- 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,