Good afternoon everyone. Thank you for joining us today for the seventh meeting of SPC strategic priorities and policy committee. We'll begin with a land acknowledgement. The city of London is situated on the traditional lands of the Inishnabek, Hodnosoni, Lenopek, and Adawandrin. 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, Matei, 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. The City of London is committed to making every effort to provide alternate formats and communication support for meetings upon request. To make a request specific to this meeting, please contact spcllondon.ca or 519-661-2489 extension2425. And with that, we'll start in on our agenda looking at item number one, disclosures of accuniary interest. Seeing none, uh, and just to make, uh, everyone on committee aware, we have two members joining online. Mayor Morgan is joining us, as well as councelor Pelosa. Thank you both. Uh, and in chambers, we have all members of committee, uh, except for Deputy Mayor Lewis and Councelor Vanir Bergen. Okay, we're moving on to item number two, which is consent. Uh, I've been asked to pull items 2.4, 2.5, and 2.6. Uh unless anyone else is looking to pull 2.1 through 2.3, I will look for somebody to move 2.1 2.3. Thank you, councelor Hill. You're looking for a seconder. Thank you, councelor Cuddy. Uh and with that, we will look for discussion on items 2.1 through 2.3. I'll start with councelor Hopkins. Go ahead. >> Yeah, thank you uh Madame Chair and through you. I want to thank staff. I have a a comment and a quick question on 2.1 which is the corporate asset management plan progress review. Really appreciated the report. Um very supportive of strengthening our integration with the multi-year budget as well as our corporate asset management coming together. Uh a question for you is uh Madame Chair to staff is when can we expect uh more of a comprehensive uh update? I know this is a partial update, but how do we get the big picture and when can council expect it? >> Thank you. I'll go to Miss Barbone. >> Uh thank you through the chair. The uh capital asset management team is actually working on that right now and uh I'll defer it to Mr. Senise who can provide you some updates on the status of uh their work to date but it will be coming forward in 2027. >> Thank you. I'll go to Mr. Sice >> uh through the chair. Yeah. What we're doing is we're we're currently in development working with all of our service partners. Um we're making really good progress on doing the next round of comprehensive asset management plan. We're targeting bringing forward a report to council in the spring of 2027. And at that point in time, we'll be seeking approval of all of our corporate asset management plans for not only the direct city owned assets, but also the agencies, boards, and commissions. Thank you very much, >> councelor. >> Yeah, thank you. I think um that's when every the big picture comes together. So, looking forward uh to the next council receiving uh the comprehensive plan. I'd like to make a a quick comment uh through staff. I know conservation authorities uh we took a look at our ABCs here in the report. conservation authorities are going to be going through a a major review and expectations to have uh things up and going in February 2027. So, uh just would like to encourage staff and and um um conservation staff working together having a better understanding uh how that all works and how it it it may shift or not. But lots of changes going forward in uh some of our our boards. So, thank you very much for the report. >> Thank you. I'm looking for other speakers on items 2.1 through 2.3. Council Prible, go ahead. >> Thank you, sir. The chair to the staff. Last year in this report, we had one more call, a multi-year budget impact on GAP, and it was dropped for this year. I was just wondering what was the reasoning for not including it this year. Thank you. >> I will go to Mr. Senise. Go ahead. Yeah, thank you very much to the chair. Um what's happened here is that when we look at um the progression of the asset management plan, we had originally reported back in the 2023 direct city owned assets an infrastructure gap of $946.1 million. Now what we're doing is we're just simply doing annual progress update reports which are just simply reporting primarily on the changes to the budget. Um, as you will have noticed, there was a significant reduction to the infrastructure gap in the 2025 annual progress report. Um, as a result of council's decisions to invest more into life circle renewal capital assets. Um, for the 2026 annual progress update report that's in front of you today, there was a very minimal change to the infrastructure gap as a result of again just minor changes to the budget. As a result, we didn't feel it was necessary to include that additional information. Thank you. >> Council approval. >> Okay. Thank you for that. And when I went through the values both replacement and camp plans and current loss gap I did find them they're almost identical actually. Uh but am I assuming then accurately if I were to add this multi-year budget impact gap that it matches last year's because if it matches last years then there's no issue. It's the same thing but if it would change in the end some of them potentially then it would make a difference. So I just want to assure that it's still the same. Thank you >> Mr. Sneeze. Uh yeah through the chair. So what what we would find is very immaterial changes amongst the different service components. Again we're looking at the most count most recent council approved budget update which includes the multi-year budget. So again when you're looking at the the material changes that occurred those occurred during the 2024 multi-teryear budget where there was larger swings in terms of investment choices with regards to life cycle renewal capital budgets. Again when we're looking at the changes from the 2025 progress report to the 2026 very small changes generally occurred amongst the service areas. Again, that's why you're finding a very minimal reduction or minimal change to the gap. Thank you, >> council privile. >> Okay, thank you for the explanation. Just one correct thing. So, nonidentified, decreased, nonidentified, increased, they would be identical to last year. Is that correct, >> Mr. Senise? Um I uh through the chair um yeah like I I wouldn't use the word identical again there's very minor changes but the what's the been the largest change on the gap is that the LMCH London community 6 housing uh um asset management plan was approved by council in 2025 that was previously not in the 2025 annual progress report for the CAM plan update. So, what's happened there is that gap has been um has changed and that's been added to the progress review. So, if you're looking exactly at the 2025 annual progress review for for CAM versus the 2026, the LMCH has been an added component on the progress review for this cycle that was not previously in last cycle as a result of council approving um the LMCH um asset management plan. >> Thank you for the answers. No more questions. >> Thank you. Uh, welcome Deputy Mayor Lewis and Councelor Van Mirburgen. Uh, we are on items 2.1 through 2.3. Just looking for any other speakers. Seeing none online and seeing none in chambers, we'll open the vote. Closing the vote. Motion carries 15 to zero. And for those in the gallery and those with delegations, we will move those items to point4 2.6 to uh item five on the agenda, which is our additional business. Uh with that, we'll move to item three, which is our scheduled items. Our first item is 3.1 uh which is the London Hydro Inc. 2025 annual general meeting of the shareholder annual resolutions. We have a presentation first from London Hydro. With the presentations that we have today do we do not require a motion to hear those presentations. Um and I know that everyone is tight to time on five minutes. So thank you for that. And with that uh we will get set for our presentation from London Hydro. Hello, my name is Tanya Goodine and I'm the chair of London Hydro's board of directors. Very proud to share details of our 2025 year. What you will hear today reflects an organization continuing to demonstrate strong governance, thoughtful planning, and a disciplined approach to operational and financial performance. Throughout 2025, London Hydro remained focused on delivering value for customers and our shareholder while continuing to prepare for the opera opportunities and challenges ahead. The board has continued to work alongside leadership to ensure decisions are grounded in long-term thinking, responsible investment, and a clear commitment to reliability, safety, and sustainability. As our city grows and the energy landscape continues to evolve, the importance of strategic planning, infrastructure readiness, and organizational resilience has never been greater. Over the past year, we saw continued progress in areas including grid modernization, operational improvement, c customer support initiatives, and organizational transformation. These efforts reflect not only strong execution, but rigorous planning, collaboration, and the accountability required to position London Hydro for continued success in the long term. As a board, we're proud to support an organization focused on today's performance and building the foundation for the future. That includes investing in infrastructure, strengthening internal processes, supporting innovation, and ensuring London Hydro remains well positioned to meet the needs of our customers and our community. On behalf of the board of directors, I would like to thank the entire team at London Hydro, many of them here today, for their dedication and continued commitment to excellence. I would also like to thank you, our shareholder, our customers, partners, and our community stakeholders for ongoing trust and support. Together, we're continuing to build a strong, resilient, forward-looking organization well positioned for the future. Thank you. >> Thank you, Miss Kdine. We'll hear from Mr. Sams Sadini. Go ahead. >> Hello. Uh, good afternoon. I am not going to go through this whole uh, presentation. So, the one slide I will bring up is the reason we are actually here today, which is the business of the AGM. There's essentially three things that we're here to get uh, either approval or receive from council. uh th those are on the approval of the uh financial statements, the election affirmation of continuing terms of directors and then the appointment of the auditors. Uh in that order, I would say the financial statements, we did review the financial statements with city administration. Uh they are aware of those financial statements, they have been approved by our auditors and our board of directors. The 2025 year actually looks very similar to the 2024 year. Uh $1.1 million in in net income. uh $5.5 million dividend paid or will be paid to the city of London. Uh a stable rating continues and 60 uh2.8 million spent in capital over the last year for the uh election and affirmation of the board of directors. The slate hasn't changed. So the current board of directors that is sitting for London Hydro is one that is up for recommendation in this year. So there was no um members that stepped down or or terms that uh came to a final conclusion. And this would be a reappoint of the current directors that are at London Hydro today. And finally, the appointment of the auditors. We use KPMG as our auditors. They are also the city's auditors and actually audit most of the uh utilities in in the province of Ontario. So they are well regarded in this right and we put them forward as well for reappoint. Um we did provide a deck. I think the deck is great for uh folks to be able to go through see all the great work that was done at London Hydro this year. But being mindful of your time, I will I will end my presentation there and take any questions you may have. >> Thank you. Uh just one moment. I will just double check with the clerk uh on how we proceed if she'd like a motion on the floor first before we go to questions. >> Okay. So, we have a motion uh that's displayed and I'm just looking for a mover in seconder for a motion for London Hydro. Thank you. I have councelor Van Mirbury and councelor Frank. Uh with that, we will look to uh questions and comments from committee and we'll start with councelor Layman. >> Um uh thank you for attending today and thank you folks for attending as well. Um just quick comment on the financials uh much to the chair and to the board. Thank you for the dividend of five and a half million. Um I just encourage you and the board uh to look at I I was this last term I pushed for an increase and and we were able to go get there uh as uh financial uh results improve. Uh I encouraged the board to consider you know putting some of that back to the shareholder. So that's that's my comments just on on the financial financial side. Mr. sense that they need this gives me an opportunity to kind of look back at London's hydro performance in in the um in the recent months and you know going back to the extreme weather days that we saw Boxing Day uh with a storm there and then just recently with the tornado and the and the extreme weather that we saw there. I just have to commend you and your team for the response um for getting us uh getting the lights on. Um I don't know how you do it. um in a reasonable manner. And I I I also want to touch on the communication side cuz I witnessed that personally. Uh it was good to know when my lights would come on, but it was also good to know um for those that didn't get the lights on, when they could expect it on. And for my family, which I have um you know, sons and daughters around the city, it kind of allowed us to do some planning quite frankly where we were able to get family members over to maybe the family that had the power and then also plan at what time we would get back or they would get back uh when the power came back on. And I got to tell you, those estimates were were unbelievably close. So, uh terrific work there. It's one thing to keep the power on during peak demands in the summertime with the hydro with the air conditioners humming and everything like that. It's another thing to do it with the extreme weather events. So, I'm just curious, you know, h how do you do it? Like, how do you do damage assessment? How do you prioritize what gets who get what neighborhoods could go first? Um, and how do you get the crews out? So, if you can just kind of walk me through a bit of that, like obviously not in detail, but just an overview. >> Uh, thank you. And if you can put that in a non-engineering speak, it'd be great. >> I'll I'll I'll try my best on that. Um, first, uh, the first thing I'd want to do is is thank our employees. So, uh, although I I sit here and give the presentations and and sometimes get the kudos from from counselors, it wasn't me out there restoring the power. And, you know, we have a huge team that responds to these types of outages. So, London Hydro has around 320 employees uh that day of of the last tornado downburst, whatever you want to call it. Uh we had 88 employees respond within, you know, the next few hours. Uh crews working overnight. Uh we had other crews come in, contractors from Integris, uh people like Davy Tree answer our calls as well. Mutual aid is is a big part of what we do in this industry uh with our neighbors to ensure that we can keep the power on. You know, essentially in an incident like that, there's storms that we know about and can prepare for and then there's storms that sort of come out of the blue. I would say generally what my experience has been, those storms that we hear nothing about seem to be the worst ones. So, people aren't prepared. They don't know what's going to happen. And the good news, I think, for Londoners is that London Hydro is always ready to respond to these types of outages. So, the down burst, I think, happened between 5 and 6:00. As you might imagine, our our teams are already home at that point. people got the call at home, they decided to come back in. I think you stepped out sort of the major processes that we do in a storm that way, which is first call out, get people in. Uh our engineering teams are are out in the field helping with our line staff to assess damaged areas. Uh how we prioritize, we usually go with the most customers first. If there's large feeders we can pick up, that's what we try to pick up first. And I understand from our customers that there can be some frustration about being out for 12 hours or 15 hours. uh but know that we're having to prioritize these types of outages and that will happen with the number of customers first. We will also look at critical infrastructure. If there was a hospital or some other critical infrastructure piece on a feeder, we may prioritize that to ensure that people are safe uh in that environment. So the general process is about people coming in, assessing the damage location, calling in other crews externally and starting the work and trying to pick up as much of that work as we can. Uh over the next hours, we have to um split up our crews sometimes as well because as you can imagine, crews will time out after they've worked 16 hours. We can't ask them to safely work any longer. So they go home, the next crew comes in and works their 16-our shift. Uh so it really is a coordinated effort. Uh appreciate the city's uh help on this as well. We're also coordinating with uh um people who are doing tree trimming and other work in those areas with police to in streets where power lines are down. It it is really a team London approach to getting the power back on and I could say I was nothing but impressed and and happy with our crews also with the city of London's response and of course our our customers who are having to live through it. >> Thank you. I'll go back to councelor Layman. Thank you. And through your chair, one final question. You know, as we are aware that extreme weather events are going to increase in the years to come, what is Lynon Hydro learning from these experiences when you can uh even get better, improve on on your uh service? >> Thank you, Mr. Samson. Go ahead. >> Yeah, I think we're learning a few lessons. One is, you know, our capital investment plan matters. Uh the stronger and the more resilient your capital assets are out in the field, the more that they will be able to resist this extreme weather. We're also designing for more extreme weather in our minds. So where we, you know, build infrastructure underground, for example, uh we might use a larger pole type. We might put poles closer together, uh to handle the the extreme weather events. We've also got some really interesting technology we're trying out this year. Uh there's some work that we're doing, some overhead satellite imagery to look at trees that we think are what we call sort of in the fall zone. Uh so if there is a storm event and we're worried about branches, large trees that may be sick in that area, we can actually be more proactive and start to trim those areas before the storm happens to hopefully cause less outages in the future. Uh I think our teams are unfortunately getting the training on these things. I mean, in the year and a half that I've been here, uh I think we had something that almost appeared to be a tornado on the west end uh of the city about a year or a year and a half ago. Uh we had the ice storm that happened over Boxing Day. We've had, you know, now the tornado or down burst happened on the east and and south ends of the city. So the good bad news about that is our emergency response is being flexed. Uh we know what works. We know uh what neighbors we can call on. And so that sort of time in the exercise is also helpful to us to to get better at it. And that's where our communication came in as well. I think as an organization, we knew we were a little bit lacking in how we communicated with our customers. People want to know that you're aware of their outage. People want to know that there's crews being sent to their area, and people want to know when they can expect their power to come back on. So, we're really trying to put our full press on getting that information as as out as accurately as we can and as timely as we can. >> Councelor Layman, >> just finally, uh, thank you for that. Um, you know, hydro is a critical utility for the livability of London and also for the economic success of London and with that comes, you know, to have a reliable power source, I think it's crucial for both those areas and I I think you're delivering on those fronts. So, uh, thank you very much. >> Thank you. Uh, on my speakers list, I have councelor Purple next, followed by Mayor Morgan and then councelor Cuy. >> Thank you, sir chair. Yes, everyone was thank you but I also I'm going to include our staff because the coordination cooperation between the organizations and team was really exemplary. So it was uh greatly appreciated by half a million of Londoners. Thank you. Last year you presented to us 2030 vision with five pillars five uh five strategic focuses. Can you update us in terms of kind of the opportunities, challenges and potentially the biggest game changers? I know it's at the beginning of the 5-year vision, but can you just pinpoint a few of them, summarize? Thank you, >> Mr. Samsini. >> Yeah. So, um, you know, our five pillars, I can sort of go through them individually. You know, one of them is building for the future. I think as we look at our distribution system plan that we're putting forward, uh, we're working through that. We're looking to get that finalized through our board over the the next months. Um, really investing in the city is a big part of what we're going to be doing. So the line that I keep using is we plan to spend as much in the next decade as we have in the last century here in the city of London. The amount of growth happening on the electricity profile is nothing that I've seen before. And now having a utility that's ready to be able to speak to increased capacity uh reliability concerns uh changing weather patterns is all within sort of our distribution system plan and the asset management plan that we're putting forward. So I would say that's going to be a critical element as we look at the next you know number of years. Uh our second pillar is about creating and communicating value. Um you know as as we heard from councelor layman the the dividend is important to the city of London. So if we look from 20 or early 2000s 20201 the London Hydro has paid out $110 million in dividend to the city of London over that time. We've also had accretion value within the organization over that time as well. Uh so having an asset that's that's viable uh for the city is important is viable for our customers is important and can make the investments that we need to make. I think the other thing that we're trying to do here in and doing some of these things or you might see us out more in the community is being able to communicate that value and you there really is efforts that the utility allows uh things like economic development that that by owning your own utility here in the city of London, you have an economic advantage of how we get out there and try to attract business here and build the infrastructure that they need to connect. Um operational excellence is is our third pillar and that's about just getting better at what we do. How do we how do we have improved reliability? How do we increase communications? How do we ensure the power stays on and the bills go out? Uh so that's something fundamental in our business every day that we're looking at ways of of upgrading our internal systems. Uh providing things like estimated time of restoration when outages happen. Uh being able to answer the phone within, you know, 30 seconds of when a customer calls. Really having a high standard that other businesses would wish that they could achieve. levels like that. I don't know for the rest of you, but if you've ever tried to call things like the CRA, you're probably on hold a lot longer than 30 seconds to to try to get try to get through there. Um, we also have our customers in community as our fourth pillar. Uh, as you can see, we're we're out in the community a lot more than we've ever been. uh supporting initiatives, being involved in things like sports and the arts, uh being involved in in uh the food bank, uh trying to get our message of affordability out to customers, let people know the plans that we have available, things like uh the Ontario electricity support program, like the uh LEAP program for emergency assistance uh for customers who are under the threat of disconnection. So, we're out there a lot more, being a lot more visible in this community, knowing that people if they're having an issue with their hydro uh with their hydro paying their bills to please reach out. And finally, our our last pillar is is all about our internal employees. Um, you know, we had uh like many businesses after CO, we had an extremely high turnover rate uh within London Hydro, which you wouldn't expect. A lot of people think, oh, you go work for a good company, you know, the great benefits, good working conditions, people tend to stay. We actually saw a 10% turnover rate for four years straight within this company from sort of you know 2020 2021 to 2024 2025. So if you look at that 50% of the knowledge of your of your organization is out and trying to get new people in trained up to be safe in the operations and carry out is very critical to us. So being named as a top employer for the second year in a row I think was was a great achievement for us at London Hydro. a way to attract new talent into the city and a way to retain them as well. So I think as I sorry I know it's a long answer we've tried to be short today but as I look at all the pillars that we sort of have in our strategic plan we are doing things in every one of those areas to try to move London Hydro forward. >> Councelor >> no thank you for that and based on your responses you truly live and breathe your culture your internal culture so thank you for that. Uh last question in terms of the financials that net earnings including swap impact I know they were slightly down compared to budget slightly more down compared to 24. Are we looking for 26 in terms of the budget and forecast >> Mr. Samini? >> So um yeah so last year we were I think 97% of budget. Um most of the sort of budget miss all happened in December. There was a couple of bankruptcies of of uh customers that that weren't expected uh last year. And then of course we had the ice storm come through as well that sort of knocked down what our projected net income would have been for the end of the year. Uh this year uh so far I think the last financials that I've seen are updates for the end of uh April. Uh we look to be ahead of budget at this point uh in the year. Again it's still early and and there's always some unknowns like tornadoes that that you can never really account for, but at this point we're looking strong for our budget year. Uh the one thing that I would mention to council, so you see sort of a reduction in net income for about a million dollars. That's ex, you know, that's expected in a regulated utility as we go through our cost of service applications. We get our rate set and then for the next four years, we only get actually less than inflation over that 4-year time. So you can expect an erosion on your net income over that time frame till we reset our rates again. Uh this will be our last time that we ever go in for a standard cost of service rate filing. the next time we go through we'll go this sorry it's technical but it's something called the custom um IR application where we can actually get increases in our second third fourth and fifth year to bring our capital in and the increased costs in on a more flat level. So I would expect that you you should note this in in the next four to 5 years that you might see a deterioration of net income over the 4-year period with the hope of going into cost of service the next time and being much more flat as we go through. Council Purple. >> Thank you for answering all my questions and thank you and your entire team for everything you do for our community on everyday basis. >> Thank you. I will go to Mayor Morgan next then followed by Councelor Cuddi and Councelor Van Miren. >> Uh yes, thank you. And so through the chair first um let me um echo the thanks of my colleagues to uh uh the CEO and and his entire team. Um, I had on behalf of council the opportunity to address the employees of London Hydro uh a couple of months back about the work that they did through the winter and the ice storms. Obviously with the recent adverse weather um we know that work continues you know each and each and every day and we thank uh all the frontline workers who get called in to do that work um you know when uh when we need it. And so thank you again for all that you do. Obviously I'm supportive of the uh recommendations that are before us today from a shareholders perspective. Uh I do have one question. Um and I I also want to thank London Hydro for participating with the city of London uh at the last AMO conference in our delegations. Uh it's my view that economic development is incredibly important to the city and that can't move forward without you know adequate, safe and reliable supply of power in the city. uh it's something that we're working on in our uh economic development uh strategy that will come forward in June and uh uh and we anticipate that there'll be linkages with hydro there. you know to uh to the CEO through the chair uh I would like to know your viewpoints on the role that London Hydro can play in supporting the city's economic development objectives uh in the future because we are at the we have the advantage of having utility that we are the sole shareholder of uh others do not necessarily have that and and I wonder how your thoughts on how we can leverage that as we move towards the release of our economic development strategy in the forthcoming weeks. >> Thank you. I'll go to Mr. Sams Sadini. >> Thank you. So, I I'm a firm believer in in a team London approach. I think our greatest asset is the great teams that we have across the city of London from the city to economic development uh to your hydro. Uh you know, there's just so many people that are all pulling for the same thing, which is the economic prosperity of this region. How do we create jobs? How do we create good paying jobs? How do we create longterm jobs that people can really establish a family and want to live here for the long haul? So to me it's about that working together that one team London approach. Electricity has become a very major part of trying to attract large sort of uh industrial customers today. The loads that we're seeing of these customers are are magnitudes higher than they would have been 5 10 or 20 years ago. So you know before where we would have expected a large we actually have a large uh use customer category that category is set at 5 megawatt many customers that we get in here today may exceed 20 megawatts or higher. So the access to capacity within a region is fundamental to being able to attract these customers. I also think the other thing that's that's key and we all need to do is not be a barrier to business. So, you know, we we sometimes put these companies through some hoops uh to try to get set up and established here. And I want to make our organization the easiest organization it is to work for. So, if we're competing against KW region, the Toronto region, anywhere, Ottawa, uh to land a customer or another country, I want them to come here and know that we're here for their benefit. and will take those those roadblocks out of the way and actually be an organization that gets them to their outcome which is to set up business here and hire people. So for us, we're taking that, you know, earn every customer approach. We're we're fighting for those customers and I think doing that in concert with the great organizations across this city is what's going to make us successful and I've and I've already seen examples of that. >> Thank you, Mayor Morgan. >> Yeah, just a just a brief comment then. I I really appreciate your response on the attraction of large industrial um our consumers. Uh I I know that we've worked together on a number of um meetings that uh you know senior executives from different uh large companies looking to purchase land in uh London uh in concert with the work that LEDC is doing. Uh I know that your team has been incredibly supportive to those efforts and and I just wanted to echo that I appreciate those and you know every time we get to make a large uh industrial announcement where we know that we have a significant consumer of power uh I would say part of that uh landing that is not just attributable to the work that the LEDC does and our staff at city hall but also to the support that London Hydro gives and ensuring that they know that there's reliable power source uh and that you have and your team have always found a way to say yes to their demands and I've seen it firsthand sitting in my office. Uh so I greatly appreciate the work that you guys are doing. So thank you. >> Thank you. I'll go to councelor Kui next. >> Thank you chair and thyu and um Mr. Simsini and Miss Gdine uh and to the board of directors. Thank you for coming today and thank you for making the presentation. You know, I I want to reference and I I I don't want to sound like everybody else, but I I do want to reference um not the dividend, which we certainly appreciate, but the fact that you were able to to, you know, duplicate another 11 million and change, 11.5 million in income, which is really incredible because you're growing. So there there's there's there's pressure and stress on your resources, on your financial resources, but you continue to grow the income, which is really cool. And that doesn't always happen. And and just for everyone's reference, this isn't a gross. This is a net. So this is what's what's very very impressive by what you've done by what your board has has allowed you to do. So thank you for the work you've done. Um I am a little surprised by your turnover because in times of of economic uncertainty, people don't leave their jobs. And you know, I'm not quite sure where that fits, but and I know you're a great company. I' I've spoken to your employees. I've been to some of these events with you and and they they love their work and they love what they do. So that's a little little challenging I'm sure. Um but what I wanted to ask you, Mr. Simpsonsini, was you know I've been really impressed and I appreciate um seeing London Hydro become more involved in the community whether it's through you know supporting the arts and culture or local sporting events um and all these initiatives you do um for nonprofit organizations. So, if you could, and I know you referenced a little bit earlier, but if you could please just share with with uh with us London Hydros, um how how you see these investments, these kind of investments, um being an import part important part of your strategy, your long-term strategy, and um how you balance the contributions uh of building these these stronger connections within residential communities and the city as a whole. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Samson. >> So, um, and I don't want you to leave with that we have a 10% turnover rate problem. Uh, the last two years, I think that that rate has dropped to, uh, under 5%. So, things have sort of, uh, uh, stabilized on on that front and and the team is growing going forward. I think a lot of those turnovers were to do with the time that we had after co people were a lot more um, I don't know able to move, wanting to move, wanting to try new things, evaluating new things in their life, retiring, whatever that that was for them. So, uh, I think we're coming out of that issue, which is good. Uh, and thank you for the question on on sort of our our community involvement. You know, the one thing that a lot of people don't realize is is London Hydro is entering its 116th year as a business. Um, I appreciate the city of London is is celebrating their bsentennial, which is great, 200 years. We're a little bit younger than you guys on that side of things. Uh, but but it's an important element to know that we we are part of this community. And I think like any good neighbors, we need to be involved in different areas. And some of that we do uh to support uh so for example the food bank. We know affordability is an issue how how we get involved in the food bank. Uh it also helps us get our messaging out for things like the OESP program and LEAP program. And I would just like to say here if anyone's listening to this and you're having problems paying your hydro bill, please contact us. There are programs available that may help. Uh, I think over 15,000 Londoners took took uh um some funding from the OESP program, which is provinially funded, which means, you know, almost $9 million came in from provincial funding to help pay hydro bills here in the city of London. So, again, if you're if you're struggling, uh if you have a child in school, sometimes university and and um college students as well will qualify for these programs. I encourage you to reach out to us to ensure that that we can get that money to you. Um, we also look at other things as you've mentioned, the arts, uh, sports. You know, to us it's important to find our customers where they are and we know that all Londoners don't have the same sort of, um, things that they look to do, uh, in their day. So, where we can support in other areas and just to let people know that we are here, we are here to help. Uh, we we are a trusted community partner is important for us and and that's how we get out. It's been interesting activities we've we've done as well. Some things have been around sustainability. Uh where there was a movie night, I think that happens around the city. Those were being used with gas generators. They were noisy. They were polluting. So we we uh brought in electrical generators to help sort of power those events. So we see our ourselves as as a community partner, a neighbor. Uh so we like to help where we can and and also let Londoners know that we're here to help uh if they need it. Councelor Ketty. >> Well, thank you and just in closing, you I I consider hydro to be gold standard and you've done a great job of keeping that up, Mr. Simsini. Thank you. >> Thank you. I have uh Councelor Van Mirburg and followed by Councelor Traso. >> Thank you, Chair. Um, I think we can all agree that um, in any local economy like the city of London, the backbone is um, a capable, consistent power supply and an organization that's able to deliver it with the capacity to grow. And all these boxes are ticked off and that's been confirmed today by this report. Um, so I congratulate you on that. uh because it's absolutely fundamental to our growth and to employment and to our community as as a whole. And thank you for touching on the affordability issue um that with a kind of uncertain economy is uh is very good to know uh that that's in place. Um, I also wanted to congratulate you on the community involvement because that's for me and I think others that I've spoken with is something that's quite different than we've seen in the past uh and quite an improvement on London Hydro's behalf about how active you really are uh in the community and showing the face of what can be a very sterile utility uh which can be frankly faceless. And so there's your beautiful building there on Horton. Some may describe it as a mausoleum, but you have actually demonstrated the human face of it and that it's active in the community. So thank you again. >> Thank you. Uh I will go to councelor Traso next. >> Um thank you. Thank you very much to the chair. Um, I'll I'll keep this short because I'm pretty much just um repeating a lot of what you've already um heard. I really needed some good news today and this report I think is our good news story of the day. what what I notice first is your involvement in the community and I' I've I've mentioned that to some of your um to some of your staff and board members and and it's something that I really appreciate because it shows that you go beyond the um really excellent level of technical technological and serviceoriented expertise but you're participating in a lot of things and councelor Cuddi mentioned that. So, I just I I just want to say um great job and thank you very much for this um report and I'll be supporting all of the motions today. >> Thank you. Looking for other speakers on this item. Okay, seeing none, we're dealing with 3.1. We've got a motion in front of you. It's ABC and uh it includes the financial results, the draft shareholder resolution, as well as the presentation. And with that, we'll open the vote. Trusso votes yes. Oh, there it is. >> Closing the vote. Motion carries. 15 to zero. Thank you. That moves us to item 3.2. Uh, another delegation with Mr. Sam Sadini on the new co. Um, I will invite you back to the microphone in case you wanted to add something before we begin with the consideration of appointment. >> I'm going to keep this super uh short. Just here to answer any questions on that process if if any are had uh but leave it to council to uh appoint their member. >> Okay. Thank you. So, uh, I will just to to help with our process, I will, um, read part of that motion for the, uh, uh, new co, and then I will look for mover and seconder. So, it's on your screens as well, I believe, but that the following actions be taken with respect to the revival of London Hydro Holding, Inc. Uh, a Tanya Gdine and Paul Madden be appointed to the London Hydro Holdings, Inc. for a term of one year. Mayor Morgan uh be appointed as the member appointed from municipal council and the communication dated May 1st 2026 from uh Y Samsini CEO Lenin Hydro Inc. be received. It being noted that SPPC heard a verbal delegation from YMC CEO Lenin Hydro with respect to this matter. With that, I'll look for a mover. I have councelor Cuy. I have councelor Ferrer. And we'll look for discussion on this item. Okay, seeing none online, seeing none here, uh we will open the vote. Closing the vote. Motion carries 15 to zero. I want to say thank you to London Hydro. Thank you to Mr. Sam Sadini and the board and staff for being here today uh and uh for a great presentation. Thank you. Okay, with that we will move to item 3.3 which is the delegation from Miss Plesn the general manager London Transit Commission of the 2025 London Transit Commission annual report. Hello and welcome Okay, you may begin. >> Thank you, Madam Chair. In addition to the overview provided in the covering letter from the commission chair, I'll explain I'll expand on some of the key initiatives that resulted in progress towards the strategic objectives uh in 2025. With respect to the conventional transit service, 18,000 hours were added in the fall of 2025. And while overall ridership did decline in 2025 as compared to 2024, it was a direct result of lower enrollment in the um post-secondary institutions as a as a result of the the caps on on foreign students. Um a positive outcome from that decline in ridership was that uh we had significant improvement in crowding concerns that we had been experiencing in 2024. So, so while obviously we don't like to see ridership decline, it did pro provide for um a a better match to the service levels that we had in place to the the ridership that we experienced in the in the fall of 2025. That led to um a slight improvement in the voice of the customer satisfaction level in 2025 with 68% of respondents indicating that they were satisfied with the service. The primary areas of concern on the conventional from the customer perspective continue to be on-time performance and travel time um while they're riding the service. On the specialized uh side, um better news, we introduced 10,000 hours of service in January 2025, which resulted in a 14% increase in ridership over 2024 levels. Um the transition to the new booking software was completed in early 2025 with riders now having the option to book um their trips both online and via telephone. And those changes have been very well received from riders. Uh noting that in the voice of the customer survey for specialized we saw a 98% um respondent rate of level of satisfaction with respect to that service. In the area of fiscal accountability, the commission received a clean audit and closed out 2025 with healthy balances in all reserves and reserve funds. And as part of the 2026 budget process, the commission approved an assessment growth business case, which will result in the purchase of four expansion buses to provide service to four new areas of the city beginning in 2028. 2025 also saw the completion of an updated asset management plan and upgrades to a number of key software programs supporting daily service delivery and work also progressed on the replacement of the hibbury facility and the zero emission bus pilot projects. Progress was also made addressing the long long-standing resource issues in the skilled trades complement. uh and enhancements to the bus operator training program were implemented in an effort to provide additional on-road training as part of our onboarding process. Uh looking forward, some of the initiatives that are included in the 2026 work program include consideration of another assessment growth business case for 2027 budget consideration, the launch of the secondary school transit pilot program in the fall, preparation for the launch of the east leg of the rapid transit service and the corresponding service improvements to feeder routes, preparation for the transition to a new service provider for the specialized service, which will take place not until the summer of 2027, but there's a lot of work involved. olved in that transition. Undertaking a review of options to expand fair payment methods on transit. The review will consider an expanded smart card revaluing network as well as the ability to pay with debit and credit on board. Undertaking a review to determine the most effective way to implement an alternative service delivery model which will provide access to public transit to areas of the city that had been identified as difficult to serve with a traditional conventional service. launch of an LTC Instagram account and a customer insight panel and enhanced participation in community events as resources have now been allocated toward this initiative. In closing, 2026 and the years following, we'll continue to see progress on a number of transformational programs as well as the continued implementation of service improvements designed to enhance the customer experience resulting in a more effective and efficient transit system for all Londoners. Thank you. >> Thank you. So, uh, we do have a motion prepared for this to receive the report. I will look for a mover and seconder before we begin discussion. Councelor Frank, Councelor Hopkins, thank you. And I will look for speakers. Councelor Hopkins. >> Yeah, thank you, Madam Chair, and thank you very much for the presentation. It's good to see you again. I um appreciate uh the fact that uh in our um specialized um we've got extra service hours and I I know we've increased in our um other services as well. I understand our booking system is also improved. I saw that firsthand and I really appreciate the work uh that staff are doing there. Uh and congratulations as well on the voice of the customer survey high marks there in both both areas. I I do have a question though as it relates to a growing city, a large city. I represent a ward that's all about growth. Um subdivisions opportunities to move around are very very difficult congestion. how we build and how we move around. I think to me as a ward counselor are are the big big issues that I I deal with on a daily basis. And I have moved around, traveled around, seen cities where um service is a little bit more available. How can we as u a city council, as a city support, work with LTC um and improve opportunities to move around in areas where we do not have uh those opportunities. And before you answer that question, thank you for a route we got last year in Riverbend and hopefully a route to come, I think next year. But it just seems it takes a long time and and um I think opportunities, we need opportunities now in our city uh to accommodate um the congestion that we're starting to see. So um I'll leave it with you. Thank you, Miss Fleshy. >> Um through the chair. Um the very short answer is how how can council assist? Obviously, it's funding, right? I mean, at at the end of the day, transit relies on municipal funding for a significant portion of our budget. If we want to grow, we're going to need council to approve increases to that budget. So, I mean, that's certainly the underlying piece. Um, you know, we we saw in the the the previous budget cycle the assessment growth uh case get approved. We're working on and we will be bringing forward to the commission as part of the 2027 budget another assessment growth business case that will again look to other areas of the city where we're not currently serving. So, um we're certainly making progress on that with respect to the time it takes. Um, what you have to remember is if if we're looking at putting service into a new area or if we're looking to add service during peak operating times, that means we have to expand our fleet. And right now, the delivery time on a bus is anywhere from 15 to 18 months from the date that we order it. So, if we look at the assessment growth process, for example, we can't order that bus until that business case has been approved. and then it's, you know, it up to 18 20 months before we've actually got that bus on our property to then prep it to then be able to launch that service. So, that's a that's a big aspect and that's why it's important that through the multi-year budget process, we've got a good indication from council what those annual incremental hours will be so that we can strategically plan for that. and and kudos to the commission. We have done that um where we know that growth has been approved. We've pre-ordered buses, so we've ordered them in a group so that we will have them in time to be able to do that. But in order to make that happen, we need to have those commitments within the multi-year budget so that we can plan accordingly and respond. >> Councelor Hopkins, >> thank you. Looking for other speakers. Councelor Stevenson, go ahead. >> Thank you. Yeah, I just wanted to follow up on that question and you started to say it there about a way to pre-order because if we're truly committed to meeting the service needs of a growing city, is there does the commission have the option to take out debt or make uh the agreements assuming something like the assessment growth is going to go through and then dealing with it uh if we if we don't because I really like that delay of 15 to 18 months really is uh not going to be acceptable. So are there any paths forward that the commission has or maybe that council could provide to allow that flexibility? >> Miss Ples uh through the chair. Historically when the um when the the balance in the provincial gas tax reserve was healthier um the commission had the had the potential to rely on that if funding didn't necessarily line up and and we could pre you know pre-order those kind of things. um now that we're relying much more on that just to balance our budget that reserve is doesn't have a healthy balance of that nature. But but certainly um like I said, we've already done that once. We pre we ordered 10 buses that kind of cover the next 2 and 1/2 years of growth rather than waiting because we knew that it was approved within the multi-year capital budget essentially. So, and again, we work with civic administration on that when when we know things are approved, you know, we would we would obviously have those discussions and and take those steps when when we can. >> Councelor Stevenson, thank you. Yeah. So, as a followup, as we hitting the end of this multi-year budget, it's a little bit of a different place. So, do you have the option of debt financing or are you in a spot now where you're not able to pre-order in this case, >> Miss Pleshi? Um, through the chair. So we have the commission has already approved the pre-order of all the expansion buses that we need to the end of this multi-year budget. So we've already taken that action and when we when we come forward in the next multi-year uh in terms of capital we'll have the you know the requirements for expansion buses set out within that and then again if that gets approved we would be able to do something similar. >> Councelor, >> thank you. So, I'm hearing that we're not really at risk of not being able to meet whatever budgetary sort of service additions we the next council might like to do. >> Miss Ples um through the chair, we're not at risk of not being able to respond once we have a budget approval. Um but the commission is not the commission doesn't have money to act on anything in addition or over and above what council approves. I'm just not sure I got your question right there, >> counselor. >> Thank you. Yeah, I I mean it's a bit speculative, right? But I'm just trying to be uh proactive around we know we're underserviced in many areas under that scenario. It would just be nice to lay the framework to set us up for success in the next couple years. My questions aside from that really are around public safety. So, how are safety incidents tracked? Um and then uh you know what are your measures to address those and are you seeing any trends >> miss um through the chair we obviously track all issues of safety whether it be customer to customer to employee all of those things we we track that and we do benchmark against um um peer properties um in terms of trends I wouldn't say we've seen a a significant change over over the last number of years I would say compared to historic you know if we go back precoid we have seen an escalation um we certainly did during the pandemic period see escalations and a lot of that had to do with the frustration around you know there was confusion about whether you needed to have a mask and you know all of those kind of things so there was a lot of confusion which led to a lot of confrontation on the bus that has gone away um but I mean we we continue to see safety issues I mean, I I always say, you know, public transit is really just an extension of the community. So, we we experience the same things on board the bus that we're experiencing as a community and and we continue to track that and and, you know, put in put in measures that we can to to help alleviate that. We do have, you know, audio video recording on all of the buses. So, we are able to investigate and take action um where required. We do have a banning process. So if somebody is found to be, you know, in controvention of our expectations, we can work with with police and have them banned. So we we've got those processes in place. Um and and we just, you know, we continue to work at it and evolve. >> Councelor Stevenson, >> thank you. And a followup through you. Um we do hear a lot about public drug use uh on in the transit buses and in the shelters. We're seeing it in other cities, too, and what they're doing to address that. Um, when we say it's an, you know, it's a public space and we see the same thing we see in other spaces, well, it's more so in some. So, we try to get people to go downtown. We want people to take transit. People are not going to put their children or their elderly parents uh on buses if they don't feel that they're going to be safe and protected from illegal activity like that. So just wondering is there anything on the horizon that that that LTC is exploring knowing that at other cities they're looking at transit police and and other things. >> Miss Ples um through the chair earlier this year the the commission did undertake a um a program with LPS to have police board the buses in the core which is one of the identified you know areas of concern. So the foot patrols that are in the in the core are getting on and off buses more of just so that there's a presence. Um we've we've not had the opportunity to to look at the data and and you know determine whether or not that's that's had a a big impact. We I can say we're not as a commission at this point looking at the implementation of transit police. We do have inspectors um which is slightly different. Our inspectors get called anytime there's an incident where the operator needs assistance, but our inspectors don't have the authority to, you know, issue a ticket or anything like that. They're more just a next level of support for the operator in a case where where there's an incident on on a bus and then again they would call police if it gets to the point where where they can't handle it. >> Councelor Stevenson, >> thank you through you. Um, are you noticing any trends say around the drug use mental health issues that's maybe related to inclement weather? Like is it happening more when it's cold, hot or rainy with people looking for basically an escape from the elements or off hours of when we have services available for people again? Are they uh are we having more are you noticing any trends that way that might support additional services that us providing it might have a double win of improving safety on the transit as well? >> Miss Fleshy um through the chair I I would say we certainly have more activity on the buses during what what I would say inclement weather. So obviously when it's very cold a bus is a warm you know a warm haven. same if it's extremely hot. You know, the buses are airond conditioned. So, we do see increases in, you know, inactivity on the buses during those those periods. I wouldn't say so much during different times of day. I think it's more more to do with weather where we would where we would notice those fluctuations. >> Councelor Stevenson, >> thank you. My last question is just when it comes to bus shelters, is that under the purview of LTC or does the city track say the safety incidents and the safety concerns, drug use within the shelters or is that something that LTC is is overseeing at the same time as the buses? >> Thank you, Miss Plesi. Um through the chair. So, we certainly do track it. All of those those concerns would come to us. We do work with the city in the event of if we've got somebody that's housed in a shelter, the city will will make the city aware and they assist us with removing um removing that person from the shelter, that kind of thing. But in terms of, you know, if there's drug paraphernalia or things like that in the shelter, those those complaints come to us and we work with our contractor to have to have that addressed. >> Counselor. Um, so on that note, like we're having a lot of issues or and I'm seeing and hearing myself a lot of issues in the bus shelters in the core area. So is there anything proactively being done to make sure that those shelters are available for the transit riders? >> Miss Plesi, um, through the chair, I I wouldn't say anything proactive. We certainly, as I said, we have inspectors that are on the road during all hours of operation and if they see activity or, you know, someone attempting to to get settled in a shelter, they will certainly try to intervene. Again, we've got, you know, two inspectors on the road for the entire city. So, you know, there there's not there's a chance that they're not going to see everything that's happening. So, you know, we we certainly do make efforts to to mitigate that, but it's it's not something I would say that we're able to stay on top of and and make sure that it's not happening in any shelter, you know, across the city on a regular basis. >> Thank you. I'll just say and obviously we can't make sure it's never happens, but there's also I I just really feel for people who are reliant on public transit, especially people who have children because the amount of drug use that I'm seeing in the core area inside the bus shelters just makes me very grateful that I don't have young children trying to keep them from not touching anything, sitting on anything. I I I don't even want to go in the shelters. I stand outside of them now. So, that's really unfortunate, I think. And if there's a way that we could address that, I'd be happy to uh work with whoever would like to work with that on me because I think it undermines some of our efforts to make sure that transit is uh a great thing in our city. >> Thank you. Looking for other speakers. Okay, I have uh Councelor Frank and then councelor Purple. >> Thank you. Yes, I mostly just wanted to share a couple comments and thanks. Uh I think a really important graph is on page 10 uh or chart that shows that um this is a very efficient service. We see the municipal cost per ride is 275 in London where the pure average is $3.81 making London the second lowest. Uh meaning that our municipal dollars are being stretched very far to provide the service that we provide. We also see that the passenger cost sharing is third highest compared to the other 16 Ontario transit operators of over 100,000 people. Um again, so noting that uh London is not necessarily paying this equivalent amount that other municipalities are in order to make it more affordable for transit users to access the service. But uh I just want to say kudos to staff for being able to to provide that service. And as someone with a young child who rides the bus regularly downtown, I appreciate the work that's being done and um we've always felt safe on the bus and in shelters. So appreciate the work of our staff um both at the city side and the transit side. Thank you. I have councelor Purple next followed by Deputy Mayor Lewis. >> Thank you and sir chair I uh I want to thank you and your team as well and I know you know in terms of the efficiency how LTC has been very good on that side certainly and I also see when I do comparative analysis with other municipalities that they are investing actually more in their public transit than we are. So thank you for that. I do have a question for you. Uh in terms of the financials, in terms of the budget for this year and forecast, are we online to deliver the numbers figures for this year? >> Miss Ples. >> Um through the chair um short answer, yes. We are obviously experiencing um unfavorable budget um budget comparisons on our fuel budget given given what's gone on. Um we did a quick analysis and I mean if if we if we assume that fuel pricing today stays in place until the end of this year um we would be looking at about a $2.5 million shortfall in the budget. Um having said that as I mentioned earlier our reserves are in a healthy position and we do have about $4.1 million in our energy management reserve which is the reserve we would draw on to balance the budget. So we we have no concern that we would be coming back to council. Um with respect to the 2026 budget, we do have the ability to manage any shortfalls with with our reserves. >> Council approval. >> Thank you. Follow up. Uh regarding the fuel, which was my next question. We used to LTC used to lock in rates for the fuel. Are they being locked or that doesn't exist anymore or is it kind of a market rate only? Miss Plesi, >> uh, through the chair, we've we've never really locked in rates. We do have a contract with a provider that essentially the the rate that we pay is based on the daily published rack price with a discount. So, it's not a it it fluctuates daily based on what's happening in the market, but we do have a long-term contract that includes that discount off of that rate. So we are just as subject to the fluctuations in fuel as you know anybody driving their car and filling up. >> Council Primal. >> Thank you. No more questions. >> Thank you. I have Deputy Mayor Lewis next. >> Uh thank you Madam Chair for recognizing me and uh thank you for filling in today as chair again. I very much appreciate your support as I work through this medical recovery. So thank you for carrying on uh those duties for me. Um I'd be remiss if I didn't thank you for that right off the top. Um I just want to say uh for me uh one of the big highlights of this is that we finally have transit funding coming through assessment growth. This is something that I have been talking about since I arrived at council that when growth pays for growth, it also must include growth in the transit system. Uh, you know, I hear people on council talking about this area is not serviced well or that area is not serviced well. Um, that's because for years we have not um had assessment growth to help meet the demands of a growing city. So, I think it's very important to recognize both our financial staff um and Miss Pleshnney and her staff for getting together and working through how we can start to apply assessment growth appropriately to transit services. Um that is going to be key uh in order for us to continue to grow transit service uh that the city needs. And that means it's not going to happen overnight. we are behind and as new subdivisions get built out. Um you know service comes after the people. We don't start running buses into subdivisions where the the home homes are only half occupied. Um we need to be assuming subdivisions and having those places filled before we can be providing service there. Um, I also want to uh say I very much appreciate the attention that LTC has paid uh as they look ahead uh to 2027 and 2028 to service in the industrial areas around Veterans Memorial Parkway and Sovereign Road uh where we do have new employers, folks like the Gap, Andreani Pasta and others uh who do have employees who need transit service to get to work and I think the plan that has been laid out approved by the commission for growth moving forward in that area makes a lot of sense. Uh so while I have had lots of reasons uh in the past to be critical of some of these reports and have some serious questions, I want to say this year uh I'm very pleased to see this coming forward. I like the direction we're seeing. I would also be remiss if I didn't uh mention that I'm very pleased that the online uh booking system for paratransit users is up and running. Uh while I know we have a lot of work to do still on the paratransit service, I think that that has been a very positive step forward and I've heard that from members of the community. Um, I will just finish uh by briefly saying uh well I know councelor Stevenson might see it in particular in the core um the the drug paraphernalia and and just general waste actually even um in city bus shelters is not unique to the core. Uh it's certainly an issue that I experience in my ward. Um not so much around the Argyle Mall hub because of the volume of traffic and and the uh services there that are being provided in terms of cleanliness. Uh but along some of the other uh sheltered areas uh where we have shelters and where things are collecting um and some of it is is drug use paraphernalia. Some of it is just general garbage. Um, so I appreciate hearing from Miss Pletchney about how that's working. Um, as we move forward, I think that there's a whole number of components that come into play there. Um, as we heard, you know, that that's our CI teams, that's transit, that's the London police, that there's a whole number of partners. Uh, we're not going to see this change overnight, but the important thing I think we heard today is that it is being worked on and it's being worked on in a partnership. So, uh, I want to conclude uh, with that on a positive note. I I've been not positive on some of our previous uh annual reports, but this year I I'm fairly positive about where things are going. Uh and I'm glad that we are at um the level we are at in terms of municipal contributions. Uh I think that there does need to be a component of writership pay. Uh I do think that we still need to look at what we're doing around uh Fanshaw and Western students are serviced versus others in our community, but I think we'll get some perhaps some numbers from that from the transit project with the Clark Road students as well. So all in all, very happy with this report today. >> Thank you. Uh going back to my speakers list, I have right now no one looking for other speakers. Seeing none online, seeing none here, we will open the vote. Closing the vote. Motion carries 15 to zero. Thank you, Miss Pleshny. Our next delegation is from uh Paul Chisum, the chief executive officer, and Phil Squire, our board chair for London and Middle Sex Community Housing. And this is on the LMCH master regeneration plan. Thank you very much for having uh us here today. Um we thought it was important uh to come before you just as a delegation. We will be back in about a month uh talking about our year end our operations. We hope to have some very good news uh for you then. But for today we're talking about our regeneration plan. We think it's one of the most important things we've done uh in our term as a um as a board and as an organization. Um the plan is underway. Uh, Reimagine one is completed. Reimagine 2 is underway, being constructed. Re-imagine 3 will start construction in 2027, and plans are underway to redevelop the Ladybrook property. We're able to do this largely because of the $29 million loan that was approved by council. Thank you very much for that. I just want to stress though that that loan is being repaid by London Middle Sex Community Housing through its tenants. Those are the people um who will who will be regenerating their own property which we think is important. Um we're very a aware uh from discussions with the city that any loans that we take out are are held uh as as against the city and its assets. We understand that. Um I've had a chance to review the city report. That report will go back. We will review it. uh we will certainly be very prudent in terms of the money that we're using and how we apply it and how quickly we move with the plan. Our goal is quite simple. We want to provide better quality housing for our tenants and along with that also be financially responsible and not require taxpayers to bear the entire burden of uh London and Middle Sex Community Housing. Accordingly, as we proceed with the plan, we will require less subsidies from taxpayers while still using funds that we generate through rents to regenerate our buildings. That being said, uh our rel our rents will continue to be deeply affordable. Yes, we have RGI rents that can be as low as $85 a month, but even the highest rents that we might see when we regenerate and we have market value, for instance, a onebedroom will be $8 to $900 per month. And there is a significant segment of the city that requires those types of properties. Two questions that arose to me when we presented this plan was, of course, how do we pay for it? And as you'll see from the city report, that's a question they have too, quite rightly so. Um, we'll do it the same way we've continued to do it in a careful uh, measured fashion without jeopardizing uh, London Middle Sex Housing or our tenants. We're already doing that. Um, we have obtained enough funding with help from the city to complete two new buildings and start on two more. We're very proud of that, but more than anything, we're proud of our tenants uh, for being along with us on this journey that we're taking. I also thought, what about people who don't get a new building? What what are those people going to say? What are they going to think? Well, I can tell you that we have and we will continue to invest dollars in our buildings. You'll remember, I'm sure, quite well, when we uh we came before you received our build building condition assessments. Uh not a positive uh a positive outlook at that time. I can tell you that we've started the process of redoing those and they will be completed this year and you will hear about them. As for now, I can tell you that a property such as Kent Street has moved from poor to good because of the money that we've invested in it and Doorchester has moved from very poor to fair. No tenant is going to be left out on this journey. We continue to invest in our buildings and we but we continue to have a need uh for new buildings. Thank you very much and I will see you again in a month. >> Thank you, Mr. Chisum. >> All right. Thank you, uh, Mr. Schwars, and thank you to the chair, uh, the mayor and members of council for having us here. LMCH, uh, remains committed to keeping the city council informed and engaged in the work we're doing in the communities. Today, we're sharing our master regeneration plan. It's LMCH's long-term strategy to renew, redevel redevelop, and expand our housing portfolio over the next 15 years. It's not just a plan for building new assets. It is about people, communities, stewardship, and LMCH's ability to deliver housing over the long term. Why does this matter? We know that London and Middle Sex continue to face significant housing needs. LMCH operates essential public housing infrastructure and much of that infrastructure is aging. Aging buildings create rising costs, service risk, and real impacts on tenants safety, comfort, and stability. Delaying action to increase long-term costs. Sorry, delaying action increases long-term costs and limits future options. So this master regeneration plan provides LMCH with a disciplined framework for planning >> 30 seconds >> prioritizing and sequencing and managing a risk. We did speak to over 500 stakeholders through this process and we're deeply aligned with the city in terms of their housing need assessment and the financial realities that you face. So it creates a roadmap for us to provide a path to improve and increase affordable housing in the city of London and we appreciate your support. Thank you. >> Thank you. Okay. Um for this uh item we are going to take a motion to receive and then we'll begin discussion. >> Sorry counselor. Go ahead. I think it's a little premature to um receive this at this point. I I would I'm going to make a motion to refer this to the annual general um meeting to maybe get a little bit more detail and have a little bit more conversation. I'm not sure if this is the point in the meeting where I I should um lay out at least my initial concerns about this regeneration report and explain why in my view it in in very very important considerations are not addressed and more information is needed. So >> just on the on the referral so you're looking to move a referral of just the uh receipt of the plan right now. Yes, because I I think we need some more conversation about it. Uh I would like to make some suggestions about things that I think need to be supplemented. >> So one, let me just see if you have a seconder first. >> Okay, I don't see a seconder at this time. Uh so right now I will look for a mover and seconder on receiving the plan of councelor Mallister and councelor Cuddy and we will begin discussion. looking for speakers. Councelor Mallister, go ahead. >> Uh, thank you. And, uh, through the chair, I'll kick off the conversation. Uh, just giving my perspective as a board member of LMCH. Um, I'm actually immensely proud of the amount of work we've put into this master regeneration plan. Um, when I first started on this board, I know there was a number of challenges we were facing. Um, but in my lifetime, uh, I've never seen new housing built, uh, new public housing built, I should say. And in a a short amount of time, we've been able to go from a concept to a plan to real buildings. I know some of you have had the chance to see the Southdale properties. They're phenomenal. We've got one done in phase two, got phase three as well. And as you heard uh from the presenters, um we're getting new uh units online. And really at the end of the day, that was my goal in terms of serving on this board is to see new community housing built. And I think we should all as a council be proud of the investment we've made and the results we're seeing. This is a long-term plan for the next 15 years to get more units online to provide different levels of affordability. We're seeing this across the board with other affordable housing providers that we have mixed communities. uh we will have those RGI units, but we will also have other units which will allow us to be a more financially stable um uh agency. And I think that that's incredibly important is that we have that self-sufficiency and be able to ensure that we have uh affordable public housing stock for future generations. So, I'm going to leave my comments there. I'm curious what my colleagues have to say, but from my perspective, uh I just want to say thank you to the other board members, to LMCH staff. There's a lot of work that's gone into this engagement with our current tenants, the community, uh, and I I'm actually immensely proud of the work we've been able to achieve and I look forward to what the future holds for us. So, thank you. >> Thank you. I have a growing speakers list. I have councelor Traso next followed by Councelor Stevenson, Councelor Ferrer. Councelor Traso. >> Thank you. And through the chair, um, I want to express my overall disappointment with the report as a whole. Yes, councelor. >> We're doing some new things. Uh, and there's there's some regener I'm sorry. Is that a point of order? >> Councelor Traso, go ahead. >> Thank Thank you. Um, I have no issue with many parts of this report which I think is promising overall. Um my problem is it does it does indicate the average building age is 54 years. The deferral um I think the deferred maintenance seems to be increasing which is putting more pressure on long-term capital um programs and I think as building conditions worsen and I'm talking about at the unit level I don't think that we're serving our tenants well. Now, your report talks about six levers, and the first one is the weakness. And my my criticism of this report, I'm going to limit to the first lever because I think, yeah, it's it's great. It's great that Southdale is is coming up and you're making long-term plans to talk about um doing doing some serious revitalization of some of your other um uh properties in terms of making a better utilization of land. But with respect to the first key lever um building conditions at least as last reported in the asset management plan was poor to very poor and it's nice to hear an oral report today that that's improving but that was not included in the regeneration plan and the reason why I think the regeneration plan is inadequate at least with respect to lever one and maybe I should refine um my motion at some point to uh send send send back lever one for a little bit more information. I just can't accept this uh plan. Now um the claim is made that the regeneration model works. I don't think it does. I think parts of it are promising. parts of it may work, but unless we see some action, some real actionable um evidence about how that uh really really poor the very poor um asset management plan is being um preserved. I saw what this council did with respect to toll plut and I don't want to send to the public a mixed message that we're that we're we're operating under a double standard. I want to see actionable improvements in the condition of the living conditions, the day-to-day lives of uh tenants. So, I'm not prepared to receive this report. I'm not prepared to vote yes on the report. I would be willing to split it into its different levers, but I need to see more on that first lever before I can accept this uh as as as a whole. Now, I've got a lot more to say about this, which I will bring up along with some associate motions at the at the uh at the shareholders meeting. I'm not going to bring them up today, but once again, I don't like doing a piece of this at one meeting and then another piece of it at another meeting. I'd rather uh put all these important condition discussions together. So, I'll be voting no on this. And I will May I ask uh may I ask the clerk, can I ask for the lever components to be uh voted on separately? or is that not possible since it's one report? >> Uh it is one report. Um so we would take the full report uh not just separate components that thank you. In which case I I can't support receiving this uh I can't support receiving this report at this point. I'm prepared to go into much more detail way beyond what 5 minutes will allow me. Thank you very much. >> Thank you. Thank you. And just in case you're looking to get back on the speakers list later, you have a minute and 10 remaining. Um, okay. I have councelor Stevenson next, followed by Ferrer and Councelor Frank. Yeah, I I you know, we hear a lot of terrible stories about life in London's social housing units and uh I think you know definitely we need to invest and invest heavily in this but you know when we talk about housing not having been built I think we're forgetting about 122 baseline. The city built that. It was brand new. There were high hopes for it and many many people would call that an abject failure right up until now. I'm still hearing terrible, terrible stories about women and children, about seniors, about people who are trying to live their lives with the benefit of taxpayer funded housing only to be subjected to illegal behavior on a daily basis. and the fact that we're not talking about that as we invest millions and I'm delighted to have more new housing, but it better not look like what we've seen so far in this term of council because then that's a tragedy not just to the taxpayers who are funding it, but to the families and the people who are living in them and those who live nearby. So, I I really I have not yet heard how we've learned from 122 baseline. We had um LMCH here a few years ago asking us to change the ratio which we did and we have not heard back on the uh success of that. The the last report that we got said that surveys had been sent out and not received back with enough time to give council the information that we need to make decisions. So I I have questions about you know even just a few um terror like you know tenants who are severely drug addicted mentally ill and doing illegal behavior from an apartment. You only need a couple of those in one apartment building to make life very uh unstable for everybody in that building. So, as we look to do the mix and change the mix, that sounds great as long as uh we're not trying to house people who should be in highly supportive housing in our social housing buildings. And I'm still not hearing that that has been adequately addressed. And I think the language, it's really important that we understand what we're saying. So when we use affordable and market, I would love to know what that means because we're talking about moving towards RGI affordable and market and yet we're hearing market's not going to be actual market. What is affordable? We've been into this before. Like what is affordable housing? When we are moving away from some RGI units in our LMCH, um like right now it's 100% RGI. I'd love to know what ratio are we talking about? How many of these other units are we going to bring in? And what what are they? What does affordable mean? What does market rate mean? Has it been RGI since the time it started? Is this something absolutely new that we're bringing into LMCH or has it been done before and now we're doing it again? Um, this is exciting. I love the whole idea of regeneration, but I think it's about making wise decisions, learning from the mistakes of the past. You know, they say that for things to change, things need to change. And I think we're not addressing the addiction crisis in the impact it's having on our city in transit, in housing, in our core area. We're going to keep talking about this and it's not a drug toxicity crisis. It's an addiction crisis that is causing the public safety concerns for the majority of Londoners. Um, there's I have concerns in here. So I heard mention of uh the regeneration was going to continue to be uh careful and measured I think were the terms. So when we talk about the build Canada homes it's on 4.2 that civic administration is currently working on an application to build Canada homes for capital funding. um through you to staff. What can be shared about that about uh what kind of amount of dollars we're talking about there and the time frame so that we it is in alignment with that careful and measured approach. >> Yeah. Okay. Thank you uh counselor. So this is uh something I just wanted to point to you in general. So we're on 3.4 still which is the submission from LMCH. I know it's and then we'll go to 4.1 which is the staff report which refers to 4.2. So can I save your question for then? Is that's okay? >> Yep. 100%. Apologies I moved one in front of the other. So um it talks about tenant outcomes. I really I really would like to hear more about that. Um I I'll remind colleagues you know 122 baseline we started with very low rents of $600. They're now up to a,000. So, I want to know that that's not going to happen here. That that if we're going to offer deeply affordable housing, then sustainability comes with that financial piece as well. Uh there's an on page 331, it talks about responsible stewardship of public assets and sound judgment. And I think those are really important terms that are needed. On page 333, it talks about in 2026, there's going to be acquisitions program starts in 2026 to 2030. >> Councelor, that's your time. Do you want me to go to to uh the delegation for your questions? >> That'd be great. >> Thank you. >> Okay. I will invite Mr. Chisum and Mr. Squire back up uh to answer any questions that you heard. I'm happy to summarize some that you heard as well. >> Thank you. and through the chair I will I don't know if I caught everything through that. Um you know one of the challenges we have faced is who we serve. We administer a rankure income program that does not permit us to screen applicants beyond a simple level. So that has created challenges in the past and we uh have worked through council and city civic administration to change the the way people access uh RGI housing and that we are seeing some improvements. However, we do know that there are people that receive housing through the weight list that require more supports than we can provide. Um so we're really happy to see uh the increasing amount of supportive housing and alternative housing programs out there that we hope are going to continue to support those those tenants to be successful. So you know that is one of the challenges that we will face and I've said um a number of times you know it took us 15 plus years to sort of uh create a tenant population that was higher needs. It's going to take us 10 plus to work ourselves out. So we will still experience some challenges and our our our role is to sort of really make sure they're supported to be successful. Um so on that point I think you had a question and this language does confuse me as well as on RGI versus affordable versus market. So rank guarantee income as a local housing corporation we're responsible to provide and maintain 3282 rankar income units. This plan does not envision us increasing the number of rented income units we provide. Every net new unit we add will be either affordable or market. And the key difference there is affordable housing typically means it's a unit that's eligible to count towards the affordability of the building which means you can access it used to be Canada mortgage and housing corporation funding but now build Canada homes funding. So, this typically looks like 70 to 80% of the median market rent uh calculated by CHC. And that's that number $8 to $900 that Phil was mentioning. Even though we know there's market units out there that would rent a one-bedroom unit, we've seen them for 1,200, 2,000, 2500. So there there will be a point in some of our buildings where we will have some higher market rents still probably low end of market maybe at 1300 that offset and bring more revenue into the project. Our objective to mix the income is to mix the tenant mix to sort of make sure there's affordable housing for not those just waiting on a subsidized waiting list for 5 years. those who have more of an urgency and an affordability issue. But it brings the rental revenue we require in every new building will have a a capital reserve. So we need to fund that and there's the expectation that any debt financing a mortgage that we get at the property is funded through those increased rental amounts. So when we say uh each project moves on its own merit, we look at that balance between how number of RGI units we need to put in if we're replacing existing ones, the affordable rent and the market rent so that we have a revenue in the building that can manage reserves, debt and operations. That is the objective there. So it's really market is the highest rent. Um, affordable is, you know, 70 80% of medium market rent and RGI is based on the housing services act and and that rule. So that's the one where people will pay maybe $85 or $150 for a unit. Um, and if you could remind me um the next question. Uh I think the counselor was looking for more information on the tenant mix component and the report back on that >> if that >> I'll go to her for more clarification. >> Yeah, thank you. I think it was just the tenant outcomes in terms of uh making the the regeneration be what we want it to be without vacancies and uh you know unstable housing. >> Mr. Chism >> thank you and through the chair thank you for the clarification. So when we talk about tenant outcomes in this context you know when we do a regeneration of existing site tenants are impacted starts to create anxiety. It's you know so we have a tenant relocation policy that sort of sets out how we how we commit to tenants what the options are when we go through relocation. Do we move you in the existing site? Do we move you to another site? do you want to come back? So, really making sure that we have uh one-on-one conversations with all tenants impacted so they know what's happening to them and when so they can manage what outcome they want to see at the end of the regeneration of that community. What we saw in Southdale people we move them throughout the community if they wanted to stay or it was an opportunity for them to to reset somewhere else across our portfolio. So, we want to make sure that we have that conversation one-on-one with all tenants so they know what to expect and when to expect it and that would be success for us in that context. >> Thank you. Did we answer all your questions? >> The only other one was uh whatever you can share about the acquisition program. >> I'll go to Mr. Chisum. >> Thank you. And through the chair. So the the acquisition of existing rental uh properties is something that was introduced a few years back. Uh British Columbia had a really healthy program where um it was used to consolidate in the nonprofit sector a little bit but also acquire some buildings that weren't in the nonprofit world which would would sort of naturally occurring affordable housing. So, it's aging housing stock that is has an affordable rent by nature uh and with long-term tenants. So, the objective of this strategy is to possibly acquire some of those buildings so we retain them as affordable. They wouldn't be subsidized, but we'd be in a position to acquire the building and operate it. We're not looking for a margin on the building uh like a private uh operator. So, we'd be able to just purchase and invest in the building, use any of the rental revenue to offset any debt acquired, and make sure that housing stays affordable for the tenants that live there today and then natural turnover for new tenants. They would have access to that. So, it's a way to sort of get housing in an area we're not servicing today or a type of housing we don't have available. It's just an interesting strategy. And we know that build Canada homes as one of their uh approaches is developing a strategy that is going to make specific funds available for that. So we want to be ready and thoughtful on how we would approach that. >> Thank you. I have councelor Ferrer next followed by councelor Frank. >> Uh thanks chair um and thanks for uh the delegation. Um I guess some of my questions are kind of in line a little bit with some of the comments that were already made. But I guess the first thing I want to ask is about um just clarifying uh the motion. I I do see that it's um to receive the report for the 15year regeneration plan but also in the report uh the first 5 years of the regeneration plan is 300 million worth of uh capital uh monies and then upwards of 1 billion for over 15 years. So, I just wanted some clarification on I I understand that there's no financial ask here right now, but at the same time, I just wanted to uh get some clarification on if we were to approve this, how does that translate into um a future, I guess, report or recommendation coming back. >> Uh so, we're not approving it, we're just receiving it. So just receipt is just information but it won't lock us into any type of financial obligations in the future. >> The clerk has confirmed that that's just to receive the report at this time and not locking us into uh anything. >> Okay. Thanks. So like obviously um you know we have I hear housing crisis but it's an affordable housing crisis which is really kind of what the discussion should be about and we see these numbers coming back and we know that LMCH has an old stock of existing buildings that are in desperate need of capital improvement and capital repair and I know that we had that uh last report when you guys came to us and I think it was like hund00 million worth of work that we needed but now we're seeing it's at 300 million. Um I just wanted to ask these are two separate from each other or does this incorporate the 100 million? >> Go to Mr. Chisum >> through the chair. The asset management plan and the state of the asset is considered in the master regeneration plan and is it's a it's a critical pillar to make sure that we have safe uh well-maintained housing across all the housing we have. So in terms of the regeneration and the redevelopment, I think the 300 you're mentioning on uh page 17 of the report with the different project listed is separate. Right. So there is uh in some of these projects it's a deferred capital cost that will come out. So the ladybrook project there is capital repair and and a capital repair backlog there. So should we move forward with regeneration that cancels out the required capital work. So there is sort of in the back end running uh a little uh assessment there but the funding that we have right now uh through our uh infrastructure gap is addressing the current capital need and when we come back with our facil facility condition index numbers and our projected long-term uh or longerterm capital need as part of the 2028 to31 multi-year budget. we will see some changes in those numbers. So what we're seeing um is that the approach to the building condition assessments we're doing right now combined with the cumulative impact of the investment over the last 3 years because the data in the report you saw last year was 18 months old. So that cumulative impact is reducing those numbers which provides clarity on the capital repair backlog and you'll see that number reduce uh as we sort of refine uh th that numbers through the course of the year. >> Councelor Ferrer. >> Okay. Thank you for that. So going I guess um leading off on that with the onetoone RGI replacement for the first 5 years like I understand that means uh replacing the existing RGI units um and not necessarily adding RGI units just replacing so um I just to confirm so within the first 5 years with this regen plan that will be a replacement one to one no addition to new RGI >> Mr. ISM. >> Thank you. And through the chair, there is we do not envision increase in the number of RGI units we have. So where we regenerate a site and we take say 18 town houses down to build a building, those 18 are put back into the new building we have. And any net new units, we charge an affordable or a market rent. And that provides the operational re revenue required for operations reserve contribution and a debt financing. So any growing the number of units by 50 or 100 those are all the affordable in market. Our revenue per unit for RGI is not sufficient to support regeneration. So, we have to be careful that we don't add new RGI units to a building that's expecting affordable market rent. So, if we're going to get $500 a unit combined between the city subsidy and the tenant and we need a,000 for that unit a month, we've got to we're creating a deficit. So, we're being really we were being purposeful in that statement in that if the if the service manager wants us to increase the RGI count, we're prepared to do that, but it has to align with the financial plan for that project or regeneration because we can't absorb um sort of lower revenues through RGI without an offset on the from from the municipality. So, I just want to be we're clear. We were committed to 3282. We're open to discussions on increasing RGI as long as the funding works for the site. >> Council Ferrer, >> thank you for that. I do get that like the report was pretty clear on that too. Um like the model clearly from what the report shows full RGI is not necessarily financially sustainable. So, I understand that you have like the mix between uh affordable and then the market rent units. Um, and I understand, you know, with like the aging buildings and and everything else, you know, the regeneration money that we're bringing in, um, is something that we we need to do just to make sure that we can actually save those RGI units as well. I do see also though, um, like with limber lost, I think I saw the cost, uh, range per unit was like $490,000 to like $600ish,000 for for the replacement of the unit as well. Um, so I do see that, you know, it's it's it's quite substantial for a replacement of of a unit in a building. Um, I just wanted to know is there any I think I saw also in the report um that there could be opportunities maybe for partnerships or anything like that as well. So I just wanted to know is that still something that is being considered here for potentially having a cheaper cost per unit for the capital side or a cheaper cost per per unit so we can actually maybe increase the RGI portion. >> Mr. Chisel. >> So thank you for the question and through the chair. I think one of the challenges I face myself is the same question of the cost per door. One of the things you'll see is that we're projecting that we're building family units. So, it's taking up more square footage. It's more footprint. So, to get more units, you have a little bit more cost. So, if we look at um the cost to build um that the target set by the city of London uh is $2 um $80 a a square foot. Reimagine Southdale came in lower and our target was $280 a square foot. So the challenge we're facing is a lot of our plans include familysiz units because we understand from the housing needs assessment that's a gap. So as we go for each project we will reassess the housing need and what is the unit mix that can be successful on that site. does the you know does the data match the reality of the community and we'll do some adjustments on that on a project by project basis to make sure each individual project is is able to be self-sufficient. So would that include adding RGI units? That may be part of the conversation we have with uh the service manager/shareholder on a condition of funding. But it would have to make sure that we don't create a situation where the operating revenue is not going not going to cover debt reserve and operations because if we create that again that's a situation the city found itself 20 on 25 years ago when everything was devolved. So, we don't want to recreate that in new housing stock. >> Councelor Ferrer. >> Okay. Thank you for that. Um, like because when I see the 490,000 like base and then it can go up to 650-ish,000 like that could be the cost of like an existing home. Um, and I and I just, you know, like the numbers they're a little bit, you know, high. Um and then when when I know that we're kind of not really increasing the RGI uh component itself, 300 million to 1 billion over the next 15 years, you know, like obviously that money is needed, but at the same time increasing the affordability factor when we're putting in such a significant investment I do feel would be kind of the direction I would like to see um going. Um I know there's another item so maybe I'll just leave some more questions for that but um just considering that there is no new net new RGI being considered here with the full regeneration plan is that correct >> Mr. Chism >> through the chair. That's correct. I will remind you that the affordable rentals are below well below average market rent. We're renting two-bedroom units at $1,200. They're, you know, so we are providing a different tier. Rankar income is a different program. It has a long wait time. We're trying to address the immediate needs of folks that are maybe new to the community or in the community and struggling with their rent today. So, we're not targeting the deeply affordable, but this is definitely affordable. So, if you look at what's on the market to rent, renting two and threebedroom units for under $1,600 is is quite affordable for for members of our community. And that that's an important segment of folks and they struggle quite a bit, right? Because so much of their income is going to rent. So we can serve that tenant group. We serve the community well. >> Counselor. >> Okay. Uh last question then. Um just breaking down uh the affordable and the RGI cuz uh you you were saying that like the prices are um I guess comparable. Well, it could be anyways depending on who is in the RGI unit. Um, so for affordable units like what would those ranges actually look like? >> Mr. Chisum. >> Thank you. And through the chair, you're challenging my memory a little bit. Uh, but I do believe um our one-bedroom units we kept at I think $960. Um, but the other units at Southdale, which is the our first build, um, I do believe the numbers range from 12 to,500 for the two to three bedrooms. Um, so it's uh th those are deeply affordable. Uh, so essentially when we looked at the CHC application, 100% of our units were deemed by CMS as affordable. >> Counselor. >> Okay, thank you for that. No more questions. >> Thank you. I have councelor Frank next. Thank you. Uh I just want to say I appreciate one of the goals being to build lower intent or energy intensive buildings um better from an operating perspective and long-term financial costs. So I appreciate the thought put into including that as a couple different pillars throughout the report. Uh one question I did have in regards to the first pillar of retaining and revitalizing existing buildings. I'm just wondering in buildings that don't have air conditioning, specifically some of the senior buildings, is there any support given uh in the near term for seniors to purchase air conditioners given the extreme heat waves that we're seeing and u many of the buildings don't have centralized air, but of course I know in the future hopefully we'll have some sort of centralized air or air conditioning program. >> Thank you. I'll go to Mr. Chisen. >> And thank you. doing through the chair. We don't envision a program that we're purchasing air conditioners for tenants. It's problematic in many ways for us. Um but it is something we think about. Um so there's a few things we're doing. Uh we are um there's an acronym and it's not coming to me but essentially for our makeup air units we are adding air conditioning to the makeup air units which will be a more energyefficient way to cool some of the existing spaces that have um small units but also it will bring cool air into the hallways and common areas of the buildings which will reduce some of that heat effect of some of these cinder block and brick buildings we have. So there will be the air flow that goes in the common areas will be cooler which will help uh alleviate some of that. Uh and we are in conversations about should we could we how do we introduce um heat pump systems to a large senior's building and there's issues on the capacity of electrical system to come in and our building to service it. But so we are starting those conversations uh recognizing that it is a significant issue. You know for low-income households they don't have the few hundred for an air conditioner and sometimes a fan is problematic. So we are aware of it. We just we haven't figured out a path and that's an active conversation for us. >> Councilor Frank, >> thank you. Yes, I appreciate that and appreciate any work that you're able to bring it uh forward in in BC when they had that heat wave event over 600 people passed away. The large majority were seniors. So, just uh something to keep top of mind as you are looking to revitalize those buildings and spaces. And I just also wanted to uh share I was surprised to hear uh some comments about us not learning about the errors from 122 baseline. Um, we actually got an audit report and there are many lessons learned and then we went ahead with 345 Silvin and with those lessons and we opened that over a year ago and I can say as a word counselor of both those buildings I have not heard a single complaint about 345 Silvin, not one single email, phone call, video, social media post, nothing. Uh, why? Because we learned from 122 baseline. We improved and we changed our policies. So, I have every confidence that the city staff and LMCH will take those learnings and continue to apply them in these regeneration plans. >> Thank you. Looking for other speakers on this item. >> Okay. Councelor Traso, please go ahead. You have a minute 10. >> Yeah, just to um just just to summarize, I I'm still not clear what we're voting on. We're just we're voting on receiving this report but not approving it. When do we approve it? >> Thank you. Mr. Chisum, do you have a timeline when you're coming back with additional information or if there's something coming back to us for approval? >> Thank you. And through the chair, there is no plan to bring the master regeneration plan to council for approval. It is a board approved document that will guide how we approach regeneration as the shareholder. Any acquisition, divestment of a of an asset, any acquisition of debt comes through the shareholder. So the intent would be on a projectby-p project basis as funding becomes available that we'd come back and have those conversations and request that approval through council. It is important for us to have a pipeline and a roadmap internally so that we're prepared to do the work that needed to do. If Bill Canon homes announces funding and we do not have a plan, we will not get funding. It will take us three years to identify the roadmap and get the work done before we can be shovel ready. We hear we are hearing clearly from the funer that 12 months is the window for shovel ready. Our objective is to move these projects along so they're shovel ready. So should funding be kept available and should the shareholder and LMCH agree this is a good idea, we're ready to move forward. Without a plan, we will not move forward and we will stay and we will continue to just to maintain the assets the best we can. We think it's prudent to have a plan so that we are able to move forward should funding become available. >> Councelor Trasa. >> Yes. Well, that just underlines why I think it would be irresponsible for us at this point being that we don't really get to approve this as the sole shareholder and the responsible party here. What else can we do if we if some of us feel that this report is inadequate in terms of addressing some of the demonstrated problems that we've seen already? So, I can't vote for this and I I I don't want to hold up other aspects of uh moving forward which are very good, but we've got a very serious problem where people are living and we can't just be saying yes, but look over there cuz this is nice and we're going to move forward. So, no, this is this is just not an acceptable way to make policy and this agency is going to have to um do a much better job addressing the uh conditions in the existing units for for this council to continue. >> Thank you. That's >> muddling through. Thank you. >> Thank you. I have Deputy Mayor Lewis next followed by Councelor Ferrer for a second time. >> Thank you, Madam Chair. I wasn't going to speak, but I given the comments we just heard, I I have to weigh in here. Um I could not disagree with councelor Trussel more strongly. This regeneration plan, which will bring more affordable units online, this is the responsible way. This is the policy process that's set out and it is key that we move this forward in order to qualify for the build Canada homes funding. In terms of the existing unit conditions, as we've already heard from our delegation today, improvements are being made. And that didn't start with this council. By the way, I want to underscore that this started with the mayor holderled council making a very significant investment in their multi-year budget for capital funding that allowed LMCH to start moving forward on a number of repairs. That's included replacing furnaces with high energy efficiency furnaces. That has included replacing doors and windows. That has included replacing elevators. Improvements are being made. But with all due respect to the council's previous comments, you don't fix 20 years of properties being ignored in two or three years. Those efforts take time, and you cannot displace every tenant in the 3,200 plus units we have for an undetermined period of time to make all the repairs necessary in every building all at once. So respectfully uh I found those comments uh objectionable. I'm going to support this report and I'm encouraging colleagues to do the same. >> Thank you. I have councelor Ferrer next. >> Thank you. >> About 55 seconds remaining. >> Uh I just wanted to point out some of the um reports we had on the placement ratio because I did hear some comments on that. In the April 13th caps report, there was um information that was brought for the placement ratio section 2.2.2 for that item um on page 10. Um and it does show the chronological placements decreasing or sorry the numbers of people on the wait list decreasing more significantly after the uh placement ratio changes were in force in effect from before. So I just wanted to point that out. Um and you can see that on the April 13th report. Thank you. Looking for other speakers. >> Council Pribble, >> I'll just make a comment. The as we heard from some of the colleagues, it's not that uh we don't have issues. We do have them. I do believe we acknowledge them. I do believe this organization and the board are aware of them. Yes, it doesn't happen overnight. But bottom line is what I see in front of us has strategically planned forward. I will absolutely support it. Thank you. >> Thank you. Okay. Seeing no other speakers online or in chambers, we will open the vote. Closing the vote. Motion carries 13-2. >> Okay. Thank you, Mr. Chisom. Thank you, Mr. Squire. Uh, this moves us to items for direction. Uh, 4.1 similar item, review of the London and Middle Sex Community Housing Master Regeneration Plan, but this is the staff report. Uh I will look for a mover in second for this report. This is in front of us to receive. I have councelor McAllister and councelor Cuy. Thank you. And we'll be begin discussion on this item. Councelor Stevenson, I'm happy to go back to you for your question on 4.2 in in that report. That sounds great. >> Okay. Thank you. I'll go to councelor Stevenson. >> Yes. So my question on 4.2 two is what can staff share regarding the uh application to build Canada homes for capital funding. >> Thank you. I'll go to Mr. Felberg. >> Uh thank you and thank you Madam Chair. Uh so we actually have a report submitted which will be on the next cycle of caps. >> Thank you counselor. >> Thank you. So is there a ballpark at all that can be shared with the public? >> Mr. for Valberg. >> Uh thank you through you, Madam Chair. Uh at this point, I think the best thing would be to read that report. It's quite complex, a lot of details in it, and we can have that conversation at that time. >> Thank you, counselor. >> Can't blame a girl for trying. Um so, in the executive summary of this report, it says that this report has been prepared to outline several implications and risks based on civic administration's review of the plan. Maybe I missed it, but I I'm not seeing too much how what the guidance is for council to mediate uh or mitigate those implications and risks. So, I'm just wondering is that coming later or is there anything that could be highlighted for us here? >> Thank you. I'll go to Mr. Murray first. >> Uh sure. Thank you. And through you, Madam Chair. Um, so I will speak to I guess the the financial uh risks and and we've uh outlined a number of considerations uh in the report that I think is uh important uh context to be mindful of and aware of. Uh looking ahead, uh certainly we anticipate that there will be future uh funding requests uh from LMCH as it pertains to this plan as part of the 2028 to 2031 multi-year budget. uh and uh some of the considerations uh in fact all of the considerations that we've outlined here would be uh important uh and useful I guess reminders to be mindful of at at that point in time uh around the implications uh in particular that uh any such investments would have uh for example on the city's uh debt situation uh and uh and how that might uh impact the overall uh debt picture for the city. So, uh, this is, uh, I think, uh, a long-term plan that will have, uh, you know, multiple, uh, touch points with with council, and I think these are, uh, good risks to be mindful of, uh, into the future as, uh, future funding requests come forward. >> Councelor Stevenson, >> thank you. Um, in the chart provided in table one is 120 where does 122 baseline fall in that chart? >> Mr. Felberg. >> Uh, thank you madam chair and through you. Uh, 122 baseline is an affordable housing project. So it's not actually included in that table. >> Councelor Stevenson. >> Okay. Thank you. Um, and then in at the very end of 2.1, it talks about tenant success. And the staff report says, "Ten success is an important outcome that could be more clearly reflected in the plan. While the plan appropriately emphasizes financial sta sustainability and alignment with the expectations of the LMCH board and city council, it may benefit from a more balanced articulation of how tenant success will be supported and measured. This could include clearer reference to elements such as housing stability, tenant engagement, safety and security, access to supports, successful tenencies, responsiveness to tenant needs, and improved quality of life. So, I couldn't agree with this more. My question is, if uh LMCH was in discussions with city staff throughout 2025, why is it not more clearly reflected in the plan? >> Mr. Felberg. Uh thank you through you madam chair. Uh so the the conversations most of the conversations that we had in relation to the plan were focused on the redevelopment development opportunities. A lot of the physical activities like the acquisition and some of the things that Mr. Chisum identified uh when the final plan came forward this was a gap that we'd identified and it's a suggestion that we have for LCH that could improve the plan further to some of the other counselor's comments as well. >> Councelor Stevenson. Yeah, thank you. My comment would be though, we're not addressing the like elephant in the room. Like we there's one thing that is having a huge huge impact on everything and we're still not talking about it. I I I fail to understand how it's not a top priority. Um, on page 352, it talks about how uh future requests to be funded through debt were not included in the debt forecast in the 2026 budget update, uh, which highlighted the projected growth in the city's debt burden. Um, I just wondered if staff had any comments around that. Again, I guess this is coming in the next report, but uh, like will will there be updated debt forecasts with whatever is coming to us uh, next month? >> Thank you. I'll go to Mr. Murray. >> Uh thank you and three you madam chair. Uh what that refers to is uh the debt implications of any future uh project uh or funding requests that come from LMCH pertaining to this pro uh this this plan this regeneration plan. Uh so we would envision that uh through the multi-year budget uh there will be a potentially a business case that comes forward uh and uh there may uh well be debt associated with with that plan. This is referring to the fact that uh that debt is uh obviously not captured or reflected in our forecast at this point because we do not know uh what that looks like in terms of the amount of the debt, the term of the debt, that sort of thing. So that is what that point is uh is referring to. >> Councelor, uh thank you for that. I guess what I'm wondering is when the decision point comes to council about an acquisition plan uh and potentially the Build Canada homes, if there's debt involved, will there be forecasts uh debt forecast updates for us to consider at the same time? >> Mr. Murray, >> uh thank you, Madam Chair. So, we typically uh refresh our debt forecasts uh once a year. So certainly uh as we're we're developing each year's uh multi-year budget or budget update as the case may be, we're uh updating our our debt forecasts and projections as well. Uh certainly we could use that most recent uh refresh to then layer on what the impacts uh could hypothetically be associated with uh any debt that may come with a uh future funding request. >> Councelor, thank you. I think that would be really helpful. maybe one of your graphs again we can see the impact of our decision points. Um uh right below that on page 352 it talks about the intention of the plan being to generate additional revenues but if the revenues don't materialize as planned LMCH could realize an operating deficit. Now, we saw that at 122 baseline. We're seeing that at uh many of the uh community housing providers as you do the new uh end ofear mortgages and that kind of thing and toll puddle. So, is there any kind of a risk assessment model or anything that is going to be provided to council as we make these decisions? because I hate for us to like an intention is good, but it would also be nice to know what we can do to ensure or at least how readily we council would be informed of the impacts, right? Cuz again, if I look at 122 baseline, it took an audit report a long time later to realize that we were uh there were financial implications to taxpayers because of that. So knowing that this is being highlighted now, how proactively can civic administration uh inform council of anything un toward that's going on? >> I'll go to Mr. Murray. >> Uh thank you three, Madam Chair. So uh as it relates to uh future requests that may come from LMCH, I think uh what will be important for uh council to uh understand is the uh sensitivity analysis that LMCH has uh undertaken as it pertains to any particular project that is being put forward uh for potential funding. Uh obviously the the intention would be that these are uh self-sufficient developments in the sense that uh you know any uh additional uh debt requirement uh to fund them can be uh covered by additional rental revenues. But certainly um there there is uh you know a sensitivity analysis that needs to accompany that to ensure that uh we're not cutting it too close as it relates to uh projections and proformas on those developments. So you know I think there's an important concept of margin of safety that needs to be uh built into those uh projections and uh it would be I think important uh that as part of those future requests that LMCH articulate uh the sensitivity analysis that has been done uh in those projections. >> Counselor. >> Yeah, thank you for that because again the intention is great. 122 baseline had a great intention about being an affordable housing building. And I think it's really um it was sad to see the loss of that highly affordable, deeply affordable rental units in such a short period of time, right? So city built, cityrun, city managed, and the rents went up significantly in just a short period of time. So I'd hate to see that here. We really want to keep the rents as low as possible. And if LMCH is raising them up to market rent to keep things financially sustainable, I think it's really important that council understands what is happening to the rents. Um, and then it talks about uh LMCH considering the priority of the projects on the roster um about a wise use of limited funds and rehabilitation. So, if I could just ask for an update on that like it says >> and I'll go to staff for an update. Uh thank you three madam chair. So uh I think what we're really driving at there is this is uh this is a significant plan as you've seen uh outlined in the report 300 million uh projected over 5 years upwards of a billion over 15 years. Um resources are going to be limited. council will have to future councils will have to make some uh decisions in terms of uh priorities in terms of not just uh funding LMCH uh potential requests but requests from uh civic service areas and other agencies, boards and commissions as well. So uh resources are not unlimited um and uh there there will need to be uh some prioritization that happens as a result of that and therefore you know it's possible that not all projects will be able to be funded on the timeline that we'd ideally like to see them move forward. Right? So uh I think that prioritization of what projects can have the best bang for the buck and and bring those forward and prioritize those ones uh will be important uh given the uh limited resources that will inevitably be be available. Thank you. I will look for other speakers on item 4.1. I have councelor Taso next and councelor Ferrer. Um thank you. Um and and through the chair going to 2.2 overview of the master regeneration plan which we've received though not approved. Um it says the first one is retain and revitalize existing buildings. But then uh the subdiv the subtitle development and redevelopment, the subtitle acquisition. Um you talk about completion of Southdale, redevelopment of Ladybrook, development of vacant lands in Stratthroy, redevelopment work for the limber loss property. When do where does this report actually address the risks that are involved in that first? And I'm coming back to that um first lever the risks involved in that retain and revitalize existing buildings because when I read this report just just like reading the uh the plan itself where it falls short and where I have very concerns about is is is it doesn't really address that first lever again. It talks about the it talks about all the other things that are going on. It doesn't talk about the first lever. And I think it's a blind spot. We're just not dealing with this. And I think that we we it we we we we're not dealing with this. And every year we don't deal with this. The problem is getting bigger. It is going to blow up. There are serious liabilities that we could be facing due to um due to poor conditions in in in buildings and also due to the um the delletterious effect that um the the the dilletterious effect has while I hear the point of order. >> Councelor Mallister, go ahead. Uh, I think we're straying a bit here. And my point of order refers to I feel like there's an accusation in there that the board is not doing its due diligence, their liability concerns, and I take issue with that because I think that raises serious uh legal accusations uh in terms of the board not doing its work. Um, so I would ask that the counselor retract that statement. The board is aware of issues. We were dealing with them and I think you're crossing a line. >> Just a moment. >> Let me rephrase that. >> Just a moment, counselor. Just a moment, please. >> Thank you. Councelor Truss, I'll ask you to rephrase. >> Well, in light of the fact that the um that that the bullets in 2.2 two include as the first one retain and revitalize existing buildings. Could you point to the to the to the point in the report where it actually deals with that first lever? >> Thank you. I'll go to Mr. Felberg. >> Uh thank you and through you madam chair. So uh it's true the report does not deal specifically with the uh with the retain and revitalize existing buildings but uh the perspective on that is that uh city council has invested through the coochi program they've invested in capital repairs at LMCH very specifically as its own uh particular line within the coochi investment plan. Additionally, uh, LMCH has also received CHC funding in order to undertake a number of capital repairs, uh, and through the asset management plan, which identified $100 million gap, and as Mr. Chisum said, needs a bit of an update in order to reflect, um, our current day, uh, activities and the work that's been going on. What we focused on in the report was really the redevelopment because of the cost of that redevelopment and the potential impact to municipal council and the multi-year budget in future years. >> Yes. Um thank you >> just a moment counselor please go ahead. Yeah. So, um I think I think what what is what is clearly h happening here in my view and I I hope this doesn't offend anybody. We're we're moving forward with re with redevelopment, refurbishment, acquisition uh on a couple of particular lands, but we're not dealing with the condition of the premises in a responsible way as they are now. And I I say that really having thought about the condition of these units based on the asset management plan and based on what I'm hearing from not only residents in the building but neighbors. It's really a problem. And I think I think that we are and and I'm sorry I'm going to I'm going to say this. We're not being responsible if we gloss over the gloss over the problems in the building. >> Just a moment. Council point of order. I have two point of orders. I will start with councelor Mallister. >> Yes. Anecdotal evidence the counselor has heard is one thing, but again I point to the board being aware of issues and dealing with them. And I would like the counselor to be cautious with his language in terms of the acquisa the accusations that we are not doing something. We are and it's being handled appropriate and responsibly. >> Thank you, Deputy Mayor Lewis. Was your point of order similar? >> Uh, it's similar. Um, although I have different concerns to raise with you. So, if you want to deal with that one first and then come to me >> or would you like mine to you and then you can rule on them together? Um, I guess I'll defer to you as the clerk. >> Thank you. I will take each separately. Uh, councelor Mallister, uh, I hear your point of order. Uh, I have cautioned the counselor already and asked to rephrase. I'm just asking the counselor again if he can just continue to think about, uh, rephrasing the way that he is positioning his points. >> Thank you. I'll do that. I'm I'm trying to think about how >> I'm just going to hear the second point of order. Deputy Mayor Lewis. >> Uh, thank you, Madam Chair. Frankly, I think the comment that we are not being responsible um actually serves to undermine decisions of council and would be a violation of the council code of conduct. It is a matter of opinion based on as councelor Mallister has said anecdotal evidence at best and it's also weighing into the operational weeds um the uh um retention and revitalization of buildings. and I spoke to this earlier um is very much operational in terms of when pieces of that are done and is not relevant to this report and so the councelor is also out of order in terms of not sticking with the uh item that we are dealing with in terms of the agenda here. Uh I think his conduct has been >> frankly in my opinion reprehensible. >> Okay counselor I need to take a personal privilege on that. I need to make a point counselor. Councelor, I do not want to have to cut off microphones. Uh, Deputy Mayor Lewis, let me deal with your point of order. Uh, just a moment. Okay, Councelor Trusso, I'll reinforce my caution and I will ask you to stay on topic. I agree that we're veering into other areas. Um, and with that, I'll let you continue uh on your comments. >> Thank you. Um, I don't think my I do want to take a point of personal privilege on the reprehensible. I mean, I'm reading this report and I'm trying to give my honest assessment on what's not included. >> One point one moment. So, just to give you preserve your time as well and to keep you on on the the topic at hand, you're asking for me to deal with your point of order around term reprehensible. I hear you. I will again let uh Deputy Mayor Lewis know that uh that I agree that that was a bit overboard and that uh I will ask for everyone to maintain decorum and I think this is just a reminder for everyone. With that, I'd like us to return to uh your comments. So go ahead. >> Okay. Okay. So, my my comments are really based on commenting about what's not in the report, which I think needs to be in the report. And um I'm very disappointed. I'm very disappointed. And I think it creates problems for the city for us to not deal with these uh issues. And you can characterize them as operational as as operational issues, but I think the condition of the premises that the tenants are living in goes way beyond operational issues. And I and I think I've made my point. I can I can I can see what the mood of several people on this council is. I'll certainly be raising these issues again backed up by certain uh motions at at the shareholders meeting. But for now, I have to say I'm particularly frustrated and I just do not think that these reports deal with the um conditions of the buildings. Thank you. >> Thank you. I will look for other speakers on this item. I c sorry for a next. Yes, go ahead. >> Thanks uh chair. Um before I ask my questions, I will I guess make comment to the chair's comments. we must maintain our decorum like we're the leaders of the city and we need to act like the leaders of the city and I'm not taking any sides. I'm just saying um I I just we need to start working as one as a unit and I know we can do that cuz I've seen us do that before. So let's let's see if we can do that here. This is a big item. This is very important and I feel like these are the times when we really need to start working together. Um, for my question for this item, if we were to approve this to staff, would we be expecting this as an appro or as a receipt here of this report, would this be coming to the multi-year budget? Would would this be kind of an action that council, if they take, we will see business cases regarding this on a multi-year budget process, or will we be seeing potential funding reports coming before that time? Thank you. I'll go to Mr. Murray. >> Uh thank you and thank you, Madam Chair. So, I think there's uh there's an important step that precedes the multi-year budget, and that is of course uh council strategic planning process. So, uh there needs to be some decisions uh made through that process around the what the priorities of of the next uh term of council are. And uh so uh pending that discussion and uh then pending uh associated discussions at the LMCH uh board of directors level around how they then contribute to the city's uh strategic objectives for the the next term. Uh that would then inform uh what LMCH uh chooses to bring forward uh through the next multi-year budget process. >> Council. >> Okay. with that because our strategic plan right now does fit into this direction in a lot of ways. Does that mean we could potentially see recommendations or perhaps funding if it were to become available before that time? >> Mr. Murray. >> Uh thank you, Madam Chair. I will uh refer back to Mr. Felberg's previous comments on uh submissions uh for potential Build Canada homes uh funding which uh further details will of course be forthcoming on that that may provide uh an avenue uh to access uh funding sooner than that. Of course, as you know uh just very recently in the last couple of months. Uh LMCH uh received approval to uh enter into the loan agreement with CMHC uh to uh secure funding for phase one and phase two of uh Reimagine Southdale. Uh as part of that approval, uh council also uh allowed LMCH to retain the previously approved municipal dollars that went along uh with that project. So that uh provides some additional funding uh I think in the neighborhood of approximately $29 million or thereabouts to uh to advance to the next phase of their uh regeneration plan as well. So, uh, all that to say, there is, uh, funding that has been approved already that, uh, will allow LMCH to progress, uh, regeneration activities over the next couple years in the leadup to the multi-year budget. >> Council Herrera. >> Okay. Thank you. So, with the last one, my last, I guess, follow up on that. Um, I understand we have some funding that's been approved or is going to get approved for the leadup to the multi-year budget. So uh the question would be if um the full scope or breadth of the regeneration plan as it is in front of us parts of it or or anything after what's been approved already doesn't necessarily get funded. Let's say it doesn't get approved or funded. What is the plan B? Is there going to be kind of a focus on repairing existing units? Is there going to be anything else um that comes up that we could take a direction on? I'm just wondering what happens if our plans right now don't necessarily materialize. >> Mr. Murray, >> uh thank you and through you. So uh as Mr. Chisum alluded to in his comments, uh there are multiple uh strategies or prongs that uh LMCH is is working through. One of them being of course the regeneration plan. uh the asset management plan of course uh informs the the ongoing life cycle uh renewal requirements as well for the uh the existing uh assets of of LMCH. So um I I'm not going to speculate on what uh what LMCH would uh choose to prioritize or put forward as part of the next multi-year budget other than to say that there are uh there are multiple uh strategies that they are working through. >> Counselor. Okay, thank you for that. Um, no, no more questions. >> Thank you. I will look for other speakers on this item. >> Any online? Okay, seeing none. Oh, councelor Purbal, go ahead. >> I'll just leave it with a comment and as stated in the conclusion by our staff that this is a plan forward. Are there going to be certain challenges? Yes, there will be which they will be addressed prior uh in the next council strategic plan and also the um uh and the multi-year budget. So therefore, yes, there will be risks which will be addressed at a proper time as every other organization. It will be up to the board of directors and that organization to prioritize what's the best. Do we need a plan to move forward? Absolutely. I will be supporting it. Thank you. Okay, seeing no other speakers on this item online or in chambers, we will open the vote. closing the vote. Motion carries 13-2. Okay. Thank you, committee. I'm in your hands. Uh, our next item 4.2 is probably going to take some time. Um, I'm looking to you as to whether or not you'd like a 10-minute break now. Okay. Okay, I'll look for a mover or whatever time you choose to put forward. Uh, okay. I have councelor Purple moving a 10-minute break, looking for a seconder. I have counselor Frank moving that break. And we'll do this by hand. Uh, all in favor and those for online, if you can put your cameras on. A motion carries. Okay, thank you. We have 10 minutes. There are some snacks in the break room. Okay, we are now on item 4.2 which is the London Transit Commission Governance Review findings and recommendation. Uh I will first go to Miss Ders Bear to pre provide some preliminary comments and an introduction to Mr. Pever who will be our speaker. Go ahead. Thank you, Madam Chair. Three to the members of the committee. Um, as committee is aware, council directed civic administration to undertake a governance review of the London Transit Commission. Uh, what you will hear today is a response back from KPMG who we consulted with uh as long as well as Dylan Consulting who led this work. Um, Bruce Peeever is here with us today. He's a partner with KPMG uh and he works in cities uh with cities and higher education institutions and he's actually from London. So we're happy to welcome him here today. Uh we had another partner with him. U Mr. Cameron had to leave. So we'll leave it to Mr. Pever to walk us through this presentation. >> Wonderful. Thank you. Welcome Mr. Pever. We will uh get you all set up there and you may begin when you're ready. >> Great. Thank you, Madam Chair. It's a pleasure to be here in London again uh to present our findings from the governance review on London Transit. I'd like to begin, madame chair, to bring council up to date on what were the objectives and the scope for our engagement. So, we were engaged in collaboration with our partner Dylan Consulting to conduct an independent governance review on the London Transit Commission. The review assessed how effectively the current governance model supports accountability, transparency, and coordinated decision-m with council's, excuse me, strategic priorities for transit. So we want to draw upon individual input and leading practices from comparable municipalities uh to inform the development of a modernized governance model for the city and London transit. So the key objectives there are two of them. One was to assess the current governance relationship between the city and LTC and the second one was to recommend a governance model that promotes alignment with council's strategic priorities, strengthens accountability and supports effective coordinated transit oversight. In order to achieve those objectives, we assess the current governance framework. We engaged key individuals to understand perspectives on governance and opportunities for improvement. We conducted a jurisdictional review and we developed three different models to look at uh for the city's consideration. The summary of our findings around governance was one. The London Transit Commission has a solid monitoring foundation for business planning, annual reporting, and effective working level relationships. However, we found the reporting to be inconsistent. Uh there's issues around the decision making process in order to support council's oversight of its priorities, risks, tradeoffs, and how you implement different projects. There is also a finding around while the bylaw establishes formal roles for council and the London Transit Commission, accountability is not always consistency consistently applied in practice. There's also a finding around authority. So the governance structure appropriately assigns council authority over funding and policy direction. and the London Transit Commission authority over operations. However, what we found was that decision- making and escalation pathways are not always clearly defined or consistently used. And finally, there was a finding around alignment. So, both the transit commission and the city are generally aligned at the strategic planning level, but there's some alignment issues during the implementation. due to funding constraints, competing priorities, and operational pressures. If we look at the three different models we considered, I'll start with option number three and work backwards. So, we looked at option three, which is a municipal services corporation. and municipal uh service corporations are being rolled out across the province for a variety of reasons. There's also option two which was to bring London Transit back into the city as a city department. And finally, there was option one, which was to retain the status quo but with improvements, namely a commission structure. So what you see before you is the recommend recommended model. >> So what changes a more structured reporting relationship with the city and the London Transit Commission >> which will promote greater council visibility. What remains is a dedicated governance and operational continuity. Okay. So as we I stated earlier, city council as the funding agent is responsible for strategic priority and and funding and the London Transit Commission is responsible for operations. And >> thank you. if you just want to wrap up >> and we will wrap up right now with we have six opportunities or recommendations for you and they involve both the composition of the commission responsibilities how council and the transit commission report governance training for the commission the alignment with the city's strategic plan and finally how to develop greater strategic capacity within the commission. Madame chair, that is our presentation. >> Thank you. Okay. Uh I will look to committee for a motion to uh receive and there was a motion included in our package. It included the recommendations uh from the governance review endorsing those civic administration be directed to prepare and bring forward future to a future meeting of SPC any necessary amendments to bylaws. Uh that LTC be directed to review the recommendations and that civic administration be authorized to undertake all the administrative acts that are necessary in connection with this report. Um so I'm looking for mover and secondary so that we can begin our discussion. I have councelor Frank and councelor Hopkins. Uh and I will look for speakers. >> I'll start with councelor Stevenson. Go ahead. >> Sorry if we could just get your mic. >> Thank you and thank you for the presentation. Um I go right to the overall conclusion which he stated is that the issues identified are governance execution issues not evidence that the commission model is fundamentally unsuitable. And I I just think it's a little bit unfortunate that we didn't make sure that we were executing what we currently had before we paid for a review. But I do think that we maximize the value of this review if we apply it to other things that we do as well. cuz there's that expression that says how you do anything is how you do everything to a certain degree and I think these issues are showing up in other areas of the city and so having this reminder of what it looks like to execute the governance function that we have um I think will is a way to maximize the use of this report. So it talks about uh accountability not always being consistently applied in practice with role ambiguity, unclear ownership of issue resolution and um decision-m and escalation pathways are not always clearly defined or consistently used creating uncertainty and reliance on informal resolution. So I appreciated the clarity and the conclusion um and the succinctness of that. I think it it uh it sums it up pretty well in that it was a governance execution issue um and something we can learn from. You just mentioned as you were uh doing the overview a more structured reporting and council visibility and again um I've been a big advocate for more more reporting more structured reporting and more visibility on the issues that matter to Londoners. So transit being a big one of those. And in number three of your recommendations, you're saying again, improve the reporting structure, increase the reporting frequency to council to strengthen reporting clarity, improve transparency, and enable more proactive decision focused oversight by council. I could read that 10 times. I love that. I think I would love to see us embrace that take this given that it is a governance review and the conclusion was an execution issue issue. I think you know it's a great opportunity for us to apply this in as many areas as we can because we're not getting the results that we want in a lot of cases and we are the governance body and we do have a lot more authority I think than we are utilizing. I've heard terms when I talk about our boards and commissions and wanting to get certain things, uh, we've heard terms say like, "Oh, we don't want to micromanage them." We're we're allocating taxpayer funding to these boards and, uh, agencies. We set them up. We structured them and they should do what we say to a certain degree, especially when it comes to best practices in terms of reporting transparency. Um, we had an issue at the Hamilton Road BIA around bank signatures and again it came up oh we can't direct or micromanage a BIA and I think well we allocate taxpayer funding something as basic as cash controls. >> Just a moment councelor Stevenson I'm just pausing your time while I hear the point of order from councelor Pelosa. >> All right madam chair I appreciate other agency boards and commissions including London police and BAS but if we just keep it on topic of um the LTC advisor report that's in front of us for governance in this decision. Thank you. >> Thank you. Uh I will remind the speaker just to keep tight onto the report. Thank you. >> Thank you. Well, as I pointed out, given that the learning of this over $100,000 expenditure from taxpayers is about governance best practices, the best way to maximize the value is to talk about how we can use it elsewhere. Um the last thing I just want to say is again in the implementation considerations and I'm just reiterating what's in this report. I do really appreciate the report and as I said I think the value comes in spreading it across everything this council does that successful implementation will require sequencing resourcing and sustained governance discipline um and that uh one of the quick wins that's recommended is to prioritize reporting improvements. So whether this is contracted agencies, whether it's boards and commissions, I I really I'm going to bring back this this report and I'm going to mention it as we look at other things that we're doing to say, hey, let's apply these best practices. Let's, you know, have sustained governance discipline across this corporation. And I think that's the best way to uh maximize the value that we spent here. Thank you for the uh report and I did appreciate it. Thank you. I had councelor Purple next. >> Thank you, sir. Chair. Thank you as well for the report and I certainly uh agree with your recommendations and with your uh evaluation of the current status and future. I do have a question though uh when we look at recommended model what changes and there are clear roles I see that decision rights and escalation. Can you go more into the details based on the model that you are proposing that it's going to be different than what we have currently? >> Thank you. I go to Mr. P. >> Madame chair to the councelor. So thank you. Uh so decision rights revolve around how decisions are made in the organization and what we're suggesting in our recommendations that they become more formalized. So counselor uh in my work with municipalities across the country I've discovered uh the saying that good paper makes good business. And what we're suggesting here with our decision rights is that the reporting relationships and how decisions are communicated across organizations are formalized and papered so that everybody has a clear understanding of who is responsible, who is accountable and who is uh ultimately tasked with delivering the the outcome. I hope that answers your question, Madame Mayor to the counselor. >> Thank you. I'll go back to councelor Purple. >> Sorry. And the followup through the chair and the part of the escalation. >> Thank you. I'll go to Mr. Paver. >> Yes. So with respect to escalation uh when there is roadblocks encountered within the u relationship between uh the two entities then how do you progress to an ultimate decision? How does it get escalated? And then again that should be papered and agreed to formally >> council privile. >> Okay. Okay. So it's not to live as the model. It's it's just the process in this case because both of them what you mentioned is not the model model currently what we have this could be implemented as well immediately correct >> Mr. Peaver. >> Yes, madame chair to the councelor. Yes, this is uh our recommendations as we have detailed in the report can begin implementation uh upon council's uh adoption and consideration. >> Councelor Perville. >> Okay. Thank you. Followup. When I look at the recommended model and when I see beside the Peter city manager executive team and LTC general manager leadership team and it is dotted line uh can you can you put more a little bit more support of this because again uh when I see even though it's a dotted line this is kind of a thing that if I look at this model city council the mo the moment where the information doesn't flow through the city council in this how we how do we prevent that the deputy city manager executive team is not blamed or LTC commission through the other hand and this is the thing if you can explain to me the dotted line so we have a clear vision on this part >> Mr. Peter. >> So madame chair to the councelor typically what we recommend is that staff between two entities like between a city and one of its boards such as the London Transit Commission they are responsible for operational delivery under council's guidance and policy direction. Accordingly, they would consult with one another. So, they would on operational matters, it would be the city manager's office or the uh city's executive team that would be communicating and working with the executive team of London Transit. When it involves policy and strategic priorities, then it becomes a matter for council and council is ultimately responsible for strategy and or strategic priorities as the funer and as the overall body holding the London Transit Commission. That said, in our recommendations, we're suggesting that the board be made up of four uh counselors and three uh representatives so that you have a knowledgebased board. And therefore, it would be our expectation that council would consult so the dotted line with the commission around strategic priorities for transit in the city. >> Councelor Purple. >> Thank you for that. And actually I'm going to go to the staff after you heard this explanation of the dotted line between you the executive team and LTC general manager and leadership team. Uh is is your understanding clear and do you see as proposed in this model working well? >> I will go to staff whoever wants to jump in. It looks like Miss Sher go ahead. Thank you, Madam Chair. Uh, as the sponsor for this review, I'm happy to answer our understanding of it. I think staffto staff with LTC and the city's worked quite well when we've had major projects to work on or when we're dealing with something pressing. What this provides an opportunity for us to do is have a more proactive strategic relationship and ensure that communications between staff and the commission respectively at LTC and staff and committee and council here are addressing and bringing those matters forward. So I think for staff yes it is reasonably clear there'll be a bit of work to do together as part of an implementation plan which is one of the recommendations. Uh it's shown here in the staff recommendation as being LTC work. My perspective is it's it's collaborative work with LTC and it's actually the foundation of that dotted line is how we define the implementation and actualization of the recommendations here and bring them back respectively to the commission and council. >> Council approval. >> Perfect. Thank you. I'm very happy to hear that. And the last thing I have actually it's the timelines. By the way, I completely agree with the strategic capacity and the the big picture vision. I know in terms of I always like to look uh within the existing team instead of creating a new position. I hope that again when I look at the timelines I hope the team will be looking if this is implemented that they will be looking making these changes immediately. But in terms of the number five and number six, the refined strategic outlook at planning 6 to 12 months and enhanced strategic capacity over 12 month frames that for me I would say are almost nonacceptable. Uh if you want to move forward and this is kind of your suggestion recommendation or based on the experiences with other municipalities because in a normal corporate world these these timelines would be very long and unacceptable. Can you please comment on those and what's your recommendation? >> Mr. Pever. >> Um, Madame Chairman, to the councelor, the recommended implementation timelines are based upon best practices with other municipalities. uh the city is fully uh capable or I don't know if capable my apologies is the right word madame chairman but within your rights to speed up or slow down the implementation plan as fit you as fits your needs. >> Councelor Pulk, >> thank you very much. No more no more questions at this time. >> Okay, thank you. Have councelor Ferrer next. Uh thank you chair. Um so I um I I found this report uh quite constructive I guess as a step forward. Um like as a counselor who sat on the previous commission and as a counselor who was also on council um the main thing that I was finding was that there was challenges that existed in the relationship between the commission and council. Um, and I found that a lot of the ambiguities that kind of existed there kind of resulted in those uh, challenges for the relationship. And that's exactly what I was kind of saying right at the beginning. So I do really appreciate how that was highlighted um, in the report. I do understand um that you know formalizing the roles and formalizing the governance and and formalizing communication responsibility and accountability really kind of will help us kind of you know guide us to make sure that when it comes to execution we can stay within the priorities of the city and we can also make sure that we have a service that operationally speaking is able to provide what people are looking for when it comes to our transit to our public transit. So I really appreciate that. Um you I some of the challenges that I saw you know like when we were trying to bring through you know the 10,000 hours for specialized transit at the board there was challenges there and you know with the smart card readers with the online booking like I experienced it all even with the training we did try to bring training to the commission at the time. So, I really appreciate that that training is in is is incorporated here because I really think that was the the level we had to go to to make sure that we can have these formal um rails to make sure that this relationship can be constructive and can be collaborative between the two entities. So, I really appreciate all that. Um so, with the recommendations, I I'm I'm fairly okay with them. I do have some questions with some of them though. Um I understand, you know, we're having now there's a a recommendation for a council majority uh commission. Um and I do understand that in the report it does say that, you know, we're trying to steer away from word specific uh I guess uh directions. Um and we're trying to steer away from that, but and we're kind of answering that with the training manual that we're bringing through as well. Um I I wanted to ask though um when we come to I guess the balance between um a majority of council how are we going to ensure that within the training manual or if there's any other mechanisms that are available to ensure that we do stay citywide in the approach when you have a majority of council on the new commission. How how would we is it only within the training manual or will there be any other I guess mechanisms that would ensure that a citywide approach a transit wide approach exists? >> Thank you. I'll go to Mr. Pever. >> Uh madame chair to the councelor perhaps the staff might be able to better answer that question given we're fairly focused on our scope of work. >> Thank you. I'll go to share. Uh, thank you, Madam Chair. I'm going to maybe extrapolate some work I do with some other boards to this one that members who sit as part of the London Transit Commission sit there wearing a hat as a representative of the commission, not as a representative of their ward or city council, but when they're there, they're bringing that knowledge and experience to the system that serves the entirety of London. So, that will be something that is encompassed in the training and onboarding and expectations around roles. And that is generally the way most boards work is when you sit at a board and hold more than one function that you would be say in the case of our here on area water boards which I know well uh you are there as a representative of the board to make the best decisions for the collective performance of those boards assets systems um staff and customers. >> Thank you. I'll go back to councelor Ferrer. >> Okay. Thank you for that. I guess speaking along the same lines, um, for me, I'm always trying to depoliticize, um, as much as I can because I feel like that lies some of the issues. So, um, I like the balance that we're bringing in because I know we have to make sure that we have a city strategic direction and I like how the chair will be a counselor and the vice chair will be a member of the public. Um, so I guess I would follow up with a question on the I guess the appointments and how we do the appointments. So, when we're looking for appointments for the citizen portions of the commission, is was there a consideration um where we could have maybe a the striking committee as we did before kind of really set forward recommendations when it comes to council making the final appointment for those public positions um to show that you know these citizens fit uh the requirements, they fit, they have lived experience or they have expertise or institutional knowledge in this area. Are we going to have um a striking committee when it comes to those citizen appointments that really kind of recommends like these are the individuals that we really think would serve the best on the commission going forward? >> Thank you. I'll go to Miss Sher. >> Thank you, Madam Chair. Uh the council is getting perhaps a bit ahead of where we are on this one and that these would be things we will define in the implementation plan that will come back to you and we will be looking at the best mechanism working with the city clerk's office who leads that process to ensure that we're seeing a representation uh for the public appointees that reflect uh either specialized skills or lived experience and knowledge. >> Thank you. I'll go to back to councelor Ferrer. >> Okay. Thank you for that. Sorry for getting a little ahead uh on that. Um, I would really like to see that though and I and I I guess I would also maybe if I can make a suggestion or recommendation, you know, a specific area for someone with institutional knowledge or lived experience when it comes to the specialized transit portion as well. I really think that would be very important because we really benefited uh very well when we had uh members of the public who had that knowledge. Um, I guess uh I would go to the um the escalation process. Um, I wanted to know like I understand that there's going to be somewhat of an escalation process for disputes or anything like that when it comes between the commission and council. I just wanted to know who would own that like where would that fall? Who would be the overseer? >> If I could. >> Thank you. Just counselor, you have 30 seconds. Go ahead and start. >> My apologies. Uh, through you. Um I I think the question is obviously in a relationship both parties are responsible to ensure that there's where there is conflict we would work it out together. So depending on the nature um through through you ma'am and chair to the councelor I think the city would obviously have that responsibility those are the kind of things that we can build uh through our discussions with LTC moving forward. Um but the intent is obviously to develop a robust way of developing or ensuring that we are addressing concerns moving forward. It could be us, it could be them, it could be a combination thereof depending upon the issue. >> Councelor Ferrer, >> did you say 30 seconds? >> 30 seconds. >> Okay, then I'll just try to say this one last question. When it comes to um the the senior manager for strategy and relationship role, I see that that's reporting to the LTC. Was there any consideration that that could and I know this might make things complicated, but could be reporting to both the city and the LTC at the same time? Thank you. I will go to m chair. >> Uh thank you madam chair. I think it would be very difficult from an employment perspective for them to be an employee of both organizations as the staff of LTC are separate from the staff of the city of London. Uh that said I think that that relationship will be very critical and work very closely with city of London staff. >> 7 seconds. Councelor Ferrer. >> Okay. Well, I'll support the recommendation. I really feel like this is giving kind of the um the guidelines that we need and really formalizing the relationship. So um your time >> thank you. I have councelor Hopkins next. >> Thank you madam chair and thank you very much uh for the presentation. I um at first when I thought we were going to do the governance review I wasn't sure if we needed to do this but uh reading the report a lot of good information a lot of guidance going forward. So I do appreciate um uh a number of suggestions. I uh want to sort of maybe underline the things uh stood out for me uh and and what I confir confirmed for me the training that is needed and and the composition it all kind of comes together. uh but also the public, the three members from the public and having that accessibility lens. I do appreciate uh comments from the public that we've received on this report. We have someone up here in the gallery as well as another comment. I think that is a really important part of the composition as well of the board. It's just not the counselors, it's also the public how we come together. I also appreciate Miss Shear's comments around um uh the composition structure and the collaboration between the city and LTC and how we can work with that. And I love those little markings around the option where we're looking at uh the commission structure with improvements, but I think it's greater than that and I think there's a lot more to come. So again, uh want to thank you for um um sort of um I think making us all understand where we need to go uh with the um the board and and thank you again for the presentation. >> Thank you. Looking for other speakers. >> Councelor Trussa. >> Thank you um through the chair. I I just wanted to um express my uh support for this uh report and my deep gratitude to the consultants for the thoughtful methodology they used that included looking at other jurisdictions as well as doing a um uh you know sometimes difficult assessment of where we've where we've been. This is not the position that I started with. And as I read the report and as I reread it again, I I came to the conclusion that taking it further at this point would would would indeed uh uh in involve some things that we might not be ready to do and some risks and some organizational challenges. So while I very much uh believe in the the underlying premise of this report and also the fact that we we needed to do this we really needed to do this I I can I know people are going to say this was an expensive report I don't have a problem with the value of the report that we received for the money I think we received good uh good value there are a couple of minor things that um having said that um there are a few minor things that I'd like to tweak. I don't think that has to be done today, but I just I just want to highlight two of them. Number one, in terms of the um uh the makeup of the non-counsel members of of the committee, um we have a lot of professional expertise on staff and the professional expertise on staff on things like auditing, p personnel management, uh understanding the transit environment, um are thing are things that um we we could supplement on the staff. For me, what the most important role of of the of of the other um members is is the lived experience that transit riders have in terms of being people need to be able to help us answer the question, why are people not taking transit more? We're seeing a decrease in wrership. I mean, this is just very important. I like the way that the report was ultimately drafted and I would not offer any amendment at this point because I think you've left it you've you you've left it flexible enough that we can that we can work that out. Certainly with respect uh to the disabled community there has to be a represent representative but on a 4 to3 um on a 4 to3 board there there are two others and I think there's some latitude there but it has to really focus on the experience of uh our our writers. The other thing and I think councelor Ferrer touched on this I I think the idea of having a communications and liaison officer is a good idea. It's badly needed. However, uh and I understand uh the deputy city manager's uh reluctance to try to create a blended position from a from a funding and uh uh you know financing uh and reporting uh challenge. But I think it would be very important to at least have an understanding that the person in this role has a bit of arms length latitude to sometimes say things that might not be a direct result of what they were told by their supervisor. I think it's very important to have that independent arms length relationship at least to some degree. This is going to be a very challenging position. the liaison communications person and they need to be able to have the the the in independence to be to be able to reach across to the other agency where there are going to be um challenges. We did a we we we we did this when we were dealing with the um mobility master plan. So it was a special project. I think uh staff went out of their way to to do this. this has to be regularized into everything everything we do. Um, other than that, I'm I'm very happy with the report. I thank you for it and I'm looking forward to we have we have to do quite a bit of work in terms of how we're going to implement this. So, I think by adopting these recommendations, we're we're not writing a whole lot into stone right now other than this is this is the direction that we're that we're going in. And um in in closing, I just I just want to say I think that this report adds a lot to where we've been. And I I I know I know there's a a tendency to to make the claim, well, this is just repeating what we were already going to do. But I I do think that this report there's so much depth in this report that I think it does add a number of layers of uh of of richness to to where we're going with this. >> Thank you. That's your time. Okay. Looking for other speakers on this item. >> None online. I will go to councelor Frank. >> Thank you and I too appreciate the findings of the report. Um I think it demonstrates that we need to have some slight course corrections but not a major overhaul which I think uh is a good approach and a less expensive approach than the alternative. And I personally have always wanted to have members of the public on the commission. So I'm glad to see that was suggested and I look forward to when uh that can occur. I also appreciate the suggestions for improving the training processes. Uh I appreciated the onboarding that we received although it was midterm. Um but even since then for example uh Council Ramen and I went and toured the uh specialized transit the phone booking system in the morning and that was helpful to understand how it was used and most of us have attended a tour of the facilities as well. So I think that continuous learning is important for commissioners. Uh more frequent reporting sounds good to me. I know for example the health unit sends monthly board minutes to council for their review and consideration. Uh so I think that keeping us in the loop is an important way of trying to make sure that we're working together in lock step. Um I also just want to say that I'm very proud of the work of the current commission that we've been able to do in the last year. Uh I think that we've been effective in progressing many items and I'll just give a quick summary because I don't think that everyone is aware of all of them because we don't have the the continuous uh connection. So, for example, we've changed the agenda structure to allow for more debate. We approved an additional 2,000 service hours on top of the pre-existing 18,000 service hours for this fall to add more buses downtown at night. Submitted the assessment growth case, which was approved, pre-ordered some buses for future growth, approved the new specialized transit provider, directed staff to report back on debit credit payment types. Uh, we've worked a lot with Western students on a couple different route issues, and also increased communication engagement with a new Instagram page. If you have Instagram, please follow LTCLDNT because there's a new transit Instagram page as well as hiring some summer students to assist with engagement opportunities. Also, if you have things that you want to see transit, London transit at, we have some students who'll be able to show up. Uh, and I also want to thank the London Transit staff who have continued to do their important work throughout the last couple years. despite many governance changes, they have stuck to their strategic plan and to their operational plans and made sure that there is stability and continuity in the work. So, I just want to say thank you to them as well. Um, so I will be supporting this and appreciate the recommendations that were outlined. >> Thank you. Just looking for other speakers. Uh, seeing none, councelor Layman, will you take the chair? >> Uh, I have the chair and I'll go to councelor. Thank you. Um I appreciate uh receiving the report that's in front of us and uh the engagement uh session and and consultation that uh I participated in with KPMG um as well as the work you've done with city staff and with transit staff uh on this report. Um, I'm supportive of what's in front of us and uh I actually really appreciate and value the fact that we have something to work through and work from because I think some of the issues that we were seeing with transit before were just kind of unnamed and it was difficult really to get a full perspective of what they were. And now I feel like they're named, they're in front of us. Um, which is very helpful and it gives us a path forward. Um, however, I do still feel like there are some underlying concerns that are perhaps more in some cases ingrained in the culture of both the city and of LTC that I think will be um more challenging to address. and I think you've you've provided some feedback on them but at the same time for instance on formalizing how we'll deal with any issues that arise uh I will say that the frequent reporting will help but a lot of this and a lot of what I read in between the lines of the report has to do with relationship building and one of the recommendations you have is for a manager that would be responsible for that strategic relationship communication side. Where I struggle with that is I see that as a as a as a leadership function that must be at the highest level of any organization. So I'm just wondering why that wouldn't be tasked to or in your recommendation it wasn't tasked to the current leadership versus being a separate person. >> I'll go to the delegate. >> Thank you Mr. Chairman to the councelor. So when we considered the additional uh position and enhancing the capacity of the organization, we were mindful of the experience of other large transit organizations in the country and the incredible demands that are placed upon uh the leadership of these transit commissions. And London is is no different. And what we found when we looked across the country, what was common was that the the executive of a of a transit commission are being pulled with respect to operational issues, right? Like there is a line down. How come the buses aren't there? And you know, it doesn't take very long for a line that is not operating correctly to get escalated to the general manager, right? Or or the executive of the uh of the transit commission. At the other side, your leadership at the transit commission has to deal with I'm going to say the politics or the relationship with the city. who is their uh share um funer, right? Who oversees and sets the overall strategic priorities for the city and who has a huge voice in how transit is delivered in the city and that's very demanding. So we felt that there is additional capacity required at the LTC to fill that gap. And one of the ways we thought we could fill that gap is through someone to provide communication support and strategic um strategic uh direct uh priority setting. not setting, excuse me, that's not the right word, but help support the delivery of strategic priorities with the city as the partner and as the shareholder. So that is the rationale behind our recommendation for the position. >> Counselor, >> thank you. I appreciate the answer. Um, however, I and this is just my personal opinion. I don't see any difference between that and the role of the two delegations we had before us LMCH and hydro. Uh they have strategic communication responsibilities within their top leadership. So for me that I don't believe uh another person is needed to fulfill that. I think it's strengthening teams. Um with respect to the issue of dealing with uh a conflicts um when you talked about training at the board level, are there trainings that you would recommend uh that would also be appropriate for the board when it comes to those issues? Because when I think of the group the the dynamics of transit, one of the concerns I have is even with a 43 model um I don't think in general across all of our agencies, boards and commissions, we have a lot of training on how to deal with conflict. >> I'll go to the delegate. >> Uh Mr. chairman to the councelor. I think that question would be perhaps best answered by your staff given they have more familiarity with your governance uh resources. >> I'll go staff. Uh thank you Mr. Presiding officer. We will be working on the content of that training, looking at what's available in terms of um offtheshelf because I I'm I'm not of a belief we need to necessarily reinvent the wheel. There is a lot of there are resources available for board training and working closely with the city clerk's office and our colleagues working for Mr. Fowler who arrange our council on boarding as well. So, we'll review what is available now, what's being used by some of the boards in the area that's effective. If we've got something we can largely work from, that would be a great start. I don't have any program sort of names off the top of my head, but we will include in the implementation plan how we intend to approach that more specifically. >> Councilman, >> thank you. Uh, one of the things I noted was Transit Windsor was mentioned. They were mentioned around their advisory group. Um, I did try to bring something similar to LTC. We are working through a process of having an advisory component. It is more of a survey based versus actual meeting, but I do think that that is missing. I'm just wondering if you can comment a little bit more on advisory groups. >> I'll go to the delegate. >> Thank you, Mr. Chairman. To the counselor. Yes, advisory groups do have a role. Uh and we, you know, we did not include that as part of our recommendations. However, uh given uh the importance of ensuring all voices are heard in heard in the community, they can uh certainly be considered once you have established your new commission. >> Counselor, >> thank you. Um and just with respect to the involvement of KPMG on an ongoing basis. So delivering this report is is part of what's uh the the the structure of what we have. Is there any followup? And I'm wondering specifically around um the as we continue the implementation path uh with rapid transit, what kind of a view or a lens would KPMG consider or maybe a future report um to look at how we effectively rolled out the new model. >> I'll go to the delegate. >> Well, Mr. chairman to the councelor as uh KPMG's favorite client. I we are always here for you. However, our my understanding uh with our project your project manager that the with the delivery of this report, our engagement is coming to an end. >> Staff um Mr. Chair, do you want to comment? >> Thank you, Mr. Presiding Officer. Uh yes, this is the end of the current commission with KPMG as well as the funding we had available to do the reviews the council had assigned to us. That said, as part of our implementation plan when we build out our project charter, we will be looking for any resources we might require externally to deliver the implementation. That'll be part of the report back. And of course, as you mentioned, we do have a a fairly new major transit initiative launching next year. And uh we did do a review on readiness. I think it would be prudent for us to follow up. That was largely a technical review, but uh it's a bit of a stay tuned. We'll see what resources we need and what would make sense in terms of continuity of supports. >> Council Roman, >> thank you. My last point on public members, you mentioned specific uh transit operations, planning, governance, expertise, etc. Uh just wondering how we would put those job descriptions together well to attract the right candidates. Something to think about, I guess. >> I'll go to the delegate. >> Uh Mr. chairman uh to the councelor. Again, that might be something that your staff would be able to answer better than I could. >> Oh, I'll go to staff. >> Thank you, Mr. Presiding Officer. Uh we will be working through what we believe the appropriate job descriptions for those public appointees would be. Whether it is looking for as some noted on council uh experience as transit users or from specific user groups or if we're looking for specific technical expertise and giving a range for council to select what is best reflective of the folks you want on the commission that ultimately delivers transit on your behalf. >> Councelor, you have about 30 seconds. Please go ahead. >> Thank you. Really appreciate the answers. Uh looking forward to some offline conversations with staff too to further understand some of those uh components of the recommendation. Thank you. Thank you. And I'll I'll return the chair to you, counselor. >> Thank you. I have the chair looking for other speakers. >> Seeing no other speakers online, none in chambers, we will call the question. Closing the vote. Motion carries 14 to zero. Thank you uh that and thank you Mr. Pever for being here today and for uh waiting alongside us. We will move on to item 4.3 which is a request to maintain the size of the London Police Service Board at seven members. I'm looking for a mover and a seconder on this item. Councelor Layman and I have councelor Traso. Uh with that I will look for any speakers. Okay, seeing no speakers uh we will open up the vote on that matter. Closing the vote. Motion carries 14 to zero. Okay. Thank you. That takes us back to uh well takes us to item five which is our additional business and deferred matters. Uh we first have item 2.4 which is the strategic plan implementation update midyear 2026. We did have a delegation request from Mr. Henderson. I do not see him on uh in the gallery, but I will just take a moment to check if he's online. He is not. Um so uh I will take his submission that's included. Um but at this time we will just look for mover and seconder on uh item 2.4. I have councelor McAllister and councelor Hillier. Thank you. And we'll look for speakers. I'll start with councelor Stevenson. Thank you. >> Thank you. I just wanted to say I'll be voting against this again as I have the last few times and I could go into great detail about why, but I think I've covered it before. I'll just highlight the biggest issues I had was that the um the council set what we wanted to have happen and how that was done was prepared by staff and we didn't even have the chance to say we were okay with that. So right off the bat um things didn't look certainly the way I wanted them to look and I and I don't know about the other uh my my colleagues. The other part is the tracking of actions. You know, 550 actions and we're 96% complete on actions. It's the same issue I have with interactions when it comes to the social service agencies. If our interactions and our actions aren't creating the results that we want, committed to, intended to create, and we're not talking about how to course correct, how to get those outcomes or results, then it's it's really an unfortunate uh waste of resources in my opinion. So, I will not be supporting this. It's the last one for this term of council as far as I know. the next one comes in November if it's consistent with uh the rest of the reports unless we're going to get one uh as it is the end of council. Um so I just think it's a very disappointing I like strategic plans. I think they can be really valuable. It's just like mission and vision statements. They can be something you just tick off and do and never look at and they just go in the drawer or they could actually drive uh a corporation forward. And so maybe uh there'll be an opportunity in the next term of council. >> Thank you. I'll look for other speakers. I have councelor Prible. >> Thank you. So I will make my comments and uh they'll be quite different than what we just heard. And I want to say this uh three years ago we put together and we look at mission, vision, values, expected outcomes, strategies and we also implemented to the bottom step implementation plan. Uh we all by the way unanimously uh we went step by step and if you remember it took us a long time to go through it but we approved it. We approved it step by step including the strategies including the outcomes including implementation plan. I have to say state that in three years when I look where we started and especially with the implementation plan where we were and we are right now. Thank you very much to the staff. What a great improvement. I had to uh uh if I look at even on online and again this is not a public knowledge for private companies but if you look at online that we have how it's presented the dashboard this on track delayed under review uh expected results mechanics with all the graphs and everything how great professional it is yes could the substance be always better absolutely it could be everything can always be better but it's something that we all agree to step by that I want to thank staff. I uh I think I gave them over 40 questions on Monday. I received eight pages this morning with all the answers that I needed. So again, if you look at this and if you are just going to look at the if you're going to look at just the report graphs, if you don't go deep to it to the detail which you can see on the deadline, of course, you might not be disappointed. But can you find the things that you are looking for? Many. So again, as everything else, it can be better. Am I proud of the last three years? And there is so much positive there. Could I be more positive? Absolutely. But there's so much positive and I really want to thanks the city manager uh Trevor Fowler's team, Nick Steinberg really with all the stuff that they are keeping and actually know and I want to say I I hope I still have time. I really want to thanks to these organizations. Middle Middle Sex London Health Unit, Upper Temp, Kettle Creek, Cavern Garden Market, London Public Library, London Public Service, Police, sorry, Police Service, London Fire Department, Alden House, Museum London, Arts Council, London Transit, Tourism London, Film London, and the feedback from Chamber of Commerce. This this report in my eyes should never be on the consent. All these organizations, if I look at organizations financials and this report are the two most important reports of any corporation, this report, if I look at everything else, brings most of our community together, working together and trying to maximize the opportunities. Again, could we maximize them more? Absolutely. Are we on the right track? Yes, we are. I certainly hope because this is my last update. I certainly hope that uh the future council is going to continue in this and just improve it, make it better together with the staff. So, thank you. But I really see I will be very much voting in support of it. And thank you all and thank you to staff. >> Thank you. Um I'm looking for other speakers on this item. >> Okay, seeing none online. And just so uh committee's aware, uh Deputy Mayor Lewis is online and uh Councelor Pla and the mayor had to uh step away. Um okay, with that, seeing no one in chambers uh with their hand up, we will open the vote. Closing the vote. Motion carries 12 to 1. >> Okay, thank you. That moves us on to item 2.5, which is the RBC Place London Steam Transition. Uh I know that uh councelor Stevenson and councelor Purbble have let me know that they have a alternative but not contradictory uh motion to put on the floor which includes a part C. So I will let them introduce that. Thank you. Yes. I'd like to move uh the staff recommendation plus a part C which says the civic administration be directed to provide a report to the CI strategic priorities and policy committee with an update on funding once the project cost is known and the contingency amount has been revised. >> Thank you. And I understand you have a a secondary council pribble. Thank you. Uh would you like to speak to it to begin with and then we'll take other discussion on on this item. follow lead. >> I would just repeat the same thing and I just want to say that both of us are on the RBC board just in case some individuals don't know. >> Thank you. Okay, I will look for other speakers on this item. Councelor Trasa, >> um just a quick question. Does adopting these recommendations preclude us from taking action? Um I'll just leave it like that. Does that does Does this close the matter or is it does this not preclude it? >> Thank you. I will go to Miss Barbone. >> Uh thank you to the chair. This report specifically only deals with setting a budget so that we can do the proper transfer to allow RBC to begin the work because in order to commence any procurement a budget and an established source of financing needs to be available first. So this does not preclude any other um actions in the future. This only deals with the very specific item of setting the budget so that RBC plays can proceed. Councelor Trasa. >> Yes, thank you. And with that very clear response, I do not need to um proceed with further questions at this point. >> Thank you. Looking for other speakers. I have councelor Ferrer next. >> Uh thanks chair. With respect to the amendment, so um it's looking for a report back. How would staff uh necessarily take that? Are we is that just you providing an update of what the final cost is after we find out um how much it's going to be with and then it would be to a maximum amount with the contingency or would we be getting a full report on everything else? Is it just like an update on cost? >> Thank you. So you're talking about the new part C that's in the motion and uh I will go to Miss Barbone and Miss Stewart, whoever wants to go on that question. >> Uh thank you through the chair. So certainly um we will be working Miss uh Stewart's team and uh RBC Place will be looking at doing this. RBC Place is leading the work on this. We're certainly providing um as much consultative support as possible given our experience with uh trying to move forward with other buildings at the city of London. So obviously um based on our experience we know that through the detailed design process when you are doing something significantly this complex in a building that is uh wasn't built to do it this way there is a great deal of design work and through design work we know that we can find certain things. So, um, once that is completed and, uh, certainly we would work with them that once we know what those amounts are and they've begun that, we can certainly have a report back to council to convey that and work with RBC Place, whether they write a letter or we'll we'll figure that out once we know what uh, that uh, the next steps will be when the work is complete. >> Council Ferrer, >> and final follow-up question, uh, would you take this report as including uh, everything else with Centennial Hall, the library? Would we have updates with that or would we have separate reports? >> Thank you. I'll go to Miss Burbone. >> Yeah, thank you through the chair. So we've already reported out on what the final costs are for all of the city facilities based on the contracts that have been awarded at this point in time. So the only thing outstanding will be the RBC place as they're just starting to commence that work noting they were provided notification at a very different time than the previous facilities for the city of London. >> Councelor Ferrer. >> Okay. Thank you. >> Thank you. Looking for other speakers. I have councelor Stevenson. >> Thank you. I just had a question around the contingency amount. So what happens to the leftover amount of the contingency for these projects and what uh does delegated authority allow in terms of that being transferred to other things. >> Go to Miss Barbone. >> Uh thank you through the chair. So because there is a specific resolution and this is set aside for a specific capital project. um that direction is in and we'll establish the budget. So through our budget monitoring process, no different than um what we would do when we've recently brought forward our capital budget monitoring when projects are complete and if there is anything left over those are returned to the sources for which they came that is done through our annual and bianual monitoring capital monitoring processes. This would follow the exact same process in that regard. Councelor Stevenson. >> Thank you. That's all. >> Thank you. Looking for any other speakers on this item. Okay. Seeing none, uh we will open the vote. Closing the vote. Motion carries 13 to zero. Okay. Thank you. That takes us on to item 2.6, which is the review of the F RFPQ 2025056, the redevelopment of city hall campus procurement and related information. Uh for this item, we have a uh motion that includes to receive just looking for a mover and seconder. Councelor Frank, councelor Ferrer, and we'll begin discussion on this item. >> Councelor Stevenson. Thank you. uh through you to staff. I'm just wondering if we could get sort of a general update on where this project stands because my understanding is, you know, it was part of the multi-year budget process. The funding was there, but this seems to have derailed um and now we're talking about not getting a report back until 2027. So in terms of there was talk of other locations like is there going to be any option for this council to provide direction as to next steps or is this being uh moved forward to the next term of council? >> Thank you. I will go to Miss Barbone. Uh thank you through the chair. So on uh in September when we brought forward the report with respect to the uh stage of the RFPQ in uh September, I think that was September 16th that uh council directed us to well council directed to cancel the two-stage RFP and uh referred it back to staff for a number of items uh the majority of which have been provided to you today and the remaining item is subject to the completion of the downtown master plan which is not coming forward to council until next month. So as a result uh we're unable to complete the rest of that direction until that report um is brought forward and we see what the outcome of that discussion is and then we will proceed to report back. So given the timing um with the election in the fall that report will not be able to come forward till 2027 as we had noted in September. >> Councelor Stevenson. >> Okay. Thanks. Uh disappointing. um I think for a lot of us but um I I I my concern too is I know we're doing a lot of talk about procurement this week but this procurement process I mean we had significant early market interest 35 planet takers 26 site visits then only two submissions one withdrawn the brief survey um it said the feedback received talks about Um there's a lot of criticism around our procurement process, things being perceived as restrictive and the team formul formation evaluation was unclear. Uh questions about terminology inconsistencies, financial expectations were unclear and uncertainty around the public private partnership type models. I just wondered if like this is a bit concerning to Londoners who look at this and think this is again this is us it's our building our project something that's been talked about for I believe a decade and uh the procurement process again just seems like a really big failure. Is there any anything that staff can share that maybe counteracts some of what's in here or helps us understand why the procurement uh results were so poor? >> Thank you. I'll go to Miss Ders Bear. >> Thank you uh through you, Madam Chair. I I appreciate the the feedback that's been shared. I I do want to be clear that as council asked us to do, we went and got the feedback from those who submitted to the RFP process. The information that we've shared in this report is their feedback. We haven't we have done the best that we can to share exactly what they said so that you're fairly clear about what the proponents felt. I I want to be clear that in my mind we continue to manage this process through our council approved procurement process. Um and I would suggest to you that uh those processes are highly defined and highly regulated and we continue as best as possible to ensure that they are absolutely effectively implemented. Um with respect to uh this process um I think we've done exactly what we need to do in terms of bringing this report back and as Miss Barbone has suggested there'll be additional information once the downtown master plan is presented to council on June 16th. >> Councelor Stevenson. Thank you. And I do hear you and I do appreciate the willingness to bring back the feedback that was shared in the wording that was provided. And and I'll just reiterate that it's very concerning. It's concerning that people who wanted to participate in a really big project in our city uh have these perceptions, you know, and I think um I think it's worthy of some discussion and some reflection because this is not the only time that I'm hearing at least about very serious concerns and dissatisfaction with the procurement process in our city. And um and it's deeply concerning to me because we want the investment, we want the projects, we want to be a great city, we want to see amazing amazing things happen here. And if this is the experience of uh people who were willing to put their time, effort, energy, talent, and potentially funding into um into projects. I think I think it's concerning. and we had uh issues with the audit in terms of procurement and I've raised just this week when we did the procurement bianual report and I've brought things forward to committee regarding some of the concerns that proponents are having feeling as though uh there's some serious issues as as I said I don't want to belabor them too much but um unclear expectations, terminology, and consistencies. I'm I'm hoping there's something here that uh civic administration can use to, you know, in terms of continuous improvement because, you know, uh it doesn't give me a lot of confidence in terms of our next procurement process for this same project. I'm just not sure how we're going to get different results if we just keep saying that what we do is great and everything we do is following procedure and it's council approved. I I feel like some reflection and maybe some council direction is needed here. So, I'm going to reflect on it myself, but this is this is something that we were told a couple of years ago that it was super important that we move forward. Do we know the condition of this building? And to be in this situation is just going to be seen as very um very unsatisfactory to most Londoners. >> I'll go to Miss Sters Bear. >> Thank you, Madam Chair, and through you. Um certainly appreciate the feedback that's been received from committee this evening. I do want to uh remind people council members and committee members that on page 198 um we shared the information and the suggestions that we received. Uh we spoke to the reality of the requirement to get greater clarity regarding the project structure in the future. It's an extraordinarily complex project. an existing building, a a an apartment building on our land, another building, and a a parking structure that is extraordinarily complex based on the way it's been developed. And I certainly appreciate the opportunities to have discussions about our procurement policies. Certainly happy to have anyone refer those as you would like to to the audit committee. That's another way to do this. So I want to ensure that as civic administration we are committed to ensuring that we take council's direction which we have done in this report. >> Thank you. Uh thank you councelor Mallister. I see that you're you did inform me you had to leave at 5. Thank you so much. Councelor Hopkins had to as well. So thank you uh to those that have informed me. Okay. Um looking for other speakers on this item I council Purple next. Go ahead. >> Thank you s chair to the staff. The report states uh to assess the downtown master plan recommendations with respect to the role of city hall. Are we considering or it's not going to be us, it's going to be the new council outside these premises. Is this going to include potentially other buildings downtown London or is this just restricted to the current facility where we are at? >> Thank you misters. I thank you. I I through you. Um at this point in time we are receiving you are receiving this report and you will receive uh in June the recommendations from the consultant who's developed the downtown master plan. Those recommendations may include um some discussion with respect to other areas that the city could consider in order to support downtown and that might include uh potentially city hall campus in other locations. At this point in time we have no direction to look at that. We've come back with this direction in uh respectful of the direction you gave us in September. >> Council approval. >> I do have a followup. If the master plan does not include it, will the will this council have the opportunity to open it up outside the current premises? >> Thank you. I'll go to Miss Sters Bear. >> Thank you. Through you. Um certainly any future council will have the opportunity to have any discussion as it relates to this project. Um and we would take your advice and direction as to what that looks like. It would be the next council though based on the comments we've made earlier. Councelor Preba, >> if it's coming back in June, the downtown master plan, wouldn't the council be current council be able to direct staff to come back in 2027 with opportunities including outside these premises? >> Thank you, Mr. Dersbear. Thank you again for the question uh through you. Um if there are directions to civic administration to undertake uh the next process as it relates to other space or other uh buildings within the core then we would take that direction. Obviously we would need sufficient time to look into that information and get back to uh committee and council with an appropriate report. I it'd be impossible I think for me to tell you at this point in time whether or not that would happen in the period of your current council and so I don't want to mislead you by suggesting that could be the case but it would be council direction that we would need in order to do that. >> Councelor Pri, >> perfect. Thank you. I do understand that. Now when the when the report comes back currently it says staff will come back in 2027. uh will there be an opportunity to be more specific and not just 2027 to go Q1, Q2, certainly not Q4 that's the same thing but 2027 is a long time 12 month will there be an opportunity to shorten this more be more specific >> MS bear thank you for the question through you madam chair um I I don't want to mislead you by suggesting that that's not possible. Um I do want to say that uh it will depend upon the information you receive, what direction committee and council takes as it relates to the downtown master plan, whether there's sufficient information for council to make a decision as it relates to this project. Uh and I I think given the complexities again of of this location and other locations in this community, um I think we would require ourselves to um be consistent in our approaches to ensuring that the best and taking the advice we've received from those who are part of this process. We've got great advice here about how to make this better moving forward in the next time. And so we'd want to ensure that anything that we developed based on your direction reflects the kind of advice we receive from proponents and develop a system and a process moving forward that really uh embraces that and ensures that it's clear uh and that we are coming back to council with a very good recommendation moving forward. It is complex. I'm not suggesting to you that we aren't open to get uh any direction that council wants to give us and depending upon what that is and the magnitude of it and the complexity it will depend upon that will impact the timelines. >> Councelor Purbal >> sounds fair and thank you very much for the answers. >> Thank you. I have councelor Trasa then councelor Ferrer. Um, on reflection, I think some of the questions that I had are just getting ahead of ourselves and can be deferred to some point in the future, so I don't have anything. >> Thank you, councelor Ferrer. >> Thanks, Chair. Uh, I've been listening carefully to this discussion and these and the questions and the answers. Um, so like from what I understand, like this report is telling us, um, there's necessary life cycle work. We've got feedback from the RFPQ or um we've got feedback on kind of what people are have said or certain um takers on the on the bids. Um and I also see that what is coming back is that um report in 2027, what the next steps are and I knew I do understand that some of the questions are about whether we look elsewhere from this land or we continue it on on this on this property. But I would kind I would I I guess I would ask like do we regardless of what comes back like staff is going to go well you're going to kind of look at everything that we have in front of us. You could potentially come back with another location in that report back in 2027. Is that correct to assume or is it locked in to this space? >> Thank you through the chair. So without presuming what council direction is going to be and uh the feedback on the downtown master plan that's coming next month, I think it would be really challenging to provide an answer to that. Certainly the the first step and as the direction um that was provided to us in September was to evaluate uh what the next steps would be with respect to the downtown master plan. So, um certainly we're waiting council's direction on what that is and then subject to that we would go back and complete the work and identify um what the next steps would be if there's applicable budget requirements that also need to be modified as a result of the the significant deferral in time for whatever we do. So there there is a great deal of analysis there for us to be able to turn it around and provide the best uh recommendation forward on what those next steps would be. And uh certainly we will await council direction and we will take that uh council's direction and move from there to provide our best recommendation when we are able to bring that forward. >> Council Ferrer. >> Okay. Thank you for that. And I understand um that report back regardless if it's if it happens to land in the downtown plan or not um it's we're looking for a role of our new vivific space to also promote the downtown's uh vitality and promote the downtown's impact. Um, so even if they are aligned or or not, we are still able to get that report back and it could have those options open. I'm just wondering like I'm wondering do we even need to give a direction um for that when the downtown plan comes or however the recommendations come out. >> Miss Burgone. >> Uh thank you to the chair. So that component is in the resolution already um from the September uh 2025. So that's the direction that we're taking is that subject to what is within the downtown master plan and what the council's directions are, we would go back and re-evaluate and then bring forward a recommendation. So um that's the direction that we are proceeding under. >> Councelor Ferrer. >> Okay. Thank you. That's kind of how I saw uh the recommendation that we already given forward. We're still a little open for opportunity and um it there's no lock set place of where it could go or what happens. It's just basically something that's going to come back that will not only provide the seat of council and the head of civi civic administration but also that promotion of downtown vitality. So I kind of see it as it's still an open discussion going on right now. And I guess that's a comment. It's not a question. >> Thank you. Looking for other speakers. uh councelor layman if you take the chair. >> Uh please go ahead councelor. >> Uh thank you and through you. So first u just thank you to staff for preparing uh the report that's in front of us. Uh I appreciate um that this is a um a reflection on the feedback that we received uh through this process through this RFPQ process. Um, I will say that I think there's a lot of good learning that happened through that process. This is a a very large project and what we set out was quite ambitious to begin with and I think that that uh ambition led to maybe some of the complexities with that we saw that came back with that RFPQ as the conclusion states um you know as we move forward that clarity that's needed the definitions of the financial expectations are all things that we need to have a lens and and a view to Um, and lastly, I just want to talk about the expected housing model. So, uh, one of the things that I'm I'm trying to better understand with where we're heading with this direction is that housing component. Um and just wanting to better understand um whether or not there is a potential to decouple some of those if there is a need to do so in order for us to move on the building needs that we have for this facility. So just wondering if someone might be able to comment on that. >> They all go staff sorry through the chair uh that absolutely can happen. So I think this was very informative the work that we did to see whether there would might be an opportunity. I think it's actually um push moving us and information that we've received that this may not be a good fit between um trying to combine that housing. Of course, every time we look at a a new facility or a piece of property, we of course would like to entertain the thought of housing, but if that doesn't work, which what we're kind of seeing from this, you can absolutely decouple it from any kind of future procurement. >> Council Roman, >> thank you. And I'm wondering how we would go about or when that kind of a conversation would potentially happen. Is it something where we need to provide direction at the time that we receive the downtown master plan is it going to speak to that at all or I'm just not sure when we get into that component of the conversation further around whether or not that is the right next step. Um personally I'd like to be able to evaluate that a little bit more to make a decision. Um, but I'm not sure if the recommendation is that that too comes back for a future term of council. >> Uh, Miss Dersbear. >> Thank you, Mr. Presiding Officer. And through you, um, I think it's probably fair that in the future we would come back with options, an option that might include housing, an option that might not include housing. And I think, uh, through that process or an option that includes other things as well. And I think through the the the sharing of options um and then costing those options and looking at returns on investment and those kind of realities and complexity as you've mentioned um we would have a better sense then of what the best option is to move forward. Uh that might come through some feedback you receive from the the town master plan but ultimately um that might just be feedback you receive. We'll we'll come back with recommendations options for consideration by committee and council based on the types of things we've been talking about already. If development of housing isn't something that we would do at that time because of costs or complexities then that might not be an option we would bring forward >> counselor. >> Yeah, thanks. So, uh appreciate the answers. Um, I will say that I worry that even for us to go down that decision point to discuss the optionality of it before we get to another RFPQ, it's just another component of potentially having more decision points, having more timeline and and and um I'm worried about the the timeline with the existing building condition and with some of the costs that we have to incur. So that's something I'm trying to balance and I'm not sure how to make the best decision uh with respect to this because I see these creeping costs. I see the expenses. We're going going to get another report back on the plumbing condition for instance um and the valve failures. I like I'm sure my colleagues don't want to see work disruptions because of things like that. Um and then we also have the Rege Cooper Square project. So I want to understand kind of when on a timeline basis when those decision points or those optionalities will be presented so we can make some moves towards what we believe to be what the vision will be for for the building and and for this location. U Miss Dersbeard, can you kind of I think what the council is looking for is you know not exact timeline but just kind of where you see this going and when it'll be coming back to council with some of those options. >> Thank you uh Mr. Presiding officer our intention would be to bring information back in 2027. Um and I think um the advice that you've given us with respect to timelines uh and ensuring that the information reflects um all the options or considerations and that that be done in a timely manner as possible is advice that we take uh and move on it respecting that um lots of things are changing in the market as well the broader community and the broader uh more global market as well. >> Council, >> thanks. My final point is just a comment and that relates to Reg Cooper Square. I guess I thought we would have a chance to reinvision what that square would look like and what kind of community use we could have out of that space. And my concern right now is as we continue to move the timeline on this and those costs and and repairs are more immediate, uh, that we may miss that opportunity. So, I'm wondering if maybe it is a comment, but if anyone can also uh provide some feedback, that'd be helpful. I'll go to staff care to comment on that comment. >> Um thank you u Mr. Presiding officer through you. Um it definitely uh we have a iconic space named after the former city clerk. Um so um that's important. Um so um we want to ensure that um as you've indicated that um we are able to support whatever we can do. It is it is also a complex piece of of u real estate that we own. Um we try as best as possible to keep it as wellmaintained as we can. It is part of the biggest challenge we have of this structure. Um it also supports our parking and the other supports uh for the community. So um I do think that uh that's certainly part of the discussion that we uh want to have and need to ensure that whatever we develop there for its continued use is really a function of supporting a community space in ways that people can use it so they come to the seat of of council and the seat of government in this community. Should we move forward with that option? Sorry, that's not a great answer to the question, but the challenge is it's a very unique space um that we cannot do a lot on because of the nature of how it's how it's been created and built. It's uh patio stones through you. >> All right, counselor, back to you with 30 seconds. >> I guess I'm hoping we'll see a design when we get to that stage. Will that be part of the what we will see? Will we see a design on go staff not exist? >> Thank you through the chair. So that all depends on what the council direction is going to be in the future on whether um how this proceeds how this project proceeds. So certainly um through the RFP that did not proceed, the intention was to include the redevelopment of the square as part of whatever the future redevelopment is going to be because as you're doing redeveloping and possibly creating a new structure, that would be the opportune time to consider that. Um other previous discussion talked about having small um community engagement pieces that would speak to getting some feedback as to what to do with that. So that was envisioned to be part of the RFP and how we could proceed. Um noting that we're not proceeding at this point in time. That will be waiting until what the future direction will be and what the next uh envision for um proceeding with any procurement would be subject to council approval. >> Councelor, >> thank you. Appreciate the answers. I'll follow up more off the line. >> I'll return the chair to you. >> Thank you. I have the chair looking for final speakers. Seeing none online, seeing none in chambers, we'll open the vote on this item. Closing the vote. Motion carries 10 to one. Thank you. Uh I have not been made aware of any additional business. Um looking to committee for item seven, adjournment. Motion to adjurnn. Councelor Van Mirburg and councelor Cuddy. Thank you. By hand all in favor votes yes. >> Motion carries. Thanks everyone. Have a great evening.