water and Wastewater and Treatment Budgets to the Public Sector Accounting Board Financial Statement Budget (“Reconciliation”) as presented in the Mayor’s Tabled Budget for Council’s Consideration – 2026 Annual Budget Update (attached as Appendix “A” to the staff report) BE RECEIVED for information;

b)    the Civic Administration BE DIRECTED to update the Reconciliation based on final budget decisions and to publish it within the adopted 2026 Annual Budget Update document;

c)    the Civic Administration BE DIRECTED to bring forward any necessary by-laws regarding the tax levy for introduction at Municipal Council; and

d)    the 2026 Annual Budget Update Presentation (attached as Appendix “B” to the staff report) BE RECEIVED for information.

Motion Passed (15 to 0)

4.   Items for Direction

4.1   D. Trentowsky, Chair, Upper Thames River Conservation Authority

2025-10-28 Submission - UTRCA

Moved by P. Cuddy

Seconded by A. Hopkins

That it BE NOTED that the Budget Committee received a communication dated September 25, 2025 from D. Trentowsky, Chair, Upper Thames River Conservation Authority with respect to the Budget.

Motion Passed (15 to 0)

5.   Deferred Matters/Additional Business

None.

6.   Confidential 

None.

7.   Adjournment

Moved by P. Van Meerbergen

Seconded by P. Cuddy

That the meeting BE ADJOURNED.

Motion Passed

The meeting adjourned at 11:50 AM.

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 (2 hours, 6 minutes)

[17:22] if everyone can find their spots. This is the fourth meeting, the Budget Committee.

[18:08] The city of London is situated on the traditional lands of the Nauschbeck, Haudenosaunee, Lenape Walk, and Adwondron. We honor and respect the history, language, and culture, the diverse indigenous people who call this territory home. The city of London is currently home to many Métis First Nation 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. For everyone’s information, I am joined in chambers by all members of council, excluding Councillor Hillier, who is a dapper today in a Jay’s Jersey joining us online. The city of London is committed to making every effort to provide alternate formats and communication supports for meetings upon request.

[18:46] To make a request specific to this meeting, please contact 519-661-2489, extension 2425. Looking to committee members for disclosures of pecuniary interest. Seeing none, we have no consent items before us today. We do, however, have two scheduled items, which would all be pertained to the annual budget update. We will commence with item 3.1, being the mayor’s 2026 annual budget update. All members of council should have received their bound and printed budget update for 2026.

[19:24] If you have not received yours, let us know. There is a copy for you if it’s gone missing. So this format will follow the similar format to last year, which would be staff taking us through their presentation and the mayor taking us through his budget. Questions today will not be focused around debate. Certainly, if you wanna know why something was in or not, the mayor will walk us through that. And then we’ll have some procedural questions at the end. Mr. Murray will start us off.

[19:58] And as a reminder, your screens have that button that can toggle between your eScribe screen and the screen for the presentation. Mr. Murray, the floor is yours, whenever you’re ready. Thank you very much, Madam Chair. And I am very pleased to be able to provide an overview today of the 2026 budget update. I’ll start by saying first on behalf of Annalisa, a big thank you to the whole finance team, as well as the senior leadership team, all the service areas who contributed to this year’s budget update.

[20:34] I’d also like to thank the mayor and the budget chair for their support and direction to this point in the process. And to all of you as well, thank you. You’ve been engaged now in this 2026 budget process since March, certainly much earlier, much sooner than we would normally get started on a budget. So thank you for your input in the process so far. So the 2026 annual budget update was released yesterday, October the 27th, and is now available online at london.ca/budget, as well as get involved.london.ca/budget, which is our public engagement portal.

[21:22] Today, I will take you through a bit of a refresher on the multi-year budget process, and specifically where the annual budget updates fits in that process. We’ll recap where we were coming out of last year’s budget update, and coming into this year’s process. I’ll walk you through the key dates in this year’s process, and the public engagement plan as well. And then I’ll pass it over to Mayor Morgan at that point, who will take us through the various 2026 budget business cases. And then we’ll conclude with a few comments or remarks from the budget chair, as we look ahead to deliberations next month, just a few key points that she wishes to reiterate.

[22:09] So the 2026 budget update is, of course, the second budget update to the 2024 to 2027 multi-year budget. And it is the final budget update of this term of council. As you know, and as you’ve seen over the past few years, the annual budget update process is a really key and important part of the multi-year budget cycle. It gives us the opportunity to adjust or to make strategic course corrections as we need to throughout the multi-year budget cycle. Consistent with previous years, an annual budget update typically includes three categories of business cases.

[22:51] They are listed here on this slide. These are the same categories that you see for the tax supported, as well as the water and wastewater budgets. You will also see that the business cases are further categorized in the budget document between those that are included in the mayor’s proposed budget and those other business cases as well that are just presented for council’s consideration and discussion. And Mayor Morgan will provide further details on his categorization a little bit later on.

[23:28] So before we get into the details of this year’s budget update, let’s recap where we were coming out of last year’s process. So this graph illustrates the tax-level increases that were anticipated based on the adopted multi-year budget back in 2024. So that is the blue dotted line you see on this graph. And then the purple solid line is the revised increases or the adjusted increases coming out of last year’s budget update. So 8.7% was the tax-level increase for 2024.

[24:06] And 8.7% was anticipated for 2025, although this was adjusted down to 7.3% through last year’s budget update process. And coming out of last year’s budget, the forecasted tax-level increases for 2026 and 2027 were 6.4% and 6.7% respectively. You’ve seen these charts. We tend to present these every year. And we like to include these as context on where we stand relative to our municipal peers.

[24:44] We rely on the BMA municipal study, which is an annual third-party study that allows us to compare against other municipalities. We are specifically looking at other Ontario municipalities with population greater than 100,000 people. And I think I’ll just mention that this represents 2024 data as well. We do not yet have the 2025 BMA study. So this is 2024 data. So this first comparison here is average residential taxes.

[25:20] London is the green bar at $3,806 per year. The average you see is the red bar at $5,043 per year on average. And the median is the orangeish color bar at $4,925 per year. This next graph shows average residential property taxes as a percentage of household income.

[25:53] So again, London is the green bar. We come in at 3.7%. Both the average and the median in red and orange respectively are at 4%. This is the comparison of commercial property taxes. Again, London and green at $3.17. This is on a per square foot basis compared to an average of $3.84. And likewise, the median is also $3.84. Our final comparison here is industrial property taxes.

[26:34] Again, on a per square foot basis. London, again, in green at $1.51 per square foot versus an average of $2.14 and a median of $2.02 per square foot. Okay, I’m just gonna spend a couple of minutes on the key dates in this year’s process and the public engagement plan. You’ve seen this chart, this picture before. This, of course, is the strong mayor process that was introduced by the province in 2022 and extended to London in 2023.

[27:15] That continues to apply to our municipal budget process. And the specifics of the process are outlined on this slide. So, again, the legislation indicates that the mayor is to propose a budget honor before February 1st, which then opens a 30-day period for council amendments to the mayor’s proposed budget, followed by a 10-day period for potential mayoral veto of council amendments, followed then by a 15-day period for potential council override of mayoral vetoes.

[27:55] So, with those requirements in mind, we’ve tried to craft this year’s timelines to give us the most amount of time possible to engage and review and discuss the budget while still complying with the legislative timelines. So, as I mentioned earlier, the budget was officially released yesterday, October the 27th, so that starts the 30-day clock. Looking ahead, we have the public participation meeting scheduled for November the 18th at 4 p.m.

[28:30] And budget deliberations here at Budget Committee are scheduled for November the 20th and November the 21st as well, if required. In terms of potential council amendments to the mayor’s budget, so the deadlines for those is November the 10th at 9 a.m. to appear on the normal agenda for the Budget Committee meeting on the 20th. The added agenda deadline is November the 19th at 9 a.m.

[29:06] Again, for any council amendments to be discussed on November the 20th. Council will then provide formal approval of any amendments to the mayor’s proposed budget on November the 26th, so that is exactly 30 days after the release of the budget. And then beyond that, we get into potential mayoral veto, if any, Mayor Morgan has indicated his intention to provide his direction on that by December the 1st.

[29:42] Our public engagement plan for this year includes five in-person pop-up events as well as one online event as well. These are opportunities to inform and educate Londoners about the budget process and answer any questions that residents might have as well. I will just highlight that these are the events that are being led by the budget team. These do not include any events hosted by community groups or community organizations or counselors individually.

[30:19] These are strictly the budget team led events. I’ll mention as well that these are pop-up style events. They are not formal presentation or sit down style events. These are true pop-up events at these locations. In addition to those pop-up events, we utilize a number of other channels for engagement as well. We’re always happy to attend upon request counselor ward meetings or town halls or community group events, council advisory committee meetings.

[30:52] So happy to attend those. Consistent with previous years, we’ve got our online budget business case survey up as well. So that’s on our Get Involved page. That’s the opportunity for Londoners to express their support or not for the various business cases that are included in this year’s budget. And we have another number of other reference materials on our website as well, including our property tax breakdown calculator and our finance flicks as well. We’ll be doing advertising through a variety of formats as well, consistent with previous years.

[31:28] And again, we have printed budget materials available at the library branches as well. So with that, I will turn it over to Mayor Morgan to walk through the budget business cases for this year. Sam, we’re on as tall as well. Thanks colleagues.

[32:26] I appreciate the ability to present this. I want to first off start with my thanks both for Budget Chair Pelosi and her support through the process. And of course, for sharing these meetings and the discussions that are coming ahead, as well as our municipal staff for the incredible amount of work they do, not only with the service review process, but also with all of the work to prepare the budget and make sure that we have the document before us today. I will just remind colleagues too, because I think I’ve seen a couple of people make comments on this. The reason why you received the information when you did yesterday and not before is because as soon as I deliver any piece of information on the budget to the majority of council, it will trigger the 30-day timeline.

[33:10] And so we’ve designed a process to try to maximize that timeframe, to maximize the discussion and engagement, so that when I table it, the council decision-making, the other end is exactly just within the 30-day timeframe, and that allows us to maximize the amount of time for council debate, decision-making and public engagement. But there is no mechanism for me to give this information ahead of time without triggering the legislative count down of 30 days. So if you wanted it two weeks ago, we’d be finishing the process two weeks early. So just a reminder of that. As well, I did provide a mayoral direction near the start of this year to bring forward options to bring the property tax rate down below 5%.

[33:54] And we’ve had some deliberations as colleagues. We’ve had multiple budget committees. We started the process early so that we could brainstorm. And I want to say I appreciate both all of the feedback and thoughts that council has given into this process, as well as the engagement and direction that was supported to go out and reach to the boards and commissions. And Councilor Plos and I went out and spoke to a number of them. I know each of you are representatives on different ones and engaged with those boards and commissions on how they could participate in trying to bring down the tax rate. And you’ll see in the table budget that there were a number of them that went through a thoughtful process and brought back some savings for us as well.

[34:32] As with previous years, there’s gonna be two sections to the business cases that I present today. The ones that I included in the table budget. The other ones that were business cases that were available that I did not include and those full business cases are included in the package should members of council actually want to debate and include those. They could do so through amendments. So you’ll have all of that full information. Of course, you have the right, of course, too, to remove any of the business cases that I’ve included. And I’m happy to provide some high level rationale for what I did. I would say for a summary, I included 21 business cases in the table budget, three resulting in tax increases, 14 resulting in tax labor reductions, four that have no impacts, basically timing requests on capital projects, things like that, that were at the request of either civic administration or boards and commissions.

[35:19] The other four business cases that I didn’t include are for council’s consideration, I’ll just make a couple of comments on why I didn’t include those. But I’ll go through each of them individually and not with a lot of time, but briefly, and then happy to take questions at the end. So the first one, P1 is operating support for a fundamental sex community housing. I included this in the budget. We traditionally have given them a grant to offset some of the property taxes they large. They manage a large suite of portfolio in the city to make them kind of hold on that.

[35:54] There’s an operating request to help them out with both the property tax increases, as well as some operating pressures that they have. As you know, our social housing stock is incredibly important to the work we do on housing. And so this investment, both in 2026 and 2027, is included in the table budget. The Middlesex London Health Unit, they have about $2.3 million. Actually, it’s about $2.8 million about standing debt. Our share of that, because the county pays a proportion of the share, is about $2.3. Because of that, they spend about 241,000 in principal and interest payments out of their operating funds, which restricts their programming.

[36:33] One of the things I put in this budget was to basically work with the county to assist having them just pay off that debt and free up that operational capacity. Despite that, they do have some operational pressures. They’re requesting an additional $709,000 from us. There would be a proportionate share from the county, as well, to help them with their operating budget. You’ve got some of the details in your surlocks package. They do have pressure in 2027. The commitment that we’ve made is that we would go and do some joint advocacy together on this with the province.

[37:09] As you’ve heard through presentations from the health unit and through our current advocacy with AMO and the delegations we had at the AMO conference, where the proportionate share that the province gives is below the provincial average. And so should the province actually fund the health unit to the general average that they fund across the province, that our health unit would be in a much better fiscal position. Rather than us just give the money in 2027, we’ve committed to continuing that advocacy together to try to convince the province that we should get our fair share of the per capita funding.

[37:44] Our health unit is in the bottom quartile for that per person user fee. So that’s in the budget as well. There’s a, this is not impact the tax levy, but there’s a drawdown from the economic development reserve fund of about $423,000 over the next five years, 2025 to 2030 to support Middlesex County Connect’s inter-community transit service. Essentially the province is committed to funding half of that service.

[38:18] The other municipalities involved in that service, which includes two single tier municipalities, that’s in St. Thomas, as well as three counties that benefit from the service. We’re all gonna pay an equal proportion, not proportionate share, but just an equal share of the amount that’s left. So London doesn’t pay more because we have more population. We just divided that cost among the five partners and we’ll support that transit system. All of the other leaders in those communities have committed to putting this in their budget. So I’m hoping that you’ll support this as well. If we don’t support it, we’d have to go back and discuss with the other partners, essentially whether or not they continue this service.

[38:54] We’ve also committed to the reason why we’ve won time this funding and not made a permanent. We all still believe that it should eventually be something that is uploaded to the province and supported at the provincial level. But we know that we need to grow the ridership base. It’s gone very well so far. We wanna continue this program for at least the next five years. Will we still advocate to the province for cost for its expansion as well as taking over the operational costs rather than splitting it? There’s some adjustments to the timing of capital projects.

[39:27] There’s no tax levy impact. Those are outlined within the surlocks binder that you have. If you have questions on that, our staff can answer that. The reasons for the adjustments to the capital projects, but we do have to actually submit it as a formal budget amendment. So I’ve included that at our staff’s request. Now we’re into some of the recommendations that came through municipal council to be forwarded for business cases, some of which I included, some of which I didn’t. I number the ones I included you’ll see here today. The first is the road network improvements, the reduction of the about $12 million road reconstruction.

[40:01] This is the local road reconstruction capital budget would result in about one fewer small court or small street each year. I’ve included that at the budget for savings and that can obviously be debated and discussed. And there’s lots of detail in the binder on that. The timing of the organic waste diversion facility was adjusted in the budget as well based on the discussions it’s been had and the discussions that will go through committee. So that’s in there as well. I won’t comment too much further on that. I did include, you’ve seen this before, stopping the multi-residential green bin cart pilot project and the future expansion of that at the cost of, or the savings of about $450,000.

[40:46] This is one where as you know, the province has said that the owners of these buildings are responsible for the service. Instead of pulling out the full cost of the service, I’ve left $50,000 in the budget which our staff will use to provide technical support to building owners to help them develop their own green bin programs and meet the provincial obligation. So we won’t be paying for this, or I should say all taxpayers across the city won’t be paying for green bin service in specific buildings. My expectation is those building owners would follow the provincial direction and their responsibility for providing those programs.

[41:21] But the municipality would be available for support from a technical and expertise perspective. And there’s the possibility that this could lead to the municipality being asked to do this anyways, but more as a fee for service rather than us just outright pay it. So that reduction is included in the budget, but there’s still $50,000 in the budget for providing technical support. The Upper Thames River Conservation Authority included a reduction. This is based on the conversations that myself and Councillor Ploza had with them. The reduction is larger than that. It’s about $41,000 total, but it’s divided across the property tax supported in the wastewater budgets.

[41:56] This is something that they’ve come up with to their own accord and they’ve done their own analysis and they’ve returned a little bit of savings to us. The $16,000 that you see here is included in the property tax. You’ll see in another slide the water or wastewater portion of that. So I just wanna say thank you to the Upper Thames for the work they did in assessing that organization and returning some savings. This is one that you’ve seen already too. The HR internships budget, I did include the reduction to that. This does not include all internships. It’s just the HR related ones.

[42:29] The ones that require technical expertise, like for Pnges, those ones where to actually get your designation, you need to have some work experience. I included left all of those internships within the municipality, so those aren’t touched. It’s just the ones that are the HR related ones that aren’t associated with someone achieving their credentials. We included the reduction for the Microsoft Co-Pilot and Microsoft Fabric systems. This doesn’t completely eliminate those but basically habs the number of licenses.

[43:05] So it would slow the pace of our adoption of these systems across the corporation, but certainly doesn’t eliminate it. So this is basically a pacing business case. So I basically just have that, which is also a business case that came before us that you’ve seen as part of the reductions that Council said, let’s see a business case for. I included the buy annualization. Yeah, every other year, we’ll do the residence satisfaction survey every other year, and rather than every year, that provides a savings of 28,000. You’ll see, if you go back through previous residence satisfaction surveys, there’s not a lot of fluctuation year over year, so picking it up every two years probably gives us a better data set and you might see more of the variance.

[43:49] So that’s included as well. This was something that staff brought forward as an option. We’ve talked about this a lot. The funding of development charges statutory exemptions. So up until we received the confirmation letter, it’s a general understanding that we had to fulfill backfilling those DC fees. These are included in the budget as a reduction. So they come out in 2026. They carry forward forever because that’s the base budget. You’ll see pieces of this in the water and wastewater as well. I don’t think I need to talk about this more ‘cause we’ve chatted about it quite a bit.

[44:26] This one, I will talk about a little bit because I want colleagues to understand it. There’s an $18 million reduction in 2027 related to the debt servicing costs. So what this is, is there’s actually two pieces to this. 10 million, 10.8 million, 2026 and 6.4 million in 2027, totaling 17.2 million is gonna be allocated to the debt substitution reserve. This is the reserve that we use to forgo debt. So when we get to the point where authorized debt comes up and we need to issue it, we can draw from that reserve fund rather than issuing it and save the principal and interest payments, $18 million though is going to be used for a tax mitigation in 2027.

[45:09] So essentially what staff did is looked at the pace that we’ve been paying down debt, which has been quite aggressive. We’ve looked at the timeframes on the allocations of that debt. You’ll see a chart on this in the future updating our debt structure and our debt servicing estimates. But essentially of the adjustments that we were able to make, I basically have that put half towards tax mitigation and then about another half towards continued debt reduction, which I will say is a really critical piece for us to follow through on. As you know, and you’ll see in the next couple of slides, there’s some one-time reductions to the tax rate.

[45:43] If we don’t wanna create a hole in the future, we actually have to provide some savings down the road by continuing to put some money in the debt substitution reserve fund. We will be able to avoid debt and avoid interest payments in the future, which will help ease that pressure and essentially solve some of that challenge that we have. So we’re, by doing this, we’re essentially relieving some pressure in 2028 down the road, which I hope council fully supports. And that’s why I have this piece. The library submitted some adjustments to the timing of their capital projects. They’ve recently done a refurbishment of a branch in the Northwest and they’re aligning just their capital plan with the changes.

[46:22] This is a library request that I included in the budget. The library, and I will give credit to them. The library included a contribution of $200,000 on a one-time basis. They have a stabilization reserve. They have a target range for that reserve. They were essentially above the target range, the upper threshold of the target range. So they still have a fully funded stabilization reserve, but they’ve given us the $200,000 above the target range back to the municipality. So they still have the ability to deal with unforeseen circumstances through the fully funded stabilization reserve, but everything beyond that’s been given back to the municipality.

[46:58] I wanna thank the London Public Library Board for doing that. I also wanna thank the London Police Service for returning $1.5 million of funds from a variety of sources there. That board has done a good job of establishing a finance committee looking into savings. They’ve committed to doing this on an ongoing basis. It is, again, a one-time thing. They’re gonna do this process each end of the year. I’ll remind you they did about $800 or $50,000 last year and about $1.5 million this year. So I wanna provide my thanks to that board as well for returning some savings at our request.

[47:35] I’ll echo the thanks to the London Transit Commission, who also returned $700,000 of funding. The Transit Commission had about $1.8 million in fuel savings due to lower diesel costs. Now they did have some upward pressures in a number of other areas. So the netting out of that was about a $700,000 contribution back to the city. The reason why you don’t see this one carry forward is fuel costs are not consistent over time. Each and every year they’ll look to see if they continue to have those savings and then potentially return some dollars, but also perhaps solve some upward challenges they have. So in the business case, you’ll actually see how that 1.8 million savings, as well as they had some administrative savings as well, is offset by some upward pressures and the net results is about a $700,000 contribution back to the city in this particular budget.

[48:23] The business case that council supported in bringing forward on recreational fees and revenues is in this budget as well. So traditionally we have a cost recovery model where on average the municipality pays a portion from property taxes and then user fees pay another portion. By adopting this change, we move from about 63% paid by user fees to about 65%. So it’s a very small difference. The municipality is still picking up the rest with property taxes, but this is a slight increase to user fees, still staying within that municipality paying about two thirds on average range of the costs and users paying the other one third.

[49:04] So that adjustment, you’ve seen this before, it’s come through, if we approve this, the fees and charges by-law will be brought forward with the updated numbers in the short term. The portion of the surplus, we talked about this one too, from our last year’s surplus that was allocated and brought forward as a business case for debt reduction. Probably no surprise since I moved the motion at committee to do so that I’ve included it in the budget. That includes 8.4 million each year. That provides tax mitigation. As I said, some of our debt work and other works in the outward plan will help offset that in 2028 when we see the upward pressure.

[49:43] But for now it’s included as tax mitigation through the end of this multi-year budget cycle starting in the 2026 year. This one I’m gonna talk about a little bit. Zero based budgeting and civic administration right sizing. This is part of our annual service review and I wanna emphasize the service review program that our staff have been executing since 2016. That council brought in a full service review.

[50:17] This is where each and every year they go deep dive, zero based budgeting, lean six sigma, they use a variety of tools to dig deep and do a part of the corporation and then try to return savings to the annual budget process. Over the course of that entire time there’s been approaching $70 million of permanent savings carved out of the base budget. So permanently carved out of the base budget over that time through efficiencies and modernization of processes and applying essentially six sigma and mean zero based budgeting best practices to different parts of the corporation.

[50:52] So that’s 9.6 million in 2026, 10.7 in 2027. And I will emphasize that we have not done the full 2027 service review. This is just what we’ve done in 2026, the stuff that carries forward on a permanent basis and some that can be applied in 2027. For reference, if you total all of the savings, although it’s about 70 million, almost 70 million out of the base budget, the total cumulative savings over that time for 2016 today of the result of the service review work is now 318.57 million dollars. So for everybody who says, municipalities should be run more efficiently.

[51:26] This is actually the work done to run the municipality more efficiently to find better processes and to plan ahead. I wanna thank our staff incredibly for finding 9.6 million dollars, essentially found 20 million dollars over two years. But this is on top of the money that they’ve already found within the tables, multi-year base budget and the annual update last year. So incredible work by our staff that I did not want to let pass by as we talk about the budget and this slide. I also wanted to remind colleagues, those are the business cases that I’ve included on that side of things.

[52:02] But that the tax rate is not what we’re essentially setting with the budget. We’re essentially setting what the budget is today. For context, in 2025, the budget increase on the property tax side was 7.3%, but after tax policy decisions were made, that was actually a 6.6% increase. And so that’s 6.6 number when people get their tax bill and they open up the little brochure. That’s the number it says in the little brochure ‘cause the tax policy and education taxes are applied at that point.

[52:34] I know Councilor Pribble really likes this. You’ll see a chart coming up that you’ll be very happy with with the additional dots that show where our budget projections were, how my table budget makes adjustments, and then what the actual tax rate is we landed on. I cannot tell you what the actual tax rate is that we’ll land on in 2026 until we go through that process in the spring, but traditionally, it’s always been around a half to a percent less than what we ended up doing in the budget, although I can’t actually predict that until we go through the province wide education rates and the tax policy. So that means this chart shows us where we were at the end of the 2025 budget cycle.

[53:12] So we had brought some of the rates down, but we were still projecting a 6.4 and a 6.7% rate through the end of this multi-year budget. The green bar is the bar that shows the actual tax rates that people faced on their tax bills, on average, 7.7 and 6.6, and this budget tables tax rates at 3.6 in 2026 and 4.7 in 2027. And I will say that does not include the entire 2027 budget process, which the next council will be engaged in, but the starting point for that 2027 budget has been brought down from 6.7 to 4.7, which is a much better starting point than where it was.

[53:52] And this year, of course, through all the changes that I just mentioned, that 6.4% projected increase comes down to 3.6. Now, things that I did not include that council would have seen the business cases for and has it. I did not include a reduction to the tree planting budget, so that remains in the budget. I did not include a reduction to the local streetlights program, so that program remains intact within the budget as well. I did not include a reduction to the Climate Emergency Reserve Fund, which the $192,000 reduction would have basically take the contributions to zero, so I’ve left that in there.

[54:33] And I did not include stopping collection of blue box material from non-eligible sources, including a variety of institutions and organizations across the city. I’ll tell you the reason why I did this is, unlike the other one where it’s the provincial responsibility for people to actually bring on a Greenman program, here the likely result is since there is no legislation that’s going to require anybody to do this, it likely ends up in our landfill. We likely end up paying for it anyways, so I’ve actually just included this program in the budget because I think we end up eating some of the costs of it anyways if we pull it out, so that program remains.

[55:11] I’ll quickly go through the water and wastewater table budgets. This won’t take very long at all. There’s some scheduling changes for some of the growth projects. You can see those in your binder. There’s no tax impact on that. There is the development charges exemptions on the water budget side of about a half million dollars, which brings down the water rates, which you’ve already seen through a previous report to committee. On the wastewater side, again, some timings of capital budget amendments and growth projects change within the binder. You can see the details of that. There’s an adjustment to the Greenway scheduling, the budget for the advanced detail design is adjusted.

[55:49] And the Upper Thames Conservation Authority, this is their contribution back to the municipality. I said part of it was in the tax support budget. Part of it is in the wastewater budget. The other half of that budget is here. You can see the details in business case P9. And this part of the budget, the wastewater budget actually had a significant portion of development charge exemptions budgeted within it about $3.1 million. That’s pulled out of the budget starting in 2026 as well. Now that we have the letter from the ministry saying we can, just a reminder that this actually lowers the projected increases on the water and wastewater rates.

[56:26] So we were gonna face a 2.6% increase on the water. It’s now 2.2. We were gonna face a 4.6% increase on wastewater. It’s now 2.4. Debt overview. This is something new that I’ve added to the presentation because we talk a lot about debt. I wanna make sure everybody has a full view of where the debt is headed in the city and the adjustments that this budget update makes to it. So what we’ve done is we’ve refreshed all of the debt projections based on most available information as well as the debt structure timing, timing of issuance, adjustments that have happened to interest rates through the annual budget update and send me an annual capital budget updates in the monitoring processes.

[57:13] We’ve had, you know, we can do deferrals and we’ve done so. They’ve had a positive impact on some of the debt financing and on issue debt. I’ll say since civic administration has implemented policies and council has been very disciplined in following the policies. This is the policy about surplus and assessment growth as well as the additional measures that I’ve taken in the budget to pay down some debt. We have before this budget paid down since 2016, we’ve, I shouldn’t say paid down.

[57:45] We’ve avoided $105 million of debt. So debt that was authorized but never had to be issued because we’ve taken surpluses, because we’ve taken our assessment growth process and actually for gone that debt and not had to issue it because we had money in the debt substitution reserve fund to use instead of issuing new debt. That has saved an incredible amount of principal and interest payments, which gives us a property tax pressure benefit. If you include the measures that I’ve included in this budget, that 105 million actually rises to 122.5 million since 2016 and over the past two years, that $44 million actually goes up because of the additional measures that are in the budget contribute to the debt stabilization reserve fund.

[58:29] So this is a combined chart of where debt was headed in the purple lines and the bars are for the left side of the graph, the dotted lines are for the right side of the graph. So the bars are the total debt levels that the municipality was going to face as well as the servicing costs and the dotted line for those debt levels. As you can see, we have a debt cap on the operating side of that we don’t want to hit of about 7.5%. That means if we were to hit that, 7.5% of all property taxes collected would be going to service debt paying down principal and interest.

[59:02] Based on the work that we’ve done, the debt reductions both included in this budget as well as the previous actions we’ve taken as a council, the debt charts have all been updated and you can see that we are issuing way less debt than we’re projecting to and those debt servicing costs are projected to be way less than they actually were. This is an exceptionally positive news story for the municipality. This is the kind of things that our credit ratings look very favorably on. And so what we can see is debt coming down in the municipality, the amount that we’re issuing. And that is assuming we stick with our policies of paying down debt and making sure we put some surplus towards debt and continuing to be aggressive and supporting the business cases that are reflected that I put before you today.

[59:48] So there might be questions about that. On the water wastewater side, the same thing is happening. It’s not quite the same curve, but same projections. We’re not hitting or coming close to the debt cap throughout the course of the next eight years or so. And that’s presuming we don’t make any other changes. So I think those two charts are something that I actually wanted to add today because I think that they’re pretty important. I wanna go back to this one though, there’s a piece that I forgot. As you know, I’m also engaging in lobbying with the provincial and federal governments on the emergency services campus.

[1:00:25] Phase one is about $133 million that a project has a significant portion of debt financing within it. I have not included any provincial or federal contributions in these new green bars. If we are successful in getting federal and provincial contributions, these numbers will come down further because we will be taking additional debt load off of the city to support that particular project. So that part is pretty important because I left it in the budget until we get confirmation that we’re getting some funding.

[1:00:57] Although the conversations are going very well, we’re gonna leave it in the table budget. We can take it out in the future. Should we receive significant contributions from them? With that, the budget chair gets to present some slides. Thank you. I’ll let you click for me. I can’t come over there. I’ll just, I think the only item I just wanted to highlight from your presentation as well that the water rates were already approved by council as we go for that conversation.

[1:01:30] So any changes if we want to do something different, we’d just have a different conversation behind the scenes as we actually had already approved those. An email will be coming out on my behalf from Mr. Murray later today, just outlining the process, just where you have it in writing easily in your inbox and for timing as well. As always, any questions you have beforehand, as much as possible, please ask the appropriate head of the department or the finance team. If you have a declaration for a point of conflict, please fill that out ahead of time. Just helps me to pull the items and know that there’s gonna be a different vote happening in advance, same with the amendments.

[1:02:08] As you read through this, if there’s something that you know you want a different conversation on, I appreciate the heads up as much and possible, just so I can start pulling things and organizing those conversations. If you know you would like something done a little bit differently. As you know, the public participation meeting comes up first. So I was just encouraging members of the public to their come in public as always or virtual or on Zoom. And then if they have correspondence and that in for our consideration as well, as you will be on a short timeline to turn around, anything you hear from them as well. Drop in sessions, stay staff will reach out and let you know.

[1:02:42] If you know you have something in particular as well, flake it for them early, same with any extra town halls you might wanna do. Or if you’re playing on coming to one of theirs that they’re hosting, sometimes I do, I just give them a heads up that I’m gonna be there. So I know where to stand that I’m with them, but not with them and can help filter any questions. As I said, those items and key dates will be coming out in an email to you shortly, procedurally for that. When we get into our actual day of deliberations on the 20th, last time there was lots of emails with finance going back and forth, trying to limit that as much as possible to make sure that their attention and their staff resources are all focused here on the room in real time and the conversation that we’re going through.

[1:03:27] So it’s just really important this time to get your things in advance so we can be ready and help you get clerked and circulated just for we know there might be different motions coming on the SIM items so we can help coordinate that versus smooth as possible. Did I have another slide, Josh? Yep, there’s the dates again. Those will be coming out and you have them in your package. Is there a next one or is that good? Perfect. So at this time it’s Q&A of either Mr. Murray and his team or the mayor just process questions or why something is perhaps in and out versus actual motions that you’re looking to make so not doing cross debate today but just process and procedure wise to focus our questions.

[1:04:14] I will start my speakers list with Councillor Frank. Thank you and appreciate all the information and I’m excited to read this more thoroughly. I just had one quick question in regards to public input for people to put stuff on the public agenda would they be emailing budget@london.ca and then it would just go on a one of the budget debate agendas? It’s a budget committee at London.ca. Mr. Murray, do you want to clarify that? Yes, thank you and apologies. Sort of included that in the slide.

[1:04:46] So yes, any public input specifically directed to the public participation meeting on November the 18th should go to budget committee@london.ca. If there are any questions or requests for information, those can go to budget@london.ca. Budget@london.ca is the email address that my team monitors. And so we’d be happy to follow up on any questions but any public submissions should go to budget committee@london.ca. Thank you. I’ve clarified that and not email. It’s going to come out later.

[1:05:17] It’s a change I made that Mr. Murray will see as well. So the added deadline would be the 17th at 9 a.m. Mr. Murray, do you know when the regular deadline is for those public communications? Through you, Madam Chair, it is 9 a.m. On November the 10th is the normal deadline. That’s for the PPM day. I will confirm with the clerks, but I believe that to be the case. OK, the clerks are date checking.

[1:05:52] So we will circle back to that. Councillor Frank, are you good? Because then I’ll go to Councillor McAllister and then Councillor Hawkins. Thank you and through the chair. Appreciate the presentations today. Very helpful. I just want to start off with a quick comment. I just want to say thank you in terms of the business case P1 putting on my other hat, a sitting on LMCH board, recognizing the pressures we’re under in terms of all the properties we have and trying to provide that subsidized housing. So I really appreciate it that that was included. So thank you for that.

[1:06:24] I do just want to ask this question to the mayor. In terms of this being the third year now, we’ve gone through this process. I still get a lot of questions in terms of how does it work with strong mayor powers. I have to volunteer budget. But I do think there’s still some misconceptions in terms of the property tax rate, the averages and what that translates to. So I just want to give the mayor an opportunity. If there’s anything he feels needs more clarification to provide that now. Thank you. I appreciate as a board member the first part you said about LMCH, we’re just going to save those type of comments when we get into things as it’s more getting into the merits of a case.

[1:07:05] Mr. Mayor, you’re in the second back half of the question. And I will confirm that what Mr. Murray said about the deadline of the 10th for public submissions to be correct, Mr. Mayor. Sure. Well, I’m disappointed that you cut off the positive comments. But I understand that we’re not in the debate part yet. There are a couple of— I appreciate the question, Councillor McAllister, because I think there’s a couple of things that we have to explain each and every year as Councillors. First is that the budget is one of the steps in setting the tax rate. And so often, we’ve translated the tax rate to say, this budget translates into X number of dollars per year.

[1:07:44] But it doesn’t actually land that way for individual homeowners. It goes through the tax policy, goes through the education taxes, and then that number is actually quite unique to the different tax classes. On the residential side, we always present projections within the budget document. And on page 7, it has those budget-related projections for taxpayer impact. But my caution with that is those are if no tax policy was applied. And it basically went straight to the taxpayers as of this number.

[1:08:15] So the numbers that the residents face were actually less than that on average. The other piece that comes up quite often is we say this thing about this is based on the average home assessed at $252. Yeah, I got $252,000. So public usually says, there’s no home in the city that is $252,000, that doesn’t make any sense. These homes are assessed at 2016 values according to MPAC. So that means every property is basically assessed at that value and then taxed at whatever their 2016 equivalent value is.

[1:08:52] It means if a new house was built this year, what MPAC does is they may have sold that house for $800,000. But MPAC will go back and say, what would this house have been worth in 2016? And that’s the value that house actually gets taxed on. So it’s very confusing for the public. The long freeze of MPAC fees has created, I think, a lot of confusion because we put accurate numbers in our budget presentation, but it’s out of alignment with people who buy and sell homes in the community because they’re looking at those real numbers. Those are not the numbers of those values or not what people are necessarily taxed on.

[1:09:26] They’re taxed on the MPAC valuations that people get in their actual tax slip. The other piece to this too is because of the way that we have different tax classes, there are different classes that pay for different amounts of the property tax. So if we collect $1.3 billion in revenues, let’s say, in a year— and I’m just making that number up, although I think it’s pretty close— we’re always going to collect that. So even if MPAC unfrows the values and all the houses appreciated in the city, we would still collect $1.3 billion because the number used to do that calculation would be adjusted to ensure that we only collect that amount.

[1:10:03] Even if property value is appreciated. So an MPAC unfreeze doesn’t mean a windfall for the city. It doesn’t mean a whole bunch more taxes are coming in. We’ll still collect the amount that we budgeted for. But the math is just basically adjusted to ensure that we only collect that amount based on whatever the current MPAC valuations are. So that’s the second piece that I think can be confusing to folks. Finally, I think those are the two biggest things. And if anybody’s interested in learning about that, Mr. Murray put the finance flicks up.

[1:10:35] There’s some really great visualizations to show how property taxes are actually calculated, how they’re calculated when there are different houses appreciating at different rates. And they’re very visual. They’re very easy to understand. And I would encourage colleagues if you got the residents with questions, sharing out those finance flicks is actually a really good way to explain exactly how the tax process works in the city. I don’t know if there’s anything else you add or those are the big key misconceptions that happen out there. Councilor Caster, follow up. Okay, Councilor Hopkins. Thank you, Madam Chair.

[1:11:07] And I’d like to start off with my thanks to staff. I know a lot of work went into this. And also always being available to answer questions. I really do appreciate it. On the mayor’s budget, thank you for the budget. I appreciate the information on the debt. I know previous councils, we had for more fulsome discussions around the debt and how it works. It’s really important that we try to understand it and appreciate the update. I do have a question on the dates and the process as we undertake the annual budget update.

[1:11:46] And I’m always excited about the process. And I’d like to have a better understanding on our amendments. So November the 10th is the deadline for council amendments. We go into a public participation on November 18th. My question through you, Madam Chair, is will those amendments be on the public agenda so the public can under see those amendments? Is my question. Thank you.

[1:12:21] I appreciate that. If we’re working on things and we know we’re gonna bring it that the public have an opportunity to speak on it, can you speak on it of the composition of that agenda? And if not, we can go to the clerks. Thank you, Madam Chair. I’ll take a first stab at this and the clerks can certainly add to this as well. But the councilor is correct. The normal deadline for councilor amendments to the mayor’s budget is November the 10th at 9 a.m. The agendas, the agenda packages are normally released. Typically the, approximately the Wednesday before the council meetings.

[1:13:05] So I believe it to the case and certainly I’ll let the clerks confirm this to be true that any councilor amendments that are submitted by the normal agenda deadline, not being November 10th at 9 a.m. They would be public on the agenda website by the November 18th public participation meeting. I will just note as well just to kind of reiterate the second important date, the added agenda deadline for any councilor amendments is November the 19th at 9 a.m.

[1:13:40] So again, anything that is submitted for the added agenda would not be public in advance of the PPM, but anything I believe on the normal agenda would be public before the PPM. Just one second, sir, verifying. Do you have a follow-up question or any other question while we wait for the official clerk answer? Maybe just as a comment, the importance of, as we engage with the community, having the community understand how the strong mayor budget works, part of that are the amendments and how we can influence the budget.

[1:14:31] And having that information out there in the community, I think is really important. I appreciate to ask staff commenting on the added part of the amendments that are to follow, but just as we go through this process, I think it’s really important that the community, that we take the community along to understand the process and the changes that we can make ‘cause we no longer vote on the budget. We can just bring forward amendments. Through the clerk, so the budget agenda for November 20th will be on our website on November 12th.

[1:15:14] So to clarify, the PPM agenda is just the PPM agenda and your motions will be publicly available just on the actual documentation that we’ll be doing deliberations on, just ‘cause the meetings overlap. Councillor Hopkins. Thank you for that confirmation. I had Councillor for next and then looking for other speakers. Thanks, Chair. Following up, I guess from Councillor Hopkins comments, that’s two thirds of council support for any amendments that come through for the budget. So just wanted to confirm that, isn’t it?

[1:15:47] Is it not two thirds? No, Mr. Murray. Thank you, three, Madam Chair. So for any council amendments to the mayor’s budget, it is a simple majority of council to approve that. Where the two thirds comes from that the councilor’s referring to, that’s if we were to get into overrides of mayoral vetoes. So the actual council amendments, the first step in amending the mayor’s proposed budget only requires simple council majority.

[1:16:28] Thank you, Madam Chair. Thank you for that clarification. Okay, so my question was really along the lines of the property tax rate increase in just the percentage and how we calculate that with respect to mean and median. I’m looking at the chart here on page 286 where it does show that we’re using with municipalities over 100,000. So that’s kind of how we’re basing that calculation. I know we’ve had this conversation before, but I just wanted to kind of get that clarified here on the record again of whether we’re using the mean or the median and the reasons therein and comparing that with the other municipalities here.

[1:17:04] ‘Cause I do see that we have the median calculation in this chart and I do see that London is here and we also have the average calculation there. So I just wanted to get kind of a better understanding from staff on that if possible. Thank you and that was 286 of today’s slide presentation not of the actual budget document, Mr. Murray. Thank you, Madam Chair. Happy to provide that clarification. So the information that you see in that the Councillor is referencing and specifically the green bars on those charts, that is average information for London.

[1:17:38] So BMA calculates, for example, average residential taxes for London or average commercial taxes for London. And so that is the information that we pull directly from their report. The red bar and the orange bar that you see on those charts, those are reflective of the average of those various municipalities presented on the chart. Specifically, these are all municipalities greater than 100,000 people.

[1:18:16] So these are the average of those figures as well as the median of those figures just to provide context on where we sit relative to others. So we have added the average and the median just to kind of provide that additional context on where London sits. Councillor Ferra follow-up. Thank you. So we’re using the average for the calculation from what I see. And the other municipalities, when they average out their property tax rates, their property tax rates, they’re using average as well.

[1:18:49] Or is there any other municipalities, I guess, pure municipalities with the same average population around us that use a different method like the mean? Mr. Murray. Thank you, so just to clarify, the figures for all of these municipalities are the average figures. So in London and others are all calculated the same. It is based on averages for all municipalities. Councillor, are you okay? That’s good for now, thanks. Thank you, Councillor, Stephen, some next. Thank you.

[1:19:20] I just had a question around, I guess, the presentation here. Last year, P-13 was the Cronin Warner funding. And I had some residents asking me why it came to committee rather than a business case. I assumed it was because last year, it was going to be an increase to the levy. And this time it went through the operating budget contingency fund. But this time, like P-4, the Middlesex County Connect Intercompany Transit Service is coming out of the Ekdev Reserve Fund.

[1:19:52] So it’s not affecting the levy. And I just wondered, how are we deciding when we do the business cases, what comes through for a full PPM and public engagement, and what comes through committee? Mr. Murray. Thank you, three, Madam Chair. So certainly the tax impact element that the Councillor referenced is an important consideration. So if there is something that has a property tax impact, then yes, that would be something that we would bring through as a budget business case. The other elements kind of be mindful of is one of timing as well.

[1:20:25] So sometimes if there are needs or requests, particularly those that are relying on one-time funding sources, and they are required to move forward sooner than the budget process is complete, those would be brought forward through the committee process to seek funding for that way. But once again, anything that comes through the committee process, that would not have kind of permanent ongoing tax levy impacts, that is only dealt with through the annual budget process. Councillor Stevenson.

[1:21:02] Just to follow up on that, because the arcade Cronin Warner site, we’ve done it as late as March of the year, like right at the month that they are the funding ends, which I don’t support, I’m glad we’re looking at it early. But in this case, this budget session would still have been plenty of time to engage in a full PPM around that business case. And it’s $3 million instead of just 400,000 here. So I’m just wondering, was there any debate or discussion around bringing that to the budget process rather than going through committee, Mr. Murray?

[1:21:39] So in general, I think what we would always prefer is to see things come through the budget process where that’s possible. I think the challenge that you’ve seen with some of the recent reports that have come through committee is one of timing, as I mentioned. The budget and the funding that is approved through this 2026 budget does not become effective until January 1st. Some of those funding requests that you’ve seen recently actually required funding to start in November or December. So there’s a misalignment, I guess, with the timing of the budget process that the funding through the budget process does not become effective until January 1st.

[1:22:19] Thank you, but specifically with Cronin Warner, it goes till March of 2026, right? We’d already funded it to March 31st, 2026. So the $3 million, the exact same, like it was P-13 in the 2025 budget update, and we discussed it as a budget case in the budget process. And this year, only 30 days ago, we did it a different way. Staff, if you want comment? Sure, three, Madam Chair. So once again, I think the issue here is the start date of that funding, not so much the ending.

[1:22:54] There could have been, I suppose, an intern period that could have been funded to get us through to the end of December, and then any 2026 impacts could have been considered through the 2026 budget. Again, the timing is a challenge, though, in the sense that budget business cases were submitted back in August. We would not have had that information to support a budget business case back in August. So the timing on this one, and that’s one example, but there may be others in the course of our council business that come up from time to time.

[1:23:35] The timing becomes potentially challenging in relation to when the budget process happens. Councilor. - Okay, thank you. I think there’s some misunderstanding, and I’m just gonna leave that be for now. But I did wonder, is this set out in policy, what goes to budget versus what goes to committee, or is this just an operational decision? Thank you, I’ll go to staff. I’ll also recognize sometimes council and committee send stuff to budget versus dealing with the committee, so if you can speak on that as well. Thank you through the chairs.

[1:24:06] So the, as Mr. Murray had already identified, our preference is the budget is the vehicle to put forward. In the case of the discussion that the council is raising with grown and worn it, Warner, and my apologies for saying that incorrectly, that was a direction of council to bring forward the information with respect to the warming centers and how that process and potential options to proceed were to proceed. That timelines did not align with the budget process, which is why they were brought forward under a separate direction by council.

[1:24:40] So certainly it is at any time, council can refer anything to the budget, but there is a very set process in terms of that timeline, in terms of trying to get the business cases complete. The majority of the work for these business cases, as you know, began in March of this year, and most business cases were completed by August in order to develop the timelines and the documents that you have received today. So the process is laid out. We have a by-law that governs the budget process and the timelines with respect to our delivery of that process.

[1:25:13] So certainly council can provide direction on other things to bring forward using one-time sources at other times as it’s so direct. Thank you, councilor. Thank you. Maybe if we could get that circulated the by-law around the budget committee process, or what goes to, I’m just specifically wanting to understand how we get, like how we choose what comes through the budget process, which has a 30-day public engagement process, a PPM, people get to be fully engaged. In February of 2024, we found out we were short $4 million in the renewal of the shelter contracts, and that came to council for a decision, and we took it from a reserve fund, which again, we don’t usually do for operating funds, but we did it, and you’d think that would have been a business case, that we would have known about that previously, and it would have been able to be discussed at that time.

[1:26:10] So I’ll continue this offline, but I’m just looking to better understand how we bring forward the issues of concern, especially large amounts like this, and issues of passionate debate, and like things like the homelessness. So thanks, that’s all. Ms. Berbon is this budget by-law, something that could be circulated via email behind the scenes? Absolutely, we can circulate the budget by-law to council. Thank you, so that was a yes, we had a microphone malfunction.

[1:26:42] Next on my speaker’s list, I have Councilor Pribble and Councilor Travsau, and I’m once again doing everyone first turns before second turns, as some people have indicated, who already spoke that they want to speak again. I also note mindful of the time that we’ll need to stop for lunch before we adjourn again for SPPC, which is also today, so just mindful of our time as well. So Councilor Pribble and then Councilor Travsau, please. Thank you, Mr. Chair, to the mayor, to the staff. The presentation on page 339 probably talks, let me support a depth summary. And the mayor did mention that, let’s say there will be additional funding from higher levels of government.

[1:27:19] It is, it will be reflected in the green bars going forward. I want to ask you, for 24-25, has this funding been reflected in the green bar graphs? Mr. Murray, Mr. Mayor. I’ll start. So no, the Council approved funding through the multi-year budget for the emergency services campus and the various components of that. Anything related to debt is included in these numbers as if we are not receiving any provincial or federal dollars, because until I receive confirmation that we’re getting a check, it would be irresponsible to pull that money out.

[1:27:59] We also don’t know the level to which they might fund it. So even if we pulled some out, I wouldn’t know how much to pull out, whether they want to contribute a third, a third, a third, or some other scenario. Those are ongoing discussions. So until that confirmation is actually made, it wouldn’t be responsible to pull that out of the budget, ‘cause we just don’t know how much to pull out. And we might pull something out that we actually need to keep in there. So at this point in time, I don’t have confirmation of that. Just if the Chair will indulge me to update Council on this matter, since I brought it up as budget-related, one of the things that both the provincial and federal governments wanted was us to basically support the case of the regional components of the facility.

[1:28:44] So I now have a list of 20 to 25 support letters from area fire services, police services, indigenous communities, other municipalities, all saying they support this project, they support federal and provincial contributions to it, and they believe it’s a regional facility that they can benefit from. That package has been pulled together for me. I’m actually, I’ll be doing SPPC from the car because I’ll be driving to Ottawa. Some of the meetings I have is to make that pitch during FCM advocacy days. I’ll be engaging with the province now. That document has just been pulled together for me to use as a lobby tool, supporting Council’s direction to get the campus done with the location, but also now I have the support letters that I can use and that.

[1:29:27] So I’m optimistic that we will get funding, but until I get confirmation that we will and I can let Council know it has to stay in the budget, that’s the responsible place for it to stay. Council- - Thank you for that to follow up. No, I do understand and you were quite clear in terms of the future, but if there were any cases for 24-25, if they were applied to the green bars, I’m in the past, I didn’t mean the future. Thank you. Miss Mary. Thank you three, Madam Chair. So any debt associated with that training facility that Emergency Services Campus was not anticipated to be issued in 2024 or 2025.

[1:30:05] So it was further out. So there has been no, at this point, debt included or issued in relation to that project. Council- - Okay, thank you for that confirmation. And the last one, page 322. And that’s the one, that’s the graph that shows the also the green percentile, the tax rate after the provincial effects. And this actually more for the staff on the right side, where it says residential includes, et cetera.

[1:30:37] Is there an opportunity to put additional few words to make this clear kind of like actual final tax rates? Because I know I did have some questions before, and I think there would be much clearer if we were stated there, actual final. So it’s really, so the individuals, the residents of London see that that’s the final increase of tax rate. Is there an opportunity to still change it or make this slide more clear? Mr. Mary. Certainly going forward, we can include revised language.

[1:31:13] This was our attempt at reflecting the fact that the green line is inclusive of those tax policy decisions and the impact of provincial education taxes. But we can certainly add further clarification to reflect that that is ultimately what the average taxpayer would see on their taxable. Thank you. So thank you for that, and I do appreciate it. And I think London is good as well. If this is more clear, and I don’t want to make this graph any more complicated, but the 6.1 in the kind of the orange color that’s based on actually the purple line, but it doesn’t reflect the green, which is actually even lower.

[1:31:54] As I said, I don’t want to make it more complicated, but if there is a way to show even with the actuals, because it would be actually less than 6.1, again, for the consideration to staff to make this clear. Thank you. I’ll just address that briefly, Chair. In the development of this slide, I engage with our staff to say how much transparency can we give on what people actually pay. The challenge with creating a green 6.1 equivalent number is we don’t actually know where the 3.6 and the 4.7 will land.

[1:32:29] I think we can reasonably expect based on history that it will be below those numbers, but if you look back to 2024, it was a full percent lower, whereas in 2025, it was not, right? So it’s impossible to make that estimate number without making a significant guess in where the 2026 and 2027 education taxes and tax policy decisions will land. So although I would love to do that, and I think our staff would love to, I just don’t think it’s possible. I mean, at the conclusion of the multi-year budget, looking backwards, we can certainly say, this is where it actually landed, but it’s a retrospective rather than a perspective, piece of information that is just would have a lot of estimates that may not be accurate, and we might get it wrong to project in the future.

[1:33:19] I think if you want to work on you’re doing a public participation meeting or engaging with the public on trying to clarify some of that information, I know I would be happy to work with you. I know our staff wouldn’t getting some piece of information, but I don’t think we can create the chart as you’re articulating without knowing where those pieces would land. Okay, Councillor. Thank you, I’ll make the last comment. I do understand that, but I meant to, let’s say, the green one would be based on first-year actuals, and the third and fourth would still stick to the numbers of the mayor’s proposal. That’s kind of what I was thinking of, but no, thank you very much.

[1:33:54] No more questions? I was gonna go to two comments. Do you want me to comment? And then I’ll go to Councillor Trossa. Thank you for the chair. I just wanted to point out that the green line is specifically only for residential versus the, the other lines are the budget as a whole, which is for all classes. So that the lines are not necessarily comparable. They’re, we’re pulling out one class. So I just wanted to make that.

[1:34:25] That’s why we would not be able to put a line all the way forward to estimate, just as the Mr. Mayor had identified, because the budget lines are budget, which includes all classes versus the green lines, are only for the average residential taxpayer, which is quite different in terms of trying to pull that subset out. And just to understand, to clarify, it is because, for example, the educational taxes was backed out from the businesses, for example, that correct? Ms. Berbo?

[1:34:58] Yes, education is one part of it, but also it is only looking at the residential class. It doesn’t look at the commercial class. It doesn’t also look at the industrial classes and the other classes that are there. So that all taxpayers will contribute to the tax levy versus the green line is only what the residential class is contributing. Thank you, Councillor, in 30 second morning. No more questions, some more questions. Councillor Trossa. Thank you. I wanted to ask a question about the role of assessment growth calculations.

[1:35:32] I don’t see, well, I just got this, so I haven’t read it covered in cover, but I don’t think there’s anything in the table of contents about it. Is that not something we deal with in all fears, or is that something that is dealt with someplace else? Mr. Murray. Thank you, Madam Chair. The assessment growth is excluded from this. So as Committee will recall, we have a separate assessment growth policy and a separate process for dealing with assessment growth that process is conducted once the budget process is complete.

[1:36:05] So you will see the assessment growth allocation report come forward. I believe it will be late February, early March timeframe. So that is separate and outside of the budget process. And when we refer to these increases that you see, for example, on this slide, you will sometimes use the term increases from rates, and that is specifically to reflect that this does not incorporate the impacts of assessment growth as a separate process.

[1:36:40] Thank you, that answers that question. My other question is in the case of the library board, LTC, Trica, and police services board, there have been some reductions, and the actual numbers for those are very clear in the budget, would there be a way to get some type of rough metric in terms of what the order of magnitude of those are with respect to their overall budget or something, just so we can compare, ‘cause these agencies are very, very different sizes.

[1:37:17] Thank you, Mr. Mary. Thank you, Madam Chair. I was just reflecting on whether that information is already reflected anywhere, and I can’t recall that it is, but that is certainly something that we could look at. We typically bring a couple of slides forward to kick off budget deliberations, and so as part of the preliminary comments that we make on November 20th, that is certainly something that we could include in that. Thank you for that.

[1:37:48] Thank you, that would be very helpful to the Chair, I’m already receiving questions about what this really means in terms of the relationship to the overall budgets of these agencies, so thank you very much. Thank you, Councillor Boehmer again. Thank you, Chair, but as we know, we’ve gone through just recently a very elevated inflation period, which obviously affects budgets. My question to staff is going into 2026, how much of a factor are those elevated inflation rates, and are they working themselves out through the system?

[1:38:32] Are they still a predominant factor, or are they becoming less so? We just get a feel for that, thanks. Thank you, Mr. Murray. Thank you, Madam Chair. So I think there’s a lot to unpack as it relates to inflation. What I will say is that certainly on the operating side of things, we have seen inflation come down from its highs that we saw a few years ago coming out of COVID, inflation, and if you use, for example, CPI, the consumer price index as an indicator of overall inflation, that has trended down pretty significantly over the past few years, so that is positive.

[1:39:15] We, of course, have a significant portion, though, of our budget that is capital-related, and traditionally what we’ve seen is that capital inflation tends to run consistently higher than what you would see as CPI as a general inflation indicator. So capital inflation continues to be higher than what you would see as CPI. Up to even 5%, 6%, I believe, is the latest levels that we’ve seen if you look at London-specific non-residential consumer prices.

[1:39:57] So that is a challenge on our capital projects. Having said that, we did as part of the development of the 2024 to 2027 multi-year budgets. We did a lot of adjusting and right sizing to reflect the inflation that we’ve seen and that the inflation that we projected. So we’re quite confident that we’ve reflected a lot of those pressures in the adopted budget already. So I think that is one thing to be mindful of as well. I think maybe what I’ll just add a couple of quick points, just on inflation as well as the impact of tariffs is still to be seen.

[1:40:36] I don’t think we’ve seen that flow through the economy and by extension flow through the impacts on our budgets. So that is something that we will have to keep an eye on going forward and see if that impacts us to any significant degree. The last thing I’ll just notice just as a caution is that the spending that we do as a municipality does not necessarily align with or is not necessarily reflective of what you’d see is the basket of goods that makes up CPI, right? A lot of our spending, as I mentioned, is construction related or is personnel related and that’s not necessarily picked up in the basket of goods that CPI tracks.

[1:41:14] So just that caution to add that CPI is not necessarily the best indicator of inflationary pressures that we would see on our municipal budget. Hope that helps, Councillor. Councillor Van Berberg. Well, thank you for that and thank you for the point on tariffs. I think we’re all kind of sitting back watching on this daily soul bopra that’s going on south of the border and how it’s affecting us on a daily basis and it’s beyond predictability.

[1:41:47] So I mean, that’s a very good point about the tariffs ‘cause we just don’t know how that’s going to play out. So anyway, thank you. Thank you, Mr. Murray. I don’t believe it’s been mentioned yet. If you already have the information, so it’s not a trick. If you equate to what the 3.6% equates to a dollar value on the average assessed home, you can do that now or later, you take your pick. I can provide that now, Madam Chair. So on the property tax budget, so the 3.6% increase as put forward in the mayor’s proposed budget, that would reflect an average increase of approximately $137 again to the average assessed residential property.

[1:42:39] Thank you. And as we move through budget deliberations in the past, it was around $800,000 represented point, whatever. If you can just clarify where those numbers are, just as people go back and dig into the business cases or think of amendments, they’ll know what it’s going to take to move that percentage point either way. Thanks Madam Chair, the figure now is closer to $900,000. I think it’s approximately $880,000. Now would represent 0.1%, so by extension, 1% would be about $8.8 million.

[1:43:17] Thank you just for having that information. Looking for first round of speakers final call before I go back into seconds. It’s a joy of being a pass scouter. Everyone gets first before we go into seconds. So as we go into second rounds, I have Councillor Frank, Councilor Perbal, and then Councillor Ferra. Thank you. And I just had one question in regards to P14, the $18 million, 2026, 2027 debt servicing cost savings. I’m just hoping to get like a one sentence plain language way to describe it so when I can answer questions ‘cause right now I know that you know what you’re talking about, but when I try to explain this, I know I’m gonna butcher it.

[1:43:57] So just wondering if I get like a very plain language explanation of P14. Mr. Murray, if you want to state simple language, maybe slowly if Councillor Frank’s taking notes. I will attempt a one liner and then maybe I’ll elaborate additionally just to provide more context, but effectively that business case reflects the work that we’ve done to recast our debt forecasts and it results in some lower than we had previously budgeted debt servicing costs.

[1:44:31] That would be the short answer. As the Mayor mentioned in his comments, we did go through the exercise of looking at all of our capital projects that have debt associated with them. And we’ve looked at when we now think those capital projects will proceed through to substantial completion, which would then be the point at which we would proceed with issuing the debt on those capital projects. After we issue the debt, of course, that’s when we start incurring the principal and interest on those, in other words, the debt servicing costs on those.

[1:45:10] When we say debt servicing, that’s the principal and interest on them. So we’ve gone through that exercise. We’ve also updated our projections in terms of interest rates and the structure of the debt that we are issuing. So we’ve been able to bring down or reduce the forecast and the debt servicing costs that we have over the next couple of years. What we’ve done is we’ve said there’s an angle to the financial stability of the corporation and reducing future debt and achieving future tax savings versus those immediate tax savings that we could achieve.

[1:45:51] So effectively what we’ve done is we’ve just gone 50/50 or thereabouts on splitting the forecasted debt savings between applying it to reducing future debt versus giving it back as an immediate tax levy reduction in 2027. The one thing I will note and the mayor is absolutely correct that we’ve done a great job in reducing some of our debt, but there is still debt that we are forecasting in the coming years. It’s maybe just coming a little later than we had originally envisioned through the multi-year budget.

[1:46:27] Councillor Frank. Thank you, I appreciate that. And I just wanna say, so it’s not that we’re reducing how much we’re paying into our debt servicing, it’s that we have debt servicing to pay because we’ve redone some budget forecasts. Okay, wonderful, thank you, that’s all. Thank you, I liked the head nodding, it was almost like a concert over there, I love it. Councillor Pribble, you have 30 seconds remaining. Actually, I believe it was already answered last round, but 1% when we started, 1% was about 7.5 million when we started our term.

[1:47:00] And Mr. Maria, you mentioned that was my question, it’s 8, we are at 8.8 million, is that correct? Mr. Murray. Through you Madam Chair, that’s approximately correct, yes. Thank you, no more questions. Okay, Councillor Perrier, you’re next, you have almost your full time. Thank you, Chair. I just wanted to speak about the November 10th submission deadline for amendments for the budget. I do see that’s a little tight, ‘cause I got some items that I’d like to bring forward that would probably require some staff work on that. It would be for specific items like waste bin collections off of West London Dyke and NTVP cleanups too, and some of our parks, ‘cause we do have some parks in my ward do need some extra resourcing and servicing for that for cleanups, ‘cause we do have quite a big component of, I guess, the general population within the neighborhoods doing some pickups on their own.

[1:47:49] So the 10 deadline, just because I do have to reach out to staff and do that homework and then speak with colleagues and then bring it to the budget, I’m worried about the timeline on that. So I will be bringing that forward, but also I guess I do wanna follow up on some of the questions that I heard before of whether it falls in the budget and what falls outside the budget, because I do also have the one hour free parking for the core area that I’d like to bring forward to this budget, but I do see that we did improve parking in municipal lots one and two until 2027 about a month ago.

[1:48:24] So I just wanted to know like, is this appropriate to bring this year, or should I be bringing this outside the budget cycle for that parking question? Mr. Murray. Thank you, through you, Madam Chair. So just to clarify, the parking matter that the counselor is referencing, that was only extended through the end of 2025. If that is something that the counselor wishes to extend further, that would be something that the counselor could bring forward as a potential amendment to the mayor’s budget to potentially add that in through this budget process.

[1:49:01] Mr. Ferra. Thank you. I appreciate the answer, ‘cause I know we extended it till the end of the year with the already approved funding. I guess just to refine the question a little bit, I did see other parking initiatives that are very similar get extended as I think it was a pilot project until 2027. So, and that was outside the budget cycle. So, would, I just wanted to know the appropriateness, should I be bringing an extension for the core area parking for this example specifically on this budget process, or would it be something that I could also bring outside the budget cycle?

[1:49:42] Mr. Murray, if there’s two ways at hand that the counselor could do it through the committee work versus the budget process before us, recognizing he’s also on timelines for it to run out. Yes, thank you, Madam Chair. So, as I previously noted, I think our preference would always be that’s where possible and where it’s practical and where it works with the timelines that these types of initiatives, whether they’re one time or permanent in nature, they would preferably go through the budget process. Having said that, certainly in the specific case of the parking that the counselor is referring to, that is something that has been funded on a one-time basis for a number of years now.

[1:50:23] I believe it’s going back to 2020. So, it would be our position that that is something that if council wishes to continue, that should be a permanent addition to the budget. And that is something that would, as I previously noted, be dealt with through the budget process, given that they would have ongoing tax levy impacts. Thank you. I’ll note some of your other questions too, would be Ms. Share’s Department and staff is available to book that time slots with us. Now, I’m seeming not from senior leadership. Council for anything further. Thank you, Chair. I guess I’ll just do some closing comments.

[1:50:54] I do have a couple items that I wanna bring, and I don’t wanna overwhelm the budget, ‘cause I know the budget is landing at a pretty good number with the mayor’s proposed budget as it is. So, that’s why I asked the question. I wanna know what would be absolutely appropriate for here and what could I bring outside the budget cycle? Just because, like I said, I have a couple items that I am planning on bringing. But I appreciate the answer, and I’ll be speaking with Ms. Share’s Department for the cleanups and everything offline. Thank you.

[1:51:27] I’ll note that on your fancy budget duotang binder, page 115 actually notes back to 2025, what we did for amendments there, if you need a refresher, it’s within this document as well. Was looking for first time or second time or at this point, third time speakers, Councillor Tropezau. The question to the Chair, if an item emerges after we deal with the budget, a new expenditure, clearly that will have to be put off for the next year or dealt with off budget.

[1:52:06] But if something emerges prior to the deadline, would we deal with that? I’m specifically thinking that later today we’re gonna be dealing with the compensation review task force, which may well result in some additional expenditures across several of the recommendations. And presumably, Council will finalize that. Would we deal with that through this budget or would we just defer that? Or yeah, could you be a little confused about that? Thank you, Mr. Murray.

[1:52:39] I’ll note that this is the third year of a four year budget and some of the timing and recommendations would actually affect future times. So for your reply, please. Thank you, three, Madam Chair. So we often do have things that come up during the course of the year. One strategy that we often use is to utilize one time funding sources or to absorb that within our existing budget until we can get to the next budget process to then add that permanently through the subsequent year.

[1:53:13] So if just using a generic example, if we had something that came up that required an additional expenditure, let’s say starting in October of 2026, we could certainly look to utilize a one time funding source or to try to accommodate that within our existing approved budget for the kind of the October to December timeframe in 2026 before it would then get permanently picked up as part of the 2027 budget process. So that is the one strategy we use. I will note that the Municipal Act does include provisions for in-year amendments to the budget.

[1:53:52] That is not something though that we typically tend to do with something that we typically try to align it with the next available budget process. Thank you, and similarly, if we went through the deferred matters list, we’d see a number of items that have language along the lines of please get back to us in terms of the anticipated budget cost. For instance, at the last CAHPS meeting, we talked about changes to the communications process for complaints, for bi-law complaints.

[1:54:26] Presumably, if there are such changes, there would be some cost to that. Would that be an example of a mid-year budget change that we would make or should we just, I just wanna make sure that I don’t need to worry about that now. Mr. Murray, to help quell some worries. Thank you, Madam Chair. So I think some of it comes down to the time sensitivity of the issue in question. If it is something that is time-sensitive and cannot wait, then those are the types of situations that we sometimes need to look at one-time funding sources or accommodating within existing budgets.

[1:55:02] Language you will also see at times counselor is that a certain matter be referred to the next budget update or multi-year budget process, where it’s not perhaps time-sensitive and needs to start on a certain date. If there’s that flexibility, sometimes you will see it referred to the next budget process as well. Councillor Trossa. Thank you. Further speakers, questions, procedures, Councillor Stevenson, sorry. You have a minute and a half left.

[1:55:37] Okay, I just have a quick question that I just saw here on the development charges statutory exemptions. On page 267, it says that should the treasurer determine that the measures are not sufficient to ensure that there’s adequate resources in place, then we would go back to putting a property tax levy or maybe utility rates. Given that I saw on one of these pages, I think any way that the infrastructure deficit is 72% of the infrastructure gap. Do we have like a percentage line that we know that if we cross that, then we’re going to need to go back to property taxes or is that it’s something I can follow up offline too, if I need to.

[1:56:20] To the appropriate staff that there’s an answer if you need more clarification. And Councillor, you were in our fancy book. Yeah, I’m on page 267 in the book. Thank you. And I guess the question is we thought that we needed to take from property taxes to for the DC exemptions in order to make sure we had enough infrastructure money. Then we said, okay, we don’t legislatively have to so we won’t. And then this note says that, you know, if the treasurer deems that we don’t have enough money, that we would go back to that course of action.

[1:56:52] And 72% just seemed really high. So I wondered if there’s a percentage or some kind of guidelines that we have in place that says that’s the warning line. Thank you to staff. Thank you through the chair. So one of the things that we’re doing with the development charges is we’re doing, I am obligated by legislation to bring forward an annual treasurer’s report. So if you look at the last two manual reports, there has been a very significant gap as a result of the exemptions that has formed within the development charges reserved fund with respect to the commitments to the projects as part of the DC background study.

[1:57:30] So certainly as you know, we are continuing to monitor this. We have taken through the latest capital monitoring report that went to council just a little while back that clearly identified a number of project deferrals that have come forward and that we have looked at closing projects to try to preserve what the reserve fund balances are to try to manage that. GMIS is another process that we’re looking at. There is not a specific percentage that would highlight what that gap would be that would trigger an amount.

[1:58:06] Certainly that monitoring report that we have done a very false of an evaluation each and every year is something that we continue to monitor. It was highlighted specifically in the recent capital monitoring report yet again. There have been a number of decisions. When we get to the next year’s monitoring, we will see what the shortfall is. As you know, the number of development charges that have been collected is far below what our expectation would be as outlined in our capital budget. So we have not come to the point where we’ve had to make very significant project deferrals, but that could potentially happen.

[1:58:43] So there are a number of tools that we are utilizing as a result of the shortfall and that we are reporting out on a regular basis to try to look at how we can manage this. Certainly through the advocacy, this is something that we have continued to have discussions with the province and that many other municipalities are actually having the exact same issue. This is not just a London issue. This is a province-wide issue. So we’re monitoring it very closely. We continue to report out and this will be subject to future decisions of council. If and when we need to get to the point where we don’t have enough money in our development charges to be able to proceed with the projects, the council has already identified to support the growth of the city.

[1:59:25] Councilor? Thank you, that’s really helpful. And then I know there’s no line like that 7.5% line that says we had to watch it for the debt servicing. So thank you. Thank you. Looking for anything further on this? Okay, Mr. Murray’s already answered the 3.6 question that I had noted. So it’s gonna circle back at this time before we start doing the e-scribe portion of if there was anything further through this discussion that’s been highlighted that Mr. Murray and the team would like to speak to and then the mayor for final comments and then we’ll start with the votes.

[2:00:08] Mr. Murray, you’re looking. Yeah, because he’s good. So just start booking those meetings to colleagues with Mr. Murray or the appropriate staff just so we can get ahead of what’s coming. Mr. Mayor, final comments. Yeah, and I’m gonna follow up on two things that colleagues mentioned for awareness. One on the development charges piece. The way the development charges work, I’m not sure five years from now we’re gonna look back and say it’s the same. When you look at the minister’s flags, most recent comments about trying to move growth into a structure more like a municipal services corporation, I don’t know where that is actually gonna head, but it’s a transformation of the way that growth might be funded in the future in the province of Ontario.

[2:00:51] Different provinces do it different ways. So the decision that we have in this budget is, let’s not backfill the province’s exemptions with property taxes. But I think DCs and the conversation around DCs is not going to stop both federally and provincially because the federal government seems committed to tabling a budget that modifies the way DCs are funded by having them and then potentially backfilling them with federal dollars. And the province is talking about the way the growth should be funded beyond DCs with capitalizing the debt over multiple generations and having paid for in a different way than it has before.

[2:01:26] So I think there’s lots we can talk about with DCs in this budget. I think we’ve got some decisions we can make, but there’s probably a transformation of DCs in the future that is gonna be led by the province of federal governments that I don’t know exactly where that will end. The second piece that I wanna follow up with on colleagues is the talk about some of the capacity within existing budgets, I think is a good one because we do have an operating budget contingency reserve to deal with things that don’t come up on a short term basis. But I wanna say part of the work that staff did within the servicing right and budget right sizing piece does actually address some of the pieces that we’ve seen where we’ve seen excess dollars come into the municipality that has generated larger surpluses.

[2:02:10] So there are adjustments in right sizing to those budgets around tipping fees and other things that say, listen, we’ve been getting more or less than we’ve expected in the past few years. So let’s just align those budgets much clearer with what we anticipate coming in based on our experience in the past. And so it means that there may not be surpluses to the magnitude that we’ve seen in the past because those budgets are being adjusted much tighter. And you can actually see that in the business cases where specific areas are being adjusted that you would probably, if you went back and looked at the surplus reports, you’d see a level of alignment with some of the areas that have either had more funding or less funding.

[2:02:46] And so that right sizing piece of the budget is also contained within the service view work to say whether or not we’re collecting more or less than what we need is being aligned in this budget in a tighter way. And so I think both I and council have heard that in questions that we’ve received from members of council. And so that’s contained within that business case as well. So I just wanted to add that context. Thank you. As we move into voting as per 3.1 to dispose of it, looking for a move in a seconder.

[2:03:18] And it’s that being known that the mayor’s proposed budget was provided to each member of council and the public on October 27. So just looking for a move in a seconder, okay. Moved by Deputy Mayor Lewis, seconded by Councillor Cudi in the e-scribe and call on the question. I’m not logged in, but I’m in favor. Perfect. Councillor Hopkins and McAllister.

[2:03:58] I vote yes. Councillor Hopkins. I vote yes. Closing the vote, motion carries 15 to zero. Thank you. As per 3.2, the recommendation was contained within your Councillor package of A through D, looking for a mover and a seconder. Moved by Deputy Mayor Lewis, seconded by Councillor Frank, calling the question, in e-scribe. I’m in favor. Councillor Hopkins.

[2:04:40] I vote yes. I vote yes. Closing the vote, motion carries 15 to zero. Thank you. Under items for direction, we do have a correspondence from the Upper Thames River Conservation Authority. This would be a motion that it’s noted and received. I have a mover and Councillor Cudi, a seconder and Councillor Hopkins. Any discussion on this? Okay, calling the question, in e-scribe. In favor. I’ll vote yes.

[2:05:19] I’ll vote yes. Closing the vote, motion carries 15 to zero. Thank you. There’s no deferred matters or additional business I’m aware of. I see none. There’s no confidential. As we move to adjournment, I’m just gonna highlight that we’re back for SPPC in about an hour. If you want lunch in the cafeteria, grab it. There’s also a communication sent out on behalf of Deputy Mayor 1030 from Ms. Korman. So read that over in this time slot. So looking for a motion to adjourn. Moved by Councillor Van Merbergen.

[2:05:55] I can buy Councillor Cudi. A hand vote is okay. A hand vote’s okay for all those who adjourned before we come back. Motion carries. Thank you. See you again.