2026-03-23 - Infrastructure and Corporate Services Committee

Note: Official minutes for this meeting have not yet been published. This page currently shows the meeting transcript only. Once official minutes are available, this page will be updated with full meeting details including agenda items, motions, and votes.

📋 View on eScribe

Full Transcript

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

View full transcript (3 hours, 33 minutes)

Okay, good afternoon, everyone. Call the sixth meeting of the Infrastructure and Corporate Services Committee to order. Please check the city website for additional meeting detail information. City of London is situated on the traditional lands of the Anishinaabeg.

Born to shown a Leno Wampak and the Anna Wannaran. We honor and respect the history, language, and culture of the diverse indigenous people who call this territory home. City of London is currently home to many First Nations, Métis, and Inuitay. As representatives of the people of the city of London, we are grateful to have the opportunity to work and live in this territory.

You will notice a bit of a change in terms of our makeup. This is my first meeting, Charingness. Thank you for the light agenda in advance. We have Councillor Van Mirbergen, Councillor Frank, Councillor Stevenson, and the Mayor.

And then we also have, as a visiting Councillor, now Councillor ramen. Oh, and sorry, Councillor Close’s is online. And Councillor Ferra, and Councillor Pribble. The city of London is committed to making every effort to provide alternate formats and communication supports for meetings upon request.

To make a request specific to this meeting, please contact icse@london.ca or 519-661-2489, extension 2425. I will now look for any disclosures of community interest. Not seeing any. I want to consent items.

There have been pull requests for 2.1, 2.2, 2.9, and 2.1 has a delegation, so I’ll pull that as well. And I do not have any other pull requests, so I am looking to put 2.3, 2.4, 2.5, 2.6, 2.7, 2.8, 2.10, 2.12, 2.2, 2.16. Can I get any mover? Councillor van Mirbergen, Councillor Frank.

Okay, so that is on the floor for those consent items for any discussion on those. Anyone else want anything else pulled or do that? Okay, oh, you want to pull? Yeah, I just checking to see if there’s any other pull.

I’m not seeing any, so if Councillor van Mirbergen, you want to speak to 2.13, go ahead. Yes, thank you, Chair. 2.13 deals with the rehabilitation of the dreadful stretch of Highbury Avenue between the Thames River and the 401. This is really a nasty, nasty piece of road, and it’s horrible that that’s how we welcome visitors on a stretch like that when they come maybe for the first time to see what London’s all about, only to be greeted with what I would call an atrocity.

So this is really good news that this is finally being done. I’d like to ask staff from a cost benefit analysis, is asphalt a way to go or would concrete be better in terms of value? I know concrete lasts longer, but obviously it costs more. Perhaps we could just get a comment on that from staff.

Asheville versus concrete? Go ahead, staff, and ready. Thank you, good question. Through the chair, we designed both options into this tender to let the competitive industry make that determination.

And yes, concrete has a longer initial service life than asphalt. So there’s a life cycle costing analysis that accompanied the tender that essentially equalized bids for asphalt versus concrete accounting for that different service life for the two pavements. So essentially, we are getting the best bang for our buck with the asphalt bids. And yeah, in the life cycle costing over a 50 year period, it is the best financial value for the city.

Go ahead, Councilor. Okay, thank you for that. Given the volume of traffic and the ponderance of trucks and heavy loads, how long can we expect the life cycle on this particular rehabilitation before it has to be done again? Go ahead, Mr.

Cuomo, okay. Through the chair, this is a full reconstruction of the pavement structure. So the initial service life would be expected at 18 years for a national pavement for all of cancer. Okay, thank you for that.

This begs the question. We’ve had a very harsh winter, relatively speaking, and that does not bode well for city of London roads. I’m going to ask staff, perhaps through Mr. McCrae, do we have the resources to take care of the rehabilitation that’s going to be required?

I mean, most of us can see now already how bad many of the roads are. Are we in a position where we can address these during the current construction season? And do we have the wherewithal to do it? Go ahead, Mr.

McCrae. Our network of pavements is managed on a multi-year basis through the corporate asset management program. The capital funding levels are set accordingly through the multi-year budget. The Highbury Abtender Award that is on the agenda today is a major investment under that program.

It’s so significant that we have had to scale back the annual program for several years just to be able to afford this one project. This Highbury Avenue reconstruction represents over an entire year’s worth of rehabilitation funding for the entire network. So we’ve had lower amounts of work done in recent years to be able to afford this major tender. However, the good news is that with the tender clothes and the award recommendation today, we now have cost certainty on the project.

And we can both with the bid price coming in under the estimate and also with the asphalt lower initial cost option. We do have some, you know, freeze up some funds and we’ll be back to a full funding availability scenario next year so that we can return our annual pavement rehab program to its former fully funded state. Hello, Councillor. So in terms of this coming construction season, would the worst of the winter damage be taken care of by the funding that we now have in place and reserve funds, et cetera?

Go ahead, Mr. Mayor. Yeah, with respect to winter damage potholes specifically, we are obliged to meet the provincial minimum maintenance standards and that flows through operations, the operating budget is in place for road operations to manage those potholes and keep the network serviceable from the MMS perspective. And from the capital perspective, so the ongoing multi-year program, yes, we’re in a position whereby we can look to program our longer term needs from that perspective.

Follow up, Councillor? Well, thank you very much for that information. I think a lot of Londoners will be pleased to hear that we can address a lot of their concerns because I think we all know there’s some real damage from this winter and it’s good to know that we can repair a lot of it and improve it. So thank you very much.

Okay, thank you, Councillor. Councillor Palose, I see your hand up. We’d like to go ahead. Thank you, Mr.

Chair. Just wanna take this opportunity to thank staff and committee and council in advance for their support on item 2.15. This is the W12A landfill community mitigation measures fund. The money is there and it’s taken years, my entire time on council for the community to come to a project they’re excited for that’s gonna serve the community well, give them the space to walk with their children, grandchildren and other Londoners enjoying this area, also close to the Kirk Cousins conservation area, which is just across the road.

So a beautiful area that I’m looking forward to welcoming Londoners and those from the region to come and enjoy this new park and residents are very excited for it. So thank you. Thank you for those comments. Looking for other speakers.

I know, Mayor, you wanna speak on the tax policy? Wanna do that now? Sure, I can do that now. I was just taking a drink of water there.

I’ll just comment on two quick things then, Chair. One, I just wanna, on the heels of what Councillor Palose said about the W12A landfill beautification plan. I actually wanna thank the Councillor for her advocacy on this. I know there was a lot of discussions in the community over a number of years to try to find the right project in the right way.

I think that they’ve landed on something that we’re actually able to approve. Thanks to the good work of Councillor Palose of providing leadership in that community and bringing some voices together to have those discussions. So I wanted to say thank you, Councillor, for both highlighting that but more importantly for the work that you did on it as well. On the tax policy piece, I did wanna say, thanks to our staff, I think it’s in consent.

So it looks like committee’s gonna unanimously support the recommendations within the tax policy and tax ratio allocations. I wanna thank staff for pointing this together. Often when we table the budget, which was back last year, it’s a long process to actually setting the finalized tax rate. So between that point and this point, it’s a budget allocation, the budget items, the needs of the city for the programs, but then also we get to the point of actually assigning the tax ratios on how this is gonna be divided across the different classes.

And I’m happy to see that the residential ratio will come down to about 3% and the commercial and industrials will be around two and a half, 2.6%, which I think is a reasonable rate given the investments that we’ve made over the last number of years and given the investments in this particular annual budget update. I will say, I know that there’s often some confusion leading up to this point where those on a system where they’re having automatic debits see that the estimates are made based on the previous year’s tax increase. So some people in the city would have got a notice that would have shown an estimate much higher than where we knew we were gonna land. That only applies to the people who have those automatic every month payments.

So I just wanted to be clear that this is the rate that people will see. Anything they paid up to this point is obviously adjusted in the next payments to reflect an increase that are the rates that are before us today that tax policy finalizes all in with all of the education taxes and everything. So that final bill will reflect these numbers in the recommendation before us on staff. And I know it’s a long path there, but this is kind of the final step in the process of pending council approval.

So I just wanna recognize all the work council did on the budget. All the work staff did on that, but also the work on the tax ratios and pulling it all together to finalize the 2026 annual tax year. So I’ll just leave it at that. Okay, thank you, Mayor.

Councillor Stevenson, you have your hand up, go ahead. Yes, thanks. Following up on the hybrid construction, when you mentioned that there was a year delay, we didn’t do what was anticipated. Does that get caught up at some point or does that come in the next year, budget or multi-year budget to get us back on track?

When you’re ready, go ahead, Mr. McCree. It meant for some previous years having to set aside some of the annual capital funding to save up for this one large tender. Now that this tender is awarded, we will allocate all available funds that are available through that capital account.

All the accounts are? No, that’s good on that, thank you. I did have a couple of questions. One on 2.3, the debenture issuance.

We’re doing 20 million right now. There was approved about 145 million, at least for the BRT and then some other ones as well. The chart shows the amount that was approved, the amount that was previously issued and then what’s issued now. And I just wondered when approximately the bulk of that 145 million will be put out to debentures.

And if we’re still on track for those amounts, I know that we’ve done some work in terms of paying down debt. I just wondered if some of those projections had been potentially decreased for the future. Mr. Marisa, you don’t go ahead.

That is, Mr. Chair, thank you very much. So what I will flag is that our debt is not callable. So what that means basically is that once it is issued, we cannot repay it early.

So because of that, we are very, very cautious, not to issue debt before we actually have to. So typically what that means is issuing only when we’ve incurred the corresponding actual expenditures on that debt. So in a number of particularly multi-year capital projects, you might see issuance over the course of multiple years as we accumulate those actual spending to support that issuance. Basically the debt issuance effectively replenishes the funds that have gone out the door.

So that’s why you see that and you sometimes see capital projects coming in over multiple years. To my knowledge, we continue to be on track in terms of the required debt funding to support that specific capital project. And as funds are available for debt substitution, we’re looking at what projects make sense to apply those to. So we make that assessment on kind of an annual basis, kind of year by year, looking at what projects are there and where the opportunities for debt substitution might be.

Okay, yeah, thank you for that. But looking at this, we’ve only done 20 million previously, still only 20 million this year, which is great, it’s nice and low, but we’re looking at over 145 million approved, much of it for a BRT. So I was just wondering, are we gonna see, just so that anticipating in 2027, are we expecting a much larger debenture issue or maybe in 2028? Go ahead, Ms.

Murray. Thank you, three, Mr. Chair. So I would envision that over the next couple of years, you will see those actuals come to fruition and then us replenishing our working capital through debt issuance.

All okay, Councilor? - Nope, that’s great. Thank you very much for that. And the other question I had, I sent a couple of questions around the remuneration and expenses, 2.4, by email.

No worries if the information’s not available yet, I can get it by email, but if the answers are available, the questions were regarding the, I noticed the taxable benefits for the Councillors varied significantly, and I just was curious as to why that might be. And also the breakdown on the city manager expenses of about 9,000. Who would like to take that one? And Ms.

Burport, through the chair, Mr. Collins, will be able to provide the first question and answers. Okay, go ahead, Mr. Collins.

Through the chair, to the committee, there is quite the variability in the taxable benefits identified in the report for 2025. The three main taxable benefits, excluding the vehicle allowance, are basic life, accidental death, and dismemberment in meals. As they all have some variability, the biggest one of their ability is in meals, which is based on the amount of usage that each Councillor may make use of throughout the year. So the predominant difference, as you’ll note, is if an elected official uses the cafeteria more often, more frequently, as they come into committee meetings and do their roles as a member of a council, they may elect to make use of the cafeteria, and in some instances, some may not make use of the cafeteria, and that’s reflected in the taxable benefit.

Okay, and who gets the second part? Go ahead. Thank you, through you, Chair. Yes, I’m able to certainly confirm and provide information to committee about the expenses of the city manager in 2025.

The total expenses were $8,681.14, and they are kind of split into five different categories. I’m a member of the Ontario Big City Mayor’s and Marco Chief Administrative Officers Working Groups. I attended generally sessions virtually, but I attended three in-person sessions, $658.52 for those expenditures. I am the Provincial Chair of the Emergency Services Steering Committee, which is connected with both Marco and the Regional Single Tier CIOs.

It’s comprised of municipal leaders. We need to discuss issues related to first responders. Again, those meetings are generally virtually. There were three in-person meetings, including one event that I presented at.

The total cost was $1,420 in two cents. In 2025, it was the Chair of Western University’s Local Government Program Alumni Society. I hosted and attended the local conference here in London at a cost of $135.08, and that includes just registration costs alone. I attended with Council two AMO events, where we both were the work of officials, and I spoke as a representative of the City of London.

The annual AMO Conference in Ottawa and the AMO Healthy Democracy Forum in Toronto. Total cost of $4,219.21. That includes registration for both events, train travel and accommodation. And the final one is my own learning, which the mayor has supported.

I attended the Ontario Municipal Administrative Association. It was an in-person conference, and the cost for that was $2,011.61. I follow up, Council. Yeah, I just wanted to say thanks for that.

It’s good to highlight, I think, how active London is in some of those activities. I think it’s a great thing that we’re doing, and I appreciate you saying it so that we can highlight it so the public knows. And then in terms of the taxable benefits, again, just for public awareness, the meals in the cafeteria are… The full amount of the meals is a taxable benefit.

Is that correct? Mr. Collins, through the Chair of the Committee, that is what is included, yes. Thank you, no other questions.

Sorry, I was just getting track of the times. Any other questions on the other items? There are before us, getting around. Not seeing any at this time, but I just wanna make a comment, echoing the mayor in terms of the tax rate that’s good to see, and I do hope people do know in terms of the tax rate that is set for this year, because yeah, I do get that confusion.

I had a few people reach out about that, so hopefully there’s some clarification that goes out regarding that. And then also speaking in terms of the hybrid of reconstruction, yeah, I mean, I’ve spoken at this before, committees and council, that, I mean, hybrid is in dire disrepair, unfortunately, and it does need a lot of work. Starting to run out of spaces on service London, we’re putting the little yellow flags, so they’re all crammed together on hybrid, and I think I’ve added a few on there. And if I ever don’t make it to a meeting, check the potholes on hybrid, ‘cause fortunately I’ve already hit a few this season.

So I just wanted to flag that. It’s something I raise a lot, but it is in bad shape, and we really do need that work, so I’m happy to see that move forward, and I’ll keep a keen eye on it, but I know a lot of people who live around the area, people who visit London, hybrid is definitely one of the ones that comes up a lot, so I really appreciate that coming forward. Councillor Roman, you’d like to speak? Go ahead.

Thank you and through you. I just wanted to thank staff for all the reports that are in front of us today, but I wanted to talk about 2.14, which is the Western Roads, our new road, Phillip Azee’s Avenue Corridor, and intersection improvements. I’m very pleased to see this in front of us. I know that this is a warranted project, one that will be painstaking, but at the same time, very positive when it’s completed.

And I know that there will be lots of signage and lots of communication with the public about mitigations around the area. I know being a parent who has kids in Western summer camp, that that is quite an active area over the summer months, and even though we are planning construction during that time period because students aren’t there, I’m just wondering how we will get that message out to make sure that people will be able to move around the area sufficiently. Okay, go ahead, staff. Thank you, through the chair.

Yeah, there’s been concerted efforts and process improvement made to our communication processes associated with construction projects over recent years, and this one will be also a focus for our construction group, things like an upcoming public meeting, website information, highlighting this project in our annual rollout of our Renew London construction program communications. And within our construction administration office, we have a dedicated outreach individual that helps facilitate solutions to individual unique challenges for nearby residents, businesses, and in this case, particularly the large institution of Western University that’s right next door. So a lot of attention to that. And yeah, you’ll be hearing lots about this project as we approach the shovels in the ground.

All of Councilor? Thank you. And I have to say a number of students from Western took me on a bike ride a number of years ago, down Sarnia Road, and that was quite the experience. And so I’m also looking forward to seeing some cycling infrastructure in the area.

And I know that students are really looking for, and cyclists are looking for those improvements. Can we, maybe hear just a little bit of feedback on some of the exciting plans for cycling in the area? Go ahead, Mr. McCree.

Yes, active transportation, pedestrian cycling safety is certainly a focus of the current project. The starting from the east of a big effort this year will be reconstruction of Phillip Aziz Avenue. That will include a new urban cross section, in Boulevard, cycling lanes, sidewalks, urban gutter, you have to upgrade in that section from its current rural status to a proper urban complete street. Along Western Road, there will be in Boulevard, cycling infrastructure added.

And also at the intersection with Sarnia Road, there will be larger pedestrian waiting areas wider crosswalks and improved signal operations for pedestrian comfort and safety. That’s the work that will start this year. Starting in 2027 will be a lot of improvements along Sarnia Road, west of the major intersection. And that will include in Boulevard, cycling paths where there currently are no bike lanes existing.

Follow up, Councillor? Thank you, and through you, I did read in the report that there will be a need for us to seek some easements around on Sarnia Road. I know that there’s quite a significant amount of work to do in the area for, to make it more cycling friendly. I do know that it’s definitely needed anyone that sees students trying to traverse Sarnia Road on any given day, it’s definitely an improvement.

I think that is welcome and warranted. So looking forward to seeing this improvement this year and next, thank you. Okay, thank you. Are there any other speakers on the consent items that we’re for going once, going twice, not seeing any?

Okay, we will open those for voting. Mr. Chair, as Councillor Palazza, Eastcribe doesn’t seem to have me as a voting member, at least not right now in Eastcribe. So I’d like to vote yes verbally.

Thank you. Motion to vote, motion carries, six to zero. Okay, we do not have any scheduled items, we are on to items for direction, we are on 4.1, which is the Pollution Prevention and Control plan update, the study notice of completion, and staff have a presentation if they’d like to go ahead. Mr.

Chair, while we’re getting the presentation ready, Ms. Ramel, it has a few opening remarks to introduce Mr. Chambers and what’s before you today, if that’s all right. Sorry, I didn’t catch that.

Sorry, Mr. Chair, while we’re getting the presentation ready to go, Ms. Ramel, it has a few quick opening remarks before she hands it over to Mr. Chambers.

Okay, thank you. I find sometimes when the mics have moved away, I just heard a bit of a harsh disorder. So go ahead, Ms. Ramel, moving here.

Thank you, through the chair. Thank you for having us back on this important topic. So today we will be bringing back the discussion on the potential of a weeping tile disconnection program. We did bring this forward previously and we were requested to give committee and council more time to speak with their constituents on it.

In the meantime, we also did have a conversation with L* and have provided some additional clarification in the report that’s before you today. You will note that we have also separated the resolution components. So this report today, we are required to complete it by the MECP and it follows an EA process. By receiving the report and putting it on the public record for the 30-day review, does not commit us to doing every single recommendation in that report.

So the PPCP Master Plan brings forward previous recommendations. So this is an update report. So it brings forward recommendations from the previous ones that are still in process such as combined sewer separation and those continue on. And it makes an additional recommendation that if we want to go above and beyond what we are doing now to reduce overflows, this is how we could do it by addressing it at the source.

So today we are before you for two things. One, to put this report on the public record for review. And two, to seek feedback on whether you want staff to do additional work on the feasibility of a mandatory weeping towel disconnection program or not. If Committee and Council chooses not to move forward with that feasibility study of it, that’s okay.

We would still receive the report, place it on the public record and fulfill our obligations with the MECP that way. So with that, I’m gonna hand it over to Mr. Chambers who will take us through some of those, that information that was requested of staff. Thank you Ashley and through the chair.

Got a brief presentation here for you to give you some of that additional context. So advance the slides here. Oh, there we go. Okay, thank you.

As Ashley noted, we have a number of sewer overflows that have been in place throughout the city that were historically installed to prevent basement flooding. The province requires us to have a pollution prevention control plan to manage and address those overflows. And this master plan follows a class environmental assessment process and has to be updated every five years. So that is what is before you right now, is the completion of that latest master plan update with the requisite notice of completion and 30-day review period.

Of course, one of the important aspects of that is this recommendation for point of purchase weeping-tiled disconnection. So where does that come from? And what does that mean? Just as a little bit of context.

Reason why we have a lot of these overflows is because there’s too much water in the sanitary sewer. So where’s that water coming from? Historically there on really old systems, we had combined sewer systems, which were essentially single pipe systems, taking road drainage and property drainage. We’ve made great strides over the last 10 years in removing significant amounts of our combined sewers.

We’re down to less than 1% of our existing system is combined. And we anticipate having all of our remaining combined sewers replaced and upgraded with separate sewers within the next eight to 10 years. However, there still is going to be a significant amount of water making its way into the sanitary sewer system. And that, one of the largest sources, is from weeping-tiles.

So this is a little diagram here. On the left is your typical house setup from the mid-1980s and earlier, where the foundation drains or weeping-tiles, which run around the perimeter of your house, down at the basement footing level, were gravity directly tied into the sanitary sewer. And that picks up any groundwater or any water from the surface that makes its way down into that system. And we found that, again, significant amounts of water can make it into those systems, which, in heavy rainfall or snowmelt events, can overwhelm the sanitary sewer system, resulting in overflows and basement flooding.

The diagram on your right is house plumbing setups post-mid-1980s, where that weeping-tiles system goes to a sump pump and gets pumped out to either the surface of the ground or the storm sewer instead of the sanitary sewer system. So what can we do to address this? And these are some of the alternative measures that we’re looked at as part of PPCP and even mobile for that. So one of the big things that you might hear about are storage tanks.

And London does have some storage systems. One example is in White Oaks Park in the early 2000s. Twin 2.5-meter diameter pipes were installed through White Oaks Park to address basement flooding issues in White Oaks. And they do work to an extent.

However, you can never build them big enough. And that is evident in our July 2024 event. So you can see the graph on the right. When we got that 70 millimeters of rain within an hour, an hour and a half in the summer of 2024, those pipes filled up within an hour.

And of course, then the system kept raining and system got overwhelmed. And we got numerous basement flooding reports from White Oaks. And then those pipes took over 13 hours to drain. So storage also has that risk of if the pipes aren’t empty when the rainfall starts, they have that much less capacity to manage rainfall events.

Something else we’ve had for many decades is a basement flooding grant program that provides funding to homeowners to undertake these weeping tile disconnection works and install a backflow prevention valve to protect their house against sanitary mainline backups. You see here that over the past five years, we have processed over 400 grant applications, which is a good thing. It’s largely reactive with homeowners who have physically experienced basement flooding. So what this doesn’t address is the many homeowners who may be contributing to the issue, but not getting basement flooding themselves.

So we have found that it is very challenging on a voluntary basis for any kind of buy-in from those properties. So that’s where this master plan then. I took a look at all of some of those historical works, the success rates, and opportunities for mitigating overflows going forward in the future. And what is being identified as an effective long-term solution is this idea of an implementation of a weeping tile disconnection requirement that gets triggered at point of sale.

And so the idea behind this is that over time, houses would disconnect their weeping tiles as they are sold through the market. And every house that’s sold would have less and less water directed towards the sanitary system. And over a long term, you would see less and less overflows, less and less basement flooding, and even more sanitary capacity for future intensification. We do note, though, that this is— as Ashley noted, it is over an above current provincial requirements.

So it is an increased level of service, and it is an option should counsel choose for us to investigate further this potential opportunity to look at what an implementation plan would look like. We do note that this is early days. This is a conceptual idea at this point. So it’s not a physical by-law change.

It’s not an implementation plan with specific costs or dates. But rather, the opportunity for staff to investigate the pros and cons of this further. So certainly open to any further questions you may have. Thank you.

Get a mover and seconder for the motion, Sir Frank. I’ll second it. OK, so it’s now on the floor looking for questions or comments. Go ahead, Councillor Stevenson.

Thank you, and thank you for the presentation. I did have some questions. It mentions 50,000 properties. But my limited understanding was that we didn’t need all 50,000 to disconnect.

There was only a portion of those that were needed. Can you just confirm that’s true and then maybe what percentage or give us some explanation around it, not needing to be 100%? Sure, thank you. And through the chair, that 50,000 number is an estimate based on properties that were— or buildings that were constructed prior to the mid to late 1980s.

And so obviously, really, really old properties over 100 years old may not even have weeping tiles, may not even have abasement. So those properties wouldn’t be included either. So it is an estimate. As far as what percentage would be required, that’s a really difficult question to answer because different homes contribute different amounts of water at different times.

And every storm is different, and every snowmelt event is different. So it would come back to a level of service or level of resiliency that the system can handle, which would be variable throughout the city and throughout each subdivision and sewer system. Follow-up, Councillor? OK, thank you.

I had a feeling it wasn’t going to be easy or that would have come back. The other question is, when we discuss this in December, this was the first of its kind that we were aware of, the first city to suggest doing this. So are we unique in having this issue, or do other cities have this issue, and what are they doing about it? Go ahead, Mr.

James. Thank you. Through the chair, London is not unique in this issue. And in fact, this is why many and most municipalities do have this similar forms of voluntary basement flooding grant programs.

But many municipalities are allowed to have private side requirements, if you will. And there are different options such as storage that do offer some level of protection, but would never eliminate overflows or eliminate basement flooding risk on the long term. So this would be unique in Ontario, so far as I’m aware. There are some other example municipalities in North America that have similar programs, but there are different circumstances and different reasons for that.

So this would be somewhat unique and why staff would have to go back and research implementation options, pros and cons, and different elements further to get all of the answers. Follow-up, Councillor? Yes, thank you, and through the chair. I guess the question is why now?

Because I think we’ve had this voluntary program in place for a long time. So what is it? Is there some urgency now? Or is this a new idea you just heard about?

I’m just curious as to why this is coming before us now? Thank you, and through the chair, it’s not a new issue. London has had this legacy issue for many decades. We have had different versions of voluntary programs and different incentive programs.

The reason why it’s coming up now is because we are just finishing up this five-year master plan update for the Pollution Prevention Control Plan, and this is a logical time to take a look at. What would it look like if City of London wanted to take a significant step in reducing our eliminated sewer overflows? Follow-up, Councillor? Yeah, thank you.

I’m going to do one more and then pass it off to my colleagues. I will want to vote on D separately. So I’ll just say that. And has there been consideration of maybe an incentive program where we offer something to incentivize people to choose in?

Go ahead. Thank you through the chair. The City of London has tried a couple of pilot project incentive programs. It remains a very, very large challenge to get buy-in from property owners who do not experience basement flooding to engage with voluntary or even incentive based programs for a variety of reasons.

Yeah, thank you. I’m very concerned, as are many Londoners, about sewage overflowing into a river, and really passionate about finding a solution and wanting to help in some way. I’m not keen on this one, but I really would like to hear what my colleagues have to say. Thank you, Councillor.

Councillor Frank, next go ahead. Thank you, yes, a couple of questions. With the water from the weaving tiles, it makes its way into the combined sewers. What are the estimated financial impacts for residents and separately for the City?

Report from 2021 references. About 44% of the water center or treatment plants shouldn’t be there. And that costs $1.4 million a year to taxpayers to treat that water. So I’m just wondering if we have any more current financial impacts both for the City and for residents.

Go ahead. Whoever I’ll stick with. Thank you through the chair. So yes, we did review that report and the numbers.

I would say those numbers stand, of course, adjusted for inflation. But noting that, as you noted, these projects can be very difficult to cost in a per-liter reduction because every rain event is different and so on. But knowing that we know, though, that that is the cost to treat that unwanted water in the system. As a point of reference also, so in our multi-year budget, one of the projects we identified was a $10 million overflow facility at Dingman pump station.

We already have one. We’d be building a second. We’ve earmarked $10 million for that project. And so it would double the overflow capacity we have there.

It would prevent overflows, but it won’t necessarily address basement flooding because it is an end-of-pipe solution. So that’s why the source really has that dual benefit and that bang for your buck because we are protecting people’s houses directly, as well as preventing the overflows because of too much water being in the system. Follow up, Councillor? Thank you.

I appreciate that. So it sounds like we’re already using taxpayer money to pay for this problem, but it’s not necessarily addressing it in a meaningful way. So I just wanted to point that out. Additionally, so with overflows and basement flooding, when that happens, and specifically in this situation, are there houses that aren’t connected to weeping tiles to experience flooding because of other people’s weeping tiles?

And Mr. Chambers? Through the chair, the short answer is yes. I mean, it’s an interconnected gravity system.

So each house that has a connected weeping tile would attribute water to the mainline system. And then if the mainline system became overwhelmed, it would back up into basements and/or overflow. So yes, everyone is contributing their share, but it is variable. Follow up?

Thank you, yes. So I am interested in seeing staff return with a report to council about a point of purchase program for this, given the answers to those questions. We’re already spending tens of millions of dollars in building infrastructure to try and address this issue, but it also not necessarily even addressing the basement flooding, because as we heard, it’s a end of pipe solution. And the over $1.4 million a year that taxpayers are spending on treating water that shouldn’t be treated.

I think it would be prudent for us to at least examine what an alternative program could look like if we are spending tens of millions, we might as well look at another option that could provide better results for Londoners. OK, thank you, Councillor. Councillor Palazzo, you’re next, go ahead. Thank you, Mr.

Chair. A couple of questions through you to staff and then some comments. I think staff had estimated $50,000. What is the process now if residents are worried or concerned if they have weeping tiles to find out if they actually do?

Does the city have a registry? Or did they need someone private to come out? Mr. James.

Through the chair, the city has, in some cases, we do know based on historical plumbing records. In other cases, we may not. As far as what people can do to proactively protect themselves, the voluntary basement flooding grant program remains, which provides 90% funding for eligible properties. So I would encourage property owners to take advantage of that.

Follow up, Councillor? Yep. In your slide deck, I thought I saw mandatory single family homes that would be affected. Look here to see if that is just standalone single family homes or duplexes and row housing, as I know, from some of your prior presentations, both sides of certain multi-unit dwellings would have to participate, for we don’t accidentally flood out a neighbor if we’re connected.

Just looking for clarification. Go ahead. Through the chair, at this time, the pollution prevention control plan study was focusing on single family homes, but it is true that duplexes, semis, some condos would also contribute, weaving tile flows. But again, this would be part of the nuance of an implementation plan.

And so at this point, the numbers were based on single family homes, and some of the rationales were based on single family home disconnections. Thank you. Yeah, I’ll have a few, Chair. You had mentioned the current basement flooding program has up to 90% back.

Do you know if it would be your intention to have financial assistance for residents if we’re going to have mandatory disconnection? Or is that something that would be contemplated and brought forward if we approve the staff report? Go ahead. Through the chair, the financial implications would be to be determined and based on future reports brought forward to council.

And future council decisions on whether there would be financial support or not if such a program did go forward. So at this time, we don’t anticipate the current basement flooding grant program to be going anywhere as far as the current process. Go ahead, Councilor. Thank you.

Yes, and absolutely to residents who are watching or reading this in the media, if this might be applicable to you, feel free to get in on that grant money while it’s there. There’s still some capacity in the system to sign up as someone who did have basement flooding in that July event of 2024, Florida ceiling. They could have helped inform me. Stock Commandant did a great presentation with residents.

I should have recorded it. We still have the slide deck for people wanting it. And part of the issue for fellow colleagues is what you’ve just heard of residents not knowing if they’re connected or not. If the city doesn’t have an accurate record, if they’re connected or not, they’re now getting private contract people to come out to tell them if they’re connected and to look into the situation.

So there’s a barrier right there for some of them with our current grant program. Residents need to make sure they qualify for the grant, go out, have the work done by a contractor if they’re choosing. Some residents have raised concern that if they don’t know if they’re an experienced contractor with it, they’re going to do good work. And I actually prefer that the city could guide them a little bit more in that process of reputable contractors, because you are coming into their home and their space and need to be very knowledgeable with drainage and the weeping tiles.

So I see the value of this. Just I’m questioning the mandatory piece, how we’re going to put it onto residents. If we do move forward and making sure that for some of them, you are still in your house, because you can’t afford it. And what’s going to do the buyer’s market of new bills versus older, especially if you want an established neighborhood?

So some concerns with it, but still interested in potentially moving forward with the Lisa staff report. Thank you. OK. Thank you, Councillor.

Looking for any other— I know, I see that. I’m just looking for committee members. OK, Councillor Stevenson, go ahead. Thank you.

And just to follow up while we’ve got the public watching and paying attention, you said that there’s a 90% grant available now. Could you just tell us a little bit more about what that covers? Go ahead. Through the chair, yeah, sure.

That 90% grant for eligible properties includes a backwater valve, which has a flat gate to protect the basement if the sewer flows up your pipe in the opposite direction. The cost of a weeping tile disconnection, sump pump installation, battery backup system for that sump pump, and in certain situations, a storm lateral for direct sump pump discharge to the storm sewer. Follow up, Councillor? OK.

Looking again for committee members. OK, not seeing them. Go ahead, Councillor Trozzo. Thank you.

Through the chair, do we keep these statistics in the aggregate such that we would be able to look at an area map and know if a certain neighborhood has a high instance of flooding issues, which could then also be correlated with the reports that come into service London about sewer problems and water in the street. Do we keep that? For staff answer, Councillor, can you just pull your mic down a bit closer? It’s just a bit faint.

OK, thank you. Go ahead, staff. Thank you. And through the chair, yes, we absolutely maintain a record of reported basement flooding, instances, and certainly anyone that goes through a basement-only grant program or obtains a permit to undertake disconnection works is tracked.

The short answer is regarding risk is that there are many neighborhoods throughout the city of London that are potentially at risk. Luckily, we don’t get large scale July 2024 style events on a consistent basis. So sometimes it really just depends on where that really high intensity rainfall happens and in what part of the city to really understand the level of risk, which is challenging, which is why we encourage proactive, basement flooding mitigation efforts. But there are many neighborhoods throughout the city that would potentially be at risk due to this issue.

Follow up, Councillor? Thank you, yes, through the chair. So you keep this data. Is it available in any convenient way for the public to look at?

Go ahead, when you’re ready. Thank you, through the chair. No, we do not make that information publicly available. That is private property information.

It can have a effect on insurance rates. We do not want to unduly people against a particular area, for instance, in home sales and so on. So that is not information that we would make public. Follow up, Councillor?

Thank you, and I’m always touched by the privacy concerns that we have here. I’m not asking for individual information about personally identifiable units being published. I’m interested in aggregate information being published from which the property owner and the address is excised, but we see an area in the aggregate. OK, staff, you comment?

Thank you, through the chair. I would have to certainly speak with others in the corporation with more legal knowledge on that than I can. What I can say, though, is in terms of awareness for property owners in those areas. When we’ve had a major rainfall, we often follow up— we’re almost always follow up with a letter that goes out to every property in that area, alerting them to the fact that homes in that area typically have weeping tiles connected, that it does put them at risk of basement flooding, such as they may have seen in the most recent event, so that there is a general awareness in areas that have that higher risk of basement flooding due to the weeping tiles.

Well, we thank you. And I could say, from the end of my street— Sorry, Councillor, one second. Those are the chair. We certainly know when it’s happening, and it seems to happen in the same places, and not really sure what the cause of it is.

So my point that I want to make is, I think we could be doing a better job providing to members of the public aggregate information. And of course, that is going to identify the block people are on, but I don’t think we’re doing an adequate job. The reason I asked this is, when we have large development applications come forward, not always, but from time to time, or usually, there is a stormwater report as part of the complete application project. And I know that that seems to be the case with the larger ones.

My question is, would this data be something that would make its way into those types of reporting documents? Before I get to that question, Mr. Chair, what were you trying to— I can follow up afterwards, Mr. Chair, just some advice for homeowners who might be interested.

Are there Mr. Chambers and Ms. Ramaloo answer the question with respect to how we consider development applications in the context of stormwater management and sewer capacity? Thank you.

Through the chair. So in terms of new development in these areas, in terms of stormwater, like overland stormwater, they must control their runoff of their site to what it was prior to development. So it should not have an impact on flooding of neighborhood properties. Similarly, they do not have weeping tiles that are connected to the sanitary sewer.

So they are not adding wet weather flows to the sanitary sewer. That said, we are cognizant of the fact that in some areas, there are higher wet weather flows in those sewers. And we must be mindful of that when proving additional development to take up capacity in the pipe. So good engineering design is we leave a buffer, basically, in the amount of capacity.

So we don’t design a sewer or allow a sewer to be designed to be filling up 100%. First of all, there are built-in wet weather allowances within our standard flows. And then plus good engineering design leaves 10% to 20% additional. So we really, in our review of development applications, we are reviewing that.

And we are aware of the areas that experience higher wet weather flows. And we do take that into consideration when reviewing the proposed densities and flows. Thank you very much for indulging me on these questions. I’m just going to wrap up.

I believe that we need to be doing better reporting just for the public’s information in general, but also with respect to the evaluation of new development applications. Even though a new development may not be contributing to this particular problem, I think it’s a relevant factor that needs to be taken into account when we evaluate what the cumulative impact in the entire area is. So I would like to see some more work done on this to improve the reporting. I don’t have an amendment to offer right now, but I’ll return to this.

Council and I would urge the members of this committee to consider some of the points that I’ve been trying to raise here. Thank you very much. OK, thank you, Councilor. Looking for other speakers.

OK, go ahead, Councilor Ferrer. Thanks, Chair. I was reading this one with interest and listening to the meeting with interest as well. So currently, our voluntary program has up to 90% costs being covered.

And I do see that the report says that the disconnect could be anywhere from $5,000 to $10,000 per household. And I also noticed that the participation rate is a fraction of a percent. It’s quite low. And I just wanted to know, what would be the current budget that we have currently for the disconnect with the current voluntary program?

Because if we’re looking for anywhere from 50,000 households at $5,000 to $10,000, that could be a total amount of up to $250 million for all the disconnects of all of them, or $500 million. So I just want to know, currently right now, with our voluntary program, if we did have everybody of those 50,000 requesting this disconnect, and they were eligible up to 90%, how much money do we really have to help with that? Go ahead, Mr. Eames.

Through the chair. So on the first point, our current annual funding is in the order of $500,000 per year. We have access to some additional reserve fund dollars in the case of dealing with large rainfall events, like we did in 2024. As far as the latter question, that would be for consideration for a future capital budget need should council decide to go forward with an implementation plan, or should staff recommend an implementation plan and council agree to go forward with it, and what those amounts may be.

It would be spread over multiple decades, though, as well. So it wouldn’t be a one-time lump sum dollar amount. Go ahead, Councillor. Thanks, Chair.

Thanks for the answer. I see that the participation rate is low, and I do see that there are some other approaches, like the disincentive-based approach, and we’re looking into the point-of-purchase approach right now. But I understand the intent, and I do want to see us disconnect from our sewage system. But I have concerns with how much that might increase the property value, or the price to purchase a house if it’s stopped at the point of sale.

And these are the type of properties that individuals who are looking to get into the housing market are most likely looking at, because they’re the cheaper ones, because they’re a little bit older in stock. So my concern really is how much that could create it an additional barrier to entry into the housing market. But then I see the other side of things, where we’re trying to disconnect the entire system, and that will help us with the tax base. That will help us with our expenses, as well.

And that will help us with our environmental approach. So I just wanted to know if there’s any other approaches that we’re seeing. And I guess I have concern with the fact that we may not have the amount of money to properly allocate to disconnecting everything if we used our current approach. But just letting residents know of this program and the existence of it.

Was there any analysis on that, and how we could really broaden how many eyes are really looking at this program, the existence of it, and what they’re covered up to, in addition to what we see in the report? Go ahead, Mr. Chambers. Through the chair.

Yes, in the past, there are past circumstances where the city has made more concerted efforts to reach out to certain subdivisions or groups of areas, especially following rainfall events. And the response is still— the takeaway is the response is mixed, in that many people do not actually go forward with all the physical work that’s required due to a multitude of reasons. But some do. And those are the ones that take advantage of our program.

So we have tried various different outreach in many different areas over the past many years and decades. Follow up, Councillor? Can my last question, thanks for that. So if we were to prove D here, what’s the likelihood, knowing that the costs could be extremely prohibitive for us, of a financial incentive program for the mandatory disconnect at the point of purchase?

What would be the likelihood that we would see a budget associated with that? And what would it be up to? Would it be up to 90% like the current program? That’s really my question.

Are we going to see that if we were to support this with that? Thank you, and I would imagine you’d have some options as part of that. But we’re at the stage where it’s do we want options, or do we not want to proceed? But Mr.

Chambers, if you want to comment, I know you probably don’t know the numbers off your top of your head, but perhaps what that would look like. Thank you. And through the chair, the next step would be if you approved the— the next step would be for staff to take that back and consider what an implementation plan may look like. And to the chair’s point, there would likely be multiple options brought forward for consideration if that were to be the case.

Follow up, Councillor. Thank you, Councillor Roman. Go ahead. Thank you, and through you.

And first, thanks for the report and for answering questions that I’ve had through residents already. So one of the things that I’m finding is creating a challenge for residents is really identifying if their property has this type of system. And so I anticipate that an implementation plan would include a mandatory home inspection, which would usually be conditional for the sale of the home anyways. So ultimately, a homeowner may go into a purchase not knowing that they have this type of system be notified at the time that they’ve had the home inspection and then have to deal with this issue between themselves and the seller in that case.

Is that correct? Go ahead, Mr. Mayor. Through the chair, there are certainly different multiple different scenarios that could present themselves in this case.

But it is true that if an implementation plan were approved and went forward with, that there would be an inspection required as part of that process. The reason why it’s being presented at this conceptual stage as a point of purchase rather than point of sale is to avoid challenges that would be very difficult to overcome, such as delaying the transfer of a home and the dates associated with that. So that’s why it’s put on— it’s structured to be addressed as point of purchase from the city’s perspective. But that would not preclude sellers of homes to proactively do the work and sell the home as a turnkey home versus selling it as is and requiring that inspection work to be done by the purchaser.

Follow up, Councillor? Thank you and through you. And I don’t think— oh, we do have real tea here as well. But my understanding would be, then, wouldn’t that create a challenge in the condition of the sale of the house?

Because now, if you have a house, let’s say, most listings will tell you the date of the home was built. So let’s say any home you’re looking at, that is before 1985, you would potentially run in the condition that if you made an offer, you had the home inspected, that the home could then be found to have a weeping tale system that needs to be disconnected. Now, if I’m an agent in this scenario, I would then go back and try to put that cost into the agreement. So it creates attention in a back and forth when already there may be an affordability component to the purchase of the home.

But it almost disincentivizes single family homes in the city of London that were built after 1985 in resale. And so that’s my challenge with the program. I understand why it’s necessary, but that concern alone, I think, creates too much of a sticking point for me. So although I want to investigate it from the exploratory perspective to better understand what this implementation could look like, I do see that we’re not exploring the drawbacks enough in what’s in front of us, but also from the perspective of those that are either selling homes or those that are looking from the single family market.

And so I want to figure out how are we going to weigh that? If we were to go forward with the report, how are we going to weigh that? How are we going to get that component, that element of the discussion forward so we can make a decision? Go ahead.

Through the chair. To be clear, that’s something that investigation of this implementation plan would include consideration of the pros and cons, because, yeah, absolutely, this is not— there are unintended consequences or circumstances or challenges associated with it. And that’s where the next step would be investigation into what an implementation plan would look like, associated drawbacks, and whether it would even be recommended going forward after all of those points were considered. So go ahead, Councillor.

Thank you, and through you. So are we— sorry, I can’t remember if in the report, it recommends an outside consultant to provide the implementation plan? Go ahead. Through the chair.

At this point, it’s just before council on whether you would direct staff to take the next step in investigating an implementation plan further, whether that is staff resources or whether that is supported by a future consultant would be to be determined. Go ahead, Councillor. Thank you, and through you. So ultimately, for me, if I were to support— first of all, I think the language of an implementation plan may be something I would probably need to change at council if that were the case, because I actually think it’s an evaluated report to look at the possibility of the pros and cons.

But I don’t know that we could do that in an unbiased way without having that outside opinion from industry experts. If this was something, let’s say, another municipality had been doing already, and we had more information from other markets, that might help me to better understand impact. But because we would be doing this as far as I understand Canada’s first, in a way, of putting a program like this forward, I would need some more expert opinion on what the impact could be to the industry and the market, as well as to single-family homeowners. So for me, that would be what I would be looking for is a report that created a narrative that was from those angles and those sides.

And I’m not sure— I know we’ve got reference groups through planning, for instance, that contain members of the Real Estate Association. I know it says, in here, some were consulted, as well. But I’d want to get more industry perspective, as well, to come back with more information, if I were to move this forward. But at this point, I think there’s just a little bit too much up in the air.

And it creates a lot of uncertainty for people if they think that council’s moving this direction. Thanks. Good morning, go ahead. Thank you for this.

I appreciate my colleagues’ comments. And for me, this is a bit of a tricky one, because I think when I look at it on the surface, it seems like a great idea. We want to help people disconnect. We want to not have their water flows going into the sewer, creating basement flooding.

It seems like a really great idea. But then when you start to look at the math, that’s where it kind of gets really challenging for me. When we do sewer separations, we’re able to leverage federal, provincial dollars and take out kilometers of combined sewer and municipal infrastructure. That gets us some significant gains.

For this, when I look at it, if we did this for six years, you said the budget was about half a million per year. So if it was that— I’m assuming it was that for the whole time, maybe it’s gone up. That’s 3 million to work with. And you did 400 and some odd.

That’s about an average cost. If we expended the whole budget about $6,800 per disconnect, we have people who get very upset about the tax rate. The 3% that we passed earlier this week is $130 for one year. So if we go the route of saying, this is a mandatory program, you’re going to have to pay for it.

We’re talking about something that is greater than people’s entire property tax bill, in some cases, for that whole year to say, you’ve got to do this when you sell the home. That seems like a fairly significant burden to put on it. On the other hand, if we’re going to subsidize it, like we are to the 90%, it becomes almost fiscally unsustainable for the municipality to have a program. And I’m trying to figure out the math of the balance in between those.

And it’s very difficult to figure out. And so for me, I think the challenge with passing D at this time is it feels to me like we’re signaling that a mandatory program is coming, which I think would give a lot of anxiety to homeowners, much like Councilor Raman described, especially if they’re not even sure if it impacts them. So I’m hesitant to approve D at this time. I mean, I’m willing to be convinced, but I just can’t make the math work in my own head to make it a program that is worth either having the homeowner invest in or us investing in, given the other priorities we have.

I certainly support the continued investments we’ve made in the multi-year budget on separating our infrastructure. And I think we’ve made great gains in this multi-year budget in the previous ones. I think that’s been a phenomenal success of the city. I know this is a huge part of the problem.

I don’t know what the solution is in the short term. I think the uptake on the program has been great for those who’ve done it. I know you say it’s very low, but I looked at the math. It looks like you’re probably expending most of the budget or coming close to it with this small program.

So expanding that is going to be— we’re creating a new significant municipal priority. So I would like to find a solution to this. I’m not sure if this is the step to find it. I think I’m happy to approve the rest.

But I think for now, I think I want to leave D off the table. But that doesn’t mean I’m not willing to revisit it at some point with some idea. And given our limited dollars, I’d rather put more into maybe more combined sewer separations and critical infrastructure projects that eliminate that part of the city than maybe spending a lot of money on individual homes where we know the uptake is low. And if we shift the burden to them, it’s probably a substantive burden to bear in an individual year.

So that’s not because I don’t think this is a really great idea. I just don’t know how I can get the math work. So at this point, unless I hear from colleagues, I’m not— I don’t think I’m supportive of proceeding at this time. I’m willing to think about it in the future or brainstorm other ideas that we could pursue to get people off of this.

And in the meantime, I agree with Councillor Stevenson. It’s great. There’s a lot of these pieces in the program. It’s great that people have some awareness to it.

I think if we had a lot of awareness to it, we’d probably have a bit of a budget problem given the cost on an individual basis. Like, you’re talking about 50,000 people almost spending what they would spend entirely in property taxes a year, just to create this one change, right? Which, again, is a permanent change. But it’s a tricky thing to have people do all at once, particularly in a time where people are struggling.

So I’m willing to revisit it in the future, but I’m going to vote against D today. Thank you, Mayor Morgan. I’m going to make a few comments now from the chair if you can. Yeah, this is an interesting one.

I appreciate— we had this discussion a while ago. Where I really struggle with this is, I mean, much of my ward would probably fall into this at time to kind of feel like part of East London or Atlantis. We have historical issues with flooding, a lot of the same properties. I always hear from them.

I mean, my struggle is also when the same properties had so many flood events. I’m always shocked that people will not just invest and get a sub-pump. Just don’t understand the stubbornness there, but there are some that fall into that category. And so where I struggle with this is, I don’t want to penalize some of the properties where if they’re older properties, they do have a lot of those financial challenges.

There’s really only a few smaller subdivisions I have that would have been built after ‘85. And so I really struggle with this. I understand our intention, and I think having that future focus is very important. But it’s that financial situation that a number of colleagues have kind of pointed to right now.

So I’m still kind of on the fence. I’m going to make a game time decision on D. But I do think even with the existing program, we maybe need to look at being more strategic. Maybe we target certain areas that have had a lot of historical flooding events.

We might be better in terms of using the program we have, but then trying to apply it to certain areas, recognizing obviously privacy concerns. But I think there are parts of the city that experiences more than others. There are probably some who are on a weeping tile that maybe they’ve just been lucky. They’ve never had an event.

But there are a lot of areas that I think still have this persistent problem. And I’m sure they’re adding a lot in terms of our capacity issues. So I’m hoping we can, even if this doesn’t go anywhere, that maybe there can be some conversations. Who knows, maybe someone comes to the next multi-year about looking at changes to the existing program.

But I think right now it’s a bit of a struggle in terms of forcing this on folks who I think have already had a lot saddled lately. So I’ll leave my comments there. Curious if anyone else has anything to say, but I’ll leave it there. So any other speakers?

Oh, we’ve got a couple. OK. Councillor Veremy, we’re going to have in spoke. So you go first and then Councillor Frank.

Thank you, Chair. Just wondering, when a neighborhood street requires a reconstruction, would that be an opportune time to lower the cost of disconnection of weaving tiles? Go ahead, Mr. Chambers.

Through the chair, short answer, typically no, because all of the work is typically required, either in the basement or around the foundation of the home, rather than out on the street itself, with the exception of the require— if an underground storm lateral was required, which— Good. Follow up, Councillor? Just perhaps just to follow. Thank you for that.

Obviously, if there’s a combination sewer that’s in the area, that’s probably an automatic. Currently, that that’s an opportune time to strip out that combo sewer. Go ahead. Through the chair, when we undertake a combined sewer separation project, we’re installing separate sanitary sewers and separate storm sewers, storm sewers picking up the road drainage, and the sanitary sewers getting reconnected to the existing sanitary laterals from each property.

But we don’t go behind property line. So the water coming through the sanitary lateral remains effectively the same pre- and post-construction. But what is removed is all of the road drainage into that single pipe. So it’s still— it’s a significant improvement to the overall flow in the sanitary sewer.

Follow up, Councillor? Thank you. Councillor Frank, go ahead. Thank you.

I just had another follow-up question based on some of the comments. I heard a couple suggestions of brainstorming new ideas or reimagining existing ideas, or adding more money to the voluntary program, which we already have, which I had heard referenced that has a low uptake and would take, I think, over 600 years to achieve the target. I just want to confirm that staff have already done some brainstorming and the recommendation for the Point of Sale program is the culmination of years of brainstorming. Go ahead.

Through the chair, certainly this has been an ongoing issue, and staff have tried various different pilot projects and programs and outreach over the years. This is something a little bit different than what most cities have attempted. So it’s something a little bit unique from that perspective. But yes, we have tried other ways of reducing or removing or mitigating the base flooding risk to properties, including storage, traditional sewer separation, and source control, weeping tile disconnection works.

Follow-up, Councillor? Thank you. So I’ll just reiterate, again, we’re already paying millions of dollars for this unwanted water treatment problem, so I am interested in hearing staff’s math and research into why, potentially, this might be a good alternative. Taxpayers are already paying to treat unwanted water.

Taxpayers are already experiencing flooding events that’s not their fault and is at fault because of the weeping tile issue. So I actually am quite interested in seeing how we could avoid both those things and use our money more effectively. Sir, trust him? Very quick question through the chair.

Under the current rules of disclosure and real estate sales in Ontario, are buyers given a disclosure about the flood status of the house, or is that something they would have to get a separate inspection for if they wanted that information? Thank you, through the chair. To my knowledge, in general industry practice, I don’t know of anything specific to that, but I would categorize it in the lump sum due diligence that is perhaps already in play in the marketplace in generality. My next question through the chair is, does the city have the authority to require additional disclosures in a real estate sales contract within the jurisdiction?

We can go to staff in the second section of the clerk. And Councillor, just kind of keep it tight to the weeping tile situation. This is very tight. Thank you, Mr.

Chair. I don’t know if Miss Pollard would wish to add anything to this, but we don’t really have that expertise to be able to answer that question within the team that has brought this report forward. It would require us to get an opinion, a legal opinion, as to respect to residential property law. Well, again, and trying to keep this tight, I hope that you can come forward with that, because I can’t make a motion.

But it would seem to me as if that would be very useful information for a purchaser to have. And in the case of a first time purchaser who has not been through real estate transactions before, it could be a very important service that we provide. So if you could get back to us on that, that would be great. But I can’t request that, because I’m not on the committee.

Take that as a comment, Councillor. Are there any other comments? Just as a reminder for Councillor Flores, I know you’re online, we’re not able to change the committee makeup at this time. So if you could just vote verbally on the items, that would be appreciated.

I’m going to start with part D. We’re going to open the vote now. It’s working, so I’m using E-Scribe. Closing the vote, motion fails two to four.

OK, we’re going to do A, B, and C together, unless there are any objections. Seeing none, OK, we’ll open those three together. Closing the vote, motion carries six to zero. Thank you, everyone.

We are now on to 4.2, which is the Smart Commute London additional details and memory of understanding. There is a staff presentation, like last time, we’ll do the presentation first, and then we’ll look for a motion. So go ahead, staff. OK, good afternoon.

And I’d like to bring this presentation through the chair regarding the Smart Commute program. This presentation is being brought to you due to the last time we took Smart Commute to this committee on February 2. There were a number of questions posed to staff, and we were asked to bring forward more details about the program and some of its benefits. Also respecting that other report, I’d include a lot of these details.

So now, allow me to provide those now. Basically, what is Smart Commute? Smart Commute is a program that’s a staff have been running to basically incentivize employers to provide information about how their employees can get to work using other methods, such as cycling, walking, carpooling, and transit. This gives everyone kind of opportunity to talk about those items, to identify people they may want to carpool with at their employee, and also just kind of promoting that there are other ways to get to work, and some of those take a lot of the traffic off the road during Russia, or making it quite a priority to our traffic demand.

Right now, within 18 months, the teams gathered 22 employers. A lot of those employers are very diverse. You see from consulting firms to some of our ABCs. So very large places like LHSC, as well as recently who brought on board was LEDC as well.

So we’re seeing a broad spectrum of employers joining so far, and again, it’s been about 18 months. Those employees are brought a lot of information about how they can get to work in different ways. And so far, the program seems to have been working quite well. We have a lot of interest budgeting on these things.

This is kind of a distribution of the mapping of those members, so their head offices. We’ll note some blank spaces, what we’re looking to do in future is look at the industrial parks primarily, where there’s not a lot of transit opportunities, how can folks out there get to work by other means, as well as some of the larger school groups. And we’ll be talking about that in a little bit. So why do we want smart commute?

This is really supporting a lot of our master mobility action plan, where we want to get people to increase their trips made by walking, cycling, transit up to from 23% to 32.5%, 32.5%. It really promotes people to use the infrastructure that we’re building, such as the bike lanes and the rapid transit systems. And it does support learners who don’t own a car or have a license. We can also note that recently fuel prices have gone quite high and taking other means aside from a single vehicle, also promotes them to cost savings to residents as well.

So since 2007, we’ve actually had a carpool app that we’ve operated. We’ve found the smart commute app is actually more cost-effective than those previous carpool apps. And also just kind of creates that same other benefits associated with being in the smart commute that are not just the app itself, but also the ability to network with other teams throughout other cities, as well as offers them other neat incentives. So when we did survey our employees, some of the employers, sorry, in 2020, we found that 12% of them had offered programs to encourage employees to get to work in different ways.

But over 85% of them were interested in looking at it further because their employees were having difficulties getting to work or finding parking, for example, is another reason to kind of look at other means get to work. When the survey was done of the members themselves, employees, since being involved in smart commute, these were, this survey is done annually. And we had over 150 respondents in London who said, yes, they actually changed the way they commuted. 47% said that they had changed the way they’d gotten to work, you know, not to say every day, but at least sometimes they had changed the way they’d gotten to work from just driving alone to some of these other different measures.

So the benefits of being in this marketing program for employers is that they can alleviate some of their parking shortage problems. Of course, contribute to their sustainability goals, their employees’ satisfaction and recruitment, of course, for the economic development as well. This can attract different employees to the employee, different economic status, et cetera. So there’s also a bit of a equity piece here as well.

Employees, of course, can save on the cost of getting to work, which really can be quite costly. Also, if they’re taking active mobility, it can prove even their health and wellness. From the city’s point of view, we want folks to start using our rapid transit lanes, as well as our bike lanes to reduce our traffic volumes during peak times, particularly. And these supports are all available free of charge to the employers.

So we have the app. That’s kind of what the member of understanding, we have to participate in the app to be part of the program. But there’s all these other benefits that happen too. Emergency ride programs really need, because if you commute in using another method, then you can get home via taxi, complimentary of the program, so that if there’s an emergency at home, you can get home right away, not have to, say, cycle back.

There’s also personalized trip planning. There’s webinars that can be given to you to incentivize how to get to work in different ways. And the business bike rack program is also kind of highlighted through this as well, either at cost or maybe for future, giving bike racks to some of the employers, again, just to incentivize this further. So the next steps, we really want to continue new employers to join.

We are going to work more closely with LEDC, Green economy, London and the chamber to really get more employees involved, really kind of toting some of the economic development benefits of this, particularly in industrial parks, where the transit can be difficult or challenging. And we also want to release this community wide so that people can take different trips using carpool matching. So that could be to get to church perhaps or to school or different other trips you’re making with other members of your community, some more carpool matching promotion that way too. That’s coming soon was the plan.

So basically the benefit of this is being part of the specifically smart commute over another type of program. It’s just that we have access to a discounted trip planning app, those employee employer tools that they’re all branded smart commute, and we have access to engage services through others and their expertise. And we also have a forum to discuss with other traffic demand management professionals across Ontario for other tips and tricks as to how to get folks taking different ways to work in school, et cetera. And that’s all I have for today.

Just wanted to give that information as a precursor to this smart commute program. The Ask of Council today is just to delegate authority to the deputy city manager to sign the next memorandum of understanding. It expired in December 2025. Hence why we kind of came back as soon as we could with this second presentation so that we can get back on the program hopefully and continue our work in recruiting more employers.

Thank you very much. Okay, thank you Ms. Chambers. Looking for motion on this.

There’s the staff recommendation looking around the table. Okay, Councillor Frank, you’re gonna move that? Okay, I’ll second. Okay, so that recommendation is on the floor.

I’m looking for speakers. Okay, Councillor Stevenson, go ahead. Thank you. I noticed in the report it mentions the 15,000, but there’s also employees.

I believe there’s at least one full-time equivalent. If you can just let us know what the staffing is for this. Go ahead. Thank you and through the chair.

We have two employees in the traffic, sorry, Transportation Demand Management Group. This is only one component of their portfolio. So currently we might have half a person working on this at this time. Follow-up, Councillor.

Yes, I’d actually like to move an amendment if I have a seconder that changes B. So that the authorization isn’t any future smart commute, you know, for as long as it goes, but it’s just until March, 2027, which aligns with the report back in C. So I’m just looking to limit the authorization to sign agreements to line up with the report back in March, 2027. For a seconder, okay, Councillor Van Reibergen.

Okay, so that amendment to change that. It’s on the floor. Just give the clerk some moment to get that together. We’ll work on that, speakers to that.

Okay, go ahead, Councillor Stu. Yeah, I’ll just quickly say, I’m careful about delegation of authority into perpetuity. And I just think lining it up with C makes sense. So I’m hoping committee will support.

Thank you, looking for other speakers on that. Councillor Trosto, go ahead. Yeah, thank you, thank you very much. At council, unless I’m convinced otherwise I will not be supporting this amendment.

I think what staff put in front of us is very, very thorough and well thought out. And in any event, we’re going to have this report back. And that certainly would not preclude the new council or this one, from that matter, from changing the level of authorization. So I don’t think this is necessary.

And I really want to thank staff for a very thorough report. My initial observation is we need to be putting more resources into this and I have a lot of confidence in our staff that they’re going to be doing what’s appropriate. So thank you, but I don’t see the need for this amendment. Okay, thank you, Councillor Trosto.

Councillor Close, I do see your hand. Sorry, the reason why I’m kind of missing you is when your camera’s off. It just defaults to Councilor Perbal. So sorry that I missed you, go ahead.

That’s okay. I can always speak up and Councilor Perbal looks great today. So everyone deserves to look at him. I question through you to staff of just this proposed amendment.

If it would have any implications on how staff would handle things, realizing it’s a smart commute program and just how that would be interpreted. You know, I fully recognize the word any future smart commute association MOUs. So just looking for clarification from staff of what this implication would have versus how it would currently be implemented if it passed on amended. Thank you.

Okay, staff want to comment on the difference between the two, go ahead. Thank you and through the chair. My understanding is that this MOU is maybe renewed every four to five years. So this will allow us to sign the next MOU that’s up before us.

And then we would basically come back in another four or five years to get that signed again. Okay, follow up, Councilor. No, thank you. Okay, it is an e-scribe, Councilor, if you just want to check, I’ll go back to you and then I’ll go to Councilor Raman, go ahead.

Yeah, just to follow up from that question. When you say come back in four or five years, but this says any future MOUs. So the way I read this, there’s no requirement to come back to Council for any renewals. Go ahead, staff.

Mr. Chair, perhaps we could get some clarification around the intent. Is the intent to only sign the MOU that we’re discussing up until next March? What the clause intended was that we would sign the MOU before you for the term of the MOU, which typically renews about every four to five years.

The second piece for any future MOUs would be should the program change and we need to have a different type of MOU. We would be delegating that as well. If the intent is to only sign the existing MOU for a year, then that does create some challenges in terms of the stability and predictability for program participants who would have generally expected about a four to five year commitment with respect to this program. If the desire is to actually allow staff to approve this current MOU for the standard term, I would suggest we just strike the last part of that clause and just stop after the amendment and extension agreement and we would bring any future, different MOUs about future smart commute programs separately because we would not have delegated authority beyond the current MOU.

Okay, Councillor. I would be happy with that if that’s considered changeable at this point with a seconder. Okay, we’re just doing the word smithing and it’s good. Okay, we’re all good.

It’s up. Any other, oh, sorry, Councillor Ronald, you were next. Thank you and through you. First, I wanna say thank you to staff for the extensive conversation on this.

I will keep my comments right now on the amendment. So in reading this report and the previous report, which actually included the contract, the resigning of the MOU language, I couldn’t find any reference to a date in those contracts or in that renewal. So I actually do support the idea of having a firm date. I understand why we’d want a longer timeline than what’s in front of us right now or was in front of us the 2027 timeline.

But at the same time, I think that I personally, and this is something I will speak to you for the main motion, I would like to see more deliverables. For me, when I see a program like this and in exploring this further with staff, I do think there’s a lot of opportunity for more collaboration. I’m concerned as to why we didn’t turn on all the functionality of the application from the beginning. If the intention of the application is so that we ensure that we have more, or sorry, less single vehicle occupancy as stated in the program outcomes, it seems like the way that the app is being used is actually more to track around sustainability.

But if we were tracking on the first metric and it turned on all the functionality, we would have been able to capture people that were using rideshare across the city and not just employers. So it would have benefited, let’s say, for example, USC or students at our local institutions who were losing their rideshare program at around the same time. So a lot of the, after COVID, a lot of the rideshare programs were canceled for students and they didn’t have anything else. And this was an opportunity for us to garner support through those avenues as well.

And so I think that targeting the program now and turning on that functionality will allow the program to be successful and I want it to be successful. But part of the challenge I have is I think we need to set more metrics to come back with a report that shows a growth in the amount of users. And I don’t think the growth needs to be because people are tracking more in the app. I think it’s that they’re matching.

And so the matching is the tracking, not, hey, I went and I rode this way and that way and that’s what I tracked on the app, which from the sustainability side of the app, I see why it’s there. But again, I think it’s really about upping the amount of users to show value. If we’ve had a program since 2007, I want something that’s more than just us engaging in an exercise to ensure we have the program. Nope, you’re trying to cram in the main motion stuff.

So I let you go a little bit there, but yeah, well, this is just on the amendment. So got another chance to speak in a second. But on the amendment, on just changing in terms of the contract itself, looking for anyone else. Hey, Councillor Stevenson, go ahead.

Thank you and I appreciate this. I recognize it’s on the fly. Now that we know there’s no date in the contract, is there some specificity we can put into this and extension agreement until a certain year? Go ahead, Mr.

Chairman, or everyone’s statement. Mr. Chair, the renewal period has been largely driven by the administrative municipality, which has been the city of Hamilton. We are happy to put a date in that provides stability for the users and employers as we’re going out and recruiting.

I would suggest because it’s been on about a four to five year cycle, anything in sort of that range would be appropriate. And then that would drive us, even if Hamilton is not in a position to renew that we would initiate a renewal at that time. So four years, five years, three years, but enough stability that should counsel approve this work. Employers know that they’re going to have those supports available to them and their teams for a reasonable amount of time.

Okay, thank you for that. But just ‘cause you said three, four and five, what I think would be good to have that. So in terms of a year, is that something you’re asking in terms of us to determine today? Mr.

Chair, staff’s recommendation is we would renew the, we would support the renewal of the MOU as it currently stands, which does not have a date. And renewal is driven then by the member municipalities administered by the city of Hamilton. If you wish to have a date where London would initiate those renewal talks independently with smart commute earlier, we’re looking to counsel as to what you are comfortable with. Staff are comfortable with the more open-ended process that is currently in the agreement.

Okay, let’s deal with the one amendment we’ve got right now. So good advice. We can have another amendment afterwards in terms of that, but let’s dispense with this one first. Are there any other speakers on this one?

Not seeing any online? Okay, so we are going to open this one for both. Closing the vote, the motion fails, three to three. Okay, and we are back onto the main, looking for any other amendment.

As we just heard previously, there seems to be some appetite in terms of trying to put a year on this. So there are suggestions for three, four, five, looking for colleagues to see if there’s any numbers they want to put forward from committee members, any takers, can we just bring this up with council as well? Okay, I’m not seeing any of this time. So with that, we will open the voting on the main motion.

Sorry, Kylie. Sorry, go ahead. Yeah, can you just pull, I want to vote on A separately from B and C. You’re okay with B and C together though?

So do A and then, okay, A is just to be received. Sorry, I guess it’s B that I want separate and you can put A and C together. So we’re gonna do B first and we’ll open that for voting. Closing the vote, motion carries five to one.

C next, just one more. Closing the vote, six to zero. Okay, thank you everyone. We are now onto 4.3.

This is the local and regional food producers. The process that is in city-managed facilities. This one is by Councillor Frank and myself. I will look for her to move it.

Thank you. I will second, and that is on the floor. Do you want to speak to it, Councillor Frank? Go ahead.

I’d be happy to. So this letter in motion addresses something that Councillor McAllister and I have discussed at the Middlesex on Food Policy Council as well as in other committee discussions in regards to trying to have more local and regional food being offered in these city facilities and trying to find a way to do it that is still in alignment with our procurement strategy and with free trade agreements, but being able to support our local food producers and processors given what is happening geopolitically and the increases in tariffs as well as the ability for us to support local small businesses. We had discussed the idea of asking staff to come back and show us a couple of ways that we are able to purchase from local and regional food producers and processors more regularly and add them to our roster because I think we should be supporting our local economy as much as possible. Okay, looking for other speakers.

Go ahead, Councillor Stevenson. Thank you. I was happy to see this and happy to support anything that supports our local businesses here as long as there is value added in this. So I just threw you to staff in terms of do you see this as there’ll be something that’ll come back to us that will make a meaningful change?

Marpone, do you want to get a chance at that, Gwen? Thank you to the Chair. I’ll start and we’ll see if Mr. Collins or Ms.

Aurora has anything to add, but essentially what we’d be doing is within the current procurement policy, there’s lots of opportunities and processes that were built into include local components. With this motion, we would be going back to look at what other municipalities are doing. We understand there is some good work that has been done by some other municipalities on this that would be able to assist us. There are certainly a lot of work being done at the provincial level right now with new legislation that’s coming to support local procurement as well.

So there may be some policy pieces that we can look at this that would support. So certainly there’s a lot of work for us to go and look and see what is possible. Some of it may be just in terms of data collection to even understand what might be viable given this is well beyond the breadth of what the municipality controls. So there may be some information and additional work just to identify what is possible and start to collect the data to see if it can make a meaningful change.

Certainly food is not a significant overall expense of the municipality in terms of our billion dollar budget, but could it have a difference? Absolutely, there is some work there that we can take a look at and happy to bring that back to council to see what is the possibility for us to investigate further for council’s direction. Follow up, Councilor? Yeah, thank you and through the chair, that’s helpful.

So just, I heard sort of two things there. One, it’s a lot of work and I know, you know, the department has a lot of work to do. And so we’ve got to prioritize things, but is this something that, like I know you’re always willing to do the will of council, (laughs) but given all of the other demands on the department, is this something that the department supports in terms of a meaningful exercise for this on behalf of the corporation? Do you want to take a crack at that, Mr.

Collins? Through the chair to the committee, as part of the update to your procurement of goods and services policy, we did include in Schedule D sustainable procurement. And within that schedule of sustainable procurement, we talked about economic development or economic prosperity or sustainability, in which case it did speak to help leveraging our tools to achieve the city’s goals related to the local economic growth opportunities for small and diverse businesses. So it was set out in our policy.

However, there is going to be some work needed over the coming months to kind of assess, as Ms. Barbone had outlined, the work that has already been done by not only our peers and other municipalities, such as the city of Vancouver, the city of Toronto, but also to some of the resources that the province of Ontario has put out there on how we can leverage our local businesses for food services or food supplies and processes. Follow up, Councillor? Thank you, I’m going to leave it there.

I certainly support the intent and I’ll listen to the rest of the committee discussion. Okay, Councillor Paluzza, go ahead. Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Question to the mover and seconder, and then question to staff. Just the motion state city managed facilities versus city owned facilities. Looking to see if you’re intent, would also include places like Canada Life Place and RBC Place, or if we’re strictly talking about the city cafeteria golf courses in arena. I will look to staff in a second, but my understanding was, in terms of the ones we had the direct control over, I’m not sure what those contracts look like, but my understanding was, in terms of our procurement, what we had the ability to control, but I don’t know if staff want to comment on that further, but I think that was where we landed on the wording.

Thank you through the chair. So certainly city managed facilities would be things that we would procure through the city of London. Things like Canada Life Place would not be governed through our procurement policy. So that would need to be very specific into things that the city of London has jurisdiction over the procurement of.

So that’s why city managed facilities is far more limiting, and based on what the city would actually purchase food for, as opposed to the broader facilities that may have some involvement in the city that we would not be able to impact through our procurement policy. Follow up, Councillor. Thank you. Three to Ms.

Barbone and her staff. Is there a rough estimate as the motion, as it’s currently worded for a time that would take your staff to create a report and bring back? Is this five hours, 10 hours, 20? Could you give an estimate?

Okay, in terms of an estimate, Mr. Collins. Through the chair of the committee, based on the work plan that we currently have, this would be probably something targeted for in early fall, late fall, based on some of the obligations that we have to fulfill related to the compliance report for the 2025 procurement of goods and services policy, in which case our procurement professionals are currently working on. And from there, they’ll be shifting to the reporting, as said, in the new policy related to the biennial report, in which we do have an expectation from council to report back on the implications if we wanted to increase that cadence to a more frequent basis, which would no doubt require some resource.

Thank you, follow-up, Councillor. Thank you. I think my question is just looking to see more, how many hours do you think it’s gonna take to make this report to bring it back? I appreciate the timing though, but.

We haven’t fully dove into all the details that our colleagues have undertaken to date, I suspect it will be more than five to 10 hours. So it’ll be quite the intense process by our team that’s available. Thank you for that, Mr. Chair.

I guess just a closing comment then through you. I appreciate it what we’re trying to get at. I don’t think arenas already have some charitable operators in them doing the food stands, which sometimes remain closed. A few potential vending machines or the city cafeteria already does have a little bit of like products that we’re highlighting there.

For me, more of my interest would be, as Ms. Brimone said, would be those city facilities are managed by third parties. If we could really get in there and start showcasing local alcoholic, the kind of life place, local chip manufacturers for that really made in London feel and made in southwestern Ontario feel. Kind of how tourism London pitches.

London is a great place. Those are more of my interests for what we could do to get those local products into highly showcased venues when people come to London that we really leave that lasting imprecision and making more economic scale out of this motion. And knowing it would take over 10 plus hours at this time, I’m not inclined to support it. Thank you.

Hey, thank you. Looking for other speakers. I’ll make a comment, I haven’t spoken yet. Yeah, I think this is a reflection in terms of many of the conversations we’ve had with Middlesex London Food Policy Council.

This has come up a number of times. We’ve had some good discussions in terms of our county colleagues as well. And really trying to have London as a leader in this space show Middlesex, Elgin, Oxford, what could be done in terms of having a local procurement policy? I think we have a lot of strong local, whether it’s agribusiness, suppliers.

I think there’s a lot of things that we could do to improve our local supply chain, which in turn would also help our local economy. I recognize in terms of what Councillor Ploza said in terms of the scope. I mean, I would have liked to have seen more as well, but I do think we need to start somewhere and I’m not willing to just dismiss an idea because it’s not big enough. I do hear a lot from, especially the county colleagues who I serve with on these committees that they often look to London and what they’re doing.

And they’d like to leverage what they have, but they’re also looking to try to get things into London, showcase them, and vice versa, support London as they can as well. But I think this would be a good stepping stone for larger things, but I think we do need to start somewhere. And Councillor Frank and I thought this would be a good starting point. So believe my comment there, looking for anyone else who wants to speak on this item.

Okay, seeing anyone, we’ll open this for a moment. Close in the vote, motion carries 42. Okay, thank you. We’re now on to, this is 4.4, the enhanced reporting for procurement disqualifications and bids and tender issues.

Councillor Stevenson, this one’s yours. Sure, I just have to, I’m gonna step out as one before me. I gotta leave the meeting. I have a call with the province at three, but I’ll return as soon as that’s done.

Okay, go ahead. Thank you, Mayor. And sorry, Councillor Stevenson, you wanna? Yeah, thank you.

Well, although I submitted a motion and distributed, I would like to just move at the moment, receipt of my submission, and then I’d like to have some debate and discussion before I move in amendment. Okay, thank you. So receipt of the communication is on the floor, looking for a seconder. Is there a seconder for my memorandum?

Okay, that receipt is on the floor. Go ahead, Councillor Stevenson. Thank you. There’s been a lot of background work on this, but just to keep it clean, I just wanted to have and see where my colleagues are at and get some more clarity from staff before moving an amendment, if any, for a motion.

So this rose out of a particular situation, which I know we will not be discussing here at committee, but all of Council received the communication as well. So what I’m trying to do is address it from a policy perspective in terms of Council’s commitment to a well-run city and value for taxpayers and that kind of thing. So my concern is that during the bids and tender process, you know, as an example, if changes are made after the question period is closed that are a pass/fail condition and there’s no opportunity for clarity, do we have policies in place that say what kind of changes are allowed after that time? Or, you know, I’m looking for clarity as to how this works and what details are in the policy around changes that are issued after the question period closes.

Staff, through the Chair, I’ll call on our Senior Manager of Procurement and Supply to speak to the specific example that the Councilor has flagged about the, if there’s any changes, what happens, post closure, what mechanisms are there within the current policy in the event that’s something like that first, correct? Okay, go ahead to believe you’re on. Thank you through the Chair. The questions answers are issued during the competitive process as part of the agenda.

And if there are changes which are required which restrict the competition in any way are the flexible timing and extensions are provided to the bid process. Okay, follow up, Councillor. No, if I could get clarity on that. So if a change is made, the question period is extended because that’s not what I understood.

If changes are required to have the proper competition done to the bid processes, then we will provide the extension to the competition. clarity on that? Yeah, yeah, thank you through you. The issue is, I guess for someone who doesn’t know anything about bids and tenders, it seems unfair to me that a change would happen after the question period that would be a pass fail.

Like I just, you would, how do changes come up and how are they approved in this process so that there isn’t such a big change with no opportunity for answers? Thank you through the Chair. Yeah, so the mandatory questions and the evaluation criteria changes if there are requirements and if it’s provided by the bidders or the community while being in the competition, those will be answered through the questions. No changes will be done after the evaluation, after the question closing period has been completed.

Okay, Councillor, do you need, or do staff want to comment further on that? Okay, go ahead Ms. Verma. Thank you to the Chair.

Maybe to be helpful, I might back it up even further. So the process, and Ms. Roorer can add if I miss anything. When an RFP is put out on the street, that information is put out through our bids and tenders process and is available to anyone that chooses to look at it and review that information.

While that is open, there is an opportunity for questions or clarifications that may be asked to confirm information or understanding. If any of that arises, that is posted publicly so that all people who have taken those bid documents can see the answers. There are changes are all communicated through a series of addendums that are added to the RFP document that are available publicly to anyone that has access to bids and tenders. From a change perspective, there may be answers through the clarifications that are asked that might perhaps receive clarity or their changes might be made that are answered through those questions and clarified so that all bidders can see.

So what Ms. Roorer is trying to say is that after those questions have been posted, there are no further modifications that are made in any way after the fact because from a fairness and transparency perspective, all bidders who have access to provide a bid through the system have the exact same information at the exact same time to be able to support a bid that comes through. In the event that there is an evaluation that a mandatory piece of information is not provided or clarity and then pass or fail doesn’t, test doesn’t meet. If there is a bid dispute, we have a mechanism that is clearly articulated through the policy by which an aggrieved bidder can support that process.

There is a committee, it is fully outlined in the process and we are currently going through that process as we speak with the situation and that is clearly spelled out. There is a committee that is formed and you go through the process. So that process, we try to ensure complete transparency and accountability in terms of making sure that all bidders have access to the same information and that all that is there so that whoever provides that, no one is at a disadvantage with that information. So perhaps that higher level gives a little bit more context in terms of how that is there.

When it is a clear bid then obviously once that process is finished, then based on the value proposition, those tenders and bids would then be confirmed to be valid. Follow up, Councillor? Yeah, thank you and through the chair. Thank you, it is very helpful because of course council’s place is way up here in this process as it should be.

But there is a lot of eyes and discussion about procurement in the city, about problems that happen in organizations, you know what I mean? So procurement is an issue that is top of mind and requires oversight by us. And so I did read about that in the bid dispute committee and everything and that’s fine. But none of that would be known to council, is my understanding?

Like there’s no reporting out on disputes and decisions, even in confidential, you know, where there’s some oversight as to what’s happening with those disputes for us to know how many are they, are there patterns that would, you know, require some attention or to just have those eyes to ensure that internally there is that oversight. So I’m just, I just wanna confirm that there is no reporting to council on those bid dispute decisions that are all done by civic administration. And if there’s, it may be any recommendations as to how council could provide a reasonable amount of oversight over this. Go ahead, Ms.

Bartlin. Thank you for the chair. So in terms of the oversight, the procurement policy is council’s governance tool in terms of providing that direction. What I would suggest is that when that procurement policy was brought forward, there is reporting on a biennial basis that we are working on and soon to bring forward through that process.

And because procurements are very, very specific and very individualized, that’s where ultimately the oversight of procurement is done through the policy, but the actual separation from the implementation of the actual delivery of the procurement is separated to ensure that there is a fairness and transparency through a public bidding portal that is maintained and does not allow the governance to be inserted into those decisions. From a reporting perspective, we’re looking at a reporting right now, we’re scheduled to bring that report back certainly in the next little while from the first, we’re closing off the last procurement policy and then we’ll have the regular ongoing biennial reporting. So certainly at an aggregate level, there’s additional information there that we have yet to provide that we will be doing so and certainly council has already expressed the desire that if we’re able to do that on a more frequent basis, which is what we’re trying to, as we go through the first cycle, identify if that will be possible to bring forward more regular reporting, but even to report out on the first report, council will get a bit of a flavor in terms of what that looks like and that information over that period of time. And certainly, as we’re looking at specific procurements, we can look to see what additional information we can enhance as part of that to ensure that council understands that the work this evident administration is doing.

Okay, thank you, more to come on procurement. So appreciate that, councilor, any follow-ups? Yeah, there is, thank you again for that. In the reporting, is there anything about what goes to the dispute committee and the decisions that are made there?

Go ahead, Mr. Chairman. Thank you, through the chair. So given that there is a dispute resolution committee and the process is yet to be finalized, one of the things that I would note is that the level of reporting around that, we would need to go back and take a look at to ensure that there wouldn’t be any additional potential confidentiality issues or trade compliance exposure as a result of providing that information, given it’s a very case-by-case specific item that we would be looking at.

So I don’t know the answer, I’d have to go back and take a look at what level of reporting we would be able to provide. Okay, councilor. Thank you, would we be able to get that prior to council? Ms.

Barbara. Thank you, through the chair. I would need to connect with legal to see just how challenging that would be, noting that the disputes may be infrequent. So just on the aggregate number, that may be a little more challenging, but I can certainly have that conversation to see if I can answer that question at council or provide through email to the committee.

Thank you for that, any other questions, councilor? Maybe just a few comments. So like I said, every councilor has a copy of the email that I have. Points were raised of concern around a change to the tender or the RFP that required experience as a change after the question period closed.

Now maybe that information is incorrect ‘cause I’m hearing that doesn’t happen. Sorry, councilor, I just have a study. You’re not a member of the committee, so you can’t pull a point of order, councilor, but I’m gonna let the council continue. No.

Okay, go ahead, councilor. You’re visiting councilor, councilor Trasso, and go let the councilor finish, okay, go ahead. Thank you chair, I appreciate that. 30 seconds, so by the way.

Okay, so my point is that there was a change made that what we’re being told potentially, you know, cross-tax payers money and disqualifies local service providers and makes it so that the bid is only eligible to those who already hold large municipal maintenance contracts already. So I’m just looking to identify from this, is there anything of concern, anything that we can do as a council to improve the process? And I think I’m gonna leave it there for today. Okay, perfect, you’re at time.

Looking for any other speakers on the receipt of this. Okay, I’m seeing any committee members, go ahead, councilor Trasso. Well, I have to say I’m getting really uncomfortable with this discussion. Certainly if it was at council, if this happens at council, I am gonna make some objections.

I think it’s really important that we respect the line that’s been drawn between councilor involvement at a granule level in things particularly a dispute resolution system, which once you use the word dispute, I would think that’s something that probably is looking to potential anticipated litigation and should go in closed session. And the last thing I wanna be reading about in a public packet are things about disputes. So I just have to say, while I’ve raised issues with the procurement process as it’s been applied from time to time, I have a general confidence in the overall framework of it. And I think we need to respect that.

So if this comes back to the council table, I will have much more to say, but I’ll just bite my lip for now. Thank you. Okay, thank you, looking for any other speakers. Okay, I’m not seeing any and this is on the receipt.

Closing the vote, motion carries four to one, noting that Mayor Morgan is absent. Okay, we are now on 4.5 requests for update on potential funding gaps. Councilor Stevenson, this one is also yours. Yes, thank you.

And again, I’ve got a couple of different amendments ready, but I’m just gonna move receipt of the letter for now until we have a bit of debate discussion. Okay, looking for a seconder on the receipt. I think Councilor Van Meerbergen, okay. So there are seats on the floor looking for speakers.

Yeah, I’m happy to talk about it. And thank you colleagues for letting me bring these things forward. This was, we talked about in another committee around financial cliffs and concerns about funding. We started a lot of projects.

This term and a lot of them had short-term funding or short-term grants associated with them. And I was looking for a way to get Council and the public sort of a bigger picture. Oftentimes we’re down right in the moment, but I would like to see sort of where those gaps are, potentially, I’m sure senior leadership team is already on it and they know where those potential gaps are. And I was looking to get that information to the public and Council.

And I know I started in one direction and it affects various committees. And then the other direction was a policy change, which potentially is burdensome on staff. So I guess I’d like to ask through the chair to staff, is there a recommendation for how we can get that sort of bigger picture view about significant funding that we know, we started it out and then maybe we hoped that the province would take over or that we’ve made commitments provincially and federally to certain targets that may put certain funding at risk or have obligations that I just want to be really transparent. So I’m just looking for feedback in terms of how can we get a bigger picture view that, like I said, chances are the senior leadership team already has, just looking for some guidance.

Hey, who would like to speak to that and staff? Anyone, Ms. Barbone? Thank you for the chair.

So certainly this is something that, from a budget monitor and perspective, we’re looking at and is something that, as we’re looking to think about the multi-year budget and the upcoming update, there is some reports that we’re looking to bring forward in the future that are going to start to set the stage for looking at how the 2027 budget will be done but also in terms of our budget monitoring where we’re at this year and looking at, because one of the things we flag as part of our budget monitoring reports is where we have emerging issues, where there is federal provincial funding for specific items and where there might be gaps or things that we need to highlight as high risk or low risk. So that is part of our current process. Certainly that is something that if there’s an intent to look at maybe a little bit more detailed, information related to that, in terms of setting the stage for future budgets, we could look to incorporate that through our budget monitoring report later this year that would start to highlight some of that in preparation for the future budgets that will be coming. So that would be my recommendation in terms of looking at that and what, we’re already looking at those things and starting to anticipate some of that.

So we could add a little bit more work to highlight some of those items as part of that broader monitoring through our emerging issues and have a more detailed section, perhaps, that’s probably the simplest way for us to perhaps proceed with providing more detail. Okay, thank you for that. Follow up, Council? Yes, thank you.

And thank you for that, ‘cause I’m not looking to add a big burden to what’s already a busy time, but that does sound great. Given the economic uncertainty and the heightened financial challenges that we’re facing across the board, that enhanced reporting around budget time would be really appreciated because there’s just more going on right now in terms of funding and in terms of concerns. Is there any direction from committee needed for that? Or is this conversation good enough to get that enhanced reporting?

Yes, Barbara. Thank you through the chair. So certainly if that’s the intent of the committee, I mean, we’re already flagging a number of items through the budget monitoring process. So I think knowing if that’s the intent, we can certainly look to enhance that and provide a little bit more information and detail through our emerging issues and flag that inter-upcoming report.

So certainly we can take that back without additional direction. And through the SLT, we can have some other conversations as well if there are other things that we would wanna flag and bring to the council’s attention. Thank you, Councillor Volat. Yeah, no, just to say thank you very much.

And I’ve outlined a bunch of examples that came to mind for me. I know one of the one that I’ve been messaged about a couple of times this week is concerns around the portable benefits ending in 2029. So these are the things that we’re being asked about by the public as well. If we know that there’s programs coming to an end, that information is helpful on how it might potentially impact us.

Okay, thank you. Looking for other speakers on this item. Not seeing any. And this is for the receipt of the communication.

Okay, we’ll open the vote on that. Opposing the vote, motion carries four to one. Okay, we are now on 4.6. This was on the added.

This is the contracts for N-Wave Steam Service Transition, looking for a motion. Mr. Mayor, we’re again, we’ll move and Councillor Frank will second. Okay, that’s on the floor, looking for speakers.

Okay, not seeing any committee members. Go ahead, Councillor Ferriero. Thank you, Chair. And thanks to Ms.

Berbon and Ms. Stewart for the report. I’ve been following this one closely. I do, you know, the cost has gone up, I guess, to $10 million now.

I just wanted to, I guess, ask some questions, just a little extra detail. ‘Cause I know that this is a little bit different from what we originally discussed on just kind of where the boiler locations would be. So I do see that within City Hall here, the boiler locations are now are gonna be inside. I think I saw in the main floor underground and then went in the penthouse.

I just wanted to get some more information on, I guess what kind of fuel is this one? This one is a gas one, I believe. And I wanted to also know about potentials with noise if these boiler systems are gonna be creating any noise or anything like that. Okay, looking for staff on those ones.

Thank you and through the chair. So yes, you are correct that we will have the boilers in City Hall will be located in the lower level, as well as the penthouse, which is where our mechanical systems are now. So to answer your last question regarding noise, it will be as isolated as it is currently. However, we do have to add equipment that wasn’t there before and build some space that will have to be appropriately built with sound attenuation and fireproofing and that kind of thing to come up to code.

So that’s that question. And then I’m sorry, the second question was with regards to the fuel source? Yes, yes it was, thanks. Two.

Thank you. At City Hall we’ll have two natural gas fired, hot water condensing boilers and in the upper penthouse, it is the same. Thank you. First Centennial Hall, could you provide any more details on what the boiler system will look like for Centennial Hall, location, fuel source, and the details like that?

Thank you and through the chair. So we’ll have two natural gas fired, hot water condensing boilers in the existing basement mechanical room at Centennial Hall. And those will be interconnected with the existing hot water piping system. Centennial Hall had an advantage in that they had existing gas service, but City Hall did not.

All up Council. Thank you and for Museum London. So I understand Museum London is several decades old, multiple decades old. And I also understand that it has issues with heat retention, just the efficiency of the building itself.

So, and these are just discussions I’ve had with the museum in the past. So with this boiler system that we’re bringing to Museum London, I would wanna know if this boiler system is going to also have any extra, I guess, improvements to the building, ‘cause I just wanted to clarify that from the report. But the system that we’re gonna be putting in Museum London is a system that will, I guess, work around the inefficiency, so to speak, with the museum as it is right now. And looking into the future, if we do have any kind of retrofits to the museum and increase the efficiencies, has that been considered with that boiler system?

Go ahead, Steph. Thank you and through the chair. So again, the museum is in a slightly different position than some of the other facilities in that prior to using steam service for heating. They did have boilers in that facility.

So they had existing gas service there. And so some of the piping and mechanicals are more suitable to using boiler systems, right? Because it was what previously existed. With regards to the question of the efficiency of the building, before this project came to be required, we were looking at building envelope enhancements and retrofits that would have increased sort of the thermal efficiency of the building.

And my understanding is that we’ve taken that into account and that we can in future as we improve other building systems, we can still use this same system that’s been designed for the museum. Follow-up, Councilor? Thank you for that. I guess my last one would be, from my understanding, we were seeking support from N-Wave on, I guess, some of the costs and we’re also hoping to see if N-Wave could help some of the other parties that are being affected by this.

Did we have any information on that? I can staff come on in there, go ahead. Yes, thank you and through the chair. At this point, I have not had any confirmation from any contributions from N-Wave, certainly for city projects, nor have I been made aware of any contributions to other community organizations.

So in that case, we are having to proceed on the basis of what we know now and meet the critical deadline that has been imposed upon us. Follow-up, Councilor? Thanks, Chair. Well, I appreciate the work that you’ve done.

Obviously, the cost is not necessarily appreciated, but we don’t have necessarily a choice on the matter, it seems. I would make note that we were informed that some help maybe discussed or brought forward to us, but we didn’t get that. So just to, again, thank you for the work. I’m hoping that after this is solved, we don’t get any more decommissionings, obviously, but I’ll leave my comments there, thank you.

Okay, thank you, Councillor. I have Councillor Preble next, go ahead. Thank you, and through the chair to the staff, I did go recently quite extensively through this exercise, and that was actually my first option where we are going ahead with, and it’s actually kind of the least expensive one, even in its huge amount. But I wanted to ask you, one of the things that I was told that the steam and water react differently in the current pipes radiators, and potentially even though it’s the least expensive, it could end up being the most because the pipes and radiators could not hold the water as it held the steam.

Can you please comment on this, and if whoever’s nearing the consulting firms, if they looked at this as well, thank you. Okay, go ahead, Steph. Thank you for the question, and through the chair. Personally, I cannot respond directly to that question, but I will ask a colleague who is much more experienced in ATRAC if he could respond to that, and get back to you either within this meeting or by email.

Okay, thank you. Okay, any more questions or comments? Thank you. I’m looking for any other speakers on this item.

Go ahead, Councillor Stephens. Thank you. I hate to ask this question, but I just feel I need to on behalf of taxpayers. When we look at the large expenditures that are needed here, several of the buildings, the Central Library, Centennial Hall, and City Hall, in the public realm, their future is questioned.

You know what I mean? In terms of the location, the longevity of what those buildings are gonna do. So given the significant expenditure here, I just wondered if staff could provide any comment on investing this kind of money in assets that, you know, do we have any updates in terms of the long-term plans for those? I would say it has to be kept to the issue of the steam, so I don’t think that commenting on the— No, but that is it.

Like we’re looking at putting $10.8 million into buildings three of the four of which we’re not even sure what is happening with those buildings. I would still say a hypothetical question. We were talking about having to do these grades that are restricted in terms of the N-Wave situation. So I would say that’s out of order.

So we’re gonna keep two questions about the steam. So I’m gonna say that’s out of order. And staff don’t need to answer that. If you have questions related to this contract specifically, please go ahead.

Okay, thank you, can I ask staff through you chair if there have been discussions with the breeders of these facilities in terms of this capital investment? Staff in terms of discussions with those who operate the buildings, go ahead. Thank you and through the chair. We have been working closely with operators of all the facilities.

And particularly the library board is due to consider a motion at an upcoming meeting to provide a contribution towards these costs because they recognize the value, particularly of having the human identification system reactivated. So that is one conversation that has taken place. Okay, follow up. Yes, and thank you.

And what’s the expected life of these investments that we’re putting in? Go ahead, staff. Through the chair, the expected service life of a boiler would be 50 to 75 years. Follow up.

Thank you. And are there any alternatives to this to meet the immediate need that is coming? Can you comment on that? Through the chair, to meet the immediate need, we have looked at the most cost effective and feasible system to do this.

And this is the proposal that we’re presenting today. Follow up, Councillor? Yeah, thank you, probably just one. And that is the, I can see that most of the, or what appears to be most of the original budget was coming from the operating budget contingency.

And then the, this new $3 million, I guess my question through you to staff is, can you just explain as an overview where the additional $3 million is coming from and what the potential impacts are on those unexpected drawdowns? Ms. Barbona, is that you or Mr. Collins?

Mr. Murray’s onlineing can address that. Okay, sorry, Mr. Murray, I didn’t see you left in your online, go ahead.

I am here, Chair, thank you. So the, the Councillor’s correct, the original preliminary budget was approved from the corporate contingency budget. That was not an option for this additional amount as we had exhausted that corporate contingency budget for 2025. So we had to look at alternative funding sources in order to provide this additional requirement.

The natural fit for this type of expenditure given its nature is the capital asset renewal and replacement reserve funds. And we have utilized those as the primary sources of funding for this additional requirement in terms of the city facilities renewal reserve fund and the library renewal reserve fund as well. The remaining balances in those reserve funds are noted in note one of the source of financing attached to the committee report. Thank you.

Okay, follow-up? Yes, thank you. Just following up, are there any implications to these unexpected drawdowns on these reserves, like any projects that are now gonna be delayed because of this or is there sufficient funding for everything? Go ahead, Ms.

Murray. Thank you, three, Mr. Chair. No, there are no unanticipated consequences as a result of this.

We manage our capital asset renewal and replacement reserve funds as a suite and are able to shuffle or shift around funds as required to meet emerging needs. So there are no impacts on other projects or any other work that needs to be deferred or anything of that nature associated with this approval. Follow-up? Just one last one, I think.

And that is regarding the library. Are there any approvals needed by the library board for any of this or is that an additional amount? Go ahead, two staff, who, I don’t know who else take that. Through the Chair, if I’m understanding your question, Councillor Stevenson, the approval that the library board would consider is their contribution, if any, to the project that’s taking place at the library.

What has included in this report is all the resources that are required to complete all of the sites. Follow-up, Councillor? No, that’s good, thank you. Okay, thank you.

Looking for any other speakers on this item. Okay, Councillor Ferro, go ahead. Thanks, Chair. Just some follow-ups.

Remind me again, when is the steam, the medium-pound steam line decommissioning going to take place? When is N-Wave going to decommission the medium-pound line? When is that date again? October 31st, 2026, and thank you for that.

And in discussions with N-Wave, there’s no extension for that decommissioning. They won’t be able to take, I guess, postpone it, or they have to decommission in October of ‘26. Through the Chair, my understanding is from conversations with N-Wave that their assessment of the system, and it’s expected unreliability. They are very reluctant to consider any extension because of the high risk of failure, I guess, from their perspective.

So we just have to work with the date that we were provided formally in a letter and work diligently towards meeting that deadline. Follow-up, Councillor? Thank you. How long would it take for the construction for all the facilities to make the install and have everything up and running?

But it’s not. So through the Chair, we are working towards that October deadline. So as soon as we have contracts in place, and we hope to do that immediately after full approval is received, we would start right away in April and continue through to October with the exception that the library may be a little bit longer both without impacts on heating, but it may take a little longer into November to get the humidification system functioning. Follow-up, Councillor?

Thank you. So I guess it’d be fair to say time is of the essence right now. We have like six or seven months to go, and they’re just with this type of work, especially in older buildings. There’s always little things that we can run into that we can’t really foresee.

So as much time as possible. So I would say we can’t delay this. I’d also say like with, I guess with the discussion of alternative installations, like I understand that those are way more cost prohibitive or way cost more costlier, especially when it comes to rentals and temporary infrastructure in the installs like that. So I understand why we went to this approach.

I’m still not happy about, you know, the amount of 30 seconds, okay? But I would say delaying this would probably not, would definitely not be within the interests of us because then we would just have facility facilities that are in the cold in the right, in the beginning, before the dead of winter. Okay, thank you, Councilor. And yeah, I know for summer even of her eyes, we’re talking about next winter, but yeah, I agree.

Got to get that done. Any other comments or questions on this? I don’t. Councilor Troso, go ahead.

I just want to say as somebody who’s very interested in the library and the museum, I really want to thank you for your work on this. It’s been really very helpful and it’s very much appreciated. Do you need to know that? Okay, thank you.

Any others looking online? Okay, seeing none, we’ll open this for a vote. Wasn’t the vote. Motion carries five to zero.

Okay, thank you everyone. I’ve had a request for a 10 minute bio break, looking for a mover and a seconder. We’d like Councilor Frank, Councilor Van Rui in seconds. All those in favor, we’ll do this by hand for 10 minute break.

Motion carries. Okay, we’ll be back for say 50. Okay, we’re going to get the show on the road, it’s 350. I don’t know if anyone can hear me out there, but I’ve given you a quick 30 second warning.

We are back to consent items ‘cause these were pulled. We’re now at deferred items. So we are on 2.1, which was the respectful workplace, policy, anti-arassment, anti-discrimination, annual report, January 1st, 24 to December 31st, 25. And that is on the floor.

I will move it, I’m looking for a seconder. Sorry, Mr. Chair. As Chair, you can’t move, but I’m happy to.

Okay, I’ll reverse that. But you’d have to give up chairs, so I’ll do that. Okay, I will have Councillor Ploza move that, I’ll second it, and it’s on the floor. Go ahead, Councillor Stu.

Thank you, just a couple of questions through you to staff. It does say an annual report, but this one is for two years. I’m just wondering why there was no annual report last spring. Mr.

Parity. Yes, through the chair. This is what prompted us to bring this one back. We didn’t realize there was a council direction to bring these forward in 2003.

So everybody we consulted on, we thought it was more like a courtesy, an internal process. But when we found out 20 some years ago, there actually was direction, we started to back up again through council direction, and we’ve covering the last two years on this, and going forward this time next year, the first quarter of each year, we will be reporting out on the previous year. Okay, thank you. It also, it says that the report is only employee ease, and given that the respectful workplace policy applies to elected officials, volunteers, interns, and contractors, I’m just wondering why it’s not more comprehensive.

Go ahead, Mr. Parity. Yes, through the chair. So you aren’t correct.

We only do our human rights division. Their scope is only internal investigations. The type of investigations you’ve alluded to, like you said, the code of conduct, there’s a mention in there. Those fall under the integrity commissioner.

And they have their own reporting structure, separate from ours. They report direct to council, very similar to what we’re doing today. Those two entities do not, frameworks don’t cross over for reporting and investigations. Follow up, Councilor?

I understand that to be the case for elected officials, but on page 13 for the applicability of the policy, it applies to interns and placement students, volunteers, including members of advisory committees, contractors and consultants acting on behalf of the corporation, and individuals from outside the corporation, such as suppliers, visitors, and other members of the public. And again, given that there’s been so much talk in the public about harassment, and it is a big part of what council is focused on, I’m just wondering why no reporting on the other issues, it would be great to know there aren’t any, or if there were problems, it would be great to know that too. Mr. Parity, go ahead.

Yes, I’m gonna turn this one over to her. I’m the manager of Human Rights, Ms. Marlowe. Okay, go ahead.

Thank you, through the chair. We have actually not seen any concerns come forward in the last two years with respect to volunteers or interns or placement students. We would likely see those go through our process in the same way with the same procedural safeguards that we offer for employees. If we receive concerns around contractor employees, our process is to communicate with the contractor directly and to ensure that they have a process in place that they can follow up on the concerns around the conduct of their employees.

And so those would be concerns that have come forward from city employees, or perhaps from members of the public not realizing that those are not city employees that they perhaps had a negative interaction with. Follow up, Councillor? Yes, thank you, through the chair. Just one other question, I think, maybe two.

It also notes on here that these are only completed cases and that anything that’s currently still in progress isn’t reported, it would be great to have that here again to know whether there was only a couple or whether we’ve got 30 others that are in progress. Go ahead. Thank you, through the chair. We do have several matters that are ongoing at present.

So going forward, I’m happy to include that information in the report. We wouldn’t want to speak to specifics because typically those numbers are fairly small, but we could certainly indicate a few or give a range in terms of the things that are still being resolved. Follow up, Councillor? Yeah, thank you, I’d appreciate that.

And I understand this is sort of a bigger concept, but specifically for this department, how do you keep track of longstanding council directives? Like I’m just wondering, like in this case, it came up, it was back in 20, 2003. But how does, say, even just enterprise supports keep track of all of the things that must have taken place over time? Okay, I believe Mr.

Parity already mentioned that. They found out and then they’ve gone directly, but notice is how you have to speak about the history, but current state, go ahead. Through the chair. The chair is correct, it’s trying to find the right person that has that history.

We just happened to have a person that was with the corporation 27 years ago and happened to be in council chambers when that direction was given. Typically we would go through the city clerks to start there and then through human resources where human rights used to reside, just in this case, but typically all of us, all the service areas, we, if we’re looking for something specific that we don’t already have in our database, whether it was through turnover or whatnot, different filing systems over the many years, we’d typically start with the city clerks and work backwards from there. Follow up, Councillor? Yeah, thank you.

Maybe through you to the city manager. I guess I’m just concerned that there isn’t sort of a log of the things that are mandated, that it wouldn’t be clear that it was mandated ‘cause to go by having to have staff who were here 20 years ago, doesn’t really make sense to me. So I don’t know if there’s a comment in terms of how does the civic administration ensure that council directives are followed beyond the transition of employees? Go ahead, if you’d like to comment.

Thank you, future. It’s incumbent upon us as staff to ensure that the resolutions and the approvals made by council are enacted upon. In this case, I think my colleague has provided an overview of why there has been a change in this regard, but I wanna assure council that activity is in place. Okay, thank you, follow up, Councillor?

Yeah, yeah, just one, I guess, ‘cause it’s not no problem if one thing slips, but what I’m hearing is like, is there a book or is it marked that we know which, when these reports come, that it’s council directed or is that something that could be implemented going forward so that when we get them and you make them, we know that they are mandatory? Well, I would also just comment, we are just on this one item. This isn’t speaking to general policy in terms of keeping track of things. So staff wanna comment just on this item, go ahead.

Through the chair, and thank you again for the question. I want to assure you that this item, as it’s presented as information for council, as the individual who has spoken already indicates, we intend to put a new process in place or update the process so that we are meeting the requirements and acknowledge the feedback we’ve received from council in this matter, and we will ensure that it continues to be delivered in the way that it was intended to be. Okay, thank you, follow-up, Councillor? Yeah, just one, is this report now complete the directions that have come in the recent history?

Like I know that we’d ask for some more information, is this it now complete or is there more coming in terms of harassment and what’s going on within civic administration? Mr. Parity, through the chair, this is the report, this is complete, this is all the data will be coming forward until this time next year. Thank you, follow-up, Councillor?

That’s it for now, thank you. Okay, thank you, okay, the motion’s on the floor, any other comments or questions about this, okay? Not seeing any, we’ll open this for a vote. Closing the vote, motion carries six to zero.

Okay, we are on item 2.2, this is the revised Respectful Workplace Policy Anti-Rasmatty Discrimination, looking for motions, okay, Councillor Frank, I’ll second it, okay, so that is on the floor, looking for speakers, okay, Councillor Stevenson. Thank you, I did put a submission in around this and I’ll just start with a question through you to staff in regards to the submissions that I have made around my concerns and just wondering have they already been looked at and applied or is it, ‘cause what I’m looking to do potentially is refer this to a future committee asking that my concerns be looked at to see if they can be incorporated within the policy rather than me be directing any changes or coming up with amendments myself. So just thing, you know, in terms of, if you’re looking for a referral or anything, you would have to do that on your first time speaking, so it’s FYI, I believe Mr. Parity already said earlier in terms of separation, in terms of the policies, but if he wants to speak further to that or reiterate that, go ahead.

Yes, through the chair, so my understanding of the agenda that was added by the Councillor, that’s referring to an IC process that took place and the filing, the investigation, the findings and any data reporting that the IC would bring back to council for consideration, that took place. There is nothing more on behalf of city management of staff, civic administration to follow up on an IC findings. Once they’re made, it’s done. So there is no crossover between our human rights division and the integrity commissioner findings are reporting or anything that comes out of that, any decision at council.

Okay, thank you, follow up, Councillor. Yeah, thank you, I just want to be clear. I understand the separation of the code of conduct. I’m not talking about that, but the complaint was made under the Respectful Workplace Policy.

And so given the findings that happened, I was looking for the Respectful Workplace Policy to be revised to inform future complaints. Like to me, there’s things that need to be revised within the Respectful Workplace Policy to address some of the concerns that I had. So I’m not trying, it does cross over at certain points in terms of the code of conduct and the Respectful Workplace. So I’m trying to separate those.

The code of conduct is under referral and review under bill nine. But the Respectful Workplace Policy was specifically mentioned and there are things in there that have not been addressed that to me given the findings should be, there should be revisions to that Respectful Workplace to better inform going forward. So I’ll just see if staff have any, ‘cause I’m seeing confusion, but I just like a comment from staff. Go ahead, Mr.

Mayor. So through the chair, like I said before, what you’re alluding to, what you’re speaking to on changing things or adding things into the Respectful Workplace Policy based off the findings from an investigation because they touched on the Respectful Workplace Policy, there is, we’re crossing over into an area where it’s not supposed to go from an IC findings, from an IC investigation. So if there’s something very specific, I’m happy to meet with a counselor to kind of find out what detail we’re actually talking about and see if they can actually take place or not, and if we’d have to reach out to the integrity commissioner beyond that. Okay, follow up, Councillor?

Yeah, thank you. Like I said, there is that separation between the code of conduct and the Respectful Workplace. It was specifically mentioned that it was under the Respectful Workplace Policy. Some of the concerns that I think would be beneficial to be looked at here is my concerns around the backlash effect, because that is part of something that’s in the human rights department, it’s a concern, a priority of this council and what happened really does raise those concerns around whether the backlash effect was looked at, how that is incorporated when complaints come forward.

I think I’m becoming a lot more involved in women’s issues than I ever thought that I would, but it is something that concerns me. The same with under the list of harassment and the behaviors and everything that are listed there. There’s nothing in there around the experience of the other person. So if that is something that is enough to warrant a harassment finding, then I think that that needs to be in there.

Because if it goes beyond what is actually said, done or any gestures, then that clarity should be in there. Now, if civic administration is saying that the specifics of what happened with the May 24 complaint were applied by the integrity commissioner in a way that is not something that the civic administration wants to move in, then that’s fine. But I would just like to hear that, because I think that what happened is worthy of some review to see how the policy can be revised. So I understand the crossover, but there are things, like I would say, around the backlash effect around the experienced, the experience of harassment being sufficient to warrant a harassment finding.

So I don’t know if there’s any comments from staff on that. Mr. Parity, I don’t know if you want comment any further on that? And Kelsey seems to be on 30 seconds left.

Through the chair, we’re really beyond what’s before us right now, just we just presented an update to the policy, but we’re really talking about, and integrity commissioner filing and findings, and what came out of them and expectations from that. And that is beyond what we’re dealing with today before our committee. Okay, I appreciate that. So Councillor, you’ve heard that.

You have 30 seconds left, but to Mr. Parity’s point, keep it specific to the policy that’s before us. Yeah, well, I’m just gonna say, irrespective, forget the integrity commissioner. A city councilor is putting a submission on, asking that some revisions be looked at, regarding the respectful workplace policy.

And when you say, well, it’s just the policy here before us, well, but with revisions, we’re being asked to endorse and accept and implement this revised workplace policy. So I was gonna move a referral, but I’m, well, I’ll move a referral and see if I have a seconder. Okay, you are out of time. You did your referral and just under the nose there, any seconder for that?

Yeah, and there would need be specific language as to what fails. On committee members. I’m not seeing any seconders. Okay, so there’s no seconder for a referral.

So we’re back on to the motion that’s before us, looking for other speakers on the item. Seeing any, we’ll open the vote. Closing the vote, motion carries five to one. Okay, we are now on to item 2.9.

This is the final program designed for Better Homes London, looking for a mover and seconder for that. Okay, Councillor Frank. I’ll second that and that’s on the floor, looking for speakers. Go ahead, Councillor Frank.

Thanks. I just wanted to say that since the news article came out highlighting some of the program design elements for this, I’ve already been reached out to buy a couple of different businesses and some residents who are very excited to see the implementation of the program, especially in regards to saving money on heating and cooling within their house, as well as stimulating the local economy. So I look forward to hopefully this moving through and being approved. Okay, thank you, Councillor, looking for other speakers.

Seeing any, we’ll open the vote on this. Closing the vote, motion carries five to one. Okay, we are now on 2.11. This was the Meadow Lily Environmental Assessment Notice of Completion.

This was pulled because there was a added request for delegation status, looking to see if Jason Ross with us. Oh, he is online. Okay, so a motion to accept the delegation. Councillor Frank, I’ll second that and we’ll open that for the delegation.

Hi there, thank you. Good afternoon, Chair. Nope, not yet, sorry. We’re just doing the vote on your delegation.

Sorry, one second. All right, I’m surveying Mayor Bergen. Mayor Morgan closing the vote. Motion carries five to one.

Okay, Mr. Ross, you can go ahead. If you could turn on your camera as well. Sure.

You have five minutes as well. All right, no problem. Thank you. I’ll tell you, I am in my car.

I just picked up the kids from school. Didn’t know this would go this long. Thank you. Yeah, I’m Jason Ross, civil, sorry, project manager at development engineering.

We’ve been retained as the civil engineering consultant by the proponent for draft approved plan of subdivision at 168 Meadow Lily South, which represents the largest developable parcel within the Meadow Lily EA study area. Draft approval was provided for our client’s lands. However, less than half the required sanitary allocation for the approved zoning is currently available. So a holding provisions in place which cannot be lifted until the recommended sewage pumping station is constructed.

As a result, our clients directly affected by the EA’s preferred servicing strategy, which is the recommendation is a pump station. Reviewing the EA, we could not confirm the specific area to be serviced by the pump station. However, considering the extensive coverage of the environmentally significant area and the existing development serviced by a private pump station on Meadow Lily, the service area would appear to be limited to the undeveloped land, the south end of Meadow Lily towards the top of the hill where our client’s lands are. Through our preliminary work for 168 Meadow Lily Road, we’ve identified a potential gravity sanitary servicing alternative that could service our client’s lands as well as potentially other lands in the study area.

We’ve not reviewed the service ability of the remaining lands, ‘cause it’s not really within the scope of our work, but in light of what our own analysis has found, we believe this warrants consideration. Sorry, I got to move here. We believe this what we found warrants consideration as part of the overall servicing solution before this notice of completion is received. We feel this may have significant costs and time savings allowing the developer to bring to market high density residential development that’s draft approved and zoned.

So respectfully, we’d ask staff or committee to seek responses to two questions from staff. Can staff clarify the intended service area of the recommended pumping station? And was a gravity sanitary servicing alternative fully evaluated as part of this EA process? And if so, on what basis was that set aside?

Thank you. Okay, thank you, Mr. Ross. Hope you’re not in a no parking zone.

(laughing) Okay, we will look for a motion on the floor. Okay, Councillor Frank, I’ll second that. Okay, so the motion’s on the floor and then looking to staff, maybe if they wanna address those two questions or ask, go ahead. Thank you, through the chair.

In short, so yes, gravity solution was looked at, but so because this area service plan, which we can make available to the proponent, goes to the north end of that metal lily area. So that goes downhill. So we require a pump station to be able to service that. So you can’t service the properties at the north end of this area with gravity.

Part of the flows from this site, yes, could go by gravity to an existing sewer, however, not all of them due to downstream constraints. We do not recommend adding additional gravity service only, that would only service this parcel and would also require disruption of the city sports fields and turf. So we would not be recommending splitting the flows in that way. Rather, the additional flows from this parcel can be directed to the new sewer that would be on metal lily, that will go to the pump station and then be pumped through the ultimate force main and to the ultimate outlet.

Okay, thank you. Looking for speakers to this item, go ahead, Councilor Stephens. I just wanted to say, I did not mean to vote no to the delegation. So I apologize that vote was a mistake.

I did support the delegation request. I just wanted to put that on the record. Okay, thank you, looking for other speakers, either in chambers or online. Okay, I’m not seeing any.

Oh, Councilor Frank. Oh, Mr. Ross, you can turn off your camera now, you’re good. Thank you.

Okay, we are now. Oh, go ahead, Councilor Frank, go ahead and ask a question. Thank you, I just want to make sure that none of the endangered species or anything will be impacted at all by any of this work. I know that there’s wood poppies somewhere over here.

Go ahead, staff. Thank you. Through the chair, so yes, we’re very mindful of the ESA, so any work done through there would have to require, we would have required the appropriate EIS work. So one that is not fully completed this time, my understanding, we would double check on that, but it would certainly be required through the design phase as well.

Thank you, Councilor. Thank you for any other questions, comments? Okay, I’m not seeing any, we’ll open this room. Was in the vote, motion carries, six to zero.

Okay, we are on to our confidential item, looking for a motion to go in camera. Councilor Frank, Councilor Frank, remember, so we could tongue-tide on your name, sorry, Paul. Councilor Van Mirbergen, okay, we’ll open that for voting. Was in the vote, motion carries, six to zero.

Okay, Councilor Frank, if you can report out, please. Thank you, I’m proud to say that progress was made for the items for which we went in camera for it, also it is the mayor’s birthday, and so we should end by singing Happy Birthday. Yeah, I can’t move a motion, but I agree. Before we call a adjournment, yeah, round of Happy Birthday.

Yes, let’s do a round of wrapping for your birthday. There we go, yeah, not withstanding our policy, you get claps, okay, motion to adjourn. Okay, Councilor Van Mirbergen, I will second, all those in favor. Motion carries.