June 16, 2026

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Meeting Transcript

Duration: 5 hours, 43 minutes

Source: Lillian Skinner’s London Council Archive

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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.

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Good afternoon everyone. I will call to order the eighth meeting of the Strategic Priorities and Policy Committee. With that, we’ll begin with the land acknowledgement. The city of London is situated on the traditional lands of the Anishinaabic, Haudenosaunee, Lenapawik, and Adawandran.

We honor and respect the history, languages, and culture of the diverse indigenous people who call this territory home. The city of London is currently home to many First Nation, Métis, and Inuit today. As representatives of the people of the city of London, we are grateful to have the opportunity to work and live in this territory. Just to let folks know, we are joined in chambers by most of council.

We have a couple members joining online, including Deputy Mayor Lewis, Councillor Palosa and Councillor Hillier. With that, we will look to item one, disclosures of pecuniary interest. Seeing none online, seeing none in chambers, we will move to our consent items. I have a request to pull item 2.1 from consent, which leaves item 2.2.

I’ll look for a mover and a seconder for item 2.2 . Thank you, Councillor Cudi. I have Councillor Ferrera as well. We’ll begin discussion on that item.

Councillor Trossa. Thank you very much to the chair. I’m not gonna pull 2.2, but I just wanna, I wanna thank the authors of this report for addressing this issue about the committee of adjustment. Over the years, I’ve received a number of, trying to think of the right word, complaints, concerns, questions about what goes on at the committee, and I’ve felt that improvements are needed, and I’m just, I’m thrilled to see this report.

There’s some things in here I’d like to accelerate and move quicker, but I think this is a good report to start, and I’m grateful that this has been tabled with us. And the residents are going to appreciate it. Thank you very much. Thank you, looking for other speakers on this item.

Okay, seeing none online, seeing none in chambers , we’ll open the vote. So votes, yes. Closing the vote, motion carries 15 to zero. Thank you, that moves us item 3.1, which we’re almost exactly on time for, which has never happened.

So I’d like to invite Mr. Squire Mr. Chisholm to the microphones. This is for the London Middlesex Community Housing 2025 Annual General Meeting of the shareholders and their annual resolutions.

They are going to begin with a presentation like all the presentations that we have today, which is just two. They’ve asked for 10 minutes. If I do not see any resistance to 10 minutes on our two presenters for today, I’ll I’ll just allow it, and we won’t take a vote on extending time, okay? Seeing that looks like it’s good, we will begin with Mr.

Squire, go ahead. Thank you very much. I wanna start by thanking the staff that are here from London Middlesex Community Housing, and that includes our senior management group, some fellow members of the board. The board, just for people’s reference, I think it’s important.

We’ve pretty much been in place for just five years. I say that because sometimes people will tend to talk about things that happen a long time ago with London Middlesex community housing as a group. We’ve been here approximately five years working on the things we’ve worked on. I also want to thank Deputy Mayor Lewis and I want to thank Councillor McAllister for serving on our board.

They’re active members of our board. They’re involved in all of our discussions. I can tell you that we’re a board that does not have a lot of disagreement. We are united in the approach we need to take going forward with our — also with our senior staff, which is gratifying for all of us.

I also want to thank — we have two tenant members of our board, important members of our board bring a unique perspective to the work of our board, and we’re very grateful for them to be with us and contributing to the work we do. I also want to thank City Council for receiving our Master of Generation plan. is our blueprint moving forward for the next 15 years for rejuvenation. I’m going to remind everyone that we have already started on that with the reimagined properties we are fully funded to complete those.

I also want to thank council for approving the $29 million loan part of it being forgivable which will allow us to do that work as well as working on the property renovations we’re doing. Also, I don’t know how to phrase this and not get into trouble. I acknowledge the staff report that we received. I didn’t have a chance to see it until just before the meeting.

It would have been nice when we met with them personally to have a discussion about their concerns. We did about the borrowing money, but I ‘m not sure we had a discussion about all of them. But I make the commitment that although I may not be entirely pleased to have received that report, we will continue to work diligently with city staff as we must to fund the continued work that we need to do. The tenants are more important to us than anything other than any kind of internal concern about reports that we receive and I’m quite used to it.

So today, very briefly, I thought, what should I do today? I thought, well, I would give you a couple of examples of things that are challenges for us and a couple of things that we think we’ve had good results on. The challenge in the first quarter of 2026, which I think is very important, is that the number of incidents we’ve had of trespassing and people trying to access our buildings doubled from what it was in 2025. That’s in the winter months, of course, of that time.

So what do we think is the cause of it? I think part of it is what we’re seeing in our community. People in the winter months are seeking access. We’re doing work on that, trying to educate tenants about accessing, letting people access our buildings who are not tenants in the building, but it is something we are going to continue to talk to police above.

We have security and we’re hoping to see a trend go down, but it’s something to be concerned about and it’s something to be aware of for our tenants. The positive news for us, the one that I mentioned last time, but I’m gonna to mention it again because it didn’t get much notice was our business building condition assessments. Last meeting, we mentioned that we were doing new assessments of the condition of our buildings and they will all be complete by the end of the year. To date, we are seeing improvements.

Kent Street has moved from Port of Good and Dorchester Road has moved from Port to Fair. This is a brick and mortar assessment of our buildings. It indicates to us that the money that we’re putting into our buildings is making a difference. we expect to continue to get positive results.

It is very difficult to be criticized about something in a general way so I wanted to bring you specific numbers and results in those areas. We often hear about pests at London Middlesex community housing. In May, the report, and we get up-to-date numbers on what’s going on in our buildings. We don’t use feel or what people tell us, we actually get the numbers.

In May, the number of units that were being treated for pests was 11% of our total units. Let me tell you that that’s down from a number of 25% of our units getting treatment. What does that mean and why did that happen? Frankly, it means we’re doing a better job.

We had to spend money on that, of course. We got new pest control service. Our staff made contact with tenants in a much more positive way to make them aware of how they could be involved in this process. We’re very pleased with this, but when I said to staff, is that the number, is that as good as we’re going to do?

They said, no, we think we can do better. That is an important result. It’s not a general comment. It ‘s not anything but facts.

I also want to just comment briefly about how we view criticism. We are happy to hear criticism, but it’s important to me as the chair of the board to indicate when people lash out in a general way at London Middlesex community housing. Go ahead and do it with me. Go ahead.

That’s fine. I’m used to it. But it affects our staff. It affects other board members when they’re told they’re not doing a good job.

So today, I want to say very clearly that the board of directors stands behind our staff and our senior management. Thank you. Thank you. I’ll invite Mr.

Chisholm up and you have about four minutes remaining on the time. All right, thank you. Good afternoon chair. Mayor Morgan, members of council.

Thank you for the opportunity to present London Middlesex community housing 2025 annual general meeting materials. You’ve all received them in advance. I will keep this brief and provide some highlights and happy to discuss further as we go. I want to start much like Mr.

Squires did by thanking Council for its continued support of London Middlesex community housing. It’s important. The city plays an important role in helping maintain renew and grow community housing in the city, including a lot of mental sex community housing. The investments in service improvements, capital repair and regeneration have had an impact across all of the communities we serve.

And there’s just really a few categories I want to talk through really just gratitude for the staff of LMCH. I want to show some service improvements and what the impact of the investments are in the organization. So to the staff of London Middle-Sex Community Housing, thank you for the work you do. I don’t think people realize that it is challenging work.

It is complex work, and it’s important that we recognize that they are doing work that most of us in the city do not know exists. So thank you for coming to work every day and working hard to improve the conditions of the units and support tenant’s success, success. They do this with confidence that they remain focused on improving the state of repair and supporting our tenants. Over the last five years, we have created a community safety team.

We’ve increased the staff to provide support to tenant and our communities, providing a little bit of case management, more referrals to agencies. We’ve increased our staff providing pest control and other maintenance services to improve the state of repair and improve service responsibility. We’ve scaled up our asset renewal team to not only improve the state of our existing housing, but to build new housing in this community. We brought our cleaning house in staff to make sure that we were no longer dealing with a vendor.

We had an opportunity to bring another 15 staff, put them in our buildings, have them wear our logos, and speak to the tenants like they’re accountable for what’s happening in the building. So now staff have more contact with our cleaners. Cleaners have more structure. Our buildings are getting cleaner.

Our cleaning programs are improving. That’s important. And I think to support this, we just have to recognize that as we deal with such complex communities complex tendencies, we are strengthening our health and safety programs to make sure that staff are working safely, working smartly, and they are supported in the complex work they do. So to our staff, thank you.

These investments and staff have let us do things that we weren’t able to do a few years ago. So as mentioned, our pest activity rate continues to decline with numbers at 14% at at the end of 2025, and they continue to trend down. While there’s some buildings that have more complex issues, those are still reducing numbers, and we expect to continue to see this improvement through the year. Work order completion rates improve.

We’re 94 to 99% of our work orders are done within seven business days. So of the 2019,000 work orders we get, within seven days, we’re resolving them. We’ve extended our community safety hours make sure we have more staff available when tenant needs them, and we’ve had 4,000 proactive security patrols across our community. Investing in our communities is critical.

At the end of 2025, we’ve delivered 249 fully regenerated accessible units. We have 167 remaining by the end of 2027, and we will hit that target. We’ve invested over $13 million in unit repairs over the last five years. In January, we did an ambitious program where we swapped out 900 hot water tanks across all of our townhouse and family sites not only improving the condition of their hot water tanks we remove costs from our operating budget to our capital budget and Mr.

Chisholm I’ll give you just some concluding statements if you don’t mind thank you unless somebody wants to move a time extension thank you I have Council Ferreira go ahead I’ll move five minutes okay thank you I have a seconder and Councillor Frank I saw your hand up first okay with that we’ll put that in the system we’re ready go ahead the vote will be open. So, trust out. Boog yes. Closing the vote.

Motion carries 15 to 0. Please go ahead. You have five minutes. Thank you .

Appreciate that time. So, as I was saying, we swapped out 900 hot water tanks. Moved costs from operating, to capital, improved energy efficiency. We have a 10 year comprehensive warranty reducing long-term maintenance costs.

We continue to modernize our elevators. We have 28 elevator cabs over 15 sites. To date, 14 cabs have been completed, six are under renovation right now, and eight have already been successfully awarded to be repaired within the next 12 months, investing heavily in building electrical systems over seven million dollars over the last five years. We just approved another five million dollars.

We’re improving the health of our buildings. I think as we look forward, just really we continue to grow and think differently. We’re building stronger connections across our communities looking at how data from emergency services, health data, and other service providers can inform the planning we do to better programs and supports provided to our tenants. That is not work that we need to do is work we need to do together with the community.

We’re doing building condition assessments they’re underway across LMCH to inform our asset management plan. We’re going to identify the capital repair backlog and with completion of this work in 2026 we’re going to be well positioned to inform the city of our capital repair backlog moving forward to 2028 to 2031 for the multi-year budget. We expect to see significant improvements with many of our buildings in a good state of repair. And we also continue the conversations on regeneration planning.

We’re getting future projects shovel ready. We’re looking to make sure we have projects that can be funded by all orders of government to improve and increase affordable housing across the city of London. So none of this is possible without the great staff at LMCH, our board, and the support of the shareholder. Thank you.

Thank you. I will look for a motion to go on the floor. There is one draft in these scribe. It is listed as motion one.

It’s to ratify and confirm the annual resolutions , the letter that’s there to receive the presentation financial statements, annual report, and then the communication. And I had Councilor Callister as the mover. Do I have a seconder? Councilor Henry?

I will second. Oh, thank you, Deputy Mayor Lewis as seconder. and I will look to begin discussion on this item, looking for speakers. Councillor Hopkins, go ahead.

I might as well go first. Thank you very much for being here and for the presentation. I did enjoy my time a number of years ago being on the board and really appreciate the updates that we as council receive. There’s a lot of positives here.

We just heard in your presentation and also in the report, I think the pesticide rate is to be commended, as well as in-house custodian staff. I know that was a big conversation a number of years ago, and it’s really good to see it back staff training. And I appreciate learning more about the building assessment improvements that took place and the investments that you’ve made. Looking forward, I’m really pleased to hear that you’re trying to get those projects in, in place so you can take advantage of the funding , as well as strengthening tenant support.

I think those are the two main areas that I’m really pleased that you’re looking forward. I know vacancy rates have always been a concern and a conversation, and as we look ahead, is there anything that you can share on not only the challenges, but how are you addressing the vacancy rates? I’ll go to Mr. Chisholm and team.

Oh, Misty Candida, go ahead. Through the chair, good afternoon. So vacancy rates is something that we continuously keep an eye on. It’s one of those things that kind of ebbs and flows, right?

You have, there’s an element that’s not as predictable, right, how many it’s become within your stock. And so we are taking a very organized and systematic approach moving forward with how we manage that rate. The reality of how we receive units is that it is highly variable, right? So typically a stable, successful tenant, we receive a unit in a certain condition, and sometimes we don’t.

And so organizing ourselves from an efficiency perspective takes a lot of coordination, and it’s work that our team has been focused on in particular the last three months and how can we organize ourselves to be more efficient at the variability of the nature of how we receive vacancies. In addition to filling the vacancies, we are at full capacity now with our team, and we’re seeing some tremendous results as of late. It’s one of those figures that is highly sensitive to us because we understand our responsibility to ensure that housing is available to people in London. And it is also impacted at times by some of our capacity pressures across our organization.

You see some tremendous results as it relates to pest control in other areas. And so when we have a flux in volume of vacancies , we have to reset ourselves. And so that’s why you’ll see the ebbs and flows. And it is quite natural, I’d say, for the into housing industry.

But it is something that we will always be watching. We will continue to strive to achieve a lower vacancy rate. The industry standard is about 3% or the target would be. And that’s definitely where we’re heading, moving into the end of the year.

And Councillor Hopkins. Yeah, thank you for that. I think it’s something that we should try to understand. It’s not easy, and like you say, it ebbs and flows, and it changes accordingly, but congrats and keep up the work.

Thank you. Thank you, looking for other speakers. Councilor Perble. Thank you, sir, Chair, through LMCH.

I was looking at last year when you presented, and there were certain initiatives that you were proposing, and you were planning to do during the last 12 months. And I was just wondering if you can update us on that. The first one is enhancing services with technology for unit inspections, will improve transparency for work order management. Has it happened and any results update?

Thank you. I’ll go to Ms. Connecticut to hand you through the chair. Yeah, I’m pleased to report that we have adopted the technology and the tool for us to have essentially a handheld mobile device and allows us to effectively manage our annual unit inspections .

We can directly take photos, do work orders on demand as we go along versus a follow-up to paper trail. We’ve seen huge efficiencies for our team in that coordination and also an additional benefit as having stored a group of positive information from every single unit inspection, I think last year we did over 3,400. So this is, our team has seen tremendous games in terms of the day of efficiency, but from an organizational perspective, It is invaluable data. And so how we do our annual inspections is a, say, a cross-functional multi-team approach .

So we have those kind of compliance accountability pieces with ESA and FIRE. We have our property services staff. And we also have some of our support staff for some of the tenants who may be having a little bit of a hard time with that level of engagement in a day. So we really take a multifaceted approach.

But from a data repository perspective, we’re seeing tremendous gains. to promote workload efficiency perspective, we are as well too. Council privilege. Thank you for the positive update.

Launching a tenant portal for increased communication and accountability. Thank you for the chair. We’re in the final testing stages just to ensure the technology is safe with our database. But we are thrilled to be moving forward at some point this year.

Essentially what Council privilege describing is a tenant facing portal. So think about on your phone, there’s an app. have a maintenance request. Instead of now, you know, calling in or emailing, you now can, you would then be able to, for example, put your work order in through your mobile device.

There’s other tools available on these platforms that allow us to expand that service channel moving forward. We’re taking a little bit of a slow approach, but right now we’re at the stage of ensuring that it is compliant with our systems and that there’s no, for example, security breaches possible. So we’re doing that testing now and it’s in the final stages. Thank you for that, through the chair, continuing to strengthen collaboration between the City of London administration, allowing LMCH to move forward differently as we improve our operations.

Could you comment on that, please? Thank you, go ahead. I’ll go back to Mr. Chisholm , go ahead.

Thank you, and through the chair. Yeah, we continue to work closely with the City of London as shareholder and a service manager, but also, you know, we work closely with them as they provide service to DAS as a business in the city of London. So a few great examples of this collaboration is the work with the service manager and Matt Feldberg’s team just on different areas including regeneration where they were brought to the table during the master regeneration plan both from finance and housing to inform the strategy as it evolved to help us make sure that we We were on the right track, and we had a shared vision. And this also works in everything like by-law enforcement, where we have stronger relations with division leads and managers to make sure we have open dialogue as we work through some of the challenging situations we face.

So I think there’s lots of examples, and I think it just highlights, you know, this collaboration and confidence is really just when we had the Kochi and OFI funding dedicated to LMCH over a multi-year program period. That was the first time that had happened. That lets us plan better and lets the city make sure the money gets spent the way it should be. And it helps improve the whole community housing system.

So lots of examples of working together. >> Let’s just go ahead. >> Yes, go ahead. >> So I actually mentioned that.

So I’m going to explain what I meant by what I said. We did our regeneration plan and arranged for a meeting between board members, staff, our senior management and the city. What we were looking for, quite frankly, is what do you think of this plan? What do you think of it?

Is it good? Is it bad? And, you know, I went to the meeting, and I did get two very specific impressions that the city would be concerned in the future if we were incurring debt, even if it was forg ivable debt. So in the case of the ‘28 or ‘29 million, a part of it, as you know, quite a large part of it, just forgivable but and even though we were taking on the responsibility to pay it back no tax payer burden it counts against the city debt so the city is concerned about that so in the future I’m not saying this is a negative in the future if we want to borrow money that we need to to enhance and build more that’s going to be something you’re gonna have to consider as council and so that’s a discussion I think is better served for me to have with council than to have with staff to explain why we need to borrow money and why won’t won’t be hurt the city.

That was important. We never received sort of a general, this is an interesting and good plan subject to our concerns. I never heard that. And sometimes it’s nice to hear that.

Thanks for the work. It’s an interesting plan. We need this to be happening. So I definitely carried that away.

And I know I may be being a little negative, but that was the impression that we had. And when we went to our debrief, one of the things I found difficult was to tell our staff, because they say to you, well, what did the city think of it? And I go, well, I wasn ‘t quite sure what they thought of it. So that’s, I have to do a better job of communicating.

I have to arrange to meet with people. And I also have to be more direct, I think, in here’s what I would like to hear. Not if you want to say something bad, please say it, but it’s really good to get feedback before we take something on. >> Return to Council approval.

Thank you for both of those answers. 2020-2027, an applicator capital program and citizen investment of $57.8 million. We are currently at less than two years left at 43%. Can you kind of update on that or if it’s going to be spent, if it’s not going to be spent, if it’s carried over, just if you can update me on this one.

The other two are at 70, 76 percent, but this one is at 43. Thank you. Mr. Chisholm.

Thank you through the chair. Yeah, that number is appears lower just in the nature of the funding. We don’t commit to do the projects till the budgets approved and our budget is approved. You know, if we have a 2026 capital budget, we don’t spend any dollars against that until January 2026.

So what we’re seeing is there’s many of the projects that have a longer lead time. So whether they need technical assessment before we can actually get the specs to do the RFP. So they have a two to three year sort of project lifespan. So what we see is that sort of slow reporting of the funding.

The funds are all committed. It’s just basically bundling the projects. And what we find is like we will find like this five million dollars that we just approved for electrical work is a combination of 16 projects. So by the time we did the assessment to determine how to best get the most effective way to do it, those 16 projects became one project became thing .

So it just takes us a little while to organize it once we have the technical assessment. The funds are already committed. We’re in ongoing communications city finance on drawdowns against capital funds. So to make sure that we’re aware of what they need to do and what we need to give them in order to make sure of the reimbursement and cash flow happens.

So we don’t believe it’s at risk. Councillor? Thank you and there’s some really positive indicators on the 25 impact dashboard. Are there certain without going into details?

And by the way, thank you very much for answering my previous questions, including the financials. I’m not gonna be asking those again, but is there something that you would like to stress from this dashboard because this dashboard does have some really good positive indicators of the work you’ve done during the last year? Mr. Chisholm.

Thank you and through the chair. I think just some highlights sort of jumps out at me. We’ve really increased the amount of staff training and professional development we’re doing, which is important for our teams. They do complicated work, and there’s a lot of regulatory compliance.

So the ability to strengthen and improve that is paying dividends in the organization. I think the other thing that we just have to sort of reflect on is our residents and our tenants, members of the London communities and Middlesex communities. And I think we just need to pay attention to the number of times our tenants on fixed incomes are accessing food support programs. We’re hearing all kinds of things across the city and whether it’s families, seniors and others.

It’s something we just need to keep paying attention to and we’re happy to support and facilitate these conversations with our partners and do some of the work ourselves. But I think it’s you know our tenants are struggling with inflation and food security and many aspects . So I think we just have to keep that in mind to make sure the service programs we have going on, the community supports we have going on in London and Middlesex, consider the needs of low income households. Councilor Perbal.

Thank you very much. No more questions for this time. Thank you, looking for other speakers. Councilor Stevenson, go ahead.

Thank you for the report and all the progress that’s been made over the last while. It’s good to have some good news there for people who are living in our social housing. I didn’t send the question in advance, so I’m happy to do it offline, but I just wondered, it’s about the accounting stuff around accounts receivables, bad debts, that kind of thing. I don’t know what you can share here generally speaking in terms of what the policy is around allowance for doubtful accounts or whether there are write- offs during the year as part of the accounting process .

Mr. Chisholm, go ahead. Thank you, and through the chair, we write off our books bad debt only when a tenant moves out so you will see that year-over- year range from 300 to 800 to 900 thousand depending on what’s going on. I think some of those fluctuations related to COVID and some of the slowdown in the landlord tenant board.

So we do write off and that’s reported on our financial report to the board. So that is something that we monitor on an ongoing basis and we’re happy that it’s sort of returned to a little bit of normally. The number last year is about 350,000. Behind the scenes in our sort of revenue line, we do have a rears for our current tenants and that number is around 800,000.

It’s down from 1.3 million about five years ago and it’s a combination of tenants who have made the conscious decision that they’re going to be evicted and they’re going to stop paying rent and that’s a common trend. These if they know they’re going to lose the tendency they will stop paying. That’s very common and that’s sort of there’s some of that there. Then there’s some tenant chargebacks and then what we have is very common for someone to fall behind and then sort of maybe have a little bit of a rears generated to a few hundred dollars and then they’re able to stay current month to month on their current rent but not be able to catch up.

So that’s just about have in conversation. So we are having been strengthening that over time and we’ll continue to strengthen that to reduce that number and it is something that is declining so we’re happy with the trend but we will continue to manage it. Councillor Stevenson. Thank you.

I appreciate you sharing that. The only follow-up I have I guess is around the Ontario Works ODSP portion just looking for reassurance that that is something that’s addressed quickly so that it can be deducted from the check and it’s not something that’s being written off or getting into arrears. Mr. Chisholm?

Thank you and through the chair, two sort of answers that support an understanding there. We’ve introduced the Tenet Intake and Support Program for new tenants to come in to connect with them sooner. We have a really robust tenant intake process until they move in and there’s a little bit of a lag there where the tenant we, you know, would just self-manage. And then when they get into a rear six months later or have questions about supports, we connect with them again.

So we’ve put an intended intake and support program in place that includes home visits, conversations about rent payment, where staff are actively looking where tenants are not making payments. Surprisingly, how many tenants struggle with that piece and some of its online and banking and the tools and things like that. Other times it’s, they just don’t really, they didn’t understand that once they got the check, say if it was from Ontario Works or ODSP on their first and last month’s rent, that they had to do something else. So about 20% of our new tenants struggle with that, and we’re able to talk to them in the first month and say, here’s what we need you to do, and we’re finding that effective.

So just being able to have that conversation early in a non-punitive way without a formal notice and Leno or Tenderboard is really helpful. We do work closely with our colleagues at Ontario Works and ODSP on our rears. So we have those conversations, and last year we had some really collaborative work with our colleagues in life stabilization to sort of say here’s some tenants that we have Ontario Works that are in our rears. Can we sort of work through this and see if we can get, recover these funds and get the rent paid and things like that?

And we were successful in many of those instances . So it is something we’re in tune with, and there’s regular conversations that take place to support that. Councillor Stevenson. Okay, thanks again.

I know it’s difficult conversations, but I wondered to just policy-wise, is there a policy where at a, like how many months are people allowed to go into a rears before it’s sought to have it deducted from the check to sort of help them from falling into a rears as well? You know, it’s, I’m just hoping we’re using that ability to be able to get it deducted from the check quickly before the arrears grow. So is there a policy around how many months before that’s initiated? Mr.

Chisholm. Thank you. And through the chair, there is no policy. We cannot direct the tenant how to pay their rent .

So our preferred channel is online. It’s very low trend, you know, there’s no touch points on paper, there’s no late fees, it just happens. Tenants on its area works in ODSP can authorize to pay the rent directly, but there is no policy that requires that. So we’ll have conversations where it’s in fact in the tendency, or we maybe make a part of a mediated settlement, but there is no policy to say after three months thou shalt.

It’s sort of managing and navigating our role as landlord. We can’t tell an income support program how they ‘re required to support a client. So it’s sort of, it’s a little sticky, but we do work through that very effectively. Councillor.

Thank you. It just keeps more questions, keep popping up. So when you say you can’t tell an income support program how to do it, what are we referencing there? Mr.

Chisholm. Well, it’s under the Residential Tenancies Act. There’s specific frames out how a landlord is able to collect rent, how rent is increased, what you can require a tenant to do. You have to think of like damage deposits used to be a thing, but more no longer required to do that.

So we can set the rent and say to the tenant, their rent is $250, we cannot dictate that they need to give us a check, they have to pay in advance, they have to give us cash, they have to, you know , so essentially the legal obligation is that they pay their lawful rent. As said out in the lease and the RGI agreement, we can’t tell them how that takes place. That’s just sort of, it’s outside of our role of a landlord. Councillor Stevenson.

Thank you, I’ll just ask one more and then if I have more, I’ll take it offline. So I understand that we can’t tell people how to do it, but I would have thought once rent wasn’t paid and they’re in arrears that now there’s a mechanism to ensure that it gets deducted, but that’s not the case. Mr. Chisholm.

Thank you, it is part of the conversation, but there is no switch that says now when you’re in arrears that we have different rights. So it is part of the conversation we’ll have with the client. It’s maybe part of a mediated settlement if we’re at the Atlanta or tenant board related to arrears and it could be a conversation that takes place with their Ontario Works or the ESP case worker, but there’s nothing that dictates that that shall happen. So we are looking to make sure we get paid on time in a full and the tenant wants to pay the rent.

We just try to navigate how to best to do that. Councillor, thank you, I appreciate it. Thank you. Thank you, looking for other speakers.

I have Councillor Trosto next. Thank you very much. I’m going to ask some different questions today than some of the questions I’ve been asking over the last couple of meetings. I’m not going to reiterate my concern about what I felt was a deficiency in the regeneration plan.

I’m not going to reiterate my concern about the results of the asset management plan, ‘cause as you say, you are making, within your ability, you’re trying to make some progress there, and I’m looking forward to the next asset management plan. I saw there was some positive news stories about things that you’re doing at Kent Street, And certainly a lot of really good news stories about things in the regeneration plan regarding Southdale and other things that are coming up. However, I wanna raise, first of all, I wanna raise some concerns about the vacancy rate, which seems to be climbing. After it got under control for a while, it does seem to be climbing, and I inquired this morning, the vacancy rate for Q1 2026 has climbed to 4.4%.

And that’s something I got from your office. One of the things that really was unsatisfying about the annual report, and actually this annual report is very typical for the annual report. You give a lot of metrics, you have your dashboard, but there’s no consistent year-by-year reporting showing trends. You have to go back and look for that.

So I did a bit of research into the historical vacancy rates because as people remember in 2019, that was one of the main concerns that the council had before they made substantial changes. But I’m wondering what is considered an acceptable vacancy rate? Thank you, I’ll go to Mr. Chisholm.

MCH has a target vacancy rate of 3% and inform ally what that means to us internally is we have about 2% of the units going through renovation to make ready and 1% in the pool that’s being rented out. So actively working with clients to make sure that they can select their housing. Councillor Chaucer. The number that we received in the report for 2025 was 3.7 vacancy rate.

That that went up from the 2024 report of 2.6, 2023, it was 2.7, and it dropped quite a bit between 2022 and 23. Now, I know there are ebbs and flows, but this seems like it’s a large increase, and I’d like to know in your view what accounts for the spike that we’re seeing right now. Thank you. Go to Mr.

Chisholm. Thank you. And through the chair, in the Q4, you know, this is something that’s reported extensively at our board and the reports are available online and the Q4 report that we essentially do five rolling quarters to our board we don’t trend much longer than that and we’re happy to answer questions on the longer term from our board should they have them but what you’ll notice is that the current vacancy trend is sort of something that’s about two quarters years old, where we were in terms of unit turns, so we were running at 1.4% in Q3 2025, where our target is 2, and then in Q4 2025, for a name flex of units from our Canum Works and Housing program, we went up to 2.5%. So that is higher than we wanted, but it’s not unexpected because of the work, the way we’re getting units from the CMHC program to make the rent ready at the end of the process.

You’ll also see that there’s fluctuating numbers that we have in our tenant placement, where the team is on top of it, and then something shifts, and it could be something as simple as a staff person is off for a few months, or we have another program that’s having a demand on them, or extra work comes to them. So what we saw at the end of Q4 was really, reimagine Southdale coming online with 53 units, an increase in CMHC units coming to us, And that slowed down the rental process. So we addressed that by bringing in an extra resource to do rental in Q1, 2026. And that will start addressing that.

We’re seeing those trends go down. And as we’ve mentioned, we’ll continue to work on reducing the numbers of units in active restoration. We are an organization that has no free capacity. So we do not have staff waiting to sort of take on new tasks.

So our staff, our frontline staff specifically, at maximum. And when we have things like in Q4 2025 the fire code changed, requiring us to put in almost a thousand new carbon monoxide detectors across our portfolio. Work like that takes energy away from other work we need to do. You know, it ‘s not that the work is not important.

We do have capacity issues. So you will see this happen over time. We pay attention to this quarterly, and we look for there’s some other indicators in the numbers we share with our board that indicate we’re making positive movement. Our experience is that when we see an increase in vacancy trend, it’s three to four months before the trailing numbers of how long it takes to turn a unit, et cetera, start to remedy just to the nature of the work we do.

Councilor Trosso, Mr. Chisholm, your microphone , please. Okay, so may I assume then that the 4.4% for Q1 , 2026 should be expected to go down in Q2 in subsequent quarters this year. Mr.

Chisholm. We expect the trend to reflect in these numbers in Q3, right? So we’re seeing some positive improvements in two or three months so far this quarter. So we’re just, but the issue is, one of the things we track is the number of days the unit is in make ready.

And that number, as you slow down units coming out of the system increases and then just it does take a little bit of to clean that up. Councillor. discussion in this report and in the media and previous discussions we’ve had deal with operational issues that can be quantified. I’d like to turn to some of the other aspects of what’s in the strategic plan including organizational dynamics and general service to the community.

I would like I would like to ask a specific question and that is how, what metric can you point to the LMCH uses to assess overall organizational health. Mr. Chisholm. We don’t currently have a measure for organizational health.

We report on some metrics to our board related to indicators of organizational health, but we don’t have an organizational health sort of. of dashboard. I will say that we, you know, we are working towards a staff engagement survey, which is rolling out this year to sort of create that baseline to start building on that. As an organization, your reference to the KPMG report, the indicator there is that we have 57 staff to do this work across 3, 300 units.

This organization has continued to strengthen the staff to address the issues across the community. So now, instead of being a medium-sized employer with 50 to 60 staff, we now have over 125 staff doing various work from community safety to tenant support to cleaning to maintenance and all the support functions. So our organization has increasingly been becoming more complex, so we’re recognizing that and we will continue to build that. Thank you, and Councilor, there’s also page six of the report that fosters a healthy organization .

Councilor Johnson. Yes, and I’m asking specifically about how, and I know it’s harder to measure these qualitative factors, but I just don’t see these indicators, employee engagement, workload, sustainability, leadership effectiveness, and I know that in the past I’ve given most of my attention through the particular conditions and the premises, but I just wanna broaden this a little bit, and I think I would like to see this council start to get more reporting as you develop these, I think very important metrics about general organizational health issues, and I see that the chair is— Yeah, so that’s it. Thank you, Mr. Squire.

Sorry, through you, Chair. That’s an entirely valid question. So I’m gonna tell you what we did, and then you’ve heard about what we plan to do. We did an entire reorg of our entire staff, and it told us a lot of things that we needed to do to be healthier and be more effective.

And I’ll give you the example. Sarah, who you just saw a few minutes ago, I don’t know if she introduced herself, but she’s now the Chief Operating Officer of London Middlesex Community Housing. So we effectively split the role because we were told that our CEO was spending trying to juggle sort of development of financing and high level issues that we needed to deal with . And we didn’t have enough sort of work being done on the ground and what was the result of that?

The result of that is some of the things like pest control and that I’ve talked about today weren’t being addressed and I think lots of people were raised before including our board, we wanted to do better. So now that Sarah is here, she’s taking over the full load of what are the deep operational matters. Human resources was also expanded and we were told to do that. To make sure that the health of our organization was met and complied with all the statutes.

Now, Sarah just reminded me that she actually started working at our London Middlesex Media Housing three days before the last annual meeting. I remember her coming to the meeting and meeting her. She was sitting there and I said, “Hi, Sarah, how are you nice to meet you?” So we haven’t moved quite fair to point out. We haven’t moved to that next step of evaluating.

First of all, what’s the effectiveness of what we ‘ve done? These changes we’ve made, are they helping? we think they are. In fact, I’m fairly convinced they are, just from the reports we’re getting.

Do we need to go on and do what you’re saying? Absolutely. Absolutely. And we will do it.

Councillor Trossa. Okay. Well, thank you for that, because to reiterate the concern that I’m landing on today, it’s that we are receiving operational capital-focused views of organizational performance. and one can always pull out particular things that you’ve done that are considered to be effective, like what you’ve done at Kent Street.

Now, when I saw your— 30 seconds. When I saw your Kent, I’m gonna ask for some additional time. I’d like another two minutes if somebody would move that for me. I have a request for two additional minutes.

I have Councillor Stevenson who’s willing to move that request for additional time looking for a seconder. Councillor Hopkins, thank you. Just a moment, please. Thank you.

We will open the vote. So votes yes. the motion carries 13 to 2. Thank you you may go ahead you have just about two minutes and I guess I remain frustrated that I get my five minutes every year to ask questions this year I get seven so thank you thank you very much for that and I spent a lot of time doing research beyond what was on the face of the reports I am I’m I still have this nagging problem that the same time that But you are admittedly increasing your scope in terms of things that you’re going to do.

You’re going to not just provide RGI housing, you ‘re going to provide affordable housing, which is closer to market, and some market. Without having a very, very broad discussion about whether or not you’re capable of doing that, given your current organizational structure , because I don’t want to seem negative. I’m trying to be positive today. But I have serious concerns about this.

And if I feel that your ambition in terms of doing new things is outpacing your ability to absorb that in your organization, given your organizational constraints, and given the funding that you have, I’m going to raise that. I do not feel as if this council gets enough reporting, I would like to see these reports come in more often. I would like to not have to be just a once-a-year event that would like to have more of an ongoing opportunity to raise these questions, particularly about some of these qualitative functions regarding organizational health. And I really want to see the vacancy rate come down because the vacancy rate is really what affects our most vulnerable citizens from being able to access housing.

And I think that at some point, we need to see that come down. I mean, you were doing well for a while. And then something— 30 seconds? I can’t put my finger on it.

And I’m going to continue to try to investigate this. I will say, at a very operational level, the complaints that I get from residents in— well, I’m ward 6. As you know, I have 345 Warren Cliff. The complaints have not gone down.

if anything they get worse and I’m really hearing from people in the neighborhood that it’s just becoming very, very difficult to be around your premises. And I tried to stay away from operational issues today. I’ll be focusing on some of the other health issues and I’ll pick this up at the council. Thank you very much.

Thank you. I didn’t hear a question. I didn’t want it to be disrespectful and not have someone standing at the podium. But if there’s a question I can answer, I’d be pleased I’m so thrilled that Councillor Trosto got an extra two minutes.

That’s. Thank you, Mr. Sawyer. Okay, I will look to other members.

Council for questions. I’m Councillor McAllister, go ahead. Thank you and through the chair. I did just want to again, take this opportunity.

Thank you, almost each staff. I know we have some board members here as well. And our tenants as well as being engaged as much as they are on the board. They also have their opportunities within the different locations as well.

I think Mr. Chisholm also mentioned earlier in terms of food security. I find it really heartwarming to see the community come together. They have their community cupboards.

There’s a lot of different programs on site that the different communities come together to support each other. So that’s appreciated. In terms of the report from last year, I again want to reiterate how important it is that we are seeing the first community housing built in 50 years. I think that’s a testament to the investment Council previously and this Council as well has made.

I do think we are trending in the right direction. A lot of these metrics are going in the right direction. Yes, we do want to get the vacancy rate down, but we had a big disruptor last year in terms of, you know, change over from , you know, townhouses to a mid-rise and seeing those turnovers, I’m sure it took a little bit of a time and staff have spoken to that in terms of some of the issues we were dealing with. but I just want to say from my perspective as a board member, I’m always pleased in terms of what I see at the board.

As Councillors, we very much have the opportunity to engage with LMCH. We all have different sites in our areas, and I think the staff have been very willing to meet with Councillors one-on-one if they have those operational issues they want to raise. So again, I want to thank them for coming today, engaging with us. I’m very happy with what we’ve seen in this report, and I think we’re moving in the right direction, so thank you.

Thank you. Mayor Morgan next. Yes, I’ll make a few comments. First, I’m maybe on the vacancy rate.

I’ll just say I appreciate the concern about the vacancy rate because it’s something that has been a concern of previous councils and has led to some fairly dramatic shifts in our approach to the board in the past. What I will say is I do feel Mr. Chisholm pretty clearly answered some of and I think Councillor McAllister recent fluctuations in the vacancy rate. I think there’s a significant an amount of renovation work going on through the CMHC grants that are very beneficial to the organization and the quality of the units, the accessibility of the units, as well as the new stock that’s coming online.

And so when those things all happen at once, there’s a lot of people to get into new spaces and there’s obviously no shortage of need, but that does take a process in some time. So I understand that. But I also expect, as others do, that that would stabilize to a more normalized level in the coming quarters. I want to say to the organization, I think that when we’re the shareholder and you have a chance to come before us, you know, only once or twice a year for different matters, I think it can be a lot of questions and, you know, we get a lot of feedback and, you know, being a city council means you get a lot of criticism.

People don’t often say, call in when something’s going really great. They’re calling in when they have a concern or a problem or need some help with something. So I think that’s why you would tend to get a lot of questions about the organization because we get a lot of feedback about that. I’ll say this is an organization that is on the front lines of like housing affordability in the city of the 5,000 RGI units that are in the city you know almost 3,300 of them are managed by one of Middlesex community housing and that means you’re really helping people who most have an affordability issue have a place to live and so that involves an incredible amount of work.

I also want and I’m gonna echo what Councillor McAllister said. I don’t think we should discount how significant it is that this organization is now building with council support, building new stock, not just one building, but two buildings and then funded for the third for the first time in over 50 years. Like when we recognize the need for housing in the city, we know that investments in environmental sex community housing are an absolutely critical part of that. And I had a chance to meet with the CEO of Bill Canada Homes a couple weeks back.

And we talked about social housing corporations and municipally owned housing corporations and the incredible opportunity that we have with those organizations that are in a position to have stock that is in need of refurbishment and repair, but also and most importantly land that has the ability to have some some density added to it and some refurbishment added to it At a time when the federal government is desperately looking for land partners and people who have assets that they can pour a considerable amount of capital dollars into to create housing, and a particular focus on affordable housing. So there are many innovative approaches that are happening across the country to taking advantage of existing land stock in municipalities, whether that’s federal, provincial, municipal. But housing corporation land, I think, is a really strategic asset. and we know from previous experience, the reorientation of some of the housing stock could be quite beneficial to the clients they serve.

Some of the stock was built in an era in a time where you don’t have a great design to the structure of the buildings, it can create challenges for sightlines and safety, and that there is an opportunity to correct that through the regeneration plan, and I think the vision that this board and this organization has for the future. So I greatly appreciate the work that the staff is doing. I know that it’s incredibly difficult and challenging work, and it’s a work for an organization that has moved into a different era of operations , where they’re actually building now, and they have all of those components of building new stock, now part of the daily work of an organization that for a long time was simply just a property manager with other community partners engaged with them. So I appreciate the work that’s being done.

I want to say I appreciate the investments from the federal government as well through CMHC. The type of work that we’re now doing is very difficult to do without partnerships and capital dollars from federal and provincial governments. So all that to say, I don’t have any questions today. And I just appreciate the work that’s being done and I wanted to end on that note.

Thank you, Councilor Palosa, next. Thank you, Madam Chair. This could be a question through you first at LMC H and then to city staff, same question. I appreciate the update today and having been on site with your reimagined Southdale project and the investment we’re making in community housing, grateful that the staff complement is increasing to help address a better service standard to the residents and while reducing the time expected to get said service.

Looking to LMCH and the city both for reply as your training staff, engaging them and doing these things. Has there been any conversation of an opportunity that might already exist with city train that could be available? I’m thinking in the past, this council’s allowed for board training of some not-for-profits. There’s been bystander intervention training before, especially former councilor Squire, we’d know about the I-Learn programs.

Is there anything that the city can do or has done to help address staff training through programs that we currently offer that could be of use to you as well. Realizing this could potentially reduce some training if we already had the modules available in-house that could make available to LMCH. Thank you. I think I’ll start with LMCH and then we’ll go to city staff.

Ms. DeCandy, go ahead. Through the chair, we do have access to quite a bit of training. So for example, we just participated in many staff participate in RGI.

We call it RGI 101 training last week. There are a few different cross-functional training that our staff participate in. At LMCH, we also do offer our own training, for example, you know, managing complex situations, de-escalations. We have our own training as well, too, whether it’s a done-by- third party, and we have some certified staff in- house.

that does speak to, so we’re an organization that is evolving, we’re an organization that very much appreciates the need for us to continue to upscale. In speaking for a moment to council trust those comments as well to on organizational well-being, I think I’m actually grateful because coming from I come from health care, coming into housing, I’m now understanding differently the need for advocacy around people who work in housing across the sector not just at LMCH. Staff well-being and safety has been a priority of organization that I walked into and has been my number one priority since I’ve been here. As we evolve and our business changes the complexity and community change we need to continue to offer the training and up-skiller staff to reflect the realities of what we’re seeing in our communities and what our staff are taking home.

So there are some metrics that weren ‘t mentioned that we are looking at so Paul mentioned a baseline staff survey. This is the first time in many years that this will be done that’ll help give us some good intel. We are also looking at different tools that are available to us even the academic space around presenteeism. So looking at are you taking vacations?

How are using sick time. That kind of stuff will be looking at retention. These are all numbers that we do have access to that we are looking at and we’re developing a plan hopefully in alignment with the staff survey that are put us in a path forward. It’s better reflective of the pressures we face in the work we do every day in addition to the pressures we take home with us as a result of the work we do every day.

So there’s a lot of great work happening that and we’re just getting started. Thank you. I saw Mr. Felberg sit down so I’m assuming that he to answer a question.

So go to him. Thank you. Thank you, Madam Chair. So as Mr.

Canada noted, we we’ve recently done some RGI training with a number of our nonprofits and property managers on CH participated in that as well. We’ve also delivered and have on our city website a series of board training modules that we worked with pillar nonprofit on. Not sure that that necessarily fits with what LMCH might need as far as training goes. They have a very competent board.

Our finance team certainly supports LMCH with their capital asset management work and all of the activities around that. And then recently we do bi-monthly meetings with non-profit sector proponents, property managers and non-profit housing providers, LMCH is an active participant at that. And we’ve recently been undertaking some continuous improvement work where we’re starting to look get some of the different processes within our waitlist, for example, our overhouse process, and LMCH will be an active participant in those continuous improvement activities, which are also with the property managers out in the nonprofit sector as well. So there are a lot of things already happening.

If Councilor liked to chat offline, maybe there’s some specific things that she’s looking at, and we can certainly approach LMCH about further enhancements. Councilor Pileza. Thank you, Madam Chair. Mr.

Felberg, I enjoy our time together, but it was just really a touch point, making sure that those conversations are happening and resources available. One follow up to LMCH as you are gonna be starting the staff survey, and we had mentioned retention and absenteeism are those things that we could anticipate as council coming forward in a future report that we would get to see those numbers as well. Mr. Chisholm, go ahead.

Thank you and through the chair. What we anticipate through the work we’re gonna do over the next 12 to 15 months is we’re gonna take the, we’re gonna roll with the engagement survey. We’re gonna use that information to inform the engagement on our strategic plan, which will include staff. And what we expect to do is build out our priority set for the next four years, 2028 to 2031, that’ll sort of have that strategy.

We would expect that strategy to come to the board come to council once approved by the board so it will inform leadership and management it will be shared with our board and then it will make its way to council so how that iterates from the exact numbers of the engagement survey results we haven’t yet sort of looked at see how the results will come back to us so I can’t say on that but yeah it is it will form the basis for the next health organization priorities for our 20-28-31 strategic plan. Councilor Palosa. Sorry, thank you, Madam Chair. Not quite a direct answer, but I’m assuming if absenteeism and retention is information they collect for the LMCH board that that would be available to us as well as it informs other decision-making.

I’ll leave it there as I know we have more things on the agenda, thank you. Thank you, looking for other speakers. Councilor Stevenson. Thank you, I just wanted to ask a question.

You know, it’s been mentioned about the first housing built in 50 years and yet Londoners know we built 403 Thompson and 122 baseline and I understand and the board chair mentioned that LMCH is new because we had LMHC and we have had HDC and now we have LMCH. I just wondered through you chair, from your perspective, is there a reason why all the housing isn’t in with LMCH like even now why we ‘re not as a city transferring that property to LMCH so we have all the housing in one space and if it’s not appropriate to ask here that’s fine but it’s it’s a question that I keep wondering about. Okay I’m looking at Mr. Chisholm do you have anything to add if not I can turn to other speakers to answer that question.

Through the chair that that is out of the scope of the CEO’s answer. Thank you. I’m not sure city staff want to address that question at this time. Well, I can turn to Mr.

Felberg. Thank you and through Madam Chair. So under the Housing Services Act, we have our 63 nonprofits and we recently added a 64th. And so we’ve been delegated that authority from the province under that to manage all of those nonprofits.

And then LMCHS, our local housing board, which was delegated also through the province and is Council’s sole shareholder up. Thank you, I’ll go back to Councilor Stevenson. Thank you, so I guess my question though is we’ve got buildings that LMCH is managing, or one of them, I guess 122 baseline, and we’ve contracted that out, but we’re leaving some of these buildings in the city assets, like is there a plan? And maybe, I was gonna ask it when we got to HTC, and so maybe that’s a better time, but when we talk about the first time we built housing in 50 years and as a city, we’ve opened buildings in this term.

I’ll go to Mr. Mayor’s, go ahead. Through to the chair, those are very good questions and I think they need to be addressed. We’ve had the same kind of discussions over the years about where these assets should remain.

So we will have future updates on that. We don’t have a specific answer for you today ‘cause there might be different ways to deal with each of the different buildings that we currently have associated. So, but there will be a future reporting on that. Thank you, I’ll go back to Councillor Stevenson .

I’ll leave it there, thanks. Thank you, looking for other speakers. Okay, Councillor Van Mirbergen. Thank you, Chair.

I was very happy to hear that the level of clean liness is significantly improving. What is the main driver of that? Is it better contractors, better direction? Could you expand on that?

Mr. Chisholm. Thank you and through the chair. A lot of their challenges on cleanliness in the building is the behavior of guests, trespassers, and some tenant behavior.

So we’ve been actively working with tenants on sort of, you know, making sure they’re leaving things where they’re supposed to be leaving them and managing that. But also the fact of taking over direct manage of the custodians and the cleaning staff, we’re better able to directly direct their work on each site to meet the needs of the site. So we’ve been able to increase hours at some sites. We’ve been sort of making sure we’re strengthened in training protocols and things like that.

So it’s just really, we’re able to put a greater attention to it. So by talking to tenants or dealing with their guests when they’re not behaving appropriately, leaving garbage in the hallways or making messes, we’re actively doing that every day and also working with our team to make sure that they have a cleaning schedule and program that works for the building. The number of hours, the tools they have, and we’ll continue to strengthen that program. We’re going to be introducing sort of things like walk behind machines that you sort of see at Costco where they’re able to sort of sweep and mop at the same time and we’re just, let’s us do it more efficiently.

We’ll leave a cleaner floor and things like that. So we’re actively engaging in how do we improve this, make it more efficient and make it a better place to live for tenants. Council Mayor Mirrigan. Okay, thanks for that.

Similarly, the drop in the need for pest control is another good news story. Would that be directly linked to the fact that the cleanliness has gone on? What would account for the drop in the need for pest control? Mr.

Chisholm. Thank you and through the chair. It is really a persistence of staff to develop and implement an integrated pest management program. So we started about three years ago where we were putting a lot of energy and resources into pest control, but not driving results.

So by just paying attention to the data differently, getting better records, seeing what’s happening, we went through an evolution where we were looking at different treatment models, we were looking at how to support tenants better through the process, trying to figure out, answer that exact question that you’re like, what is driving these numbers? And the reality is it’s a combination of the buildings and as they are and how tenants are living in the units and sometimes some just bad behavior of collecting things out of the garbage that are already infested with bugs and bringing them into their unit. So what we’ve done is we are integrated pest management focused on timely service delivery, meaning that we’re getting to the units. There’s not weight you call and we come out to your building the same day every week and we’ll get you in.

And we have a philosophy of do something. So in the past, if you have a structured program, if the people don’t prep a certain way your pest control provider wouldn’t do a treatment, which would delay the cycle again and again. So we’ve got on top of that and we have a do something approach, which means when the pest control company goes in there, they do something. They do the best they can.

They might not do the most effective treatment, but they will start the treatment program. So what we’re seeing is that is improving the clearance rate. building confidence with tenants, the tenants are getting a little information of how to do it better next time in real time from the provider. So we’re able to just build up and build up on confidence.

So now by making sure we’re doing that effectively, we’re seeing reductions. So we’re seeing, and by things like we talked a little bit about the unit inspection program, our unit inspection program as part of one of the outcomes of that is we identify units that are not on our pest control radar, that have pest infestations. So I think the number last year was maybe 150 units that hadn’t told us they had pests. So we’re getting to those units before they become problematic.

And then everything else is built to make sure, what can we do to make sure they get treatment? And do we divert them to a housing stability case coordinator that can work one-on-one with them? Do we engage in agency? So it’s really do something, let’s address this problem.

And it’s really having a significant impact across the organization. Councillor. Well, thank you and congrats on that because that directly improves quality of life. And so this is a good news story.

So thanks very much. Other speakers, okay, seeing none in chambers and none online, we will open the vote on this item. Closing the vote, motion carries 15 to zero. Thank you, Mr.

Chisholm. Thank you, Mr. Squire. Thank you, Ms.

DeCandida as well. Okay, we’ll move on to item 3.2, which is the Housing and Development Corporation, London 2025 Annual General Meeting of the Shareholder Annual Resolutions. You have in front of you the 2025 year-end report to Shareholder and the financial statements of Housing Development Corporation from KPMBG from December 31st of 2025. I’m looking for a mover and a seconder for this item before we begin discussion.

I have Councillor Frank and Councillor Ferrera, thank you and looking for speakers on this item. Councillor Stevenson. Thank you, I do have some questions on the financial statements on this one. So it says basically the financial assets of the corporation as of December 31st, 2025 is a reserve fund with the city.

And it says set aside for, I’ve lost it now, but I think it said set aside for specific purposes. I just wondered if we could find out what those purposes are. Mr. Felberg.

Thank you, Madam Chair. and I’m acting in capacity as the HDC at the moment. So the purposes will be for, that will ultimately be transferred to the city and it will go back into the Affordable Housing Reserve Fund and then it will be used for the purposes of further future affordable housing. Councillor Stevenson.

Thank you. Any reason why that just wasn’t done at year end? Like a lot of things were cleared out, but not this amount. Mr.

Felber. Thank you and through you Madam Chair. So there’s still some activities related to the dissolution that we need to complete. So as you’ll note in a shareholder report, we talk about two outstanding claims that we need to resolve.

Once those are resolved, the full dissolution can occur. There are still some minor expenses that we need to maintain and pay for. For example, the financial audit and the financial statements that we do annually. This should hopefully be the second last annual shareholder meeting that HDC completes and all of the real assets, all the agreements, all the properties have been transferred to the city with that last remaining piece still outstanding.

Councillor Stevenson. Thank you. So I did hear the answer in the previous section, but you just said there the assets were transferred to the city and I would like to know, was council involved in that decision as to where the assets were transferred, whether it went to the corporation of the city of London or whether it went to LMCH. Mr.

Felberg. Thank you, and through you, Madam Chair. So civic administration brought a report to SPPC in November of 2024, and at that time, we outlined the transition plan and how it would be actioned. And at that time, it was decided that the assets would be transferred to the city.

At this point, that completing the dissolution is definitely the first step of all the activities related to the HDC and wrapping it up. What to do with those three properties? So Thompson, Sylvan and Baseline is still one of those things that we have to address. And we’ll be the subject of future reports as Mr.

May, there’s already identified. Councillor Stevenson. Thank you, yes. So if I could just ask at the time that that recommendation came to council saying transfer them to the corporation of the city of London, what was the rationale for that, Mr.

Felber? Through you, Madam Chair. So at the time, a big part of what we were wrestling with with the province was the land transfer tax. So because we were transferring from a corporation of the city of London to the city of London, we were provided with an exemption for land transfer tax.

So we didn’t end up paying for that. So that was a big part and a big cost savings for the city overall for us to be able to transfer the properties at that time in that way. Councillor Stevenson. Thank you.

So my understanding was part of the reason This is dragged on so long was this issue of the land transfer tax. So was that the only way then to avoid the land transfer tax? So we weren’t able to, it would have cost us money basically then to go to LMCH. Mr.

Palper. Through you Madam Chair. So yes, the land transfer tax, that was a few million dollars in cost to the city. So it was one of the ways and one of the recommendations from KPMG who was providing us advice on that.

We didn’t explore the transfer to LNCH at that time, but again, that is something we’ll be looking at in future. Councillor Stevenson. Okay, thanks. A couple other questions on the related party transaction, section three on page 98.

It talks about receivables. In 2025, the city assumed loan receivable and accounts receivable, receivable, from the corporation in the amount of 240, 2,437, 000. So I’d just like more details on that and where those amounts collected, particularly the accounts receivable portion. I’ll go to Mr.

Felberg or anyone else would like to answer that question . Thank you, Madam Chair. I’d need to go back and take a look at that specifically. I’m not sure Ms.

Barmon has any information on that at the moment. Thank you. Counselor, are you satisfied with an answer offline on that or I think that’s what we have right now? Okay, that’s fine.

if I could get it by email before council, then that would be great. I’ll send some of the other ones I have in terms of the specifics of the financial pieces of the HDC. It does just seem like a lot of stuff is lumped together and put through, and I just feel like the taxpayers wanted to see the specifics, especially when 122 baseline was involved. Thanks.

Thank you, and I see a head nod from Mr. Fal berg about providing that before council. Councilor, do you have any other questions? Maybe just a quick overview from staff for the public who, like I said, is maybe not aware of the transitions through what happened with the housing, how HTC came and went so quickly, and maybe why it’s been dragging on so long, would be helpful.

Mr. Felberg, if you wanna hit the highlights. Thank you, Madam Chair, and through you. So back in 2019, 2020, around that time, there was an audit undertaken by KPMG.

And at that time, they had identified that they proposed a council that they moved the HDC back in-house. And it would provide a better oversight for council and a loud council that have more input on housing and affordable housing and new developments and all the things around what the HDC was doing at the time. I think you’ve seen over the past couple of years , civic administration brought a number of reports, councils had been able to provide guidance and provide support and direction on various elements of the roadmap to 3,000 and other programs such as that. So as far as the redevelopment side of things, so the three properties that we have, as I noted, those are things that we’ll be bringing forward in the future and looking to really deliver on what HDC’s original intent was, which was to actually build buildings with the property operator on board at the time and then be able to transfer in order to create new affordable housing in the city.

So that’s all activities that are municipal housing and industrial development team do already and we’ll just be looking to enhance that and continuing to deliver on the good work that we’ve been doing. Councillor Stevenson. Thanks, that’s good. I’d love the better oversight part and I guess that’s why I have a lot of questions on these statements, so I’ll send them via email.

Thank you, I’ve Councillor Trossa next. Yes, through the chair, I’m just wondering, are there continuing roles that this corporation could productively be playing? In that, anytime you wanna set up a new entity, their startup costs, we have this entity. Does this entity have any particular statutory powers that could be of assistance to the city and some of the things we’re trying to do with, for example, building new housing or doing things downtown, or assisting with the conversion of office buildings to residents.

Is there a potential role for this agency that we should really think about before we dissolve it? Thank you, I’ll go to Mr. Felbert. Thank you, and through you, Madam Chair.

So the audit that was undertaken back in 2019, 2020, consider all of those different factors and what the benefits were to cancel. and at the time it was decided that the corporation should be brought back into the city so that council had more oversight. Councillor Trossa. Yet we’ve seen through the chair, yet we’ve seen some very serious changed conditions since the time of that last audit, which I guess raises two questions.

Number one, is should we revisit it? And do we need to do another performance review of these agencies that might update some of the findings that were made in 2019? Mr. Palberg.

Thank you and through you, Madam Chair. So I think the work that municipal housing industrial development has been doing over the past number of years tying in some of the housing accelerator funding and some of the provisions to accelerate and improve the simplicity and the ability for us to bring forward and develop new affordable housing. I think a lot of those activities, they were outlined in the February report on the update to affordable and community housing . There’s been a significant number of policies and changes and generally successful projects that we’ve been able to deliver on.

So certainly could take Council direction on whether we need to re-explore that, but the KPMG audit and the outcomes that were identified in that report, they seem to be taking hold and coming to fruition based on Council’s original direction. Councilor Chassa. That’s all for now. Thank you, looking for other speakers.

Okay, seeing none online, seeing none in chambers , we will open the vote on item. Closing the vote, motion carries 15 to zero. Thank you, that takes us to item 4.1, the Center of Opportunity, London’s economic development strategy, 2026 to 2030, and the implementation plan. I will go to Ms.

Stater’s Bear to introduce this topic. Thank you, Madam Chair. And I just wanted to speak briefly about actually the next two items, 4-1 and 4-2. And just an overall statement about these two pieces of information in front of committee today, we’re really pleased to be able to coordinate the presentation of both of them today, both the ECTEDB strategy and the downtown master plan, and I want to acknowledge the work of staff in this, both in Mr.

Mather’s area, in my own area, in the CMO, but across the corporation as well, and also the work of Del oitte on the ECTEDB strategy and the Canadian Urban Institute with respect to the downtown master plan. As it relates specifically to the ECTEDB strategy, committee will remember that we presented the draft framework to you in January and the consultants final recommendations in late March alongside each SPPC meeting staff sent follow-up communications to organizations and individuals who were engaged during Deloitte’s formal process that started in the fall of 2025. Through April and May we incorporated feedback from committee and impact lab London we use the impact lab London work as well to support this work. We have reviewed the strategy against the city’s equity and climate tools processes as well as other Council approved strategies to move this forward and have it in front of you today.

We’ve refined and validated this presentation to you through further conversations with partners in our community to arrive at this strategy. 200 business and community leaders were engaged through this process for the ECDAV strategy and I’m sure we’ll hear from CUI about the engagement they’ve done as well, conversations were candid, insightful, and we really know that this community cares about what happens in this city and certainly believes its potential. It’s really the strategy in front of you today follows the data from the Deloitte information that you received and focuses on where and how the city adds value to the economic development ecosystem. What you have in front of you is a direction for the way that we want to travel forward and we’re hoping to be able to present additional information as we move forward and get feedback from council today relating to the strategy.

And I’m happy to take any questions as is Mr. Fowler. Thank you. Okay, before we move to questions, I think what we’ll do is we’ll hear from our delegations.

We have one motion drafted for the three delegation requests received. This is not a PPM, just the delegations that were emailed ahead of time, had provided a request to delegate. So I will look to get a m over and a seconder for a delegation for Mr. Wallace, for Mr.

Morrison, and for Ms. Smith. And I’ve got lots of hands, but I’ll go to Councillor Hopkins and Councillor Cuddy, and we will open that request for the delegations . Mr.

Palosa, closing the vote. Motion carries 15 to zero. Thank you and we’ll start with Mr. Wallace.

Thank you for being here, you have five minutes. Please go ahead. Thank you, Madam Chair. Thank you, Mr.

Mayor and fellow Councillors for supporting the delegations here today. We are, my name is Mike Wallace. I’m here on behalf of LDI, but you may get a few Mike Wallace comments in there throwing in there too. We are in support of you moving forward on an economic plan.

We do appreciate staff’s outreach to our community. The fact is that as the economic development growth happens within London, my industry, I represent benefits. There’s no question about it in terms of whether it’s housing or commercial sites, industrial sites, we benefit. And staff have reached out on a number of occasions to our group and to me individually to talk about this plan.

I want to thank Kathy and Trevor in particular for hearing my rant a few months ago on this piece. I would encourage you to support this, but there’s one key part that I think is kind of missing. I think the report identifies what the actual industries that have a foothold in this community now and have potential for growth and retention, But where I think the report, and it’s a little bit of consultant ease in here, which is their job, but where I think it really misses the boat or has potential is on page six in terms of the city’s role. The one thing that is missing from that list of six is leadership from the city.

I’ve been in a city council that had a different approach. We tried to outsource our economic development. We thought we would be able to leverage a whole bunch of business investment that would come from us not being involved and we’d outsourced it. Frankly, it did not work.

You got to have leadership from the mayor’s office, from the council, actually make economic development work. It’s about creating jobs, it’s about bringing business, it’s about sales of this community. It’s a sales job. It’s not a kumbaya, let’s get together.

It is a sales job. You think the mayor of St. Thomas, that it through got that investment in that community, in on land that the city didn’t even control. You had to go to the province to get the boundary of the city to change, so they’re able to attract that distance that is there now.

We need to be aggressive as the city of London. There are tons of competition everywhere. If you wanna go online today, Pickering, City Pickering, just put out their economic development plan just this week, happen to know one of the consultants. That’s why I know it’s there.

And it sounds pretty familiar to what’s here. Different consultants? Same result. The difference is it’s the people who will make the sale.

It’s the mayor’s office. It’s the city manager’s office. It’s getting the processes right here so that when you get an attractive business, an industry based on, in my view, on what we have here, look at the agro food business that we have here. We need to be out talking to them about who their competition is, who their suppliers are, who is their customers, and can we attract them, is there something we can do to attract them?

Sitting around here, we don’t know who’s doing what, but those in the industry know who’s selling, who’s moving, who’s expanding, who ‘s shrinking. We need that leadership at this table to make that happen. I don’t want this report to collect dust. I want this report to be a report that leads to action, and I’m asking you as a counselor, except what this is, spend the money, spend the time, and make it happen on the economic development file for London, thank you very much.

Thank you, we have a delegation from Mr. Morrison next. Thank you, Mr. Morrison from the old East Village BIA.

It’s not often that I’m referred to as Mr. Morrison, that was my father. For those of you that don’t know me, My name is Kevin Morrison. Five minutes.

Probably as you give me that much, sir, Madam Chair. I also submitted a written document as well for your consideration with observations and recommendations from a perspective of a business improvement area working daily with the businesses and the property owners, the investors, residents, and community partners. I want to begin by recognizing the significant work that has undertaken by the Civic Administration Deloitte Council and the many stakeholders who contributed to this strategy. What I appreciate most about this document is that it focuses on implementation, accountability and measurable outcomes.

And the reality here is simple, London does not suffer from a lack of plans. Over the years we have produced studies, we have produced strategies, we have produced revitalization plans and reports. What businesses are asking for today is not another plan. They’re asking for results.

And as I reviewed this strategy the one word kept coming to mind and it’s called confidence. Economic development is not simply about attracting investment. It is about creating the conditions where businesses want to invest. Entrepreneurs want to take risks.

Employees want to work, and customers want to spend their time and their money. And for many businesses operating in London’s core area neighborhoods, that confidence has been stretched to its limits. Business owners are dealing on a day-to-day basis with vandalism, property damage, open drug use, mental health crisis, public disorder encampments, discarded needles and aggressive behavior and growing concerns about safety and cleanliness all while trying to run successful businesses. These may be social issues, but they are also economic issues.

When customers choose not to visit a commercial district, that’s an economic issue. When investors hesitate, that’s an economic issue . And when businesses lose confidence, economic development suffers. The next point I want to make is about the business improvement areas.

And too often, BIAs are viewed as organizations that hang banners, plant flowers, organize events, and promote local businesses. I guess we do those things. But increasingly, BIA’s are also responding to issues directly that directly impact confidence and commercial district vitality. We’re coordinating cleanups, we’re addressing safety issues, we’re advocating for our businesses, we’re working with city departments, we’re liaison with the police more often than we ever have before, we’re supporting property owners, and we’re helping businesses navigate challenges extend well beyond the traditional mandate of what BIAs do and we don’t do this because it’s the role of a BIA we do it because in these days it’s necessary.

If London is serious about implementing the strategy then BIAs must be recognized as economic development partners and included at the table. Why? Because no one understands the opportunities and challenges facing London’s commercial districts better than the organizations working with them every day. As the old East Village BIA, we do support this proposal.

But its success will not be measured by the number of meetings held or the more reports produced. It’s going to be measured by whether businesses five years from now can actually see and feel the difference. Will confidence be stronger? Will investment be growing?

Will commercial districts be healthier? Will entrepreneurs be optimistic about their future here in London? Those are the questions it matter and again we don’t need another plan we need implementation and business improvement areas here in your city are standing ready to help thank you thank you next I will go to Vicki Smith and Vicki is the interim executive director of downtown London good afternoon Madam Mayor Mayor Morgan and members of council on behalf of downtown London thank you for the opportunity to speak in support of the economic development strategy we are encourage that the strategy recognizes downtown revitalization as essential to London’s broader economic competitiveness. Downtown represents only 0.5% of the city’s land area, yet generates 5.4% of London’s property tax revenue.

That is a clear reminder that downtown is one of London’s strongest economic assets, and its continued prosperity will help ensure downtown remains a strong economic driver for the entire city for years to come. One of the most important strengths of this strategy is that it positions downtown revitalization as an economic development priority. It recognizes that business confidence, vacancy, investment attraction, creative economic growth, and public ground conditions are all connected. We are especially supportive of the strategy’s focus on downtown, street-level business advisory support, a downtown investment portfolio, the proposed creative industries hub, business navigation, streamline approvals, and annual economic outcomes reporting.

These are practical actions that can help reduce vacancy, support existing businesses, and attract investment, and move downtown revital ization from vision to implementation. We appreciate that the strategy recognizes economic development is not only about attracting new investment, but also about supporting the businesses that are already here. businesses are managing change or commuter patterns, construction impacts, safety and perception concerns, customer attraction, and the need to navigate city processes efficiently. Targeted advisory supports in a strong business navigation function can help businesses access the right support at the right time.

We also want to reinforce the importance of office retention and employment growth. The strategy recognizes that downtown office vacancy remains a significant challenge, and the reversing this trend is an economic imperative. Downtown’s long-term success will depend not only on residential growth, culture, and activation, but also on maintaining and growing its role as London’s primary employment center. Office workers remain a critical part of downtown’s daily rhythm.

They support restaurants, retailers, services, cultural venues , transit use, and contribute significantly to positive street activity. They also contribute to business confidence and perceptions of vibrancy and safety . As the City advances the strategy, we encourage continued focus on retaining office employment downtown and attracting new office users. We also support the strategy’s recognition of culture, music, tourism, and the creative industries as economic drivers.

Leveraging London’s UNESCO City of Music designation and advancing the proposed creative industries hub can help bring more people downtown, support local businesses, and strengthen London’s investment and talent attraction story. As implementation moves forward , we encourage the city to measure and report on how mental health, substance use, and public realm conditions affect business confidence and investment attraction. These issues are not only social or operational concerns, they are directly impacting business retention, customer experience, staff well-being, visitor perception, property investment, and overall economic confidence. Downtown London looks forward to working with the city as a core implementation partner in business support, vacancy reduction, investment readiness, creative economy, activation, public realm reporting, and ongoing business engagement.

We strongly support the economic development strategy. It strengthens the business case for for downtown revitalization and confirms that a healthy, prosperous downtown is essential to lend this economic future. Thank you. Thank you.

Okay, that concludes the delegations that we had on this item. I’m looking for a mover and seconder on the report and the actions associated. It’s included in your package. It’s also loaded in as motion one.

Looking to see if there’s someone that would like to put them on the floor. I have Councillor Ferrera as the mover and Councillor Hopkins as a seconder. Okay, looking for speakers on this item. Councillor McAllister, go ahead.

Thanks. I’m sure there’ll be a number of Councillors with questions. I’m just gonna start with one question that kinda piqued my interest in terms of one of the actions. This is in regards to activating the CIP tools for commercial corridor reinvestment.

Definitely appreciate that this item, the next one we’re talking about has a lot to do with downtown, but with my word being impacted as a different commercial corridor, I think also OED would qualify for this. And it was mentioned in one of the delegation comments in terms of the leadership needed by the city. I do appreciate with the action items we have our partners listed, and in this one in particular, it has the city of London as the lead, and then the BIA’s in there as well. And so I just think with this, my concern is what is that gonna look like?

really do appreciate, you know, that we’ve identified those partners, but I think in terms of the action, and I appreciate, you know, Mr. Macaulay’s team does a great job, but I would like to have more detail in terms of what that action would look like in terms of leadership from the city, because I don’t want this to be something that is downloaded to the BIA’s to run on behalf of the city. Thank you, I’ll go to Mr. Fowler.

Thank you, Chair, and through you, I know it’s certainly not the intention this is downloading or offloading to the BIA’s. In fact, this emerged through a targeted conversation that we had with the BIA’s on the importance of the CIPs and the value in sort of optimizing how they work. One of the pieces that was like brought up is the geographic symmetry between a BIA catchment area and the CIP catch ment area and where there’s a potential mismatch. Are we like missing opportunities for more business growth in that area?

And so those are like conversations to have and we think that it’s important that the city works in alignment with the BIAs as economic development partners in what those optimizations look like. Councilor McAllister. Thank you and appreciate that. And just as a follow-up, I think this kind of maybe speaks to the vacancy more broadly, but what concrete actions are we gonna take to really tackle that?

Just recognizing, I think we all probably have some areas where there’s some longstanding issues with addressing those vacancy rates. But are we looking to kind of take direct ownership? Are we looking for subsidies? Like what actions will we take to actually address the vacancies not just have them sit even longer?

Mr. Fowler. Thank you, Chair. And through you, I’ll say that where we are in the strategy process is we have a direction of travel.

We don’t have the specific tactics that we would employ. We’ve had conversations. I wouldn’t want to commit to anything today. but those are the kinds of tools that we would be looking at in collaboration and conversation with the Office of Partners.

Thank you, Councilor McAllister. Thank you, through you. This isn’t a question, this is more of a, just a comment for that. I think that’s just something in terms of the feedback that I often receive is we’re just seeing the same buildings vacant time and time again, regardless of what plans or strategies are brought forward.

So I mean, I think what I hope to get out of an economic development strategy like this is to actually have those concrete tools on the books. And even if it’s like a level of escalation, the way we almost deal with it through bylaw, because I’ve reached a point with some of mine where I’ve just had to say, we’ve got to knock them down. And I don’t want to do that. I think ideally, we want buildings that are currently up to be used for something productive and contribute to the economy.

And so I think we need to have those tools, at some point, well-established. And again, if those levels of escalation have to be there, then that’s fine. but I really do want to see action on the vacancy rate because whether that’s us converting commercial to residential or I mean, I have some where they have residents above and shop the front below to have a strategy specifically targeted to that to bring back life to our main streets because there’s a number of them throughout the city. We think we’d all love to have those vibrant neighborhoods.

The people live there, but I think they want to see those main streets come back alive. So I just want to kind of hone in that I know there is, you know, downtown element of this, but there are a lot of other neighborhoods who need those concrete actions on the books as well to have that revitalization come back. So I’ll leave my comments there, save a bit of time, but I’m curious what other people have to say. Thank you.

I look for other speakers. Councilor Perbault. Thank you. And I’m just going to make a couple of comments and a question, and I have more to the next one.

But I do like both economic agidef plan as well as the downtown plan. I think they are both very solid plans. They do include very good initiatives for citywide as well as downtown. When I compare them to the previous ones that City of London had going back to I think 10, 12 years, these two in my opinion are the best.

On the other hand, they do need to be the best because we have the most challenging times. There were many consultations that were done. And I think when I look at the horseshoe here, I think all of us were, if not all of us, most of us were involved in the consultations, which is, I think, great that we did have this overall feedback. My concern, which I’m going to talk about it in the next one, is the delivery, the responsibility, the accountability, and actually the framework.

And as actually, as was stated before, I don’t want these two great reports to do these two great plans to be sitting on the desk and catching the desk for months and years. But with this one, I have a specific one just for that government’s model, the 173. And one actually I’m gonna ask now, where would be in this, because there was a question actually from the gallery in this model, where would be the BIA’s and how much they would be involved in this part? Thank you, Governor, Mr.

Fatt. Thank you, Chair, and for you. In terms of the governance model, I can say with certainty that the BIA’s are part of the broader ecosystem, but I would also characterize based on the expected role that they could play as delivery partners, that we could conceive of them there too. It’s a function of what specific roles they would play both broadly in the work that they do as a BIA.

And also anything specific that they would be doing in terms of the delivery of this plan. And so we have the BIA’s as partners on, I wanna say at least two actions in this plan. And so in that context, they are delivery partners working with the city to meet those outcomes. And so they will be a part of the governance from that perspective.

And of course, in the work that they do day in and day out, they’re a fundamental part of the city’s broader economic development ecosystem. Councilor Perbal. Okay, thank you for that. I do have a full up, I’m going back to this model .

I do think it’s a really good model. I do think that there needs to be certain additions, which again, it’s a final report, but again, within our building here, it’s a work in progress. But when I look at the model, the crucial points are the dotted line, they’re actually the everyday work, how it’s gonna be done, driven, and not just led, which I’m gonna talk to in the next one more. But can you clarify this?

How is this gonna be now developed into everyday work and not just becoming a theory, actually planned that will take the action. Mr. Fowler. Thank you, Chair, and through you.

So thank you for calling attention to the dotted lines. That is in terms of the legend, that is a characterization of a certain kind of relationship that is collaborative, but it’s easy to write this down, right? To the point earlier, we can create plans so we can write things down. What matters is what we do in practice.

In terms of actually operationalizing this, our next step contingent on endorsement by council is to begin developing the terms of reference in more detail. That will take some time, but then it’s about actually populating the economic partnership table. And it’s the partnership table that we really see as a fundamental implementation action that engages the keeps the great conversations we’ve had through the development process going with business leaders. It’s also the process that keeps us accountable and honest and responsive because our intention is to vest that group with ongoing advice and adaptation with respect to how this strategy evolves over time, not just the content but the delivery.

And so what we’re looking for is a group of business leaders who want to work together, who want great things for this city and are willing to tell us what’s not working so that we can stay responsive and active. approval. Okay and the last one as I stated we had these plans before and there were some really good initiatives, some actions that actually the whoever they were never even taken up and never delivered, never done. I have a question now what are we going to do differently this time and don’t don’t don’t tell me to read through the 300 pages or whatever which I did but in the the bullet points, how are we gonna attack it to make sure that these things are truly delivered?

And I totally understand that there is to be funding as well. But if the funding at the council commits, how do we make sure we deliver? Mr. Fowler.

Thank you, Chair, and through you. I think in a few ways. One thing is the way that we’ve designed this plan, we’ve tried to pay close attention to the feasible roles that the city as an organization can play as one actor in the ecosystem. So we have ambition, but it’s a function of also what tools we can employ as the city to make change happen.

One of, through the ecosystem review that Deloitte undertook, one of their key insights was the London has great raw assets, but we need to knit them together, and we need to be like, optimizing how we the work. And so for us, the pillar five on system optimization is really where we see a lot of foundational work happening. That’s less what we deliver and more how we deliver. And so in there is where we’re making commitments to developing the partnership table, to committing to the outcomes report, to a structured business review and adaptation cycle so that the strategy stays like responsive over time.

There are things that we’re going to learn in three months and six months that are important that we don’t know today. And we want to make sure we have a concrete mechanism that not only says this is a living document, but explicitly obligates staff to pull on the data to get feedback from the business community who is impacted by what we’re doing and recommend changes to counsel for how we can make sure that this is a continual living document that actually gets used. I guess finally, Ms. Parsons and I have spent the better part of last year and a half working on this, and we really want to see it work, we want to do it.

We are really energized to move to implementation . Councillor Perbeau. Thank you for the answers. Thank you for, and I will have more detailed ones on the next one, but thank you very much for all the work.

Thank you, Deputy Mayor Lewis, next. Thank you, Madam Chair. I just want to take a minute to, sorry, am I l agging? You are, yes.

Okay. Do you want to go to the next speaker? and I’m gonna disconnect and reconnect. I’m having an issue with like a theater ‘cause I’ve had some moments where you guys have been lying too.

Thank you, sounds good. Looking for other speakers, we have Councillor Trossa next. Thank you very much. I’ve read these two reports very carefully and I have to say I’m not gonna vote against them .

This is what it’s going to be. We’re gonna pass these. I’m very worried that we’re going to pass these. I really agree with what Mr.

Wallace said. I just have to call you out on this one this time . I’m very worried about the implementation, ‘cause I think we put so much energy into this, I am not satisfied based on what I have in front of me, that there’s going to be any kind of departure from business as usual. And I’m really worried about that, and I’m more worried about that with the second one, and I’ll come back to it.

But there are two things that are very much bothering me. And I want to ask how this city’s approach under this plan is going to change the status quo in terms of how we deal with these issues. And the first one is this broader question of the perception of downtown as being unsafe, as being a function of stagnant economic development, poverty, homelessness, I hear a lot about businesses, and of course business has to drive this ‘cause it’s the economic development plan. But how are workers, how are consumers?

How are people who are not directly involved in the business community going to help drive this? But even more specifically, the second one, and I’ve spoken to this before, we have a crisis in terms of office vacancy and storefront vacancy . And what’s missing from this, and I think it’s more blatantly missing from the next one that we’re gonna discuss, but like what is gonna be different about how we deal with the plague of the high vacancy rate and what tools are we going to be using here that we haven’t thought of using it? ‘Cause I don’t see anything in this report that addresses my feeling that we need to also be looking at the regulatory tools that the city has at its disposal.

I know a lot of people like to talk about that they can see tax and I know we can’t do that . But the other tools that the city has at its disposal in terms of vacant building, registries, code enforcement, and maybe this is too operational to discuss at this high level, but what’s gonna be different about a Mr. Fowler? Thank you, Chair, and through you, I just wanna start by thanking the Councilor for the attention on this piece.

I can give you what’s in there, but based on how you characterize it, I’m not sure it’ll satisfy the size of the task for what is in the economic development plan. But the piece that I would point to specifically is the Downtown Advisory Service. That is in Pillar 1, and it does focus on like downtown, but there was a conscious choice in terms of this action to focus on street level retail or street level businesses that sort of street level vacancy, right? We know there’s also office vacancy that can occupy these upper floors, but to really look at the perceptions of street safety or the like the reality of that safety and business confidence and like resident comments and consumer confidence, the focus of that piece is on storefront, ground level, street level.

It’s designed to work in concert with some of the actions in the downtown plan. So the downtown plan has occupancy strategies. What this action does in the ACTEP strategy is try to overlay the business advisory support so that the folks who are occupying those spaces are hopefully better set up to like succeed in the downtown operating environment. That is specific to the downtown.

It doesn’t preclude us from looking elsewhere. Councillor Trossa. Yeah, to follow it up, thank you through the chair. But if the underlying business purpose of a holding company, and I won’t say which company, but I will say a holding company, which is very different from a retail establishment or an operating company.

If the purpose of a holding company is to acquire properties, manage them for other people, and not necessarily put them into productive use. Why would the city not be looking at additional regulatory tools that could be used to disincentivize and discourage that kind of behavior if our overall goal here is economic development? And I think it’s just something that’s missing from this plan. And I need to be assured that in supporting this plan and having this plan go through, that discussion is not being cut off from a future time.

I don’t wanna be in a situation where I come back in a few months or another year and say I would really like to talk about some more regulatory tools that we could use and be told, well, the time to talk about that would have been in formulating this plan. I need to have some assurance that in putting this through the way it is without that information in it, without that consideration in it, that it’s just something that we can still get to . But it does not take away from my disappointment that we haven’t addressed that. But if you could address that, I’d appreciate it.

I’ll go to Mr. Fowler and anyone else. Thank you, Chair. And through you, thank you for those comments and that additional context.

I think they’re great thoughts today. I will say from an engagement standpoint and from the recommendations and the evidence base, that didn’t come up as a strong piece, which is why you don’t see it here. What I will say is this strategy was built to adapt. It was built to allow for it to really require ongoing input and refinement as we go.

And so that conversation isn’t going to be lost by an endorsement today because we have built in mechanisms mostly in pillar five to continue updating this and to continue to look at some of those new tools or different tools that we hadn’t either thought to include or chose not to, that is still there. Cancer trust. Last question, does that need to be written into the motion or is it just understood that by passing this we’re not necessarily precluding other approaches and other regulatory, adopting other regulatory tools later. Because if it doesn’t need to be— Thank you, that’s your time.

Yeah, well that’s my question, yeah, I’d like that. Thank you, so your question was, does it need to be explicitly written in or is it understood that the plan is evolving? Through the, pardon me, through the chair, we certainly do understand that, Councillor. If we, if council chooses to endorse this, the mechanisms are in the like strategy.

They are like concrete commitments. We are coming back every year and add a, I should say add a minimum and we’re open and happy to have conversation about this to continue the ongoing development and refinement of the strategy. Okay, I’ll just say thank you since my time is up. Thank you.

I have councilor Ferreira next. Thank you chair through you. Interesting where the conversation’s going. I guess I’m gonna start with this economic development strategy in the downtown plan coming next.

These are the two items that I’ve been probably the most thoroughly engaged with staff on throughout the last little while. I do appreciate Ms. Parsons and Mr. Fowler on the monthly meetings that we’re having and just kind of seeing all the considerations that were brought into the plan like you.

I do understand that if we’re talking about the economic development of the city as a whole, that’s a big that’s a big thing and it has a lot of moving parts and then has parts within those parts that are moving as well and just making sure how that all fits. You can know that but when you actually get into the discussion and you actually get into the considerations you really start seeing the gravity of it all. So I appreciate the plan. How is it how it’s come back?

With respect to like you know how does this change the status quo ? Like my answer to that would be the follow-through. If council follows through . If council ensures that we have our hands on and we ensure that this follow- through goes to where we would like to go.

It’s up to us if we want to make sure that the ideas and policies and what can be created from these themes that we see goes forward. So that’s what I would say to that. With the integration and the alignment with the downtown plan, I really appreciate that. That was obviously a big item that I would continually talk with with you and with Mr.

McCauley. So I appreciate how how we’re kind of highlighting that. And I do, I guess, have one, maybe two questions, but one question in particular would be about the downtown investment portfolio. And I wanted to just kind of ask, like I do see that this potentially could be one of the most useful tools in the strategy, but only if it becomes an active investment tool rather than like an internal list.

So I wanted to know, will the downtown investment portfolio package like properties for investors with details like ownership and zoning or incentive eligibility and redevelopment potential. Like, could you just give me an understanding of how that will look when we actually see that portion of this strategy come about? Mr. Fowler.

Thank you, Chair. And through you, you’ve actually described it very well, Councillor. It takes some of the data work that is happening coming out of the downtown plan and looks at how that can be packaged into materials that would be meaningful for investors and folks looking to potentially acquire properties downtown, and so we’d be working with partners on what are those dimensions, and what are the features that a potential investor is looking for when they are considering a downtown property, I’ll point on some of the information found in the downtown plan, but those pieces around zoning that you mentioned are exactly the kinds of things that we’re thinking about. Councillor Ferrer.

Okay, thank you for that. I do want to, I guess, speak to, ‘cause the vacancy is a big issue that we have in the core. And some of the tools that I have discussed with staff and with colleagues, and I know Councillor Trus sell and I had a long conversation about this last week, but some of the tools that exist, and this goes back to, I guess, that conversation we had a couple years ago about the carrot or the stick, the carrot and the stick, and which one do we use , which one’s appropriate? I think a combination of both is appropriate.

And some of the tools that we have that we’ve seen have worked would be our incentive programs. That has been very useful. But some other tools that we don’t necessarily have is that vacant commercial property tax. So how do we bring something like that?

About, you know, we would advocate to the province to see if we can get something along those lines as well. But other tools that we have would also be the property standards and how we kind of enforce that and how we move forward a matter, how we have a vacant property registry how we ensure the payment of that comes through. But I guess the way I see it is, it’s like when I was reading the downtown plan, and I know there’s some overlap, so hopefully this is fair game right now to speak to this. But there’s also the potential of acquiring or renting out some properties and converting that ourselves or having our hands more directly onto that, and I see it that through the downtown this kind of how I read the downtown plan portion on that so I just wanted to know if we can speak to that here about the downtown revitalization authority, what will that look like when it comes to vacant properties, how would that be a direct application and I understand the terms of reference probably still need to be created around that but how would that look when it comes to vacant properties.

Thank you and through the chair, I might have you ask that question again once we have our consultants standing up here at the podium and we get on to the downtown plan project. However, the action that exists within the downtown plan that’s before committee is to explore different vehicles that the city could use as a way to obtain and manage land in the downtown area. The action that is specifically in the plan is to test feasibility and obviously we report back to council with different options. So I wouldn’t get so stuck on the downtown revitalization authority as the solution, because it is a sequenced action that comes later on in the phasing of the downtown plan.

What we potentially— what you described, yes, that could be a function. One civic administration determines what the mandate and the role of this new entity is. It could be a function to lease out vacant spaces . It could be a function to purchase vacant buildings and then lease those out and put some sort of use in there.

That is certainly a functional role that some sort of entity or authority such as the downtown authority could do. Councilor Ferrera. Okay, thank you for that. I might come back to that on the next item then.

Anyways, I do appreciate the work that’s gone into this. Like I said, like I’ve watched it get developed probably from the beginning, I think. It’s been a while. So I understand kind of the themes that we’re bringing forward.

I really appreciate how it is aligned with the downtown plan because as the downtown BIA clearly stated, and I agree and I’ve said this before, downtown is an economic driver of the city. It has benefits to the city and it has— 30 seconds. And what has been clearly articulated when it comes to the economic component is downtown is healthy one. It just as it’s state is now, but a very healthy one does have the ability to broaden the tax base and does have the ability to reduce the property tax payments by every single Londoner while still getting the same services or even more.

So the more we invest in our downtown, the better we are all are off when it comes to the financial side of the city. So those are my statements. Thank you for letting me go on a little bit more. I’m done.

Okay, thank you. I have quite a speaker’s list. I will go to Councillor Hopkins, then back to Deputy Mayor Lewis and then to Councillor Stevenson. Yeah, thank you, Madam Chair.

And first of all, I’d like to start off thanking staff and the consultant. A lot of work went into this, a lot of months, and we’ve got a plan now. I really want to thank everyone for their dedication and work. I appreciate what Mr.

Wallace said as well about it being a sales job with this plan. And it made me think it may be a sales opportunity plan gives us also an opportunity to acknowledge that we can do this. We can maybe change the direction, change the course. To me it’s a positive outlook on where we go.

I don’t want to get too much into the weeds here asking questions. I think there’s a lot of work still to be done. This is the framework, the governance framework, I think which will be important. But I just want to acknowledge the attitude that this plan can give us everyone in the leadership and the salesmanship of promoting our city.

I appreciate the five pillars. I started to pull apart the pillars in thinking which is the most important one that I want to speak to. They’re all important. So I just want to acknowledge that.

As well as the indigenous embedding a reconciliation plan into our strategy, I think that is very important for me. It is creating that lens that makes the plan a better plan. And as we align it with the downtown plan, I think that is important how we can complement these two plans. I think I want to just stay up here, keep that focus and see how things unfold.

many things for presenting it to us today, thank you. Thank you, I, Deputy Mayor Lewis, next. Thank you, Madam Chair, and through you, I think maybe the first thing I’ll do is use part of my time to ask through you to staff, ‘cause it was stated that a healthy downtown will lower property taxes, but would it not be more accurate to say that a healthy and full downtown might ease future increases? Because I don’t want people to think that they’re going to suddenly get their property taxes cut by 5% if this plan gets endorsed and moves forward.

So just for you to staff, if they could comment briefly. I’ll go to Ms. Barbell. Thank you through the chairs.

So as our assessment growth increases, obviously that is beneficial for the growth of the city and notwithstanding tax increases from year to year. That assessment growth is utilized to support additional services that support the growth of the city overall. So any assessment growth that occurs, whether it be in the downtown or throughout the city, is beneficial to the city of London and ultimately does support how we deliver the services to the new households in the city of London. So it is a positive incremental outcome, but may not necessarily reduce taxes overall, but would mitigate additional costs in the future .

Thank you, go ahead, Deputy Mayor Lewis. Thank you, and I just thought it was important ask that question because I don’t want to start creating false expectations for people. And I also think that I will say more assessment growth is certainly welcome. I’m sure Councillor Frank would agree that London Transit would happily take some more assessment growth in the future.

So that would be a positive, but I don’t think that we should be saying it’s going to lower property taxes. I also want to through you go to staff, and I’m sorry if this was asked while I was offline, but I don’t want to be redundant, but I did miss some speakers. Through you to our staff, this is a plan for endorsements. Then in terms of reference, work will be undertaken.

But I wonder if they could just speak briefly to the reality of through the council’s strategic plan in the next term of council, through the next MYB , the multi-year budget process. Not all of these things are necessarily going to be priorities or function that they just may not be identified. They might not be fiscally viable. So I just want to stop and comment on how this plan they see it evolving over time and be updated as things as decision points are reached.

Thank you. Okay, Mr. Fowler. Thank you, Chair.

And through you, great considerations. The timing of this is interesting given the in pending multi-year budget. I will say first of all in terms of the actions that we that we scoped out and attached initial cost to those aren’t intended to be cost to the city they’re intended to be cost to the estimates for delivery . It’s our intention and our commitment to to identify the best funding options including external funding, partnership opportunities, alternative resourceing methods to mitigate any cost any potential cost to to the city and city tax payers.

In terms of the actions themselves, many of those can be delivered without incremental cost. And so those are pieces that we’re excited about. They tend to be more like process-based and more system and process optimization. But those are things that we believe will have broad benefits to the economic development strategy.

In terms of how it stays responsive, again, I’d go back to what’s in Pillar 5. We have a partnership table. We have an outcomes report, and we have a structured feedback and adaptation cycle. Those three actions work in concert for us to take a hard and honest look at what’s working, what’s not, what we thought was a priority on June 16th, 2026.

That isn’t a priority 6 to 12 to 18 months from now. The intention isn’t to throw things out every six months, but to continually look at what It is the best use of our resources to affect change in the ecosystem based on the performance of our actions based on the macroeconomic context , based on where the province and the feds are going with their different funding priorities. And so we want to stay tuned into like all of that and we believe fundamental to that is working in partnership with the experts in this community. Deputy Mayor Lewis.

Thank you. important to highlights that not everything in this plan may work and that we will have to adopt adapt along the way as well as the fact that this requires private sector investment in our community. This is not all city funded and city led. This is how we work in partnership with the private sector moving forward and I heard this raised already once with respect to the private sector and how we tax them.

So again, I want to go through you to our staff and I believe probably to miss Barbone. Under the Ontario Municipal Act, municipalities are not allowed to charge a vacant commercial penalty tax. Is that correct? Thank you.

I will go to miss Barbone. But before I do that, I’d like to have Mayor Morgan take the chair from it for a moment, please. Thank you . I’m to make a phone call.

go ahead and answer. Thank you through the chair. So Deputy Mayor is correct. The municipal act only allows various options to reduce through some subclasses with vacancy reb ates.

If the did exist here in London once upon a time, there is no authority through the municipal act to add additional levies for vacancy with respect to commercial properties. So it is allowed for residential and that has occurred throughout Canada and various places. However, with respect to commercial. There is no ability to provide additional taxation as a result.

Go ahead Deputy Mayor. Thank you and I appreciate our city treasurer also referencing the fact that there used to actually be a rebate for vacancies. And in January of 2019, the final nail was put in that coffin as it were by the older council and those discounts are no longer available. So vacant properties pay the same property tax as full properties.

And I think that But we all, as a council, need to recognize that the current provincial government is not going to start allowing us to charge extra taxes on commercial properties. So when we talk about that, and there’s not just commercial properties to speak into the downtown, I should say there’s commercial vacancies in wards right across the city. There’s some industrial vacancies out in my ward, but I would, I hope this plan might help attract some investors to look at coming to. But I think that we have to be really clear and practical about that again and not set some false expectations.

Overall, I’m very happy with this plan. I’m prepared to support it today. I know that staff wants to start working forward on the terms of reference on that. So I think today is the time to do that.

Every pillar, as Councillor Hopkins said, has a role to play. They’re all important. It’s not one above the other. And it does dove tail nicely with the next item on the schedule with the downtown master plan report.

So I just want to say to Mr. Fowler and Ms. Parsons, and I know that others have been involved as well , Ms. Dater’s Bear in particular, that the work that’s gone into this is appreciated.

And certainly I know that the work is not finished. I also want to say to, and I heard from our delegations before I got kicked offline. I do agree with some of the things Mr. Wallace was saying, we do have to have the right opportunity to spend time.

We have to go hunting. So I think this plan gives us some blueprint to try and hunt some of those key investors that we wanna see come to our city. Okay, next I have Councillor Stevenson. Thank you.

I do have several questions about this. When we’re looking at possibly approving business cases to come forward through the multi-year budget, is there an approximate amount that we’re looking at for this plan? Mr. Fowler.

Thank you, presiding officer, excellent. And through you, the overall, based on the initial estimates to implement the entire plan, it’s approximately 4.5 million over five years, and there’s also an ask attached to this cover report too, which would be a portion of that. I had made a point earlier that that is not necessarily a cost to the city. That’s the cost for implementation.

We have some runway between now and the next MYB to look at alternative resourcing options, and that’s part of the work that staff want to do to give each of these actions the maximum chance for success and minimize any potential incremental tax burden on like when in taxpayers. Go ahead. Thank you. And is there any projected ROI on the investment in this plan?

Thank you, Chair. And thank you for inviting an officer and through you. Not a formal ROI, I would love that. It’s work I’d love to undertake and would look forward to opportunities to scope that in before we get too far down the path, in particular on some of these bigger ticket items.

Thank you, I’d like that too. Especially when we’re talking about an economic strategy. Hopefully we’re looking at an economic return. So if there’s no ROI, do we have KPIs that are gonna measure things like number of jobs , increased assessment, those kind of measurables?

I think it’s an officer and through you, each of the actions has what we’re calling a headline KPI. We don’t have a full project planned about for any of these yet. We want endorsement first before we proceed with that. We would expect the KPI’s for each of the actions to be built out.

There’s also toward the end, there’s a broader community outcomes piece where we’re looking at the big things that we think most folks really care about, which is job creation, business creation, business retention. And we want to be tracking those at the city wide level. We’ll have to do some thinking about how we can associate the interventions of this strategy with those broader outcomes, because things are pretty complex in that measurement space. But that would all form part of the outcomes report that we want to deliver to council and community each year.

Okay, thank you. ‘Cause when I look at a lot of the KPIs, To me, again, they’re not economic outcomes that, you know, Londoners are looking for, like increased jobs, increased assessment that would help us with their tax base, that kind of thing. It feels like there’s other plans coming through here that are maybe meeting metrics for other things. And I think if it’s gonna be an economic strategy , we should focus on economic KPIs wherever we can.

I’m also wondering about the investment portfolio . Are we looking at buying properties or is it just inventorying them? I think I’m sorry, an officer and through you, it wouldn’t preclude buying properties. That’s not the intention.

The intention is for anyone who’s interested in investing in the downtown, that they had easy access to information data to help them make that decision. If that happened to be the city as an institution , would work too. Thank you and maybe through the presiding officer to staff the we have you know we talk about hunters and and I agree this is a sales job from council but we also have people who are hunters out there right now they ‘re we got real estate agents and property owners and they’re working at all the time trying to lease those buildings trying to sell those buildings trying to bring things in so what is maybe the city manager or others hearing from those people who are out there doing it all the time. What is the problem that they’re having that when we start to do it somehow we’re going to be able to do it better?

Whoever wants to start with that, Ms. Stater’s Bear. There we go. Thank you.

Through the presiding officer, thank you for the question. I think I think we’re hearing many different things from community members about the ways that we can work together in partnership to address vacancies, to inspire companies to come, whether it’s to our core, as some council members have said, to any other location in the city as well. We have had many discussions. I know personally I’ve had many discussions with committee members who have many good ideas.

You see many of those ideas reflected in this work that’s in front of you today. So I think we continue to build on this. We have an opportunity also to get advice from this council on any future council about where they want us to target moving forward . We’ve been clear about the kind of information get from representatives will come back to you on an annual or more than annual update and so we’ll be feeding that information to you.

At this point in time, I think it’s probably fair to say that we continue to be a city of growth and we continue to embrace that and we hear that through this strategy and also the work that we’re doing in other work with the provincial government and the federal government. We’re looking for additional investments for housing and other infrastructure. Go ahead. Thank you for that because I hear a lot about people who are frustrated, right?

they want to do things in our city and they feel that the answer is no, the pathway is difficult to navigate, it’s expensive, some of them survive it, some of them don’t. And I’m just concerned that we’ve come up with this plan to get involved in an area that, and not be doing what we need to do. Like to me, we should be making the city attractive to investment and easy to invest in, and supported in that, this, what I see anyway, when I look through it, is a lot of us getting in there and us doing it. And we’re gonna create a creative hub and we’re gonna do all of this kind of thing.

And we’re not the, like, you know, when we talk about letting the experts do it, I feel as though this is an expensive endeavors where we’re saying we don’t know, we’re gonna try things out, we’re gonna test them out and see if they work. and taxpayers have been pretty clear that like we don’t have any more money and so I appreciate you saying you’re looking for other avenues for funding because that’s good and there’s only one taxpayer so is this an area that the city of l ondon and londoners want us to do like that’s what I want to know is the people who are frustrated with investment in investing in our city and londoners who want to see us grow is this the missing piece or people going to be happy with it because I’m not seeing that when I look at it. I’m open to being sold, happy to be sold on it. But as much as I appreciate the work of staff on this, I feel like we didn’t maybe know what we wanted in the meantime.

We have LEDC, we had an economic development department. There’s lots of things I hear that we could improve upon, that we could do better, that didn’t need us to start all these new things. This is like a strap plan again. All kinds of activities, all kinds of measuring, all kinds of bureaucracy.

And at the end of the day, we’re like, where is this even taking us? What’s it going to create? How is it going to benefit Londoners? It gets lost sometimes in all these weeds.

And as much as sometimes we like to count the beans, and I tend to like to do that, we need to keep the big picture in mind and wonder, is this something that Londoners want us to do? because I’m gonna be voting no for today at least consistent with I didn’t think that we should spend the money doing it. We got a lot of problems to fix. I also wanted to ask on page 197, there’s a land acknowledgement on the center of opportunity, the second one.

It looks like it’s the one that came from the consultant, but there’s three asterisks and then it says, this strategy commits the city of London to economic reconciliation through long-term indigenous led partnerships. So I’m wondering why that’s stuck in a land acknowledgement in a second report. Councillor, I think the mayor’s just trying to - Just letting you know your time’s up, but we’ll get the answer to your question. Thank you, through the presiding officer.

It’s certainly appreciate the desire to, I think you said count the beans. I think that’s our job too, is to ensure that policies are the activities that we bring forward for councils endorsements, reflect both the desire and the passion that you as council members and our city has toward the growth in the city, but it was also fiscally prudent. So I think it’s important for us to say to you that we give this to you for your endorsement. The endorsement is intended to be part of the work that we do moving our organization in the city forward towards economic development.

We heard from people today talking about taking the leadership and taking the action. We see council doing that, and we look to support council in moving that forward. I think I will turn to Mr Fowler around the indigenous reconciliation piece that the Councilor has spoken to as well. Thank you Mr.

President and Officer and through you. So this was here, so we delayed acknowledgments at the beginning of many of our documents. And when we were thinking about the role of this plan and how it fits into our constellation of plans at the city including the Reconciliation Action Plan, we wanted to make sure that we were not just putting the acknowledgement in but thinking about what it meant in the context of this plan. And so what we wanted to do as a supplement to do that, and not to sort of change what the core land acknowledgement is, we talk about when we think about the sort of indigenous like relationships in history here, and the opportunities and the goals of the Reconc iliac action plan, what does it mean for this strategy?

And so we looked at— and that, of course, comes out more tactically in strategy 3.2. But we thought it was helpful to make a statement at the beginning to like say like you know, this isn’t sort of boilerplate. It’s something that we’ve thought through and tried to make sure was meaningfully threaded throughout the strategy. I’m gonna return the chair to Council Raman.

And I don’t know. I don’t have any bells additional in the speakers list, but I’ll go to you. Thank you. I will look for other speakers on this item.

Okay, I will go to Mayor Morgan, go ahead. Well, I didn’t want to put myself on the list. That seemed like I could wait for you. So I appreciate the dialogue that my colleagues have made.

And also the delegations that were presented today. I know that the delegates have been involved in the process at various points as well. I wanted to comment on a couple of pieces related to some of their comments. First, like I totally agree with what Mr.

Wallace said about the city providing leadership to the economic development strategy. And I think if you look at section five, although it’s not overt in on page six, every major piece in section five, the city is the lead or the economic partnership table that the city is developing is essentially the lead for those components and pieces. And the governance model meant for the overarching piece of the strategy puts the mayor and council at top. and you’re absolutely right.

You know, the job of the mayor and the mayor’s office is to work with all of our partners to go out and sell the city. I mean, I have a major VP of a global company I’m meeting with this Thursday who’s looking to invest in our city, and those are the types of conversations that happen on a regular basis, and I’m looking forward to that conversation as I have the ones in the past. I think what the strategy is trying to do is be much more clear about the governance model because although you and I, of course, through the chair, both know that this is how it should and does work in many different ways, I think trying to provide some clarity to that within the strategy, I think it helps. I mean, the piece that refers to the mayor says, London’s visible champion opening doors, making London’s case across governments and business.

And we do do that. And I’ve actually heard fairly positive things about engaging with the city on housing development, engaging here. I mean, when Fitzrovia first came to build their first 35-story building here in our city, I was at a speaking engagement with them in Toronto where they were speaking to their peers. They said, “You got to come and invest in London .” We needed an allowance under a sidewalk.

It took a conversation with staff and we got it. In the city of Toronto, we’d never get that. It’d take us six months and seven committees. Like, we are trying to clear barriers.

We are actually creating pathways to people investing here. And those who have come for the first time to invest go back to other jurisdictions who are more difficult and say, we had a great experience. Now, there are always bumps along the way. There are always people who get stuck in a system or are snagged in some way or a miscommunication between who’s passing what back and forth, but we’re here to clear up those things, and I think our staff have done a good job of doing that when they’re aware that there’s a challenge and they’ve continued to improve.

On the strategy, I think that it’s structured in a way that allows us to build on it, right? And I don’t think anybody who’s talking economic development shouldn’t expect that strategies have to evolve over time. Economics conditions change dramatically from month to month, especially in the global environment that we operate within. And the strategies have to have a good base core of structural responsibility, coordination, who’s responsible for what, what we’re working towards, what the metrics are, but also a flexibility built within it to say we’re going to respond to things that change over time.

What I like about the strategy, too, is that it recognizes some of our competitive advantages that we do have. We do have established organizations and partners , and we’ve got opportunities and life sciences. We’ve got strategic asset in the airport. We know that we are well-positioned within the agri-food sector.

We actually know that we have a lot of competitive advantages within just simply where we’re placed geographically. And we’re in competition with others, so we have to leverage our advantages, carve out new spaces that we want to be in. But one of the most important pieces in the strategy, I think, that’s there, aside from the downtown piece, of course, which I know we have some friends in the audience here to talk about, is the regional collaboration piece. We do not operate as a separate economic entity within the city of London.

The economy and the success of the region is not dictated solely by us. It’s dictated by the partners reaching and working together, reaching out and advocating together, and pitching companies together. If we land a big company, we know that there’s been not benefits for the region. We know that people with us in St.

Thomas, for example, people move back and forth for jobs all the time. Taking a regional economic approach means including some of the indigenous communities in the area who have tremendous opportunity with the resources that they have access to to be incredible economic partners. Other municipalities, regional partners, indigenous communities and the city of London, if we work together as a region, we’re going to be much more successful for everybody in our area. Because we may have these arbitrary city borders, but that’s not the way the economy works.

So I’m supportive of the strategy. I think there’s lots more we can talk about, and it will evolve over time, but I appreciate the work our staff have done on it. Thank you. I’m wondering if you could take the chair, so I may make some comments.

Yeah, go ahead, Councillor Roman. Thank you very much. I wanted to start by saying thank you to our staff and the consultants for the report. I know it’s been a lot of work.

I’d like to also thank all of the organizations that participated and contributed to this. What I like about the report, I like that I can see kind of those lines of integration where we’ve got really good flow going between different groups and where things seem to be working well. What I find challenging in the report in the same vein is that I feel like some of the elephants in the room when we talk about economic development to still remain not spoken or not out there as clearly and as well defined. And what I see from that is I see some of the same challenges and problems we’ve had for decades that persist because I feel like we’re not naming them completely.

And again, around this table, I heard some of those things come up already. But I want to talk a little bit about the system integration piece, and specifically around 2.1b. I want to understand a little bit more about what we anticipate receiving with this new platform being engaged in this space quite a bit and understanding some of the tools that exist. I see that we’ve pointed to the fact that there’s a need to get this entire system working together better.

We are also talking about a technological piece and working through some existing technologies that exist. In this space, I want to know what’s going to be better for the end user in a system who is looking for a job, is frustrated, needs opportunity, And they’re meeting roadblocks in our systems. Yes, go ahead. Through you presiding officer, thanks for this question.

So this emerged, of course, from the research that Deloitte had done in the engagement in the system review. In the system review, when they looked at different functions of economic development in this city, workforce in particular was one was highly populated with organizations working in this space, whether it was job search job supports or training and upskilling those kinds of things. And the feedback that they received through the engagement was that that element of London’s economic development system is fragmented and is challenging for job seekers to navigate. where there are multiple points of entry and there are actually multiple existing strategies and initiatives that are designed to bring the system together.

But there are just so many actors in that system that it’s still a challenge based on the data that we’ve been provided for workers and job seekers to easily navigate all of those options and opportunities and so this is really an action designed to mediate that with the understanding that we probably aren’t going to get to a stage list anytime soon where everyone across this city zeros in on like one single a single platform in in that time and in that in that space we want to work with like partners to make the Londoners who are who are in search of like job or like looking to like retrain upscale etc. make their ability to access that a bit easier. The specific tool or platform or technology isn’t sculpted in at this point. That’s something that would happen through the detailed documentation planning and contention on endorsement of the strategy.

Go ahead Kelsey. Thank you. I appreciate that. I will say that where there is a redundancy in some of this work.

I don’t particularly see value in adding new money when there’s a redundancy. I think we can address the redundancy without adding new money. That’s just one point. I also think that I know we didn’t name it, but the naming of the local employment board in this report, in our community, it’s confusing to people in the sector.

We’re a single to your government, why we’re lumped in with Middlesex, another story . But again, when we’re showing leadership on some of these pieces, I’m trying to understand where that leadership would be. Is it that a new entity would be formed to house all of that or these partners and lead this lead partner would be in charge of this part of the plan? But, I mean, I think it was an officer and through you, it is the latter.

It’s really about these partners working together under the leadership of the identified lead on that tool or on that platform. Go ahead. Thank you and I’ve shared my comments on this offline as well, so I’ll just move on to the leadership component. I agree with Mr.

Wallace. I would say that when we talk about leadership in the plan, there’s a defined piece around the mayor. I understand that to mean the mayor and council, but I do think that is a piece of work that we as a council need to define and leadership roles need to evolve within our council planning, how we and the agencies, boards and commissions, for instance, that we sit on so that we have more of a front-facing role when it comes to some of the economic activity in the city. I think it’s very much needed.

I think it’s missing from the conversation and even though there are opportunities for maybe the mayor’s office to engage, which I think is great, I think there needs to be more opportunities for everyone to play a larger role in that. So I think that that’s definitely a separate conversation. But I’m not sure how receiving a report, as an annual report in the future, will allow that input to be entered into the discussion. So I wonder about referring some of these items to other committees and other works.

So for instance, if we’re talking about leadership, should we be referring that to governance, working group, sorry, for instance, to talk about the agency’s boards and commissions piece of this and whether or not there’s something on the structure side that we need to look at. Just an example. I’m just wondering how we do that effectively. You got 30 seconds left.

Go ahead. Pardon me. Thank you, President, and through you, those are great suggestions. I think to your point around the annual update and whether or not that facilitates opportunities for input, what we envisioned was that the update would come to council as a collection of macroeconomic data, strategy performance, and recommendations from the partnership table, and also structured feedback from the business community, all those pieces coming together, and using that to inform a conversation and discussion on recommendations for potential changes to how the strategy looks and how the actions roll out.

If I’m hearing correctly, we’re thinking about our role for council outside of that, a more defined and explicit role for council outside that using mechanisms that we may already have within our organization as appropriate. I’d say that staff is very open to that conversation. Of course, our goal is to be effective, and if we can make those opportunities happen, we can, it’s not scoped in explicitly here as an action, but we can find those opportunities to make that happen. Go ahead.

Quickly on the commercial corridor reinvestment , I’m wondering what kind of observable differences we’ll see at West Mount Mall, Hyde Park, other parts of the city. So thank you, I’m sorry, an officer and through you. So we were looking at the corridor piece. We were looking specifically at the CIPs and working with the BIAs on what that would look like.

And so that be the specifics of what those changes will be are in implementation consideration. I can say that, especially, you know, listening to the conversation today, I think that the vacancy challenge has emerged as something of significant interest, not just in downtown, but in various commercial corridors across the city. So at a minimum, I would expect that one of our metrics to target would be that challenge. May I ask for two more minutes?

Sorry. I’m asking for two more minutes, please. All right, Councilor Romans looking for two more minutes. Councilor Tross has willing to move.

Is there a seconder that I see Councilor McAll ister? All right, well, we will open that, we’ll do that in the system and we’ll open it and Susan’s ready. Deputy Mayor Lewis, second call for Deputy Mayor Lewis. Parking Deputy Mayor Lewis absent.

Closing the vote, motion carries 14 to zero. Okay, you got two minutes and nine seconds. Thank you on the redevelopment opportunities. I would say the only problem is we’re talking about areas that don’t have access to CIPs, and that’s what I’m wondering if you could address.

Go ahead, Mr. Fowler. Can clarify, unless they’re citywide, those two areas wouldn’t have access to CIPs that would be as specific for those type of investment. Sorry, through the representing officer, if you could repeat the question one more time for me.

Thank you. Thank you. So my question is about commercial corridor investment, especially on page 224. It talks about place-based development.

So I’m wondering what happens if an area doesn’t have a CIP, what kind of place-based investment can we imagine? Good question, when you have like six people nodding at it. So we’ll just give you a minute. Well, you guys coordinate Mr.

Mathers. Through the presiding officer. So the focus of this item is specifically on CIP. So if that’s something that would want, that council and committee would want to consider in the future, there is a five-year CIP review process that will be undertaken in the next couple of years.

So that’d be the opportunity to generate CIPs for that type of purpose. Anything to add to Raman? Thank you, I’ll move on from that point. I’ll revisit that with staff separately.

I wanna talk a little bit about childcare. I do think we’re missing an opportunity to talk about another big consideration for people, not being in the workforce here in our community, and that is childcare. However, we do that, whether it’s on the advocacy side, it needs to be highlighted, I think more, as we move forward, thank you. Okay, good.

I will return the chair to you. I don’t have anybody further on the list. Thank you, looking for other speakers. Okay, I have none online and I have none in chambers, so we will open the vote on this item.

Opposing the vote, motion carries, 14 to 1. Okay, thank you. We are at four o’clock. I’m just looking to everyone in the room.

We have a three delegations. We have a 10-minute presentation and we have a very important topic. So I’d like to get a sense of, okay, Councillor Stevenson, go ahead. I’d like to move a 10-minute break, please.

Thank you, I’ll look for a seconder on a 10- minute break. I have Councillor Van Meerberg in, just a moment, everyone. Okay, we have a 10-minute break moved and second ed. We’ll open that in the system.

Councillor McAllister, closing the vote. Motion carries, 15-0. Thank you, we will resume at 4-12. Okay, I’ll ask council just start moving towards their seats, please.

Thank you. Wonderful, we do have quorum. So we are onto item 4.2, which is the downtown reimagined city of London downtown plan. We have a presentation to begin from Mary Rowe, the president and CEO and Jennifer Barrett, managing director of the Canadian Urban Institute .

They have 10 minutes for their presentation together and we’re just getting you set up with IT and then we will begin. I’m sorry, I was supposed to go to Mr. McCauley to do a better job at introducing this topic. Go ahead, please.

Thank you and through the chair, we are very proud of civic administration to be here today to present downtown reimagined the city of London downtown plan. Before I turn it over to our consultant team, I wanna recognize the significant amount of work, expertise and collaboration that went into developing this plan, both from city staff and the consultant. London was fortunate to have the Canadian Urban Institute lead this work to deliver a plan of this scale and complexity. CUI assembled a team of specialists with multidis ciplinary expertise in key areas including land economics, main street revitalization, placemaking, transportation and public engagement.

The Canadian Urban Institute provided overall project leadership and downtown revitalization expertise. Republic urbanism brought extensive planning, urban design, and local knowledge to help connect the vision of the downtown plan to on-the-ground realities. Tate economic research and Houston Bond strategy provided a critical market analysis, economic development expertise, and investment attraction perspectives to ensure recommendations were grounded in economic realities. Belver placemaking contributed internationally recognized expertise in creating vibrant public spaces and activating downtowns through programming and place making initiatives.

ARIP provided transportation and infrastructure expertise and diversity’s advocacy or advisory helped ensure the plan reflected diverse perspectives through inclusive and equitable engagement. Collectively, this team brought together a breadth of experience from leading downtown revitalization, recovery, transformation initiatives across Canada, including the development of Ottawa’s downtown action agenda and other nationally recognized city building projects. Their collective experience and their teams enable extensive research, data analysis, market feasibility assessments, policy review, public engagement resulting in practical, evidence-based recommendations that are both actionable and tailored to London’s unique opportunities and challenges. Downtowns where transportation, housing, business, culture, public space, and people all intersect, are wonderfully complicated places.

Developing a plan to guide the next decade required a team which with equally broad expertise and diverse perspectives. And I’ll now turn it over to Mary. Sorry, can we just make sure you’re with the microphones? I’ll try.

Thank you, Madam. I’ll say what I said just a minute ago. I love local democracy because you need stamina. So thank you all of you that are still here and all the council members that are still here and all the staff.

I’m Mary Rowe. What’s important for me to remind you of is that I am a London girl and I am very, very pleased to have had a chance to work on this project because London matters, not just to London, but London matters to the country. CUI, just so Mr. London can’t get his story right .

CUI is not a consulting company. CUI is Canada’s national charity, 36 years old and counting. I’ve not been running it for 36, thank God. for six.

We are the national charity to focus on the quality of our urban spaces, what drives the Canadian economy, what drives places that you enjoy. And that’s why this is so important to us because we have 75 downtowns across this country that are challenged, 75 of them. And London is the gateway to southern Ontario. It is a mid-sized city.

It has enormous extraordinary assets which the work that the consulting team highlights. And so much opportunity, so much opportunities. I’m here to encourage you to seize the day, look at the moments that we’re in, because we are in a national moment. We ‘re in a national inflection point where the economy is under siege at every scale.

And if we want to have an impact on people’s lives, we’ve got to focus on the places in which they live and work. And look at the assets you’ve got. I sit to the clerk when I walked in. What a great day to be in London.

You’ve got students graduating out here on the Victoria Park. I went and had lunch at the market . I saw all the dynamism there. You’ve got so much to work with and so many downtowns don’t have that, but you have it now I appreciate one of the counselors asked me right off the bat We’ve had a lot of studies here.

We’ve done a lot of the studying part I agree with you I understand that I understand the frustration that happens when you say what another study But the staff that we’ve been working with and all the folks that we’ve heard from hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of people Appreciate that you’ve got a moment a moment where you can align a moment where you can be really aspiring about what the future needs to be here So I’m going to run you through briefly what we ‘ve come up with and then I’m looking forward to the conversation, having just listened to the last couple of hours and I know how engaged you are. So let’s have at it. Let’s talk about what the challenges are and what the opportunities are. So thanks, Mike, for the introduction.

Really great team that assembled under Jen’s leadership, she’ll speak to you in a minute. We called this downtown reimagined look for this photo is taken. It’s taken from your balcony, your rooftop, and you’re looking at the downtown. I need you to look in the downtown out.

And the reason that we say that is because this is why downtowns matter, because an Apple rots from the core. The first mayor of Chicago, the first mayor daily of Chicago was asked, “Why do you spend so much time in investment in downtown?” And his response was because an Apple rots from the core. So this isn’t either or this is not, “Oh, gee, what happens to downtown east? What happens to Wartley Road?

What happens to Byron?” No, no, no. This is about how you build on the key assets you have in your downtown to build the tax revenue, to build the economic future, not just of London, but the region. And that’s a principle that we can really, I hope you will endorse with us, that we talk about this across the country, that we’re building communities from the ground up, that urbanism happens from the ground up, and that that’s what you have. You have remarkable roots, remarkable assets that you can build from.

So when you look at why downtowns matter, there’s just a long list of them. I don’t think I probably have to tell you, you live in it, you’re in it every day. You know that you attract private investment. People don’t, people who are looking at investing , this is true of Canada, people who are looking of investing, look at the broad investment prospects and say what’s investable, and inevitably they look at what’s happening in a core area.

They look at what’s happening in a downtown, they look at how connected it is, they look at how the land use is being invested in, they look at all the institutional capacity. Look who you have in the gallery, you’ve got the London Community Foundation here, you’ve got the London Development Corporation here, you have tremendous civil society advocates, you ‘ve got the chamber, you’ve got everything you need. The question is, can you align them? Can you rally them?

Can you be that leader? All the things that we list here are all the things that exist uniquely in a downtown. Yes, there are aspects outside of downtowns that exist, but you need that unifying thread that has to be here. So, you don’t, I don’t think you need to be told why, sorry, I don’t think you need to be told why there’s urgency.

You have the highest vacancy rate in the country. Now, I want to say you’re not alone, you’re not alone. This is a challenge post-pand emic. It was a challenge pre-pandemic.

It’s been made worse. You have lots of people moving into the downtown, more people moving into downtown than anywhere else, but still not enough when in doubt at people. You have retail vacancy. We had heard that discussion a minute ago about what do you do with vacancies.

But you have all the potential to move more people into downtown because you actually have assets. You’re not dealing with an empty landscape. You ‘re dealing with landscape with a lot of built form assets that could be redeveloped and imagined in different ways. So we talked hundreds and hundreds of people, as you know.

Lots of engagement still to go. One of the things that I will always want to say is, you know, these conversations are not the end. They are the beginning, the beginning of a process that you have to be committed to. And that’s what I’m hoping we ‘re going to encourage you to be.

And that’s what we think this document is it’s a 10-year roadmap for you, and it’s not just you. It’s all the partners that you would recruit with you to achieve all these things. Safety, vibrancy, all the key things. You’ll see it in our goals.

The framework that we created has four goals, 58 actions, beautiful Saturday night reading. Lots of things that you don’t have to do them all . You know that, what’s that story? Had you any elephant one bite at a time?

You just got to start biting. And then all these, what we’re suggesting need to be your big move. So we’ll talk about that in a second. But if you look at these goals, I think these are rallyable for all Londoners.

I think they’re rallyably for all Southern Ontario’s. You want to live a build downtown. You want to be able to place where people will move. You want to be able to have more and more mixed use there.

You want to a grocery store there. You win all the amenities that make it a livable place. The second thing you want is your public spaces of which you have so many. Lots and lots of communities would be so in because of what London has.

How do you actually program them? You’ve started to do all the right things. Flex Street, Victoria Park, all the different festivals you do. How do you make the downtown more creative and innovative?

How do you actually invest in it to make it something special? You know, I call this the Patula Factor. When you’re alone and life is making you lonely, you can always go downtown. You have to be a certain age to know Petula Clark, you and me.

And the fourth thing is you wanted to be well-managed. And I appreciate that there is lots of frustration and anxiety in London about things that are manifesting. But let’s be clear these are not unsolvable. They can be invested in and addressed in really imaginative creative ways.

Whoops. So the four big moves that we’re suggesting, we had you see it, we’ve got these actions, and then they sort of ladder up to these four big moves. And they’re all focused on the priorities. And And actually, I feel we’re very in alignment with the Deloitte study.

I was thinking about that. We used to say downtowns in urban life was agord ia not. But I actually think it’s like the Russian dolls, those nesting dolls. And downtown has so many of the interesting characteristics and challenges that we see across the region.

But you will not solve them in the region if you don’t start in downtown. So all these things, housing, population, growth, vibrancy, connectivity, mobility, economic revitalization, jobs, what Councillor Stevenson is focused on. You will not have economic productivity if you don’t invest in your downtown. And then governance and leadership, which I know everyone is concerned about.

So four big moves that I’m hoping you can get behind. You elevate your public spaces, which are unique to London. You embrace that river. There are 29 riparian communities in Canada that are actually on a lake or a river.

Probably a handful more, but 29 that really matter. You have one of the most beautiful. How do you actually embrace that? How do you leverage that?

You already are UNESCO music site. How do you double down on that? and then this notion of nimble downtown governance. You have to, the points that were being raised in the earlier discussion of, well, how can we do this?

How can we do that? You need some kind of entity that’s gonna give you the kind of flexibility and the imagination because it’s not just your money that you need to invest. You need to attract all sorts of other money. The mayor and I were just talking.

There’s 51 billion. Wanna make sure the minutes record that consonant in the bill came already strengthened. The federal government understands It has to invest in places. You have to have a vehicle to be able to leverage getting that piece of the $51 billion.

Hats off to your mayor, through the big city of Mayors caucus, who’s drawn this attention across the country that we need a downtown revitalization fund in dozens and dozens of communities, and you could lead that way. So the outcomes that we’re suggesting 10 years with your leadership, with many, many, many partners, who are sitting behind me and others, you need to have more people living downtown, you need better amenities and services, you need more people, traffic, you need people to hang out, You need more people, foot traffic, visitors, sticky. It’s going to boost your property tax, but it’s also going to boost job creation, investment income, investing in opportunity, business growth, newcomers being able to find jobs and start businesses. And then you’re going to build on the cultural assets that you already have that I remember as a kid.

You know, I’m a Marion bad person. My parents took me to Marion bad when I was a kid . I went to the London Cafe. I played in Victoria Park.

I played in Lebak Park. It says my childhood here, and I know what the future can be, but it’s going to take you and all the partners that you need to recruit to be behind you. So the ROA, everybody should be concerned about this. You do not want to put public money and not see an ROI, but the point that I’m making is it’s not just your money, it’s everybody else’s money, I know I’m at a time .

So I think you’re gonna see private investment and visitors spend go up, you’ll see taxes go up, and tax growth go up, you’ll collect more taxes, you’ll have more people and people will want to be in your downtown, don’t miss this chance, that’s it. and may want to add some substantive things, questions. Okay, thank you for the presentation. We have three delegations.

So what I’d like to do is I would like to look for a mover and seconder for the delegations. I have Councillor Hopkins, Councillor van Mirberg en. We’ll deal with all three at the same time. And those are opening in the system momentarily.

It’s open. Councillor Feink, closing the vote. Motion carries, 15 to zero. Thank you.

I have Mr. Wallace, first Executive Director, London Development Institute, please go ahead. Thank you, Madam Chair, and thank you for allowing the delegations on this item. And again, I will speak a little bit from the ICE perspective, and then maybe a little bit of my gloss on the top of that.

So we are very much in support of the plan that is in front of you for the downtown revital ization downtown reimagined. In particular, we, and we’ve been advocating the councilor and through the city manager’s office that there needs to be a downtown office that is at a high level in the city hall that can help us get through the process of making sure that we can do things downtown. We as an organization have been clear that we are very supportive of downtown Lenna and think and believe that it has a tremendous amount of potential. I do want to make one point that was made a little bit earlier .

The last purposely built office building in downtown London was by Siften, first London place , whatever it’s called. That was in 1992. It opened in April of ‘97. Our people do not believe that we believe in mixed use downtown.

Purposely built Office buildings I think is not going to happen in the future based on the people who I represent who are like although Blue stone shift in Auburn drew low like those people are the builders of that Product and they’re telling me that it isn’t happening So I just want to make that make that point when you’re going forward and thinking about what the future is we believe I believe that downtown London belongs to every Londoner, and it’s the cultural heartbeat of the city, and that Londoners need to be proud of downtown London. And you will come downtown, London. We moved from a city that we were very proud of our downtown. In fact, if we ever to leave London, that’s where we’re moving back.

There’s the only one spot that we would go. That’s not happening in the near future, by the way. I’ve been looking at what’s happening downtown, and I keep track of buildings and trying to give us more wife to move downtown and so on. When we moved here seven years ago, we looked downtown and we knew it wasn’t where we wanted to be, but I think it definitely has the potential to be there.

Look, we’re here, we live in Byron. We’re downtown all the time. Wife’s downtown this weekend, this past weekend. Couple, not that long ago, last month, two months ago, we were at Centennial Hall on Thursday.

We were at the rink for hockey game on Friday. We were back at the music hall on Saturday for another event. Downtown has a tremendous amount of advantages that need to be taken, that need to be embraced. And what I think this report that you’re in the season front of you has to do.

It does require in some investment from the city. Even simple things, for your festivals, for them to grow and mature and be bigger, things like infrastructure in the park, electricity everywhere, water everywhere. So, you need that infrastructure for festivals to take place and you need to make that investment. When I was a counselor many moons ago, you could shoot a cannon down Burlington, downtown, downtown.

Everything was closed, had boards on window on, it was nothing was happening there. I encourage you as counselors to get in a car. Clark’s gonna be furious with me at this. Get in a car, go to communities that are working, that their towns are, see what’s happening there.

We went to Chicago, and you don’t have to go to Chicago. We went to Chicago. We talked to the second mayor daily. We had me, we looked around.

What was happening, they had a really active waterfront, including a pier. What does Burlington have now? Active pier. Now it’s not like the Chicago pier, but we have one.

There are ideas and things that are working in other communities that you bring to London. I encourage you to embrace this report, take leadership on making things happen, spend money on downtown, and make it the great heartbeat of this London, of the Cultural Center for this community and region that I know it can be. Thank you. Thank you.

I have Mr. Morrison next, Executive Director, Old East Village BIA. Thank you, and with only five minutes to speak, I’m not going to read the document that I submitted prior to today’s meeting. I do think the counselors that have reached out and asked questions about that document.

But what I would like to focus on is what I believe are important takeaways from the report. And let me begin by saying that I do support this plan in principle. It’s an excellent report and it’s a great start. It’s ambitious, it’s thoughtful, and it recognizes that London must continue to evolve.

The consultants focused on the area that was directed to them by council being downtown London. Reviewing the document, the question I ask and I guess the concern I have is downtown London is a district of the core area. And Mary and her presentation did mention a couple of times about the core, not just downtown. And are we planning for only downtown London?

Are we going to actually think bigger and begin to plan for the entire core area? We see a lot of investment being taking place in a number of districts here in the city. specifically, when you take a look at East London , I focus on, you know, 100 Kellogg Lane. We’ve got the Western Fair District .

And there’s also other emerging neighborhoods and districts, Hamilton Road. We have downtown, of course, we have Soho, and we have Wortley Village as well. And each has its own identity, and each has its own strengths, and each has its own opportunities. And I And I think this is an opportunity for you as elected officials to think bigger and start with that downtown but also include what we can do combined with the other districts that are in the core area because the other districts are increasingly becoming connected.

And together they form something that’s much larger. They form London’s urban core. I believe the plan represents an opportunity to start thinking differently and not district by district. I think that for years, London has planned neighborhood by neighborhood, project by project and study by study.

And I think it’s time to move forward with something different. Perhaps the next step is a broader vision that considers alongside what we talked about with economic development plan. And I must say how impressed I was with the questions and the conversations there. And it’s encouraging that you folks are grasping what really needs to be done.

But also include the tourism, the transportation, housing, the public spaces, and investment attraction across the entire urban core. A vision that asks not only for what’s best for downtown, but what’s best for London as a whole? I was really excited and intrigued by the concept of a downtown office. But again, I take a look if we could expand it a little bit more to be a core area concierge office to assist those that are interested in downtown and area.

And again, I believe that business improvement areas need to be at the table. BIA’s represent hundreds of businesses and property owners across the city, and we understand our districts, we understand the opportunities, and we understand the challenges that our businesses are facing. We’re not simply stakeholders, we’re partners. This is a really important step forward, but perhaps the greatest contribution is a larger conversation that can inspire how we connect our districts, how do we strengthen our urban core, and how do we build a city that is greater than one neighborhood.

I’m really looking forward to the questions and the comments that you have and the discussion . So thank you for your time, Adam Chair. Thank you. I will go next to Vicky Smith, the Interim Executive Director of Downtown London .

You have five minutes. Thank you again for the opportunity to speak in support of the Downtown Plan. We would like to thank Council for continuing to recognize the importance of downtown revital ization. Downtown is London’s cultural, civic and economic heart.

It’s where people come to work, visit, invest, access services, experience arts and culture, and connect with the broader city. Downtown is also one of the city’s strongest economic assets. It currently generates approximately 7.2 times more property tax revenue per square kilometer than other areas of the city. That’s an important reminder that investment in downtown is not about one neighborhood.

It’s about strengthening a highly productive part of London that supports services, infrastructure, quality of life across the entire city. With continued focus, that return can grow even further. The plan itself estimates that implementation could generate nearly $100 million in new property tax revenue over and above what is already collected downtown. More than double the estimated implementation cost.

A healthy downtown benefits all of London. We are encouraged that the downtown plan moves beyond broad vision and provides clear actions, timelines, partners, performance measures, and implementation tools. Downtown revitalization requires coordination, accountability, and follow-through. And this plan provides an important foundation for that work.

We strongly support the proposed downtown office and the focus on stronger governance. Downtown London works every day with partners committed to improving and promoting the core. A dedicated downtown office can help align those efforts, clarify accountability, and support more coordinated implementation. It can also help reduce the red tape and frustration that many businesses, property owners, and investors experience when navigating City Hall.

A one-stop shop for downtown assistance would help people find the right supports more quickly, reduce delays, and direct issues to the proper area the first time. This would improve the experience for businesses while also reducing pressure on city staff and partner organizations through a more coordinated and efficient process. We’re also pleased that the plan recognizes vacancy as a central revitalization issue. Office vacancies, storefront vacancy, underused buildings, and business retention directly affect downtown’s economic health and public perception.

The plan’s leasing and occupancy work, office attraction strategies, FITOUT grants, and concierge-like service are practical actions that can support business growth and investment. As implementation moves forward, office retention, employment growth, business attraction and investment attraction must remain front and center. Residential growth and activations are important, but downtown’s long-term success also depends on maintaining and growing its role as a primary employment center. Only a select number of buildings can be realistically converted to residential use.

Many office buildings will need to be modernized and actively marketed for other uses. Workers continue to support downtown businesses, cultural venues, transit use, and everyday street activity . We appreciate that the plan focuses on everyday vibrancy. While there are no major transform ational projects included, downtown also has a significant wealth of assets, including heritage buildings, cultural institutions, public spaces, businesses, and civic infrastructure.

The opportunity now is to better connect, coordinate, and strengthen those assets so people have more regular reasons to come downtown, stay longer, and return often. We’re also encouraged by actions related to public amenities. These visible improvements shape how people experience downtown every day. At the same time, we recognize that safety, security, mental health, homelessness, and street level disorder continue to have real impact on downtown businesses.

These concerns are not only about perception. They influence leasing, retention, investment, customer behavior, employee confidence, and the day-to-day experience of operating a business downtown. We encourage the city to continue addressing the operational priorities that affect perceptions of safety and care. Downtown London will collaborate with the city to support clear service standards to find rules and regular reporting so improvements are visible, measurable and coordinated.

And we welcome the opportunity to partner with the city on funding advocacy aligned with downtown revital ization. Overall, Downtown London strongly supports the direction of the downtown plan. It recognizes that revitalization requires coordinated action, long-term investment visible improvements , and strong partnerships. It’s a strong foundation, and now the focus must be implementation.

That implementation should recognize downtown’s citywide economic value, address real safety and street-level challenges, protect and grow downtown’s employment role. Thank you. That’s your time. Thank you.

Okay. I am looking for a motion on the floor with this item. I have Councillor Ferreira to move that motion looking for a seconder. Councillor McAllister, thank you.

I did have a request to speak first and I understand we also have our any questions that we want to address to the Urban Institute as well as to our staff. So I’ll start with Coun cillor Pribble first. Go ahead. Thank you very much as I have to leave actually in seven minutes, so it’s perfect.

Just going back to it, and I want to thank CUI for all the involvement that the sessions you have organized here in the city. We had honestly all of us, businesses, individuals, they had an opportunity to give their feedback. So it was really extensive. All the initiatives that are there, I do believe they are very meaningful and they can make a difference.

What I said before, my concern is to deliver an implementation plan. I have, by the way, thank you for staff for answering my questions in five pages within hours. I greatly appreciate it. But going back to it, I want your perspective.

And there are a few things that you have mentioned. And it’s actually has to do with both plans because both plans, they do have advisory table in your words and includes actions that support a downtown champions table to support implementation. How will this table actually support the implementation and aspects of the action tactics, timelines and accountability and the reason what I’m trying to figure out again so we don’t drop a ball we have two great plans again funding is going to be second second. But how do we stay on track.

I totally agree we need to change status quo. I totally disagree we need to be hands on. No we cannot be hands on. Can you please go ahead.

Thank you, I will go to Ms. Rowe. Oh, there we go. Thank you, Madam Chair.

You know, these exist across the country, Coun cillor, and that we’re just seeing it across North America. You need these kinds of broad tables and that everyone has their lane where they have agency. I think the dilemma is when you labor it into one sector alone, you know, we see this in almost all our issues. If we only look to the province to fix healthcare , we’d be sicker, you know.

we have to have some kind of collaborative mechanisms, and that’s what we’re proposing here is that a downtown office or a redevelopment corporation, whatever you decide to do, that you need entities that are nimble enough so that where the investor’s skill is, for instance, where the accountability is, where the public services are, where the analysis of what your fellow counselors concerned about regulatory reform, each of the sectors is gonna bring a different set of expertise and knowledge, and you don’t want to operate without any of it, you wanna operate with all of it. In terms of accountability, I think it’s important for you as counselors to really charge your staff, to have a sense of the vision that you wanna have accomplished, and then cut them some slack to be creative about how they can get there, which is why I was reacting to just off the top, running municipalities off the property tax in Canada is crazy. There’s no one who will tell you, that’s a good idea. So we are constantly looking for workarounds in Canada about finding other ways to get provincial and federal resources and other investment capital into communities.

So this kind of entity, you have to hold your staff accountable. The civil society needs to hold itself accountable. You need the university, you need the college, you need all the different business partners, you need the chamber, you need Mike’s people, all have to hold themselves mutually accountable. And that’s the trick, I think.

But you are a particularly important player in enforcing that accountability and seeing what you have capacity to do. But the province can be your partner and I’m quite convinced the federal government will be your partner. Councilor Perbal. Thank you again, totally with your comments.

And I do think when I say hands on, we cannot be on the daily, we will be just st alling it. It needs to be driven by the staff. Some of your comments mentioned. How it comes together, I just said some of those points I’ve mentioned, but it is missing a very crucial part.

It states, established city of London downtown, lead roles, responsibilities, timelines. That’s from your text. Who is gonna decide? who actually does these great actions, these great works, who delivers on these?

Thank you, I’ll go to see you like, go ahead. Thank you, Councillor, through the chair. So the implementation in the back of the plan lays out many of the things you’ve discussed. So it lays out the actions, a lead, and any partners that would be involved.

It lays out a timeframe over 10 years. So we have some quick-start actions, short, medium, and long-term. There’s a scale of the cost of our estimates, And there was a longer working document that staff have in their hands that creates a lot of the key considerations that we heard throughout our process of engagement, both internal to the city and external, that need to be kept in mind and that hate helped to shape those actions. Thank you, Ms.

Ferrell. I’ll go back to Council for a roll. Thank you for that follow-up. And I did see that lead, but again, lead doesn’t have to be always accountable or responsible.

And I certainly hope that our staff is gonna clarify. In addition to that, it was actually a question from last time. I totally understand there are no goals, targets, KPIs right now. Because we don’t know the actual amount, we don’t know if it’s going to be funded.

And of course, it’s totally different if it’s approved now in six months, 12 months. The world is changing very quickly. But having said that, once the council approves this, I would certainly would expect that there will be KPIs, there will be goals, there will be targets. Because if we are spending $10, we need to know what the expectation is.

If we don’t deliver, we got to go back and evaluate it, why it was not reached. I just want to address this with the KPIs. There are two points you are mentioning, evaluation of governance, and then there’s the Revitalization Authority. But there are two points, and you are saying to wait for the office, for the Revitalization Authority.

Why couldn’t we start within our city hall, within our stop? Why do we have to wait? Why can we attack it right away? Yes, Rob.

Yes, you’re right. Why wait? I agree with you. You know, here’s the caution I would ask all of you to think about in your roles as stewards, your stewards of your city, not just your city for now, but city for the future.

The expectation of accountability, hugely important in municipal governance. Here’s my concern. When it basically justifies risk perversion, then you get immobilized. So I’m trying to find the right way for you, counselor, to feel that you’re holding your staff accountable.

But at the same time, that you have an expectation that they are going to try some stuff. They are, and that means creating some kind of parallel organization or talking with the province and the federal government about other kinds of tools. You don’t want to get to a place where you’re so cautious and holding people accountable to specifics that you missed the opportunity to be imaginative and creative. And I think now we have AI leaping at us.

We’ve got to be really fast and nimble. No time to stall. And that’s going to be the fine point, but I totally agree with you. your staff to be their best selves and to be as imaginative and creative as they can and give them permission to take some risks and come back and report to you.

Councilor Provost, fast, nimble, and effective. Thank you very much. I really think I very much like what we have here for all of us. We just have to stay on track and deliver for half a million of Londoners.

Thank you. No more questions. Thank you. I wanted to go back to Coun cillor Ferrer.

He was the mover in the motion. I just wanted to make sure I gave you a chance to add yourself to the speaker’s list. Councilor Mr. Perbal had to leave and ask me to move him up first.

That’s why I did that. But did you want to go now or later on? I’m happy. Okay, then I’ll go to Councilor McAllister and then I have Councilor Van Meerbergen.

Thank you through the chair. Let me just start off by saying, Mary, I love the energy as I needed that ‘cause of this long meeting and if tourism London hasn’t offered you a job, they absolutely should. So yeah, I also just want to start my comments with saying and I hear what was said in terms of the core areas, that’s not where we’re here today . This is now a town plan, and I’m gonna really try to stick to that.

I think there’s a time and a place to talk to the arterial areas, the feet into downtown, and I’m more than happy at any time people wanna have that conversation. But I’m here today, we’re all here today to talk about the downtown plan. And I’m kind of excited, like I’ll be honest, I appreciate it again, the energy, because I’ve lived in London most of my life. I think there’s so much potential in downtown, There’s a lot of great things that we’re down here for all the time.

We have amazing festivals, some great sites. And so when I read this report, there were things in there that were called out that I was excited about. And I kind of wanted to take this opportunity to maybe ask a bit more about it. And one of the things that really piqued my interest was having kind of that river district or really capitalizing on that.

I’ve gone to a number of cities in Canada. They’ve done great jobs with the river. And I’m just wondering in terms of how we operationalize that, I feel like we’ve had attempts in the past, a few false starts. I think we do try to bring people to the river.

I mean, Harris Park’s a great example. I think when it doesn’t flood, it’s a great opportunity. And so that’s kind of where I struggle is I think there are areas of the river that would be great, but do we have to have like an elevated district? Like, what does that look like in the real world?

‘Cause I think we all have concepts of what that looks like. I’m just wondering what is envisioned in this plan as to what that could look like. Ms. Barrett, thank you through the chair.

Yeah, it’s a great question. I think something that is reflected in the river district but throughout the plan is our desire to build on the assets that already exist but to really weave a story that helps to build in the kind of partnerships that Mary’s been talking about. So we see private development happening along the waterfront. We wanna make sure that that private development speaks to the waterfront and creates the kind of private public amenity space that helps to enhance the waterfront.

So that’s one piece of it. We started this plan initially just by looking at the Forks and Ivy Park and seeing the great opportunities there. You have heritage buildings. You already have a playground for families.

You have spaces where you could have entertainment. You’ve got the Thames Valley Parkway. You’ve got programming that’s happening. You’ve got all of the infrastructure investments that have happened in Harris Park.

So how do you continue to build on that and to stitch this together so that it feels like more of a place that comes together? And I think some of it is through small incremental pieces like enabling concessions to happen. You know, so that people can come, they can stay, they can have a meal, they can have a glass of wine, they can sit and listen to jazz music in the evenings and making it one of those everyday places. And by that, you’re creating a real anchor that’s part of the downtown, but also feeds off of the energy of downtown.

So it’s not an either or. And so that was the goal with that big move is to really bring forward the incremental moves that have happened, but to really elevate them to a greater extent. Councilor McAllister. Thank you and through the chair, appreciate that.

I guess another thing that also comes to mind when I look at this is I like the idea of downtown office, but I’m just wondering, do we consolidate, do we coordinate? Like there’s a lot of C words I can throw in there, but like it’s just, I’m wondering what that looks like because we just have a lot of cooks in the kitchen and we need an executive chef to run this show or like how do we make that work differently than we’ve tried in the past? I’ll go to Mr. McCauley.

Thank you and through the chair. So yes, one of the big recommendations that’s coming out of this plan is to explore the opportunity of having a centralized service area within the city of London. That is responsible for the downtown area. As to the role mandates for responsibilities and scope of that office, that would be a decision that Council and civic and senior leadership would have to make.

There certainly would be budget considerations with that action, so it is one of the ones that we are referring to the multi-year budget process in order to have those conversations. And I’m assuming that once that process unfolds, there would probably be a follow-up report to determine, again, the scope mandate roles and responsibilities. There are some services that make sense to consolidate. There are some services that do not make sense to consolidate, or for several reasons, that could be budgetary reasons, that could be historical use, that could be collective bargaining agreements, that sort of thing.

So that is an opportunity for civic administration to explore this further and see, with the creation of a downtown office, what that looks like, what its role is, what its responsibility is, and how it integrates with all the existing outside, external partners that we have. So we have the Downtown London BIA, we have LEDC, we have several organizations that operate within the Downtown area. We don’t want to be duplicating those resources or the responsibilities within house either. So we also need to look at the larger ecosystem as we develop and determine what that looks like.

Councilor McAllister. Oh, go ahead, Mary, yeah. Sorry, go ahead, Ms. Row.

And, you know, ask your treasure, she’ll tell you investors want easy, they want easy. So you can see it federally and you can see it provincially. They’re organizing themselves so that there’s a direct, easy way to get investment and get decisions made. So that’s what you need to think about it.

And that’s what Mike is talking about. You want to create a mechanism that’s going to make this easier so that it’s not so labyrinthian and so complicated and people can’t just continue to blame one another about why it isn’t happening . You want easy accountability back to what Coun cillor Pribbles concerned about, easy, easy, easy. The second thing is just in terms of timing, I’ll just want to add this.

You have an unusual moment here, I would say, an alignment, I mean we have all the issues we’ve been chatting about that are across the country. You have a federal minister who’s sitting on $51 billion, who’s a former mayor. You have a provincial minister who’s 800 meters from here. When else do we have that in London?

A federal minister and a provincial minister both kindly disposed to urban life and to urban vibrancy and understand the value proposition that we’re getting at. So alignment and ease, investor ease. Councillor? Thank you and through you, appreciate that.

And yeah, to that point as well, like I think, you know, a few years ago we had that generational opportunity for mass transit in London as well. You know, we ended up with a different system. I think then it was originally envisioned, but I think with this plan we do have to be bold. And so I guess my question to this, the broader impact of this is, what are those generational investments that we need to make, like what’s missing?

I think one of the things downtown, which I think a lot of us have pointed to in the past is, you know, it was the JLC, then Butt and Gardens, now it’s kind of life place, but having that arena downtown was a huge asset for the downtown in terms of a draw to bring people to the core. I know one of the things that’s a longstanding thing that’s identified is a grocery store, but what are those bigger assets that, as a city, we can drive forward, that we have an opportunity to champion now and ask for those dollars for. I know housing is one of them, but if there’s any others that you can think of. So through the chair, who implied about elephants in the room.

So you have one dominant landlord in London. And honestly, if we had a dime for how many times that was raised with us, this is the impediment, this is the impediment, this is the impediment of my God, and we’re only here for a year and a half. You people must be full of it. But listen, this is an asset.

You actually know who that investor is. You know who that landlord is. There are many, many cities around the world that have a dominant investor and don’t know where they are. You do.

And you have these extraordinary assets built forms. Buildings are already built. Existing assets that can be renovated or altered or reconditioned in certain kinds of ways. You need to find a way to invest in imaginative ways.

This is happening in downtowns around the world. It’s not just a place where you work. It’s a place where you live. It’s a place where you learn.

It’s a place where you experiment. It’s a place where you have experience. Look at the assets you have. you’ve gotta be really imaginative about how you get capital in there and work with the configuration of who you’re working with and turn it into an opportunity, an opportunity.

You have so much here to work with, so many assets to work with in the management of new ways. Councilor McAllister. Thank you, and I appreciate that. ‘Cause I mean, one of the things I don’t think, and yes, that is the elephant in the room, 100%.

And I mean, when you look at the build Canada homes, maybe we have to buy some buildings as a city. And I know nobody wants to talk about that, but I think one of the things with the plan, which I think would be important and maybe the downtown office could deal with this, but purchasing, repurposing, we’ve done office to residential conversions, but I think the city does need to take more of a role in terms of acquisition of properties to direct what we do with our downtown. And yeah, go ahead. Mr.

Rob, go ahead. Madam presiding officer, may I? 30 years ago, Kitchener spent $100 million bought buildings. Look at what Kitchener looks like.

Kitchener’s not that far. if you’re gone to Kitchener, like we can take a bus and get you there. There are examples exactly of what you’re talking about. Catholic investments, and as I suggested, you’ve got partners at the provincial and federal level who will be amenable to you talking about this.

It’s not only on your own dime. You can invest, and you can get all sorts of private sector investors. And the philanthropy is in the room. You’ve got lots and lots of possibilities, so I’m agreeing with you.

Invest in the assets you’ve got, don’t be deter red. Don’t be defeated by this. Use the assets you’ve got, buy some buildings. Councillor.

Thank you, and through you. I’ll just leave my comments here, but I appreciate that ‘cause I just think with this, this is again, that generational opportunity and I think we need to seize the day. We need to do things differently with the downtown. This is a longstanding issue.

People have grown up in the city for years and said, we gotta do something about downtown. We’ve tried things, but I mean now, I think this offers us a vision and some options in terms of doing things differently and I really do hope we capitalize on it. So I mean, I will support this, but I really do hope that there are some. Okay, well, yeah, I’ll be out of time, but I just wanna say, like, let’s be bold and really do something different with downtown, ‘cause I do think that there are a lot of opportunities and we should definitely seize on them.

Thank you. I have Councillor van Mirberg in next. Thanks, Chair, and thank you for the presentation. As we know, we’ve had other reports.

We’ve had similar dialogue in the past, and we have over the course of, at least two or three decades spent millions upon millions into the downtown core. We’ve built all sorts of facilities, Covent Garden Market, Canada Life Place, the new, or the new were downtown library. I mean, the list goes on. The different projects go on.

But the fact of the matter is that until we come to terms with what’s the reality of what’s taking place downtown. We will not grow the downtown or develop it into its potential unless we come to terms with public defecation, public urination, the homelessness, the illegal drug use , the violence. And this is the concept, the idea that Londoners have in their own downtown. They They certainly don’t want to go there, certainly not after dark.

And during the day, they think twice. So until these things are cleaned up and at least improved substantially, perhaps not totally resolved, but improved substantially, it’s fine to have lofty goals, lofty ambitions, lofty words, but until the reality changes, there’s not going to be a lot of progress. It’s a real barrier. And we really have to come to terms with it.

I look at a city like Detroit. They have improved so much. The visits I’ve had there in the last year or so. Truly amazing in terms of what they’ve done.

And I would suggest they came from a worse place. And it’s cleaned up. You don’t see homelessness encampments in the core or the entertainment areas where the stadiums are . Far different.

I would suggest it may be to our real benefit as London to consult them, visit with them, see for ourselves. What did they do that perhaps we can do without having to reinvent the wheel? How did that happen? How do people feel safe again in downtown Detroit ?

So again, unless we come to terms with this, having all these nice plans and spending all this money isn’t gonna do it, thanks. Thank you. Was there a question there, Councillor? No?

You do have a response, but there wasn’t a question yet. No, but I have a sense of it. I guess the question is, can we learn from others ? If the question is, can we learn from others?

I’ve talked to the downtown Detroit guy. He’s fantastic and he’s old enough to remember when Detroit wasn’t that. So am I. I’m a London girl that would take field trips down to Detroit where it was very rough.

But when you were speaking, I was supposed to call you Senator Councillor, when you were speaking, I was thinking about New York City. There was a period of time when they were going to count New York City out. And the way that these communities come back is block by block by block. They coordinate investment.

They figure out where they can get some early wins and they start to show what is possible. And you have some of that already. The question is whether the narrative can be constructed. I also think you’re taking all sorts or I said when I first came to London a couple of years ago, I was in New York and I think somebody invited me up to speak.

I looked at all the things you were doing, so many of the right things, you have a bunch of factors over which you have very little control, the pandemic, other things like that, online shopping, all that kind of stuff. You’re not the only ones dealing with it. But how do we correct it? We correct it by intentional coordination of activities, which you’re doing around your housing initiative, your building housing downtown.

You have cooperation with the police. I’ve talked to the chief with the different medical officer people that are trying to look at integrated approaches in Ottawa where we did the downtown strategy. They had very similar elements to you and what we’re seeing across the country that works in downtowns are the kind of coordinated actions that you’re initiating here. So you as a steward have to be hopeful, optimistic but also as you say practical block by block by block you have lots to work with and it will over time improve.

I’m here you heard it here 20 26 it will improve. We just have to be diligent. Councillor and thank you for that. I think the first step is we really when we do a plan like this acknowledge the problem the let’s call the elephant in the room whatever term you want to use so acknowledging is the first step and then we have to now of course we have taken steps there are some positive things but we have not seen resolution or anywhere near resolution.

let’s start with improvement continuing to improve so we get a significant improvement so people feel comfortable and confident again to come down to the downtown core so anyway but thank you I really do appreciate I mean we do need to set these kinds of goals and ambitions but at the same time we have to counterbalance of what’s going out there what’s going on out there on the streets thanks again okay thank you I have Councillor Stevenson next followed by Councillor Trossa thank you yes I’m enjoying the energy that you’re bringing to this as well and keeping us seeing that, you know, it is possible. And I agree with that completely, but to follow up on Councillor van Mirbergen, it used the example of the apple. If the addiction mental health crisis is the rot that’s already in the core of our apple, and if parking is the stick and we don’t have one, we’re talking about wrapping it in caramel and what we’re going to put around the outside, which, you You know, look, I want to do that, but it’s not going to work if we’re not addressing the things that need to be done. And we have repeatedly supported what we don’t want in the downtown core, right?

So we can talk about the addiction crisis and it being a problem, but we are repeatedly funding more services in those areas where we stay, we’re committed to business growth. We continue to do outreach and hand out drug equipment in the very area that we say we’re committed to something different. So we are responsible for this and to just then fund everything and it’s working across purposes and our taxpayers don’t have any money. So you know, this is $48 million and hey, great, maybe we’ll get it from someplace else and all that kind of thing, but we aren’t talking about prior to spending $400,000 on report.

Almost everybody would say it’s a homeless addiction mental health crisis in the downtown and it’s parking. This just says keep going with the whole community response which is still predicting worsening outcomes and I don’t see anything about parking garages that a study we paid for 10 years ago said we should have had three by now and again this is my concern about getting these massive documents where we have a week to look at them and we say yes and we’ve said yes to all kinds of things that we haven’t like gone through little by little. And then they’re having impacts. So some of our master mobility stuff is having us not widen roads and not do things because we hope that people are going to choose another form of transportation later.

But then we wonder why we have traffic congestion. Why? You know, it’s because we’ve endorsed all these things in these big long documents that come to us. So I think there There are some exciting things in here.

I struggle though with putting the cart before the horse and not saying if we can’t do the basics right, then how do we sell Londoners on $ 48 million on this when we can’t even make it safe for a teenager to walk to high school, you know, it’s pretty bad. So your thoughts on that, I’d be curious about the parking and the minimal role that I see of addressing the addiction crisis in here. Thank you. Go ahead on the parking.

I’m gonna suggest Councilor, we not conflate the two if we can’t. So let’s deal with parking first. I love parking. Parking is a huge asset.

You have companies in this city that wanna locate downtown that need more parking . It’s often quoted to us when we encourage one of the things that I would say back to you, Councilor, around what can you do? One of the things you can do is put more of your own workers downtown and move them back. That’s when I said on the front of the report, I want you to be looking out from downtown, not looking at downtown, and so put more of your workers downtown.

And then one of the impediments is you don’t have enough parking. Well, you do have parking. You do have access to parking and you have lots that could be adapted to parking. And in fact, parking could be a revenue source for the municipality.

You should charge staff to start figuring that out. Lots of municipalities have done this. They get into the parking business. They figure out how to do it.

It doesn’t actually displace other land uses, but they integrate parking into developments. of course there will be people that say no no we don’t want more parking there will be the anti-car people but I’m not that person I’m the person who’s a realist about people like having access to mobility personal mobility so I would say turn parking into an asset and figure that out and turn it into economic asset and I think you’ve got the opportunity of many lots that are sitting there that could be developed that you could purchase back to this counselor the cows are saying maybe you buy some parking lots so that would be I wouldn’t shy away from that for a nanosecond buy some parking now on the mental health piece. So, I’m appreciative your stewards, your counselors, you’re not gonna wanna be seen as not compassionate. Obviously, we want a London that is ministering and available to all sorts of people.

And so, the question continues to be, how do you coordinate best with the province? How do you coordinate with your own mental health folks to figure out what the best way is to support people that are vulnerable and need that kind of support ? We sat through an hour and a half of talking about community housing. Your questions were all fabulous about holding that entity accountable.

you’re doing the right things, more housing, more supportive housing. We will always have, I’m sure, I’m old here, I’m just looking to see, I might be the oldest. We will always have people that have mental health needs and they will always be in our communities and we wanna find ways to distribute those services. And I think part of what you’re asking is, is the concentration of services downtown maybe not the best stewarding, is am I right?

Are you wondering whether we need to have services distributed in other parts of the city as well? Yeah, so I think that’s the question, is how do we maintain a balance. I do know that when in doubt, if you wanna maximize the value of a place, you increase more people. You increase more people.

And that means more services too, but a more of a diversity of people. Go back to New York in the 70s, more diverse people. And that’s part of what Detroit has done. And I think that works.

Not necessarily stigmatizing one group, but actually introducing a more of a cross section of different kinds of services and people and uses. Councillor Stevenson. Yeah, thank you. Again, I appreciate the dialogue.

here. I guess, and I do think it’s a separate issue from this. I do agree, but I think just identifying that it needs to be addressed. And there’s nothing compassionate about what we’re seeing on our streets right now.

So, and there’s always been homeless people downtown. There’s always been mental health issues. There hasn’t been the safety issues that there are right now. And so when you talk about why are the buildings vacant downtown, I don’t think it’s because people want vacant buildings.

I think it’s because they can’t get people to lease the buildings and people are leaving the buildings and we know because employees have been attacked, they’ve been hurt, their cars have been damaged, things have happened and you’re not going to have, you know, our small businesses worry all the time. They worry about their employees, they worry about their customers, they worry about their property, their financial future. We’ve got large, large corporations that have to put their safety of their employees first and customers and so I guess what I was hoping to see in this was a directive, a small line that says you must address this, you know what I mean? If what you’re doing isn’t working, you need to do something that’s going to work and then we can do all the rest of the stuff.

And I’ll just make one other comment on the downtown office. I think it’s leadership that is needed, right? If leaders say we’re going to make down your town that priority, we’re going to say yes, we’re going to make this happen. the direction that goes through, we don’t need to create an office, create a department.

You set the expectations, you make a commitment, and then you, you know, race and celebrate when you hit the milestones. So I’ll just leave it there. Thank you. Councillor Chaso, next.

I’m going to thank you for the chair. I’m going to breeze through these. I’ve got five points I’d like to make. I’m just going to briefly say the five and hopefully I can come back and talk about each one a little bit.

Number one. to incorporate more about indigenous engagement. The report says development of a framework. More of that framework should have been in this report.

And I don’t think it’s adequate to say develop more of a framework. Two, the failure to utilize, incorporate, or really even acknowledge key institutions that are already functioning downtown, doing many of the things that we wanna do. And I’ll just say Museum London, the London Public Library, which aren’t really acknowledged much less dealt with in this report. It’s a flaw.

The MAP1 391 doesn’t even have them on it. Number three, a long talk about the vacancy issue . I’m gonna repeat some of the things I said before , so I’m just gonna leave that there right now. I understand that we can’t have a tax, but we do have a number of regulatory tools at our disposal that I think have to be incorporated in here.

Number four, I think that the points about OEV, Midtown, SOHO, there’s some legitimate concerns there, and I’m wondering if we are going to set up an office structure to govern whether they could be at least involved in that without blowing this whole thing up and starting over again. Number five, we got this Wednesday, if a group wanted to submit, they would have had to have had something in Monday morning. I want to give our stakeholders another, I don’t want to put this off for a long time, but I wanted to defer this to the next SPPP cycle , I don’t know how to do that procedurally, but there wasn’t enough time. And I agree with let’s be bold.

But when I see this report and I hear about talk of the riverfront and don’t even see anything about museum London that is constantly having programs down there utilizing that riverfront, it really bothers me. And I guess how much time do I have left? About two minutes and 30 seconds. Okay.

So let me go back to the first one in terms of maybe better integrating a more fulsome plan about indigenous participation in framework. Thank you, Councillor, before I go to the consultants, I just wanna quickly ask you, asked about a referral, you can make a referral. You were asking that question. I just wanna make sure that I answer it for you.

If you wanna preserve time to do so, I’m just making a point for you of that. Okay, I will go to Ms. Barron. Yeah, thank you, Councillor, through the chair.

I can speak to the indigenous engagement that was done both in phase one and phase two of the project, and then I’ll turn it over to city administration to talk about how they’ve continued those conversations. As many of us will know who have done this kind of work and digital engagement takes time and we wanna make sure that that time is allowed for those conversations. So we began Indigenous engagement through the community connectors at the city and contacted a number of nations. Through that, they were invited to several events we did and we had quite a good response on the survey that we sent out.

In phase two of the project, we did engage with some Indigenous members of the chamber and we also did some engagement through our youth and university engagement. Subsequent to that, I know the city team, both Trevor Fowler’s team and Scott and Mike McC auley have done some additional indigenous engagement since then, but the ideas that the conversation absolutely needs to consider. Indigenous throughout, and there are 10 specific actions in there through which indigenous have been identified as being partners in the delivery of the plan. My second point is the failure to utilize, acknowledge key institutions.

I’ll mention the London Public Library Museum London and the Grand Theatre just as three. And if I refer this back, I would want them dealt with. Thank you. I go to Ms.

Rowe. To the chair. I can speak to that. I just want to just flag that Julie Bevin is one of the best museum curators in the country.

You are so lucky to have her. I met with them extensively. already, as you suggest, open out into the river. It’s a beautiful aspect.

I know how that was created. I remember when it was amalgam ated. It’s a tremendous asset. If it’s missing from a map counselor, we’ll fix it.

Nobody is underestimating how critical the museum is to the strategy. Absolutely. And I would say the same about the library. I often talk about that.

You were one of the first to put a library in a downtown core. I know Mike Well, because he sits on the Canadian Urban Library Council, where we did a big report called Overdo, why libraries need different kinds of investment in this country. And you put it on Dundas Street and I am very aware of the challenges they’ve experienced. We had consultation sessions there.

We’ve witnessed it. It’s a perfect microcosm of what Councillor Stevenson is concerned about, about how the actual delivery of services is impeded by competing uses. So Councillor Wilfix, if you don ‘t feel those institutions are appropriately acknowledged, we will fix that. But I can assure you, they are central to the success and it’s one of your great assets.

Councillor Chassa. Yes, I think they need to be fixed and thank Thank you for acknowledging that. I wanna, is there a way to address some of the concerns raised by OEV Midtown? So how, at least in being part of the governance?

And I’m not saying we should start over again, but is there some way to incorporate some of those concerns? Thank you, I’ll go to Mr. McCauley. Thank you and through the chair.

So with, throughout the plan, there’s several actions that are immediately dealing with the downtown. And I think as we see successes through those actions, there’s certainly an element that we can scale them or perhaps they might work in these other neighborhoods. So that’s an opportunity, I think, that we can present to Council once we move through this plan. And then I’ll turn it over to Mr.

Mathers to answer the second part there. Mr. Mathers, go ahead. Through the chair and then absolutely is moving through to the implementation stage.

There’ll be opportunities for Council to provide that direction of where you want us to take this office. Of course, we don’t want this to become so dilute that we get back to the model that we are currently using, but I think there’s definitely some flexibility in how we set it up. And as long as you are very clear and being able to drive those goals and as us as leaders as well, being able to ensure that people know what their mandate, then I think it’ll be successful. Thank you.

  • Thank you. I made comments before about the vacancies. I’ll just go to Ms. Roach.

Before I run out of time, I would like to put a motion to— Councillor, I’ll just go to Ms. Roach for a moment she had her hand up. Pardon? I’m just going to Ms.

Roach to follow up. on old East and the other parts. You know, as the mayor said in the previous discussion, you know, the economy doesn’t actually pay much attention to these arbitrary boundaries. We all know that our quality of life is actually, you know, spreads regardless of any particular definition.

So any kind of, but the dilemma is you want to have a focus back to my earlier comment. You want to focus investment as much as you can. You want problem solving to be as place specific as you can. The benefits will bleed and you want to have a governance structure, I agree with you completely, that make sure that you have input for all the districts.

We’re trying to eliminate this either or us against anybody. We’re all in this together, in this urban fabric. It’s all an interconnection, so I agree with you about how do we find it better integrated. I’d like to make a motion to refer this to the next SPPC for action.

I wanna finish the discussion we’re having today and I want you to take back what you’re hearing and incorporate it into the next iteration, which should be the final iteration. We’re very close, but I do think that there are some points that need to be made. I’ve got my— Councilor, just a moment. So you’re moving our referral.

Let me see if you have a seconder. The referral would be for— Just one moment. Okay, so I have a referral move to on the floor right now if you’re willing to second. And the referral is to come back with more pieces of the report for the next meeting.

That was the way that the counselor articulated it, but now that it’s moved and seconded, I could go to Councilor Trossa to speak to it. Yes, and what I was also going to say, I’ve got my four that I put on the table here. Other counselors might wanna add other ones. And I think that this is urgent that we do this quickly.

I don’t wanna put this off for a long time. We’re thinking about it, but I want more time and I want other stakeholders to be able to come in here and do delegations and had an agenda items for us . So that’s my motion. And I think it’ll improve the report.

Okay, so we’re on the referral now. I have it moved and seconded. I have Deputy Mayor Lewis, do you have your hand up? Yes, I do, Madam Chair.

On the referral, go ahead. Yeah, so I’m gonna be pretty straightforward here. I’m not supporting a referral. For every report that we get, the cycle is the same on every committee.

opportunity for stakeholders is the same on every committee. Yes, this is a big report. There are some pick actions here. Like, I would like our staff to be able to get approved at council next week and start working on.

And although we’re endorsing the plan today, this is a living plan. There are going to be changes made. We’ve heard Ms. Roa already indicate there were discussions with Julie Bevin at Museum London.

And I’m sure there were discussions with a number of other stakeholders and they there has been opportunities for lots of feedback. There been hundreds of people engaged in this process. I’m not willing to delay it. I’m ready to move forward and approve this plan today.

Thank you, I ‘d Councillor Ferreira next. Thanks, Chair, and through you, I also won’t be supporting the referral. I feel like, you know, we need to be decisive. We have some big directions here.

We need to really move things along, and there’s just too much risk at stake for any potential referral. I agree with the deputy mayor like we have a procedural bylaw I agree that you know sometimes we don’t have too much time but that is the procedure by law that is not with respect to the plan itself and it is a living document there are things to come when it comes to the downtown office revitalization authority champions table which I would assume you would see some of these key stakeholders on those are still items that are going to be coming to council those are still items that we We are still going to be developing terms of references for where we can have that input before we even implement those areas, and then once we have those areas established. So I do understand we’re also having a report back in Q4 on this, and like that just speaks to how this is a living, breathing document. This is not something that is set in stone right now.

These are the themes that are coming out, and again, we have a lot on the table here and some very good work and very good items. And I know we had a lot of engagement moving forward, but this is not the final decision. This is just an endorsement for the framework and the themes that we are supporting. So I’m not gonna be supporting the referral either.

So I’ll leave my comments there. Thank you, Councillor McAllister next. Thank you and through you. Yeah, it will likewise not be supporting referral .

I think it’d be easy for me to say, we could talk about the other core areas, But as I said before, this is a downtown plan. I think a lot of work has gone into this and we need to move forward with it. I mean, at some point I would like to see a decoupling of downtown from CORE. I think CORE of its own host of issues.

There’s a number of areas and neighborhoods that can work together on things. But what we’re looking at today is downtown. I think we’ve heard from a lot of stakeholders, even within this report. A lot of people have been consulted.

A lot of people knew this was coming. And I agree. I think there is some quick action. items that we need to move on now.

And I’d like to see this move forward. Thanks. Thank you. I have Councillor Stevenson next.

Thank you. Yeah, I just had a couple of questions about B. It talks about the actions identified in this plan that can be accommodated with the existing approved budgets be implemented . So this is what we’re being asked to support today.

So I have two questions. What’s the amount of the budget that’s available? And Do we know what the actions are that are being that we’re approving here? Okay, Councilor, I just wanna draw you back to the referral that we’re on.

So you’re asking on the main motion now? No, but it’s, this is why I think that we should refer it a month. Because if we, what are we approving here? How much money and on what?

And I think the public would like us to be clear on what it is that we’re approving. Okay, so I’ll take that as tied to the referral and I will go to staff, Mr. McCauley, go ahead. Thank you, and through the chair, the recommendation be actions be identified in this plan that can be accommodated within existing approved budgets be implemented.

So that’s looking at the quick start actions that Council that we have brought in front of Council previously that can be implemented. It’s also looking at actions within the actual downtown plan that we can accommodate within existing budgets. However, the approval today, we are not moving into starting these things right away. we are going to report back Q4, 2026, where we’ll outline all of the short-term actions .

We’ll identify each of those short-term actions as having an existing budget or requiring additional investment, which would then be referred to the multi-year budget process. And we would show all those pieces for council at that time and then identify our 2027 work plan. Councillor Stevenson on the referral. Yeah, so thank you.

So I’m not clear then if we approve some of the quick start stuff already, and you’re gonna bring us the stuff in Q4, 2026. What is it that’s gonna be different if we approve B here today? Mr. McCauley.

Thank you and through the chair. So we would be implementing the quick start actions as we’ve been doing. Any of the other actions that are within the downtown plan staffed undertook with the consultant the costing exercise, we wanted to bring back to you a feasible and implementable downtown plan. There’s several actions that we as staff have identified that we think can be accommodated within existing budgets.

and we want to move forward with those because we’re recommending a full plan to you and we’re recommending all of these actions be implemented. So the asking in front of you today is to approve the plan in theory. However, anything requiring additional investment , anything requiring us changing budgets or moving pieces around, that would have to come back to council for a further approval. The report that we’re gonna bring forward in Q4- 2026, as I previously mentioned, it’s gonna outline all of the short-term actions that are gonna be accomplished or plan to be accomplished through years one through four.

We will identify each of those actions as being one of the actions we hope to implement within an existing budget. One of those or actions that would require additional investment. We will lay out that work plan for counseling committee and allow you to kind of pick and choose if you wanna advance anything at that time. Otherwise that report in the fall sort of serves as your formal approval of giving us the go ahead to kind of start actioning those.

That makes sense. Councillor Stevenson. Thank you. So I guess my point is then this approving this or not approving this state doesn’t change anything then.

You’re not going to be making decisions and I’m implementing things beyond the quick start before Q4, 2026. Am I hearing that correctly? Mr. McCauley.

Thank you and through the chair. Yes, however staff would then take some additional investigative work to start moving into that feasibility point. So the work we’ve done the last couple of years has been to develop this plan and get it ready for implementation. There are conversations that we need to have that we didn’t have because we wanted to get the plan in front of council first, allow council to set the direction.

That’s what the purpose of today’s meeting is, setting this direction for us. Then over the next couple months, we will have further conversations. There’s some fine tuning. There’s some further investigative work we need to do.

There’s also some refinement of costing, responsibilities, leads, that sort of thing. And we would bring that back for your formal endorsement and approval in the fall. Councillor Stephenson on the referral? Yeah, that sounds good.

So this was, it was this section that I felt like it would be good to spend a bit more time on, but I’m hearing that B shouldn’t even be in this motion, but it’s not needed and it could be removed. If that’s true, I may not support the referral then. Mr. May, there’s— Through the chair.

So as long as council understands and committee, your understands that we will still continue the work on the quick start actions that has previously been approved. And as long as Council on Committee understands that we’ll start developing implementation that will be bringing forward later this year, then that item is not absolutely necessary and required. We just always like to have some documentation that Council wants us to continue the work that we’re doing. Noting that when we had the quick start actions approved, We noted that those were items that were, I’m gonna bring us to the point of having a master plan before you.

So this was just an endorsement that you wanted that continued. Councilor Stevenson. Okay, thank you. I have the clarity I need.

At least that there’s not anything that I need, but I’m also hearing that deferring it so that a colleague can do what they want isn’t going to slow anything down. So I’ll just leave it there. Thank you, looking further speakers on the referral. Okay, seeing none online, none in chambers, we will open the vote on the referral.

Closing the vote, motion fails, three to 11. Okay, thank you. Okay, Councillor Trossa, you have a minute and 40 seconds remaining. Okay, well, thank you very much.

Is it still possible to make some of these changes when you bring it to council? You’re shaking your head, that’s not on the record. Could you speak? Sorry, I will go to Ms.

Rowe and again, through the chair. So through the chair, I just wanna very much be very specific about the changes so that we can work with the consultant to make them. So there was flagging some of the mapping items that were missed, so the Museum London, for example, and then ensuring that we’re very explicit about a couple of the key as partners that we engaged with, including Museum London and the library and specifically the downtown, are those the items? And then if that those are the only items, then we can ensure that those are, the edits are made and what’s before you has those items included.

Councillor Trosto. Yeah, I’m sorry. I mentioned for one is putting in a paragraph about exploring regulatory approaches to controlling vacancies without making any commitment to doing anything. Another one was a little bit more detail about the indigenous framework and the others, I think you’ve captured.

Thank you. Thank you partners, something about OO, maybe something, at least explain better why we can’t incorporate OEV and SOO in the governance structure, something. I mean, I’m open to voting for this at council and I’ll vote for it now if I think there’s gonna be a change at council, but I really wanna see a little bit of a movement between now and council. Okay, thank you, I’ll go back to Mr.

Mathers. Through the chair, so there was quite a few pieces there to unpack, what we’ll do is we’ll work with the consultant to see what some of those tweaks, that if it is more informational and that we just haven’t highlighted something that we feel was what work that we had undertaken or framed part of our recommendations, then we can work with the consultant on that. There’s not a lot of time. So what we’ll do is we’ll make those changes, provide a memo on the council agenda that just flags the changes that we’ve made so that it’s everyone’s very clear of what those adjustments were.

They would have to be fairly minor, just so it doesn’t impact the entire document, but we also wanna make sure that it’s accurate and reflects the work that was completed. Councilor, you’ve got 30 seconds. Fair enough, I’ll be looking forward to seeing that. And of course, I’m available to talk to you to reiterate what I think I said.

Okay, thank you. Councilor Stevenson, go ahead. I don’t know how much time I have to. 10 seconds.

B is says B implemented. and if we’re not implementing, I’d like to move an amendment that changes that to what staff actually intend to do. One more. Okay, so in crafting the motion, you’re looking to amend part B.

What is the word in your suggesting? Well, I’m wondering from staff, I’m hearing them say they’re gonna make create a work plan. So if that’s it, then— That’s the point of order and a clarification. Are we able to move an amendment on the second time speaking at committee?

Okay, so thank you for the reminder. So you’re on your second time speaking on that last 10th second moment there. So unfortunately you can’t move an amendment because you’re on your second time speaking. Okay, so we’re back on the main motion.

I’m looking for speakers. Before we do that, I’m gonna need a motion to extend past six o’clock. I have Councillor Hopkins and Councillor Frank, thank you. And we will get that ready and open a vote.

That’s open for you in the system. Closing the vote, motion carries 14 to zero. Okay, thank you. So now I’m looking for speakers.

Councillor Stevenson, we’re still on the same item and you don’t have any remaining time. I just wanna vote on B separately. So I just wanna. Okay, thank you.

Okay, I will go to Councillor Hopkins. Go ahead. Thank you Madam Chair. I’m gonna take an opportunity here to speak since I do think this is an important issue.

I’ve missed an event so I am gonna speak to this and I will be quickly, quick as well. First of all, thanks to staff, thanks to consultant Mary. Thank you so much for being here. It really does matter, hearing your voice.

Thank you for that. I guess I just wanna start off with listening to the conversation here. And I really do appreciate it. I appreciate the delegates that are still here with us at this hour.

Thank you for that as well. I’ve been around a bit on council. And one of the things I have learned and what I ‘ve learned, what is important when we have these plans, Councils come and go, we get new plans, we approve them, next Council comes in, we chip away, the next Council and so it goes. And for me, it’s a reminder of what we’ve done in the past year.

We’ve made investments in our downtown. I think the pandemic changed a number of things. kind of made us go backwards a little bit. And it ‘s also opened my mind up to how we need to work together.

And it may not be perfect. We may not get it all right. But to me, this plan is a direction that we are here undertaking, putting it together , giving it to staff. They’re going to come back in Q4 with these opportunities, but I think we need to sort of come together.

We all get the importance of downtown. We need to celebrate that and come together. My colleague to the left here, I hear his concerns about the safety. I represent a ward , suburbia.

I hear it all the time. I’m not going to come downtown, but I do think we have to change the narrative, the way we talk about our downtown and understand the fear and talk about that and create these safe spaces. I know we can do it as a city. You said it.

We’ve got great places. We’ve got this structure. We can do it. So I am very supportive of receiving this, giving the direction.

I’m not too caught up on B. I know we’ve already had the a quick start conversations throughout the past couple years, putting out money where we need to for the downtown. I am interested in the report coming back. I understand we’re going to take a look at the thirst to the fourth year.

Getting this office going I think is very important and then obviously having to go through the multi year budget. So thank you to everyone. Thank you. Okay, Councilor Ferreira next.

Thank you, Chair. I guess I’ll start with thank you to Marion and Jen for coming here today. Thank you to CUI for all the work that you’ve done and all the engagement that you’ve done. I also wanna say thank you to Mr.

McCauley for also meeting with me every single month and ad hoc calls and meeting requests just for questions and concerns and just moving forward. I appreciate all the work that we’ve done and all the engagement that’s been done. I appreciate hearing that downtown is for everyone. It’s for every Londoner, and that is so true.

Whether you come downtown or not, and I would say come downtown, but it does benefit you in more ways than just the financial. Now, we do have our challenges, downtown, and those challenges have been articulated here today, and I think one that was just brought up recently is another big challenge, and that is, I would say, the perception, the sensationalized perception of what the reality is downtown because there is the reality and then there is the perception and those two are not aligned with each other. And coming downtown, anybody who comes downtown frequently or lives here, they know the truth. Like the challenges are there but the perception is one of those challenges and it’s right at the top with everything else that was spoken about here.

So I just, I want to say that. I also want to say and I’m not going to go through all the good items that were brought up in the plan, but the four big moves, especially with respect to the downtown office, is the one huge component with the other ones, but that is really, and I’ve been saying this, what gives us the legs and the hands to do the things that we do. When we originally brought the motion to council to consider looking into a downtown plan, that motion specifically requested a comprehensive review of the other existing plans because it was known that some of those plans were still relevant, or some of the items in those plans were still relevant, and we specifically asked, look at them, see which ones are not relevant, see which ones are relevant, bring that in, because I don’t like shelved plans. I don’t like having taxpayer funds going into plans and going on a shelf, and that did happen in past councils.

This alignment of this plan pulls those items from those other plans, which means all of a sudden that wasted taxpayer funds is not wasted . we have utilized those plans. And we’ve also aligned them with the times that we are today because the pandemic did change things. And this was also spoken out committee, but it was clear after the pandemic that we have a diversity issue when it came to how we used our downtown.

We have a large office space sector, which was very vulnerable to the changes that were revealed after the pandemic. So now, moving towards that mixed use downtown gives us more resilience for anything that might happen in the future, which is why it’s so vital to move forward to that. The answers are there, we need the political will to move there. This gives us a vision, and this gives us a direction, a strong one, that not only lifts up downtown, but also ensures that it will survive.

Other things that may come up that we don’t see. The more diversity we have in our downtown, The more diverse we use it, the more resilient and the stronger we are. How much time do I have, Chair? About a minute and a half.

I may ask for a time extension of two or three minutes. I’m gonna go. So, I’m not gonna get into some of the big things that I wanna speak about ‘cause I don’t have the time, but I wanna ask this, or I wanna say this. We’ve spoken about financial aspects of downtown.

We’ve spoken about how it broadens the tax base. We’ve spoken about how I think the investment is around 48 million, and we’re going to get double in that. We do see in the plan that property tax revenue generates about 50 million of downtown. We know that that full 50 million is not the cost of the services that the city provides.

A lot of that 50 million does go out to the city and subsidizes the rest. The return on investment, and this is all in the plan, the return on investment does mean that you will get the services citywide. Can I move to a three minute? I won’t go that long with three minutes.

Sure. I’ll look for a m over and a seconder for three minutes for Council Ferrera. Councillor Hopkins, seconder , Councillor Frank, thank you. Just a moment while we open that in the system.

System. Closing the vote. Motion carries 11 to 3. Go ahead, Councillor Ferrera.

Thank you, Committee and Council. So that investment, there is a return on investment. The more we invest in our downtown the more it will broaden our tax base, the more it will help. So that was all spoken to and I’m glad that that was articulated in the report.

Now there’s one thing that I have realized as I’ve had the meetings, as I spoke to stakeholders, counselors, residents, and that’s something that ‘s always between the lines that we don’t necessarily talk about and that is about the identity that downtown brings for London. A stronger downtown will help us understand what it feels and what it means to be a Londoner. It will give us our identity because if we want the pride of the city, we need to have the feeling of what it means to be a Londoner. And in this day and age where people seem to be moving apart and not necessarily seeing each other face to face, the more our identity is at stake and is at risk.

And the thing that I’ve seen is if we want to feel proud of this city, we need to make that pride possible. And if we want people to believe in London’s future, we need to invest in the places to go that shape that future. And where is a place that everyone in London knows to go? It’s downtown.

So if we want to reconnect Londoners to one another, we need to strengthen that place that belongs to all of us, which is why downtown belongs to everybody, and which is why this plan is not only one that will provide the economic benefits, and this plan is not only one that will lift downtown and bring it to where it is, it’s not only one that will make the heartbeat of our city stronger, but it’s also something that will ground us of what it means and what it feels to be a Londoner, and it will ground us in our identity and it will bring us together. So the vision is something that I think this council can do. We see the vision and which is why we need to support this and we need to fulfill it. It’s something that we need to follow through.

Like that is the one big thing that I have seen between all the lines like I’m saying. It’s the one thing that I just wanted to bring out. Thirty seconds. And I’m going to finish it up right now.

But that’s Why this is so important and it’s different because we have the ability to do that. So I appreciate the work I really appreciate the engagement. Sorry for annoying staff and see why sometimes and I appreciate council’s discussion and Thank you, chair. Thank you.

Okay. I have mayor Morgan next one time myself So you don’t cut me off So and I would say thank you to everybody, but thank you I don’t want to waste time going through how much of people because I got a lot to say First off like I think this so this is a strong starting point and for the road map to to downtown And I think it sets it like a really clear direction for revitalization growth creating a more vibrant downtown I’m like I’m gonna talk at a very micro level and then a very macro level. So like I hear what people are saying on some of the day-to-day issues like We know that cleanliness Public safety and perception of public safety Parking, you know, these are all things that people engage with on a daily basis and those are absolutely things that we need to tackle Not only as part of our downtown strategy, but just as a daily provision of service to the city And that’s why we’ve made a number of the investments we’ve made so like I want to recognize that right off the top It may not be explicit in the plan, but I think we all know that those are really critical pieces to any downtown It makes people feel safe comfortable walking visiting working spending time in the core And ultimately, like feet on the street is something that is really critical. And this is the piece where I think we actually have a really interesting convergence of alignment.

So we have people building residential development in our downtown core. We have uptake on office residential conversion with 200,000 square feet being converted into homes. You know, we have, when you talk about some of the big moves, the river district, that’s not our idea. That’s not even the consultant’s idea.

That’s a grassroots idea that came from the development community and business owners getting together saying, we think this should be something that is a district. And if you get behind that, we don’t even have to spend a lot of our own money. We’re leveraging a grassroots movement that says we want a brand and market ourselves differently and we want to attract people to this area to live and work and be entertained and play. That’s a really interesting convergence too.

A successful downtown plan isn’t going to be built by the city making this perfect and we could edit it all day long and make a million adjustments. It’s a convergence of different key partners saying we’re all in on this. So when you have, you know, through the chair, Mike stand up there and say, our guys who spend hundreds of millions of dollars in the downtown are behind this plan and you have the BIA say, we’ve got access to lots of resources, lots of members, and we want, you know, to get behind this plan. And you’ve got other partners who are in the area, other the people who have been consulted with said yes.

But what’s a really interesting, I think, convergence is, think about all the things we’ve asked the federal government to do over the last number of years. We want help with public safety. We want them to change. And they finally passed their bail reform legislation.

And I think today came into effect. We asked them for money on transportation. They’ve invested with us in the downtown core. We asked for support on homelessness, housing, culture, community infrastructure.

These are all things that the feds are involved in. And when I went to Edmonton and pitched with Mayor Sutcliffe to the big city mayors, we want a federal intervention on the downtowns across this country because municipalities can’t do it alone. The issues are too big. They’re too complex.

They require multiple partners to come together. And what happened was every single mayor of every single large city of the 23 largest said , this is a great idea. And we all have the same sort of challenges in our city. and you can’t build ports or transportation infrastructure or pipelines if you ignore the core of our cities , the calling card to the world, the places where when people come to Canada, they say, “I’m going to Canada.” They say, “Where are you going?” You list a city, usually one of those 23 cities, and they usually stay in the downtown.

It’s the economic and social calling card to the world, and that’s why it needs to be a federal nation building project. That’s why we have to align our downtown plan with a bigger, bolder vision for the revital ization of major downtowns because if you go to other cities, the challenges aren’t new. In fact, there are other cities that are way worse than us. Like I’ve traveled to a few of them lately.

I don’t wanna point them out ‘cause my colleagues might get wind of that. But there are other cities that are having more significant challenges, illnesses, mental health and addiction. Yes, we have a big problem. Yes, it’s a big challenge, but we’re trying to build momentum.

And when you talk about block by block street by street, I hear what Councillor McAllister’s saying, and I hear what the other BIA’s are saying. But you— 30 seconds. It is getting better from the west end of downtown head to the east. I had a business owner who’s owned a business in the downtown for 40 years and they said it is a transformational change in the last few years that has been made.

It’s not where it needs to be, but it’s got me, I’m gonna want an extension too. I don’t usually ask for one, can I have two minutes? Thank you, I have Councillor Ferrera and Councillor Hopkins moving a motion for two extra minutes. Hey, thank you, we will open the vote on that.

in the vote, motion carries 13 to 1. Go ahead. So this convergence of local level support, counselors interested, federal government interested, an alignment of like massive amounts of money in all of the areas that we kind of need support on, and massive interest in deploying that money quickly and effectively, an alignment with other key stakeholders across the country to put incredible leverage on others. Like this is like a rare opportunity for us to not just have another plan, but start the steps along the path to a larger, more transformative change and I’ll be clear.

There are a number of lenders who want the downtown to go back to, I like shopping at Kings Mills, it’s a destination play. It’s not going to be the same it was. The plan recognizes that it is the transformation to a neighborhood where people live and work and be entertained and come visit. Like that is the future of downtowns, residential density and all of the other pieces combined together.

And I think we’ve got the catalyst on all of those. We just need to pull it all together and take the initial steps. Now, I will say all of our plans are flexible. We make adjustments to them.

There’s going to be an election. People are going to have lots of ideas. We’re going to probably new counsel will say that here’s some adjustments we don’t want to make based on the feedback we’ve heard. There’s lots of chance for that.

But we got to get started at some point and we got to start to create our signal as a council to all the other players out there, whether they’re the private sector are the public institutions or other levels of government, that we’re going to move now on our downtown. We spent two years working on this thing, and now ‘s the time to switch to implementation and begin the implementation process. Again, there’s some council sign-offs we have to do as was clearly outlined, but this is the point where we can approve the plan, send the signal, and start to move forward, and I’m fully behind this approach. Thank you.

Councilor Franknax. Thank you. I like this report, and I’ll be quick. really, really, really, really, really want to play ground somewhere near Victoria Park.

In Victoria Park is ideal. I understand there’s archaeological stuff, but I just really, really want to play ground so badly. Thank you. Okay, other speakers?

Okay, Mayor Morgan, can you take the chair? Yes, I can. I assume I have you on the speaker’s list. All right, go ahead.

Thank you. Councillor ramen, you go ahead. Thank you. Sorry, I will ask the playground question then, just so I’ll get Councillor Frank an answer, go ahead.

Perfect, you only used four seconds, so I’ll let you go ahead and answer. Yeah, I just wanna say I’m a kindred spirit and it’s something that I look for whenever I go to downtowns and so there are limitations with Victoria Park. There are also, if you read the fine print, other opportunities to use surrounding land particularly, you know, at some of the church lands to get a play space because I totally agree that if we want families downtown, we have to give them places to spare. Councillor Roman.

Thank you, I will be quick as well. This plan is, and I love the conversation we’ve had today, this plan is a refreshing plan. I enjoyed the fact that there’s a lot of energy behind it, there’s a lot of support behind it. I do have some concerns around costing implementation, new councils visions and their strategic plan and their multi-year budget and whether or not that will continue to be a priority and how that will be addressed.

I don’t quite understand and I need more clarification around B because to me B doesn’t speak to the quick start actions. B speaks to the actions identified in the plan that are not the quick start actions. ICC is speaking to the quick start action. So I’m just wondering if we can clarify that a little bit more.

Yes, so I’m gonna go do whoever makes eye contact with me first. Okay, go ahead, Mr. Macauley. Thank you and through the chair.

So I’ll clarify what is being asked and what committee is approving or endorsing today. So the intent of this report is to provide council with the downtown plan as a strategic roadmap and a reference document. While maintaining your ability as a council to consider individual actions and investments through future reports, the strategic plan process and the multi-year budget. So this approach that we took provides council with more flexibility and implementation as actions that can be accommodated in existing budgets will proceed.

We support that, we support everything in the plan. That’s our recommendation to you. If you’re not ready to make that recommendation, then my advice to you would be to defer that or to remove that. But the intent behind that was that we are moving towards implementation now.

We have developed the plan, the plan is in front of you. We now need to drastically switch our, switch gears. And we need to start looking seriously at implementing these actions, the costs that are gonna be associated with that. Whether or not we can do any of the actions within existing budgets.

Some of the actions in the plan are things that service areas can add to their work plan and we’ve had some initial conversations. So, you know, a couple of studies. Oh yeah, we can do that in our 2027 work plan. Those are the things that we intend to proceed with.

However, council, again, if council’s not ready to make that decision yet, you can just defer it all to Q4. We’ll come back with all of the short-term actions at that time. We’ll identify everything that we intend to complete existing budgets, everything that we intend to move forward with that will prior additional investment and we can provide that further clarity in that detail to counsel at that time. That’s a ramen.

Still need more clarification. So part C says the progress update is on the quick start actions. Part B to me is the other parts because we already said yes to the quick start actions. So part B is anything that isn’t a quick start action that can be done in existing budget be implemented.

Is that correct? Thank you and through the chair, that’s correct . And by implementation, we mean that we are going to take this back to the drawing table. We are going to do some more investigative work and we’re gonna bring that back to council at the end of the year for your approval.

Okay, so thank you, I appreciate that. My concern would be pacing, I guess in a sense. There are things that I think are not in quick start, but for instance, maybe in other parts of the document that I think should be paced ahead of other things. So I don’t wanna pay for another plan or another piece of coordinating work.

I wanna pay for things that have action. So how do I signal that within the directions that are here? Thank you and through the chair. So your opportunity to do that is singing Q4.

When we come back, this is not going to be a, we are not going to have a consultant come back within a meditation plan. This is staff’s implementation plan of the consultants plan. So we will be coming back in Q4. is when we will be outlining the intended direction and actions that staff are taking in terms of implementing this plan.

There are conversations, there’s things that we have not yet had the opportunity to have because we didn’t want to put the car before the horse. We wanted to get this plan in front of council, get your approval or have you set that direction so we can come back and say, okay, you gave us direction back in June. We’ve now done some further investigative work here are all the short-term actions that we are moving forward with. If you want to cherry pick and bring some actions forward or expedite that timeline, that meeting will be the time to do that.

Some of the actions, like I said, can be done within existing budgets. We will outline when we intend to do those. Really, there are things that will require additional investment need to be referred to the multi-year budget process and unless Council is willing to provide specific direction on what those actions are, we to be deferring those until that time. That’s where I’m in.

Thank you and through you. So just so I am very, very clear. So the headline is not Council endorsed, endorses London’s downtown plan of $48 million. It’s Council’s endorsing the plan of the downtown plan, but there’s no costing associated yet with the $48 million.

I just want the public to be very clear about that because that to me is a very important distinction right now in the conversation. Go ahead. Thank you and to the presiding officer, correct . You are not approving $48 million today.

This will flow through the budgetary processes that we have right now, so the 2028 multi-year budget. I also want to remind council, this is a 10-year plan. There’s the 2028 multi-year budget, there’s the 2032 multi-year budget, there’s the 2036 multi-year budget. You won’t see everything come forward in 2028, unless of course you’d like that, and you can provide us with that direction and we can do that.

However, there’s a phased implementation approach . There’s a lot more detail we need to provide you in terms of how this is rolling out. And that report in the fall will provide that detail. And again, the control is with council so that you have the ability if you want to exped ite or pull things forward in terms of the phasing or the secret thing that we as staff have recommended to you.

So if there’s items or specific actions, then we would take direction at that time in the fall, expedite those, and then we’d include them in either the 2027 multi-year budget process or in the formal 2028, 2031 multi-year budget process. Councillor Roman. Thank you. I’m also looking for some clarity, and I don’t know where I get this from.

Maybe it’s the mayor, maybe it’s staff, on how this downtown plan and the advocacy for what the big city mayors have put forward, How do they align? How does that get pulled forward if we’re making an advocacy ask on the funding side? Yes, I’ll go, you can go first and then I can jump in. Go ahead.

Well, they totally align. I mean, there are, as I say, there are 60 or 65 downtowns that are in trouble. We have a huge project trying to collate all the data about how important it is to, we’re trying to persuade the Prime Minister that the economy lives in the cities and it lives in places. And as the mayor just suggested that investing in downtowns is a nation building project.

So we’re building all that case and all that data of which you are one of the leading mid-sized cities. So it’s very much tied to how the federal budget will be allocated in 2026, how the bill community’s strong 51 billion will be allocated, and that’s why we’re so supportive of what the FCM and the VCMC initiated. So it goes, it locks up. But also, I look to your treasurer.

She’s gonna be looking for every opportunity she can get for matching funds, for leveraging, for finding ways to get federal investment and provincial investment in to match yours or to exceed yours, likely. Go ahead, ma’am. Thank you. I just wanna ask a follow-up.

So we talked about the fact that a lot of what we ‘re, we’re looking at is it’s tenure plan, it’s a longer term vision, et cetera. Then we talked about some of those short-term, immediate things that are, and Councilor Van Meer, we’re gonna talk about it in the concept of what’s keeping people from downtown. So in the quick start actions, do we feel like we’re addressing some of those things that are more immediate that are in paraphrasing, hearing that, so Van Mirbergen, but keeping people away from downtown. Do we feel like we’re addressing enough of those inner short-term actions, or are those some of those going to be coming forward in part B as we look at the proposed work for 20 27?

Go ahead. Thank you, and through the presiding officer. So on page 457 and 458 and 459 and I think 460 as well of the agenda. So those are all the quick start actions that Council has previously approved.

Some of them have budgetary with them, some of most of them were accomplished within existing budgets. To answer your question about are we making progress in terms of some of the things that are keeping people from coming downtown? As part of that report in the fall, we will include an update on all the quick start actions, but I think everyone at this table can agree that yes, we have seen results with the quick start actions . We have seen additional investment by Council.

We continue to see additional investment by our staff teams and certain new priorities and things emerging as we’ve moved through the development of this plan and what’s coming forward. I think there is still a lot of angst in the community and we recognize that with this plan. But through the quick start actions and through some of the subsequent actions in the downtown plan, working on communication, working on perceptions, working to make downtown a greater place is certainly something that I think everyone at this table is committed to and we continue to do that. Go ahead, yeah, if you want to add something.

Thank you to the chair. Your employer is doing the right thing, and there are many, many employers who can continue to develop down and bring in workers. I only just happened to know, ‘cause I asked you where you worked during the break, and you told me you were at Fanshawe. All sorts of institutional employers can bring workers downtown, including the one we’re standing right in here, the city of London.

So how do we consolidate more and more people into the downtown, going out for lunch, having dinner, staying over, staying later in the day, making it sticky. So there’s lots and lots of ways for people too, not just these quick starts, but all the other ways that you’ve got so many other partners relocating themselves, committing their own workers into downtown. It’s going to take all of us. It’s what the mayor was saying.

It’s kind of an all-in moment. Go ahead, Councilor. Thank you. And on the quick start actions, again, how do they relate to changing the public relations image of the downtown?

Go ahead. Through the through the presiding officer, I think the ones that most closely align and because of what I’ve heard and I’ve heard from through this engagement, through many engagements we’ve done, is that feeling of safety and there is a couple of actions that are specifically related to the line of police service and their work on their open-year sub-use strategy. So our hope is that that work that they’re undertaking is going to be very helpful moving forward as well. There’s also our CIR response that we’ve ramped up as part of the Quick Start actions and Of course, I don’t want to go through every single one, but I think of those are the two that very much focus on that feeling of safety in the community.

So, and we’re hoping that that’s going to just continue to ramp up over the remaining portion of the year . Councillor Rowland. Thank you, just my final comment. So, I see that we are engaging in conversations around do people feel safe?

And I know that London Police had some survey information about that with respect to the open air strategy that came back with some important data. I think it’s the communication out to the public around the perception right now. So what I’d like to see is I would like to see what are we doing on the perception side. I don’t think we’ve identified that enough and how we’re going to address some of those concerns.

And I’m just wondering if there’s an opportunity to move some of that work forward faster. Thank you. I think that’s a comment. Okay, that’s just a comment.

You’re all good. All right, I’ll turn the chair to Councilor Ramen . Thank you, I have the chair looking for other speakers. Okay, seeing no other speakers online or in chambers, we were, sorry, Deputy Mayor Lewis.

Sorry, Councilor, you’re sorry, Madam Chair, I just needed to pull my hand up to let you know, I’m gonna have to leave, I’m at the end of my endurance and the head and the eye are pounding. So thank you for chairing this another long SPPC in my place. Hopefully I don’t have to burden you with the next one, but I lasted as long as I can tonight. No problem, thank you for letting me know.

Wish you well. And we are going to look at opening the vote. I was asked to pull B separately. We still want that pulled separate.

I have Councillor Stevenson, you asked to pull B separate, yep. We will open the vote for B first. Councillor Van Merebergen, closing the vote, motion carries 11 to two. Thank you and on the remaining items.

Closing the vote, motion carries 13 to zero. Thank you, that takes us to item 4.3, which is the request for province-wide deposit return for non-alcoholic beverage containers. Councillor Frank and Councillor McCallister submitted the communication. I will go to Councillor Frank.

Go ahead. Thank you. I won’t speak too much because the argument is essentially outlined in the letter, but Councillor McCallister and I had a discussion with somebody who works at the Canadian Beverage Association and brought this advocacy opportunity to our attention and seemed like a very reasonable and prudent thing to pursue. and requests going towards AMO and OBCM to develop official advocacy positions on behalf of Ontario municipalities in order to have a deposit return system and the various arguments are outlined in the letter.

Thank you. Councillor McAllister, did you wanna add on to that? Okay, Councillor Hopkins, you had a communication on this as well. I’ll go to you.

Thank you. Thank you, Madam Chair. I do have a response on the agenda. I would like to say though, when it comes to advocacy, I am a board member, I don’t need a motion, but I’m more than happy to take the advocacy.

I also want to take an opportunity to share with you what AMO has said and done on the return as well. So there you go. Thank you, okay. Any other speakers on this item?

Councillor Stevenson. Thank you. If Councillor Hopkins doesn’t need a motion to advocate does the mayor, because I just not understanding why we have a motion to advocate to AMO unless it’s required. The mayor isn’t here for me to get a response on the OBCM portion of that if he needs that or not.

So, oh, he is here, hold on. Whether or not you need the requested motion that’s in front of you for OBCM to advocate. So I would say OBCM is slightly different than AMO. OBCM will only advocate on issues where there were, like we’re almost consensus driven, like it’s not bringing a motion.

So I’m happy to raise issues with OBCM, but they’ll only take on advocacy positions that have very wide consensus. It’s not like we try to stay pretty focused. So my preference would be to take very focused things there. And AMO use AMO for the wider advocacy.

Thank you, Councilor Hopkins, you had your hand up. Yeah, you know, you can bring forward the emotion for me to advocate, that is fine too. It’s a great opportunity for me to share what Emil is also doing on these areas. So I welcome, you know, the motion and happy to respond to it as well.

Thank you, go back to Councillor Stevenson. Okay, so we have a motion moved and seconded, looking for any other speakers. Seeing none, we’ll call the question. Oh, Councillor Vermeer, but go ahead, please.

Thank you, Chair. I’ll probably support this. I do have questions though, and I’m sure the province will do its own analysis. We have a system in place, a producer responsibility system that hasn’t been fully fles hed out yet.

I think it’s still kind of morphing, but my point is if there’s less material going into the blue box, does that change the revenue slash funding slash cost to taxpayers? Would staff any concept on that? Thank you. I’m not sure if we have everyone in the room to answer that question.

I will look to Ms. Stader’s there and see if she has anyone to answer that. Thank you. Through you Madam Chair and the laughter is probably well warranted.

We believe that the movement to to produce her pay takes it outside of us in our reality. So that means that it shouldn’t have an impact to the Councillor’s question, but we can certainly clarify that if there’s anything further that Ms. Chair wants to share when she comes back. And I don’t know who Mr.

McCray in the room behind us. He is. Hi, Mr. McCray.

Anything that you can add to that? Yeah, if you have anything to add, go ahead. Yeah, my additions are limited. I mean, we can take it back.

I could check with our subject matter experts on how this may influence potential business cases, but you’re right, it’s early days process. Thank you. I’ll go to a Councillor Van Mirbergen. Well, for example, a lot of the beverage cans aluminum and aluminum is worth money.

And if that aluminum is not is available in less quantity through the blue box system, it’s going to change the economics. So I’m sure the province will do their due diligence. I think on one level, this makes some sense, but I think we need to be aware that there’s a bigger, more complicated picture at work here. Thank you.

Thank you. Council Frank, you had your hand up. I was just going to reference, I did get the fourth paragraph in regards to the financial benefits was from Ms. Chambers in regards to now Londoners are paying for blue bin pickup at community centers, fire halls because those are no longer included in the blue bin recycling that the province has moved.

So there actually would be some tax payer savings in this model. Okay, thank you. Any other speakers? Okay, seeing none, we will open the vote on this item.

Closing the vote, motion carries, 10 to one. Thank you, we’ll return to our consent agenda item that is remaining which is 2.1, the diversity, race, relations, and inclusivity award policy amendments. I will look for, to Councillor Cudi, who’s moving referral. Thank you, Chair, through you.

Deputy Mayor Lewis has asked me to present this in his absence, so with your indulgence, I’ll read this. Thank you, yes, go ahead. Thank you. That the staff report dated June 16th, 2026 with respect to amendments to the diversity, race relations and inclusivity awards policy.

Be referred to the civic administration for consultation with the London Chamber of Commerce regarding the potential to recognize diversity, race relations and inclus ivity achievements through the Chamber’s business awards, achievement awards program or a similar existing recognition program. And I think you are my seconder, Chair. Thank you, yes. Okay, thank you.

Councillor Cuddy, would you like to speak to it any further? No, thank you, Chair. I think that sums it up, thank you. Okay, thank you.

Looking for speakers on this item, if I could pass the chair to Councillor Hopkins, if you don’t mind. Thank you. I have to. So I can speak to it, thank you.

Thank you, much, appreciate it. So, thank you to Councillor Cuddy for moving the referral on this item. When I was reading through the policy and with the date change that’s proposed and some of the criteria that existed from the previous policy, but as we move this award forward, I noticed a lot of similarities between the Business Achievement Awards, and I thought it would be a great opportunity for us to have a conversation or refer this item, ask the chamber if they would consider adding this to their prestigious Business Achievement Awards as a lot of the categories refer to large and medium-sized businesses, as well as nonprofit organizations and organizations and groups that support those under 26 years old that are doing this type of work. So I think there is real potential for alignment, but also to put this on a larger stage.

So this would just allow for that conversation to happen before we made a decision. Are there any other speakers? I see none. I will return the chair back to you.

Thank you, I have the chair looking for final speakers. Seeing none, we’ll open the motion on the referral. I vote yes. Closing the vote, motion carries, 11-0.

Thank you, that deals with all of our additional items. Were there any other items from members? Seeing none, I will go to item seven, adjournment . We have Councillor Van Mirbergen with a motion to adjourn.

Councillor McAllister with a second, and by hand, all in favor. Motion carries. Thanks everyone, have a great,