Transcript: Council Tackles Safety and Governance - Council Meeting of April 27, 2026 | Summary 801

Good evening. I'm calling to order this meeting of the council of the town of Oakville. Uh Mr. Clerk, do we have any uh regrets? Uh we do not. Thank you. I would invite everybody to rise if you're able and join us in O Canada. Oh Canada, our home and native land. True pats may see the rise a true north and free from wide. Oh, we stand on God for thee. God keep glorious and free. Oh Canada, we stand on God for thee. Canada stand. Thank you. Please be seated. The town of Oakville is located on treaty lands and territory of the Missagas of the Credit First Nation. We thank the Missagas for being stewards of this traditional territory. By 1820, the Missagas were rep were welcoming settlers from all over the British Empire. Soon, Oakville was welcoming black people fleeing the United States. Our indigenous white and black residents created a community of harmony that makes us proud. By 1857, Ontario recognized Oakville as a town. At town hall today, we fly the flag of the Missosagas of the Credit First Nation with the flags of Oakville, Ontario, and Canada to acknowledge our origins. The vibrant livability we are creating for everyone attracts people from across Canada and the world. We feel sorrow for acts of racism and intolerance suffered anywhere in the world, including Canada and here at home. We want our future to be equitable and inclusive for everyone. We believe the path of truth and reconciliation can unite us. Please keep well, stay safe, and let us on council know of any chance to be helpful to you and yours. And please let us know anytime that you can help increase Oakville's harmony, prosperity, and livability. Um, council, are there any declarations of conflict of interest? Mr. Clerk, I see no declarations. Council, are you prepared to confirm or or amend the minutes of the regular session of council on March 30th? Uh councelor Shei and councelor Longo. Thank you. Any objection? There being none, uh the minutes of uh the regular session of council March 30th are confirmed. Um, I now uh would invite the uh I'd like to welcome the Oakville Hornets U1A 2025 2026 team. uh uh they have quite a story to share and uh I want to say uh you you young ladies have made the entire town proud of you and uh we're looking forward to giving you an opportunity to share your story uh with the community not only live on on air so to speak but also on YouTube because this meeting goes on YouTube and then sits there forever so you'll be creating a video momento of the entire event. Would you uh would your speakers like to come to the podium and then I would invite the team uh depending I won't interfere in whatever arrangements you have made but please uh we look forward to the presentation. Perfect. Hello. Good evening Mayor Burton and members of town council. My name is Mike Nean and I am uh the proud coach and hockey dad of the Oakville Hornets U1A girls hockey team. Thank you for taking the time to recognize this incredible group of young athletes. It's truly an honor for all of us to be here and to celebrate what has been a remarkable season. From the very beginning, this team showed something special. They finished the season with an outstanding record of 54 wins, only three losses, and five ties, and went undefeated in the regular season, playing to 180 and two. They scored uh an incredible 322 goals for this season to only 70 goals against. But what stands out the most to me as coach isn't just the record, it's how they achieved it. Their work ethic, their commitment and accountability to each other, and their love for the game were evident every time they stepped on the ice. Uh they rose to every challenge throughout the year, winning our very own Oakville tournament, the Harvest Classic, the Pink the Rink Tournament in Atobico, and the prestigious Silverstick tournament, while also earning a hard-fought second place finish at the Painted Purple tournament in Ottawa. And of course, the highlight of the season was winning the provincial championship. An achievement this group earned through determination, resilience, and true teamwork. As a coach, moments like this make you reflect on the bigger picture. Girls hockey in Canada has grown tremendously over the years. What was once a game of limited opportunities for the for young girls has become one of the fastest growing sports in our country. Today, we see more players, more teams, and more pathways than ever before. And that progress is something we should all be proud of. Here in Oakville, we've seen that growth firsthand. The Hordets organization has built something truly special, creating an environment where girls can help develop their skills, compete at a high level, and build confidence that goes far beyond the rink. This team is a reflection of that growth and a glimpse into the future of the game. But beyond the wins in the championships, what makes this group truly special is who they are as teammates and as young ladies. They support one another. They push each other to improve and they generally enjoy being part of the team. And as a coach, that's what you truly hope for. I would also like to take this opportunity to recognize our amazing coaching staff and of course our families. This commitment is a lot uh from early mornings to long drives and everything in between. It's significant and it makes a difference. And this success is something we've all shared together. And of course to the players, I couldn't be more proud of you. You've represented Oakville with character, determination, and heart. This is a season you'll always remember, and it's only the beginning of what you're capable of. On behalf of our entire team, thank you again for this recognition and for supporting youth sports and girls hockey in our community. Thank you. I'm g pass it on to our the president of Oakville, Dave Whan. Uh so my name is Dave Whan. I'm president of the Oakville Hornets. Um we have over a thousand young athletes uh that play hockey in Oakville and I can proud to say that there's only 17 that won gold this year. So congratulations. Uh I was fortunate enough to see a lot of their games this year. Um I came and handed you guys out a silver medal on the league championships and what did I say? you're going to win gold for provincial. So, congratulations. So, on behalf of the Hornets, congratulations. You guys did a phenomenal job. So, thank you. Thank you. All right, council. Um, we've arranged for a group photo. If u if you'd like to be in it, you can stay in your seats. you'll still be in the photo, but uh our idea is that we'll all gather in the center here and and we'll and the cameras will be up there and we'll face that way. Well, I I recommend Everybody right here. Anybody else? Thank you very much. That's what I said to Well, I think we all enjoyed that. All right. All right. Council, we we have no minutes to uh our committees or advisory committee this evening, but we do have uh several consent items. I'd look for a motion for the consent items. Councelor Dudk and uh councelor Hlettal. No. Um I'm looking for a second. Councelor Omira, was that you? Thank you. Now, separations. Councelor Hazit deal. Mayor Burton, I'd like to separate 9.5 out, please. I'm sorry. Did you say the number again, please? 9.5. Yep. And councelor Chisum. Uh, 9.4. Thank you. Uh, can we vote on the rest? Any objection to the balance, Mr. Clerk? There doesn't seem to be any opposition to the balance and they're carried. Um, so uh, councelor has a deal 9.5. Thank you, uh, through you, Mayor Burton. Um, so thank you to the staff for the report. Um, I just had a couple questions around, um, uh, some of the savings and, uh, expenditures. So um there there clearly is a reduction in applications and those applications obviously affected our building permit revenues. I wanted to understand will it affect our staff levels which we have encouraged you to um ensure we have sufficient to move our applications along in a timely way when we do get it. So will there be any impact as a result of uh building permit revenues reductions uh through you Mr. Mayor? Short answer, no. We will uh applications are down about 30% from uh 2024 to 2025. Uh with it's the whole point of the reserve account to draw on when necessary and we intend to keep the uh staff levels as is at this time. Thank you, Commissioner. Um, my next question is around the 1.74 million on automated speed enforcement. I see we need some additional support to to wrap it up, but could we just get some clarity given that the public see the 1.74 million. Will we be able to expedite any of the traffic calming projects uh earlier or out of 27 into 26 given that our Halton Police Services uh absolutely do note that speeding is up and collisions are up and uh people are looking for some additional support and I'm hoping the traffic calming will help us all. Uh Jonathan uh Vanderhiden, our uh director of finance is here to address that question and perhaps if Lynn Rogers is on the line um she may assist as well through you, Mayor Burton. Uh to answer the first part of your question, counselor, those funds that came in were the remaining uh fees and revenues that we received from the tickets that were issued when the program still existed. We knew that some would be coming in uh and so that is finishing off the program. uh as it pertains to using those items. The last budget did include a number of traffic homing initiatives, but Director Rogers could speak to that much better than I could. If Lynn is online, perhaps we can get back to uh council with some further details. It doesn't appear that Lynn is on the line. Um so we'll uh endeavor to do that to you in a memo after the meeting. Okay. Thank you for that. Um my last two questions are um we seem to have been able to uh generate greater revenue in the municipal enforcement area and I'm wondering will there be uh any opportunity to increase staff deployment to enhance the response time um which obviously surfaces under the community satisfaction survey that maybe they'd like us to work a little bit more on it. Thank you for that question, councelor has the uh municipal enforcement uh is looking at doing well actually not looking we are already in the process of doing an operational review. So with that we're looking at efficiencies, staffing levels, service delivery uh recognizing uh the comments that have come out of the customer satisfaction survey and in on top of that we have actually reached out and done a survey of our own just to get a little bit more detail. Uh but yes, there there will be a a report to council later this year. We're looking December to really go over um any opportunities we have for efficiencies and and um service level standards and support for the community moving forward. So, director, thank you for that response. I think I guess my pointed question is we've pulled some others uh of the savings um for other projects. Um and I appreciate that we have to have a long-term view about staffing and and making sure that uh we allocate people in the right place at the right time. Um but given that there are funds there is it your view that you need additional staff if you were to need to increase the response time that we can provide through you your worship. Um we are looking at improving response times and how we measure those KPIs moving forward. uh that will be part of the operational review. In addition, this year uh as far as response to to service levels and staffing levels, we are starting our parks enforcement program which will provide additional support throughout the parks. Uh it will actually it's one of the things we're we're implementing for this Victoria Day to help uh bolster our our ranks to support Halton Regional Police with with that initiative as well. And that will continue through the summer and and into September. We will run a number of initiatives um to address some of the more significant problems. Motorcycle noise certainly is one of our summer issues as well as signs and those sort of things. So, we will provide additional staffing for those elements this summer, but the operational plan will address those long-term concerns. Thank you, director, for adding in. And so that means there's a confirmation project noise maker will occur across all of Oakville, including downtown Oakville. Through your worship, it absolutely will. We've already got about 10 dates scheduled. Thank you very much. Thank you, counselor. Uh would you be good enough to uh move uh the receipt of this item? Yes, sir. And can I get a seconder? Councelor Nanda. Thank you. Any objection? There being none, that item is adopted. and councelor Chisum, we go to 9.4. Thank you, your worship. Uh just uh some clarity on this one. We have um 37 requests uh put in and we have an a great u description of them. Um I'm just wondering is there any action uh on any of these 37 requests that we've been putting through to the ministries or the province? Because I don't see that uh any action or any status, another um line, another status where we're at on these requests. Well, let's turn to the manager of intergovernmental affairs, Mr. Man and K you an answer. Thank you through your your worship. Uh, thank you counselor for the question. Um, is it still on? Yeah. Uh, we do have 37 requests in here. Uh, and um, we have highlighted some of the reasons why the there have been additional requests and some of the removals and the status is in the uh, the actual content of this uh, staff report. Uh but additional detail would be provided through the uh briefs that we provide to uh council in advance of FCM and AMO that would provide a little bit more information on some of the the key actions uh since uh uh council would have last seen the briefs uh and any status updates that are appropriate. I I guess what I'm looking for is on the on the form or the template you put in, is there any way we can just add another another line uh just status update uh through your warship? Uh for sure we can take that back and consider as part of our continuous improvement to add that in as we move forward and uh disclose that in the actual staff report as well. Great. Thank you. Thank you, Councelor Chisum. Uh, next. Uh, thank you. Um, we have a couple more, uh, questions, but I appreciate you being able to move being willing to move that. And I'll look for a seconder while we're on that point. Uh, councelor Dick. Uh, thank you. And more questions. Counselor has the deal. Then councelor Giddings. Thank you. Through you, Mayor Burton. Um I I noted that um in the uh climate change green energy part there was some uh shifting around and uh the stuff you chose to put labeling in. Um perhaps you could help us understand is there uh even though the province has made it clear that they they don't want us to have green energy standards I is that sufficient reason to take it off given the importance of uh our ability to build homes uh in a way I appreciate the incentive line is there which uh is absolutely probably the route we have to go but should we not be still standing behind our request that we believe a council agreed that green energy standards was something we should be pursuing through your worship. Uh yes um you know this is something the staff has had a lot of discussion on about whether or not to uh go beyond sort of uh the way we've uh currently positioned the the energy labeling program. Um the thinking is trying to balance what is achievable um as well as um you know um we know that building uh energy efficient housing is key to ensuring affordability. Um and uh and we can take direction from council about whether or not we want to be a little bit more forceful uh and have a stronger position on uh net zero which we have intentionally moved away from some of that language within the context of this particular ask just to try to speak uh to try to speak in in a way that resonates with the audience that uh that we are uh dealing with here. uh but we can take additional direction uh from council should there wish to go back to sort of the earlier standard and uh a little bit stronger language on the net zero front uh specifically for uh energy efficient buildings. Um so so for clarity you would look us to reaffirm what we had previously agreed to. Is that what you're telling me through your um through you uh your warship? Uh no, this is the updated staff recommendation on how we believe that this ask should be positioned. Uh but should council wish to be a little bit more uh direct in that, we can take that back. Well, thank you very much, councelor, thank you for raising it. Um, madame CEO, since uh this this has been a unanimous position of council, I would ask on behalf of council, subject to any objection from council, that we prepare these to reflect council's position. Um, and uh it's it's understood, I think, by all of us that these are our scripts for our meetings at AMO and FCM, at the Association of Municipalities of Ontario and the Federation of Canadian Municipalities. uh we'd be happy to continue to represent what we haven't really abandoned as a position. We will recognize as we must that some decisions we're not happy about have been made with regard to these things, but I don't think that stops us from being able to advocate or continue to advocate. Is there any objection to that on council? Then I think that that direction will be taken. Councelor Giddings, you're next. Thank you, Mr. Mayor. you just uh made me put a smile on my face. I'm very happy. Uh those were the two items that I wanted to uh make sure we're uh we're highlighted and uh thrilled with the fact that it's going to go forward. Thanks. Oh, you're very welcome. Councelor Mcnes, it's your turn. Thank you worship. Um justine, we were talking about project noise maker number request number nine related to vehicle noise enforcement. I don't have the brief in front of me, but I don't recall it being um I'm not sure if it mentioned noise radar or sound radar. Uh reason I ask, I mean, I know it's uh currently not allowed in Ontario, but a number of American municipalities have successfully implemented it just in the past year or two. Um I think New York City, Nashville, a number of others, and I believe um Edmonton is testing it right now. um and they feel that they can get it to a point where it's legally defensible in court. Um so I'm just hoping that maybe we can be a little more direct around that one. I believe Toronto is trying to advocate for it as well. Um seeing Amos coming up. I just wonder if um we could have some language specifically related to noise or sound radar related to uh I think more so the the vehicles than the motorcycles as we have a hard time getting those in in Project Noise Maker. I believe uh Mr. Man may have an answer for you. Yeah, thank you. Through your worship. Uh thank you counselor for that question. Uh we can certainly take that back and add language and do a little bit more investigation from a staff perspective on the noise radar angle uh and incorporate that into the brief so the council has that messaging. Anyone else? Thank you. Councelor Chisum and councelor Dudk with those additional features. You're still comfortable to move and second. Any objection? There being none, that's carried two. So, thank you everybody. That brings us to our discussion items. And u it was my thought that we would move to 11.3, which is the unsanctioned youth gathering response for Bronny, which um uh we're moving ahead for the out of consideration for the time of the chief of police who's joined us tonight. And um we're going to turn now to staff for the presentation. And I'll call it the joint the presentation as a result of our joint work with the police. Mr. Duckworth. Uh good evening, Mayor Burton, members of council. I'm present before you this evening to present a report co-authored by both Municipal Enforcement Services and the legal department. Before I begin, I'd like to acknowledge and thank the Halton Regional Police Service for being with us this evening. We are pleased to have Chief Tanner in attendance tonight as well as Inspector Bar who will remain on hand to assist members of council with any questions you may have as part of this discussion. Their presence and expertise are greatly appreciated. And Mr. Williams, I apologize for calling you by the wrong name. It's okay. I've been called worse. Uh, next slide, please. Uh, this report responds directly to council's direction from August 11th, 2025 following significant public safety incidents experienced in Bronny Village both on Victoria Day and Canada Day over the last several years. The focus of today's presentation is not on permitted events, but on unsanctioned youth gatherings involving the misuse of fireworks. staff have worked closely with the Halton Regional Police and multiple town departments to bring forward a response that prioritizes public safety prevention and enforceable tools that can be applied in real time. Next slide, please. Over the 2024 and 2025 holiday weekends, staff and police observed groups of youth primarily between the ages of 14 and 17 rapidly forming in Bronny Village. During these unsanctioned events, fireworks were fired towards police, uh, members of the public, vehicles, and nearby properties. Additionally, the area saw sudden crowd surges and youth using late night businesses to evade police, leading to blocked exits and severe life safety concerns, as evidenced by a tanker truck that was refueling at the pumps at 7-Eleven while fireworks were being discharged in and around the refueling area. These conditions escalated quickly and required a policeled response. Next slide, please. Based on these risks, the response being proposed is intentionally policeled. HRPS is the lead authority for public order, crowd control, and criminal enforcement. The town's role is supportive and preventative with a focus on reducing risk, strengthening bylaw tools, and removing the conditions that allow these situations to escalate. The overall objective is to deter unsafe behavior earlier, reduce escalation, and allow police to operate safely and effectively. Next slide, please. A key part of the staff response is targeted amendments to the discharge of fireworks bylaw. First, the bylaw would now prohibit the possession of fireworks by anyone under the age of 18, which closes a significant enforcement gap. Second, police would be explicitly authorized to seize and dispose of fireworks that are possessed or used illegally. And finally, penalties are increased to better reflect the serious public safety risk with fines rising to $1,000 where fireworks are discharged in a way that endangers people or property. Additionally, a new offense is also created for obstructing an officer. Next slide, please. The enforcement approach remains proportionate and appropriate for a gathering that leans towards youth aged 14 to 17 years old. Administrative penalties do not result in a criminal record and do not require court appearances. A key change that council asked about previously was parental involvement. Staff are proposing a mandatory notice to parents or guardians whenever a youth receives administrative penalty. Police discretion is fully preserved and where appropriate, charges under the criminal code and youth diversion processes are still remain available. Next slide, please. This slide outlines at a high level what each department is committing to deliver in support of the policeled response. MEES will be meeting with impacted businesses in advance of the intended and the anticipated events to both inform and and also promote a partnership that advances enforcement goals, particularly with late late night establishments. MEES will be actively monitoring these establishments to ensure they're complying with their licensing requirements. MEES will be on site during the evening to support policeled work once conditions are stabilized, issuing administrative penalties where warranted. MEES officers will be proactively patrolling parks in the vicinity of Bronny Village, allowing staff to radio HRPS of groups forming in advance of moving into the area. Additionally, an MEES supervisor will be on site to serve as a single point of contact acting as a liaison between the HRPS and all other town departments. Oakville Fire will focus on life life safety risks inside businesses, especially occupancy and blocked exits, and will be supporting our proactive outreach ahead of the event. Parks, roads, and transit are all implementing environmental and operational controls, including closing parking lots and washrooms, installing fencing, providing enhanced lighting, suspending field use permits, rrooting buses, and providing road closure materials in an effort to reduce gathering opportunities and support the police operations. Communications will support consistent and clear messaging to youth, parents, residents, and businesses before and during the events. Signage will be installed throughout Bronny Village in advance of these events, and educational material will be provided to local school boards for distribution to both students and parents. Together, these actions represent a shift towards a more proactive approach that is intended to reduce risk, deter escalation, and support a safe and coordinated response. Final slide, please. Thank you for your time this evening and staff are available for any questions you may have. Thank you very much for the presentation. I admire how crisp and clear it was. Councelor Mcnes and Councelor Romera and councelor Adams. Uh in that order, you're up. Councelor Mcnes, thank you uh through your worship. Um really appreciate the collaborative work that has happened this year. I think you it's been taken as seriously as it should be. certainly been concerned for a number of years and you've you've done a real uh deep dive on it. Um I just want to highlight uh I really like the collaboration that's happening um you know and and bylaw having a a physical presence there as well that's outlined in the report. Um I just want to highlight the school board and ensure we've we've heard recently from a trustee that's been following that you know would like to extend their sort of staff support if appropriate related to communications. I mean, we're about a month away or so from uh from Victoria Day and um you know, we we'll see how well this strategy works then, but um I think trying to get that proactive message out to the schools as well um will be helpful. So, just I I have uh sent the contacts on to uh Director Campbell, but just wanted some assurance that that will be uh followed through as far as the joint communications efforts. Uh so through you, Mr. Mayor. Yes. Um there is material being produced now that'll be distributed to the school boards. Okay. And I think the fine level um you know tripling of fines I think is very appropriate especially for unsafe conditions there and the introduction of uh some new categories that we've had issues with uh in the past. Um just one question related to that for a minor and this may be a police question. I'm not sure if it's BA, but um how do we ensure that a minor can identify themsel if they may not have a I mean the ones that have I know have been arrested have been 14 to 16, don't have a driver's license. I don't know if they typically carry ID, but how do we ensure that um you know and I'm assuming the parents are going to be the ones paying the $1,000 ticket if someone wants to discharge fireworks in unsafe conditions. uh how can we en ensure that uh you know the ticket does get uh issued to the right person and and I I think the notification of the parents a great idea as well. So how do we ensure that that can happen? Uh good evening Mr. Mayor uh through you to answer your question counselor uh we have a variety of offenses available to us notwithstanding a criminal offense uh as an arrestable offense that compels the individual to provide us their name. We also have a number of options in notifying the parents uh through a municipal offense and our plan on some level would be to turn that turn the uh young person over to their parents. Okay. So, we're confident that even if it's a bylaw officer that uh we'll be able to get them to identify themselves properly and and find the parents. Correct. Okay. Thank you. Um Okay. Thank thanks again for the collabor. Happy to move it at the appropriate time and uh look forward to further discussion here. Thank you, Councelor Mcnes. So, I'll put you down for the mover. Councelor Romero. Thank you very much, M Burton. Uh again, just to echo, thank you very much for the report. Um, I I I have a question about what to do with masked kids and hooded kids and and that sort of thing. And I know there this is obviously for many different reasons been a subject of much discussion south of us, but um is there anything that we can do because I think there's this cloak of invincibility now that kids go out and put their hoods on and throw a mask on and the skull masks and everything and you can't identify them at all. Is there anything that can be done either through bylaws or through the law that that that um that can deal with that at all or that can help us in terms of trying to recognize some of these these uh these bad actors that want to conceal themselves from from being recognized or or being being uh yeah. Anyway, I'll just leave it with that. Uh through you, Mr. Mayor, there is no offense for wearing a mask and so there would be no law that we could compel someone to take a mask off if they're in in commission of some sort of offense or crime. Um, the police have the tools to be able to deal with that in terms of obtaining their identity and that can be passed over to a bylaw officer if they want them to write a ticket under our bylaw. Okay. Yeah, I know. I just know we had numerous cameras out and drones and every other tool under the sun and if you can't recognize these kids when when this is happening though from video surveillance or body cameras and there's there's limited ability I guess to prosecute if you can't see who it was and they disappear into a crowd but um that that that can be its own sort of um change. So, uh, Craig, I have a just a question. Um, because I'm trying to understand what the MEES's role in terms of patrolling parks and and so maybe just the question is on a normal weekend if if somebody called and say there's some kids in a schoolyard at at 10:00 at night or something and they were to call me MEES, what would MEES's role be at that time? Would they call the police up or would they show up and attend or what how does MEES respond to to that? I'll just let uh Director Campbell answer that for you. Thank you for that question. Through your your worship, on a normal parks patrol, uh it's a little bit different. So, our parks patrol officers would go out, they would uh patrol a park where there's no foreseeable issue. That's one of the major differences between the Victoria Day uh unsanctioned event and a normal parks patrol where the numbers of people that we're looking at are substantially different. So, we could go to a parks patrol and I I'll use examples over COVID where we might have somebody who has a bonfire or, you know, is um maybe putting up a tent or that sort of thing at at night. And the officers will travel in pairs at night just for safety reasons, make sure if you know they are engaged with somebody, somebody's always able to radio police if they need assistance. Anytime that there's a life safety risk to to our officers, they will call Halton Regional Police for support. and they're wonderful at showing up and giving us all the assistance that we need. Um the difference here is is simply the numbers, but in a a park on a normal park patrol, it would be two officers that would attend. They would deal with um whoever the individuals are, whether it be providing education, issuing an amp, all of those those normal processes the bylaw officer would would take upon themselves unless the situation turned into a life into a safety risk. Okay. So, we're just from from the get-go. This is obviously going to be treated different by mees. So their their response would be to radio HRPS right away if if if there is a group of five kids, you know, not on Lakeshore Road during Canada Day, but maybe somewhere else and they saw them, they wouldn't engage. They would just call HRPS at that point. Is is that correct? Through you, your worship. I think it really I'm I'm going to give you my my legal answer. It depends. Um, so essentially what they would do is they would radio in anything in. So if they see a group of kids walking towards a park or that sort of thing, they may radio it saying, "Hey, I see this." Um, but it could just be a couple of kids walking home. So what they'll do is they'll monitor the situation. They'll report any changes. If there's education that needs to be provided and they feel it's safe to do so, they will do that. um if they feel that they're starting to congregate and now we're having issues where there's potential fireworks that are coming out, we will work with our partners at Halton Regional Police. Okay. Thank you very much for that and thank you U Chief and Inspector Bar for for coming here tonight as well and and uh for all the conversations we've had over the past few months. Thank you your worship. Thank you councelor. Is that you wanting to second this? All right, councelor Adams, you're next. Thanks very much. I just had a question for you about one of the pieces of correspondence that we received from the uh Canadian National Fireworks Association where they were asking uh what part uh they could play in education. And uh so I wonder what our staff think about um what part the Canadian National Fireworks Association could play in supporting uh our response to the issues of misuse of fireworks, the inappropriate sale of fireworks, the inappropriate possession by young people of fireworks, and of course their mis um misuse in Victoria Day and Canada Day celebrations and so forth. But um we've we've had conversations with them where they've come to us previously and um I would say a reluctance on their part for us to take um any kind of prohibition stance. Uh and so I am I always wonder exactly where they want us to be. But um what what role could they play uh usefully to us um if any? Thank you for that question and through your worship. Uh we have worked with um the the CNFA um in in the past certainly when we've been reviewing the fireworks bylaw. Uh we have looked at their website. We have their information that they provide to their vendors. Um, and we also look at um the the federal website as far as handling of explosives, sales of explosives, proper discharge for explosives, and we've really structured our educational um material around the federal recommendations. So, that's where we focused our efforts in energy. Also, we've consulted with our Oakville Fire Department. So, our educational material really is really based on that portion. I would strongly encourage the CNFA to um look at the the information that their their membership um provides and the information that they provide to their customers just to ensure it's compliant with the federal regulations and really to encourage them not to sell uh any fireworks to minors and and within the the um allowable time period to sell fireworks. So my recommendation really is if if they want to assist us with this process, if they could make sure that um you know take every effort to educate their their membership in order to comply with federal regulations, that would be uh enough support for us. So we'd be very pleased with that. Would you um would staff undertake to provide that feedback to them? Most certainly. Okay. Thank you very much. Um and on that um you talked about the need to uh be consistent in providing education to the sellers. One of the concerns I've had more recently is the online sale of fireworks. Um how is that handled and do we have any control over that locally through you your worship? Unfortunately, we don't have any uh jurisdiction over the online sales. It is something that we would look to our federal partners. Um, anytime that they're shipping explosives, it should be compliant. Um, but unfortunately from a bylaw standpoint, we're not able to address the online sales. And have we had any interaction with our federal counterparts on that or not? Uh, through your worship at this stage, we have not given them any recommendations or mentioned anything to them as far as specific sellers. Um, I wonder if uh perhaps we could uh copy this material to our MPs locally uh in order to begin the conversation with them on that through your worship. We're happy to take that away. Thank you. Thank you, councelor. Councelor Null. Thank you, worship. Uh thanks for the extremely uh detailed report and some really great collaboration and uh work done here between uh the town staff and the police. Um so uh really want to say a big thank you for that. I only really have one technical question or I guess a additional question and that is um we heard councelor Mcnes uh ex explained the threat that existed and I was right there at 71 with the gas tank uh uh being refilled in the midst of the chaos that night. Have we taken any steps to uh communicate with that particular gas vendor? I'm not sure if there are any other uh gasoline stations within that that catchment area anymore, but uh have we taken any steps to actually have a communication with those folks to say this may not be the best time to be uh driving around a giant tank of explosives through your worship. Uh although that conversation hasn't happened yet, we do have a meeting scheduled with uh a number of businesses within the Bronty BIA and we'd like to thank of course the the Bronty BIA for helping us to to work that out. Uh so that meeting is coming up. We're going to deal with an talk to a number of businesses. Anybody who doesn't or is unavailable to come to that meeting. We will go personally to each location and share the information and suggestions. Uh we're also going to reach out to some of the property owners um who have multiple uh stores on their lots as well. So all of that are are is going to come in the the next couple of weeks. That was a really good answer. Thank you for that. Um my next question is with respect to uh expectations of the public. I know there's a list of who does what in the proactive operational commitments. Is there anything you want the public to know or to be to be aware of or to be watching for in the evening? Maybe to use this as a platform to uh enable the public to take a a position on their own uh safety. I guess that'll if you see something say something mantra. What would you like them to do and how would you like them to be in touch? Uh thank you for that question and that's certainly an important one and through your worship I I would say absolutely if you see something say something. uh contact us through uh you know either the non-emergency line at Halton Regional Police or of course the emergency if there is an emergency service Oakville um both uh the email or the online system is is fantastic. Our officers get that information right away. Um and I would also say please if you're a parent of a young person let them know that this is not appropriate conduct. Don't drop them off for this event. you know, um please make sure that they're educated and and even when you're lighting off your own fireworks, understand the risks and ensure that you're compliant with with the regulations. So, that would be my hope moving forward and we'll certainly communicate as much of that as we can through the um Halton District School Board and and all the school boards as we we share that communication with them in the coming weeks as well. Thank you. And last point I wanted to make and thank you for uh councelor thank you to councelor Adams for raising the letter from CFNA. Uh I'm wondering if one of the things that we could request of CFNA since we're getting a very generous offer for help here is for the investment of some dollars and some social media support because I mean that's the place where you can really have the biggest impact in terms of uh socializing the concerns and issues amongst kids and adults and I'm wondering if they may be willing to put their money where their mouths are so to speak or put their money where their explosives are so to speak and and invest in some proactive communications. That's just a suggestion of maybe how we could respond to that as well through your worship. Thank you. I will share that suggestion with the CF CNFA. Thank you, worship. Thank you, councelor. No, councelor McN. Thank you, your worship. Just uh one final point that I think exemplifies that all this collaboration is starting to work. Um, through the Canada Day discussions, I know we had some tips that there may be a vendor who had previously been fined that has continued to uh sell even beyond fireworks weekends. Uh, so to director Campbell, can you confirm has that particular business been inspected again and finded? Through your worship and and thanks for that question, councelor McNiss, we have gone out already and and performed inspections. There has been one charge issued uh already this year. We have a couple of other inspections dates. Of course, I'm not going to share those. I'd like to keep them a secret, but they will be coming up as well and we will ensure that uh businesses are compliant with the fireworks regulations. Okay. Thank you. So, great great message to the businesses. I know most are compliant and there's I believe only one that we license now across town, but uh if any business is thinking of selling, we'll be watching for them. So, thanks for your hard work already. Thank you very much. All right, council. Is there uh any objection to the U motion in the agenda as moved by councelor McNiss and seconded by councelor Omeira? Councelor Nol. Sorry, I'm not objecting by any stretch of the imagination, but I'm wondering that if in clause three of the motion that you could add the Halton Police Board to um that referral because I know that we're taking an active role in monitoring the situation and I know I can deliver the copy of the motion, but if it could be officially transmitted to the police board, that'd be useful. We have a meeting coming up this Thursday and I'd like to build a report back on it. So, if we could add Halton Police Board to clause three as the distribution. Oh, I see. Yeah, we do share a building with the service, but uh I just think just for an official official uh communication of this to the board be great. Is it satisfactory if we make it read that this report be shared with the Halton Regional Police Service and the board? Absolutely is. There's no objection. I'll uh I'll say it's still carried. Thank you everybody. So um that uh allows us to come back to 11.1 and uh and that is the community satisfaction survey. We're first going to deal with uh well, we'll first have Julie Clark, the director of corporate strategy and uh government relations, and she'll introduce forum research and and I believe we have a presentation. And in the meantime, we we thank uh Messer's uh Tanner and Bar for their time and we we hope you have a productive use of the rest of your evening. Okay. Uh so tonight we are presenting the results of the 2026 community survey. Uh with us we have Lauren Bozenoff, the president and CEO of forum research and Sarah Lamb who is the senior research director and they're going to be walking us through the findings tonight. As a reminder, the survey was conducted between February the 72nd and February the 24th. Uh, and we've been doing this survey since 2001. And we do it for a few reasons. We look to assess community satisfaction against the services they receive. We look to see what uh key priority areas are uh front of mind with the community. We look for continuous improvement opportunities and we also assess the perception of value for the tax dollars. Uh after tonight, we are going to be sharing these results broadly across all of our available communications channels. Uh and I did want to note that your ward specific results will be shared in the next few days with you. Uh so with that, I would like to pass it over to Lauren. Thank you, Julie. Uh, good evening, uh, Mayor Burton, council members. Uh, today we'll be sharing the results from the 2026 community satisfaction survey. Uh, so before we dig into the results, I just want to speak to the methodological design of this study. Um, so this study was conducted through a telephone methodology using something called random digit dialing. And um it's conducted among residents of Oakville, all 18 years of age or older. And uh as Julie mentioned, the survey was in field uh earlier this year from February 2nd to the 23rd. Um and from this telephone survey, we received a total of 808 completed responses. I do want to note that um simultaneously we did also conduct an online survey uh where the survey was hosted on the town's website but just due to the methodology of that uh today I'll just be focusing on the results from the telephone survey. So diving right into uh the detailed findings from the survey, I'll start with uh the section related to livability. Uh so overall when it comes to satisfaction with the government of uh the town of Oakville, we see that this year 82% of residents say that they are satisfied with the town of Oakville. And we can see that these satisfaction levels have remained pretty stable, especially in the last few years. We also asked residents um to rate their satisfaction with various attributes related to the town of Oakville. Um so the efforts the town of Oakville government makes to protect the environment received the highest levels of satisfaction here among the list with 77% saying they're satisfied with this aspect. And that's followed by 76% saying they're satisfied with the amount of information the town provides to residents. Uh and then followed by 75% being satisfied with uh the town responding to the needs of the community, 66% satisfied with the opportunities for public involvement in decision-making, and lastly, 63% satisfied with road planning and mobility in the community. We also asked residents in the survey whether living in Oakville is better or worse compared to the rest of the GTA. And here we see pretty positive results with uh 82% of residents say that living in Oakville is better than most of the areas in the GTA. Uh 11% say it's about the same and then only 2% say it's not as good as other areas in the GTA. So we can also see looking at our trending results uh looking back to 2022 that green bar has been increasing. So uh in 2022 74% said uh living in Oakville is better. That went up to 80% uh in 2024 and now 82% this year. When we asked residents uh what qualities or features of Oakville make it livable and vibrant, the most commonly mentioned quality is the small town community atmosphere with 17% mentioning this. And then there's also mentions of recreational programs and parks uh making our top three. Here is the net promoter score. So basically the NPS it measures um residents willingness to promote the town of Oakville. Um so in the survey we ask residents how likely there are to recommend Oakville as a place to live to others and they're asked to give a rating on a 10-point scale. And basically they're classified into these three categories. So if they gave a rating of six or under, they're classified as detractors of Oakville. they give a rating of six or uh sorry seven or eight they're considered passives and then nine or 10 they're considered promoters. So how this NPS is calculated is we take the proportion of the detractors and subtract the proportion uh subtracted from the proportion of uh promoters and that gives you that net score. Um so essentially the score it can range anywhere from minus 100 if everyone is a detractor all the way to positive 100 if everyone's promoter. So looking at this year's results we can see that 43% of residents are considered promoters of Oakville while 19% are considered detractors. So that gives us a net promoter score of 24 this year. And when we trend it back to uh 2022, we can see that this net promoter score has been increasing um since then. We were also able to compare this with other similar municipalities in Ontario. Um and we can see that um when we average out that municipal uh score um the Oakville's NPS score is much higher, which we can actually see more closely in this next slide. So the average score is eight and Oakville's net per motor score is 24. Moving on to um quality of life. So we asked residents um you know whether they think the quality of life has changed in the last few years. Um so here we can see that uh 49% say that it's stayed the same. 7% say it's become better and then on the other hand we see that 42% say it's become worse. Um we do also notice um a little bit of a trend here now where um the proportion of residents who say it's become worse is increasing since 2022. However, I do want to note that uh when we compare this with the municipal average, it is um pretty similar. The municipal average is 58%. So Oakville is just below that. Here we asked residents uh basically what's the most important issue facing the town of Oakville today. And we see that land use planning is most commonly mentioned by 18% and that's followed by 11% mentioning traffic and congestion and then 10% mentioning crime and public safety. Uh now I'm moving on to uh resident satisfaction with town services. So here overall 90% of residents are satisfied with the level and quality of services provided by the town of Oakville. And we can see here that overall satisfaction is pretty consistent with the 2024 results and it's also uh higher compared to the municipal average of 84% which we'll look at more closely. So with that score of 90% of residents being satisfied, uh Oakville emerges second on this list of comparisons. And now we also asked uh residents to rate how satisfied they are with uh each individual town service. So there's 13 of them. I'm not going to go through each one, but at the top of the list is uh parks and green spaces with 94% being satisfied in this area. And that's followed by fire services and then public library services. And then I'm just going to move on to the next slide which is a continuation of satisfaction with those town services. Um here at the bottom of the list we can see public transit um with uh 60% being satisfied there and 70% being satisfied with winter road and sidewalk maintenance. And then when when it comes to their sense of belonging with the community, uh 86% are satisfied. And these results are pretty similar, basically identical to the 2024 results. Not sure what happened. Go back. Sorry about that. Okay. Here we are. Um, so here we conducted something called a gap analysis. So in the previous few slides, uh, we looked at residents overall satisfaction with the level and quality of services and then we also looked at satisfaction levels with each of those 13 individual uh, services. So here we look at um we run a regression analysis which tells us how important or how much of an impact those individual services have on their overall satisfaction. And then we compare it against the actual satisfaction levels with each of those 13 services. And um this gives us uh let me actually move on to the second chart so you can kind of see it gives us this quadrant chart where um that impact on overall satisfaction is plotted horizontally and then the actual satisfaction levels of each individual service is plotted vertically and then it gives us uh you can see those four little quadrants here. So the main ones we want to focus on is um first one is the bottom right quadrant. So those are the primary areas for improvement. So you can see these are the services that have a high impact on overall satisfaction but they're performing lower relative to all the other services. So the idea here is to improve these services in order to improve overall satisfaction. And then on the flip side at the top right corner um these are also areas that have a high impact on satisfaction but as you can see they're performing a lot better. So the idea here is to maintain those levels of services so that you can maintain those high levels of satisfaction. So here those services are uh town roads and sidewalks and municipal enforcement for those primary areas for improvement and then uh parks and green spaces, recreation programs, arts, heritage and cultural offerings uh for those primary areas for maintenance. Uh we also u just provide some contextual details uh regarding those two primary areas for improvement uh town roads and sidewalks and municipal enforcement. We kind of compared it to uh data that's available with other municipalities and you can see that um although it appears in that bottom right quadrant um the town of Oakville is doing pretty well in these areas uh in comparison to other municipalities. Uh moving on to items related to priorities and planning. So when it comes to participation in activities in the last 12 months, um a lot of residents have visited green spaces, parks or trails. 88% saying that they themselves or someone in their household have done this. Um and then the majority also visiting community centers, visiting parks and then 46% saying that they've participated in recreational or cultural programs. Uh here we asked residents to pick from a list of attributes uh what they consider most important to them as it relates to growth and land use planning. So emerging at the top is to protect the character of existing neighborhoods with 36% saying that's most important to them. Moving on to taxation. So we asked residents to think about the programs and services that they receive from the town of Oakville. And 81% of residents say that they receive fairly good or very good value for their tax dollars, which remains pretty stable compared to the 80% in 2024. And I also want to note that this is higher uh compared to the municipal average of uh 72% uh coming in second uh but very close to uh the city of Burlington who has a score of 82%. And then Lastly, when it comes to balancing services and taxes, 65% of residents prefer an increase in either taxes or user fees, uh, with 46% of them saying it's to maintain existing programs and service levels, while 20% say it's to add new programs and services. And then meanwhile, uh, 35% of residents don't want increases to taxes or years fees, even if it means a cut to, uh, services and programs. So for those 65% who mentioned that they prefer an increase in taxes or user fees, most of them 70% uh say they incre they prefer an increase to user fees and only 23% uh prefer to see that increase in taxes. Um and then I'll round off the presentation just looking at the demographic profile of the residents who responded to the survey. Uh so here we can see that the survey did lean a little bit more uh towards the older population which is usually what we find with telephone surveys. However, we do have a pretty balanced uh representation from uh gender identity as well as from each of the seven wards. Um and that brings me to the end of today's presentation. Um if anyone has questions, I'll be happy to help answer them. Well, if you wanted questions, you're about to be richly rewarded. Councelor Elgar is the first one to reward you. Uh thank you member. Thanks very much for the presentation. I I just I'm just looking at the number of people that responded. 88 on the telephone and 590 on the computer. So you have a total of 1,398 people in total I guess in the survey that was done with a population of 240,000. Does that have any significance whatsoever? What is your statistical analysis here? Uh, that's a really good question. Um, I kind of skipped over this part, but on the methodology slide, we do include something called a margin of error. Now, this can only be applied to the telephone portion of the survey because that's the uh survey where we used um what we called probability sampling and so it's the statistically valid survey. But um basically it allows us to calculate something called a margin of error. um which is 3.4% in our case with a sample size of 808. So what this means is that if we were to redo the survey multiple times, the results will fall into plus or minus 3.4% 19 times out of 20. So, um I know it might seem like 808 responses doesn't seem like a lot in comparison to the entire population of Oakville, but um with the use of statistics, um even if we were to survey like a thousand, 2,000, 10,000, at some point that margin of error kind of, you know, it doesn't really get any better. And so um right now with a margin of error of three plus or minus 3.4% it's um a fairly comparable margin of error I would say. Well I appreciate like I look at ward four with the 88 that gives you only 154 people out of 20ome,000. I thought that's a little bit small but then I go on to on page 87 you talk about ages. What I found interesting those 64 and over wow quite a shock. like it used to be and you the response was apparently based on your what you've given 38%. So if that's on 88 that's 300 people but even if it's on the 590 plus then I look at stats Canada 2021 21%. Wow. So you're telling me the age that have responded have increased 80%. Gone from 38 that gone from 21 to 38. So 17 on 21 gives you 80%. So, is that because nobody went to Florida this year or something like what what how can you explain that? Um, that's a really good question and through you, Mr. Mayor. Um, with telephone surveys, uh, one downside is it does oftentimes, uh, skew towards the older population. However, we do have methods in place to help counter that. So, um, for the telephone survey results that you saw today, um, they were weighted by age and gender so that they are representative of the Oakville population according to the 2021 census data. So, well, something's wrong here. 21 census data was 21% were over 64. Your respondents showed uh, 38%. Uh, sorry. Uh, can I ask where you're seeing this number? Page 8, page 87. I don't have the full reports on me. Um, I have here, I don't know if I can still put the presentation up, but um, for the telephone survey results, uh, the 65 and older, um, the the census data is 21% um, In the survey unweed it's 50% uh who are 65 and older but then after waiting it we kind of reduce it down to 21%. So you're so if I look at page if you go to page 87 of the presentation I have it shows here clearly forum survey uw 38%. And then you show a forum 21%. And that like I thought something's wrong here. a change of 80% on that is is doesn't seem realistic unless everybody left Oakville and the only old people left or something. Uh I'll have to take another look at this report. It's possible that it's for I mean I'm I don't want to say for certain, but I believe this might have been for the I believe you're looking at the online uh demographic profile from the online respondents. Um yes, I believe so. So the 38% um you're looking at those who uh completed the online survey. That's online, is it? Yes. Yes. Yes. And we didn't do any waiting for the online survey because um I mean that's like a self- selected survey. It's not a statistical survey. Um it's not meant to be representative of Oakville. Oh, not meant to be represent. So where could I find out what the telephone survey was then? Really to find out the age. I did I I didn't see it in the details I received here as I went through it. It should be on I believe in the reports that you're looking at um 55 page 60 sorry yes page 60 actually it shows the unweed weighted and the census proportions for the telephone results. Okay. Well I I guess we didn't have the detailed results by word. I guess that's what I was interested in. So, okay. I appreciate what you're doing. I just when I start I like stats and I like playing with them, but something it doesn't quite line up. But anyway, thank you very much. Appreciate it. Thanks. Thank you, counselor, for illuminating uh one of the reasons why online polls are not considered statistically valid or significant. Councelor Nanda, you're next. I I we may all have a go before this is done. Councelor Nanda. Um, thank thank you through you, Mayor Burton. Um so actually I was on the similar page as uh um councelor Elgar as well because when I saw statistically I I also calculated like 55 and over there were 62% but now you're saying that's online and then it said 63% don't have children. So I think one of the concerns and I was wondering how you felt but I guess you're saying you still feel that this is a fair evaluation of overall what uh Oakbillians feel. Yes. If we're looking at the telephone results. Yes. Okay. So I think even in the telephone you said it's geared towards the older population. So I think I was wondering how do we get more younger people involved because we have had young people come into council and give great presentations and they have great ideas and what they're looking for. So couple of my thoughts were did you think of going to Sheridan College and doing something on campus there working with the school board for like the grade 11s and twelves for 18 year olds? Um, and we've even had some younger high school students come in. So, would we maybe include 16 plus to see? Um, because there's a difference between that. There's also a little bit of a difference between North Oakville and South Oakville now, too. Um, you would you would probably get 63% in North Oakville who have children where in South 63% don't have children. Right. So I'm also wondering when we're looking at what we're doing our planning development and all that has changed. So people's views of how they feel for planning and development is also different in north versus south because of how we're building. So how do how do we decipher between all of that? Uh that's a really great question council Nanda. Um there's multiple multiple components to that. Um I'll answer the first part about uh reaching younger adults. Um it is true it's harder to reach younger adults especially on the phone these days. Um so it is a challenge when it comes to a telephone survey. Um but this is a methodology uh that uses like I mentioned that probability sampling with that random digiting. There are ways to kind of help that. For example um we can use SMS outreach as well. um you know if they don't want to answer the phone or you know spend 15 20 minutes on the phone with an interviewer to go through the questions um we can you know send them an SMS and with a link to the online survey things like that. Um so there are ways to kind of uh reach that younger population. Um however um it I with your points about u maybe reaching out to uh specific youth communities um that would be a great idea to promote the survey. Um but at the same time um we do want to keep that uh rigorous methodology to ensure that it is like I mentioned a probability sample. Um and then you also mentioned uh rep rep representation from different regions of Oakville. Um so in this year survey we did make a concentrated effort to target uh uh certain wards that were less represented in previous years. So particularly W seven for example. So we targeted that area a lot more and definitely increased representation there. And um you know, of course, that's also something that we can look into uh in the future as well. If there's any other types of representation that we want to pay pay closer attention to, we uh can look into it and see if there's ways to uh target certain audiences or different regions. And maybe just Oh, sorry. Go ahead. Just have one comment. Um you you might want to think about how to engage with young people in the community and maybe do before the survey is done targeted to younger individuals because we know they're less likely to do the survey. Well, and that's what I was thinking like in our community centers or in other places or even if we gave it to Sheridan College or some of the schools you have a QR code or something where where you know the kids can just you know scan the QR code and be able to get you know to get more and I know the online versus the telephone but like you said they're not engaging as much now. you're getting more of the older population that has the 15 to 20 minutes maybe if they're retired or whatnot to be able to do the survey, but most people probably wouldn't. Right. Exactly. If I can just add to that, um, we did so getting the youth uh population responding to these surveys is a challenge. Um we did do some very targeted outreach though to um the youth community in Oakville. So uh it was through social media. We had information at all of the rec centers. Um I don't know if we went to Sheridan, but that's something that I can definitely take back and look. Uh but it is it is a challenge trying to engage that demographic. I did however just want to note we were conscious of that this year and we tried um and we will continue to look for ways to do that. When is the next survey again that we're looking at doing? So we do every two years. Two years. In two years. So we could look at that. And then just in terms of one of the biggest issues was planning and development. So when we're taking these surveys in how are we implementing you know um responding to that for for the residents. Uh so sorry the question is what are we doing with the survey for yeah um great question. So this is um this is one piece of information that we get among others. So uh a decision point on uh improving a particular service wouldn't be made through this survey alone. This gives us excellent trending uh over a number of years. It's not intended to be a one-year report card, so to speak, but we take this information, the departments look at it, combine it with other information that they have to then determine what changes need to be made, particularly in the areas where we're seeing a trending decrease. uh and that gap analysis where um it's roads and sidewalks and municipal enforcement. That's a trend that we look to uh quite closely to see what we need to do to get more information to understand how we need to uh adjust going forward. Thank you. Thank you. And Miss Clark, um I think you're implying, let me just check, uh this is a key input into the uh four-year strategic planning exercise at the beginning of each council. That's correct. All right. Um before we go on to the next questions, I wonder if our experts could explain in layman's terms uh waiting because I'm not sure everybody understands the the way you do that and that might help people understand how to adjust the represent the representativeness. And the other thing is you use this phrase probability sample and that might need some unpacking. Uh what's that mean? like you need to make sure that your your sample is randomly generated. I mean like can you a little more basic information on both those points please? Those are excellent questions and Mr. Mayor. Um so I'll start with the first one about waiting. Um so basically what this is it's a statistical technique where um every single respondent in the database like so all 88 respondents they're given a weight and how that weight score is calculated is depending on um so in our case we waited by age and gender. So basically we look at the proportion of um age so the distribution of age and also gender that we got from our survey respondents. We compare it to what we actually see from the census data and using the example of the 65 and older because we received more responses from that age group compared to what's actually in the population. What we do is uh that group gets a lower weight. And so that means um at the end of the day when we rerun the the results using those weighted scores um the representation from that 65 and older category they're no longer being over represented. So they're they're kind of weighted back to uh that 21% that's in line with the population. Um hopefully that kind of helps clarify it. So if we have twice as many seniors as we should have. Use the microphone please. If we have twice as many seniors as we should have um we give them weight of one half and that what brings the proportion down to the proportion in the Stats Canada data set. Okay. I I think we all get that and you and you connected it nicely back to your 21% uh remark earlier and uh that's what I made the note that we might need extra explanation and then uh probability sample uh decode that for us please. Yes. So you were on the right track uh for probability sampling uh basically what we used for the telephone survey is what's called random digit dialing. So um we look for uh all the phone numbers available in the region and we randomly dial them. So anyone who um has a phone number either a landline or a cell phone they have basically like an equal chance of participating in the survey. And so that's what makes it a probability sample. And I I I presume that there's a the only selection bias left is anybody who you don't have a phone number for automatically doesn't get included. That is correct. Right. Okay. Thank you. I hope that helps everybody. And councelor Giddings, you're next. Thank you, Mr. Mayor. Uh looking forward to the award specific results in the next couple of days. Always fun going through that. Um the report talks about the gap analysis and two primary areas for improvement town roads and sidewalks. Uh elsewhere in the report it talked about after two years of of uh heavy snow and difficulties and the difficulties associated with that. Uh I understand that part of it. Would it also include potholes and uh perceived need for uh repaving or is that exclusively uh snow and ice? Uh through you Mr. Mayor. So there are two separate uh questions. The first one is uh town roads and sidewalks. So that's what we see in that bottom right quadrants of the gap analysis. Um and then that's separate from winter road and sidewalk maintenance. Excellent. The uh land use planning, traffic congestion, and crime public safety. Uh perhaps a question more for staff. Can we compare that to other comparator municipalities just to see how we are fairing or if it is a uh a sign of the times if you will. I would actually ask forum if they have comparators for that. Awesome. Thank you. Uh so I believe you're referring to the issue agenda where we ask Yes. where we ask residents to uh state what they think is the most important issue facing the town of Oakville today. Um so this question is very commonly asked uh in a lot of these municipal you know community satisfaction surveys. However, I do want to note that this is an open-ended question. So we don't, you know, read them a list and ask them to pick what's most important. We just ask them the question and they kind of just, you know, say what's top of their mind. Um so we can compare but the the themes that come out of it uh can differ between uh municipalities. So it can be a little bit um more challenging to interpret how we compare those results. So it would be available but they aren't exact comparators. Yes. Exactly. All right. Um the online survey results it talked about lowest ranking services are for public transit and so that would be the same answer for public transit I take it. Uh are you referring to uh municipal comparisons for public transit? Yes. Yes. Uh yes, we can also look into that um for any municipalities who do ask that question in the survey um and we can share that. Yeah, that'd be great. And uh the other lowranking service was availability of parking. Would that be in newer areas where the it's more congested or would that include uh the three BAS in Oakville? Any feedback on that? So, when it comes to availability of parking in the survey, we do mention both commercial and residential. So um it's a pretty broad um area here. Uh if there is of interest I believe there is like wart level analysis that can be done afterwards. Um but yeah. All right. Um next quick question. There was an increase in residents visiting community centers uh four percentage points. Is that um because people are finding our our community centers or is that reflect an increase in population? Uh that is a good question. It's it's hard to pinpoint the exact reason why uh something has gone up especially in this type of survey because it is more broad and we don't have enough time in the survey to ask them follow-up questions to really dig deep into each individual topic. So um you know if it is of particular interest um separate surveys can be done and you can ask questions. For example, you know has your participation in recreational programs increased in the last few years and really um ask more specific questions. From the survey alone, it's hard to tell whether that increases because they're more aware or there's more interest in these programs and offerings or if it's a increase in population or you know any other number of variables but right I'm not being I'm not being critical I'm I'm being curious so um thank you for that and the last question I have we we uh received some feedback um I believe when this was out in the field uh this would be for staff I guess did we have there was a a number of people asked about nanos research that is being done. That's totally separate from this, I assume. Uh yes, it is. That is a that was a separate survey um conducted by the office of the mayor and council. All right. So, different topics or or whatever. Uh I wasn't talking about rec centers and and and parking. No, it wasn't. All right. Thank you very much. Thank you, councelor. Councelor Longo. Thank you, worship. I have a couple comments and then a question. So, thank you to Forum Research for the analysis uh and the survey results. So, that's my first comment. My second is to Jane. Um to see that 91% of people surveyed had a positive experience with employees, that's phenomenal. I mean, that's a great thank you to the employees at the town of Oakville. And then to top that off, there was also 90% of survey respondents were satisfied with the town services. So a huge kudos to the town staff. So as our CEO, I want to say thank you because that's phenomenal to see those percentages and results. So wonderful job. Uh thank you councelor Longo through you, Mayor Burton, uh for recognizing that. Actually, we just had an all staff meeting this week uh where we thank staff um because that certainly signifies the effort that they put into in um providing services to this community. So, thanks to all of town staff for the work they put in into it. Awesome. And then my one question and this is for yourself or Julie. Uh it did talk about some of the areas of improvement, land use planning, town roads and sidewalks, municipal enforcement. Are there is there a timing for action plans or immediate action plans? The mayor mentioned going into the next strat strut survey or or strategic planning, but is there anything immediate that can be looked at to try and address those uh concerns that came out in the survey? Uh yes, I can speak directly actually to the snow clearing one because that one did have a a fairly significant decrease. Um not surprising to see um see that given that we did do the survey in the middle of winter. Uh and there were two significant snow events, one right before the survey opened and another which was record setting which was during the survey. Having said that though, uh we do have snow events that happen. It's not unusual for that to happen during our um survey period. Uh so I can share um roads and works has been working on a number of improvements. So they do a lot of continuous improvement focus. Uh they have been looking generally for uh well over a year how they respond to significant events whether it's flooding or whether it's snow. And they have made a number of improvements already including uh improvements to communications as well as redeploying staff between departments to make sure that those priority areas are addressed right away. Uh so I would say um uh improvements are already well underway as well. Um we are just finishing a lessons learned for this past winter season as well. So it's that continuous improvement mindset that um really has been embraced in that department and other departments that support them uh to get improvements to any significant event, not just snow. Okay. Thank you. That's a great example of that continuous improvement. And I can say with our residents, the feedback from the the the snow uh removal and the communication was was really good in very challenging times. So, thank you very much. That's it. Thank you, councelor Longo. Uh councelor Lchenna, thank you worship. Uh thank you very much for uh the presentation. Uh you you made comparisons to other municipalities. Did Forum research do those surveys as well in Burlington, Gan, London, Missaga? Uh, that's a really good question through you, Mr. Mayor. Um, so we do do a lot of municipal satisfaction surveys. Um, but we don't do all of them in Canada. So, um, you know, just just like you guys, a lot of municipalities do these surveys and they publish their results online. So when we look at those comparisons um we So so you were assured that the uh same methodology was used in order to be able to compare. Yes, exactly. So we do uh note that if there's any differences in maybe how the question was phrased, we would make note of that in the report. Um and then just to speak a little bit more about uh those comparisons because I couldn't fit it into my presentation. Um but basically uh we have different criterias in terms of choosing which municipalities to include in the report. So we look for municipalities that are you know similar to Oakville whether that's in population size or in geography. So you'll notice all of the comparators that we do include are all within Ontario. And we also note the population size of each one of them. Um, and then they you might also notice there's some comparisons that we've included where we didn't actually mention the name of the municipality and that's just because that municipality they haven't published their report online yet. So it's not publicly available. So we can't uh provide a name for them. So we kind of just broadly describe them as like for example municipality in southern Ontario with whatever population size. Understand? Thank you. Can you also uh comment on non-response bias? So, you know, you're calling you say you have 10,000 numbers that you you get to 10,000. So, there's a whole bunch of people that didn't answer the phone or or they answered and they said no thank you. So, how do how do you account for that at all? Uh that is a really good question. Um and you know there is some sort of bias that comes with these types of surveys like you mentioned. Uh there are some people who ignore the calls uh or you know they pick it up but they don't want to answer the phone. Um but that's why we have the we have our target sample size which is large enough and then with this methodology um it kind of um still gives us a representative sample to work off of. So you're pretty confident in the results. We we we are very confident. non-responders versus responders. You know, we know the polls are political polls are extremely accurate. They're like within 1% almost continually. So, we're pretty confident about our methods. Very well. Council has a deal. You're next. Uh thank you through you, Mayor Burton. Um I echo thank you very much for uh the detail and the uh the insights that can be used by the next council. Um can you just confirm and I think it's a staff question um that who determines the question and who has input into the questions being asked uh through you Mr. Mayor. So it is a staff-driven survey. Uh staff uh primarily in corporate strategy and government relations. Uh look at the questions each at the beginning of each survey and determine whether or not any of the questions um need to be adjusted. I will say um there is a a fine balance between uh I I had mentioned earlier this is about trends over time. So there's a balance between changing the questions too much because then we lose the ability to do the trend line. Uh but staff in corporate strategy and government relations um do uh facilitate this survey on behalf of uh the organization. We will get comments from departments on an ad needed basis if we think that there are adjustments to be made. Uh it does go to our executive uh leadership team um for review, but carriage does sit with corporate strategy and government relations. Has it ever been uh a time because you've been obviously doing this for quite some time, ever been brought to council in a draft format to to be looked at um before you finalize it to receive some feedback? Uh not to my knowledge. It's it has not gone to council. Okay. Does it go to the mayor's office for review? It does not. Okay. Um, thank you for clarifying that for me. So, um, you'll recall that I raised with you a concern about land use planning and, uh, the the way the questions have been framed um, in the survey. And in fact, it is it is really a singular question. Um, and for those that might not recall, um, the survey asked respondents to select a single most important issue in relation to growth and land use planning from the following list. Diverse housing options, sustainable development, protect the character of existing neighborhoods, highquality appearance and landscaping and none of the above. So it is a mo single most important issue that they are asked to uh to answer and uh when the survey actually came to my house uh none of the above was not even offered um when I I tried to decline doing the survey but I was told I should do it. Um and I just want to put it clearly land use planning is inherently multi-dimensional and the decisions regarding growth intersect simultaneously with density, building height, traffic impacts, infrastructure capacity, parkland provision, fiscal sustainability, mobility planning and community services. and a forced singlechoice format without a real other a as a minimum or an ability to select multiple priorities does not allow respondents to reflect the interconnected nature of the this primary issue. Now, what heartens me is that clearly people told us that land use planning is at the top of a concern for them in Oakville. And so, uh, I'm grateful that that question, uh, was on the survey and that the public expressed some of the frustration that certainly we've heard at a multitude of community consultations and council deliberations, but I really would encourage that our future survey must look more deeply at uh, asking a detailed multi-question format in land use planning. We missed an opportunity to get greater clarity. And as an example, who doesn't want, you know, a better appearance or, you know, a better public realm? um forcing that choice, you know, is uh perhaps gives you uh you know, what some may say is at the top of the list, but two truths can be equal. And we need that quality of data for when uh the next council looks at uh the strategic plan. So, I I I just wanted to be clear that I think there really is an opportunity. I get that we don't want people on the phone for an inordinate amount of time. Um, but it's obviously an important issue for people and I would hope and ask, is there a way for us to do follow-up surveys to get that level of uh detail from the public? Uh, so through you, Mr. Mayor, I I I take your points. Uh, councelor has the um just for a little bit of context for um viewers and the rest of council the community survey is intended to be very high level. Uh we I mentioned earlier we do struggle with the length of the survey and the um willingness of the community to spend the time to respond to the survey. So we have cut it down quite a bit over the years. It used to be almost a 30 minute survey. We've gotten it down to 17 18 minutes and I think there's an argument to be made that it actually get reduced further. Uh we are asking people to spend a significant amount of time answering a number of questions. Um and when we when we did reduce uh the questions, I will acknowledge that we did take some of the planning the traffic congestion out because we felt that there were other methods in which we could receive information on that. So any of the planning and development um public engagement opportunities for example. But I take your point um about the purpose of this survey and how we how we approach that topic in this type of survey. You did mention is there an opportunity to do a different survey that goes into a deeper dive? Absolutely. And in fact, we encourage that when we have areas if we're not quite sure what's going on or what the results mean, we encourage departments to go back out and do further surveys. And I will use the example that was mentioned earlier which was municipal enforcement which has been uh on the uh improve uh red box of that gap analysis for two years. They did go out and do a much more detailed survey to get a sense of what's what the community is um is experiencing with that service. Uh so I do take your point councelor Theo. We will um absolutely consider that um in the future and we will also consider whether or not there are um opportunities to um engage with council on the survey as well. So thank you very much for that. And um one of the reasons I pointed out is that others may start to look at the gap analysis chart on town services and because uh perhaps of how the data is being looked at and um and the feedback we're getting, it doesn't show land use planning on that gap analysis. It doesn't show crime. It doesn't show traffic congestion. and those were top concerns that came through in the survey. So, um I'm just I'm pointing it out because I'm I look at these as opportunities for us to continue to do better and I'm appreciative of councelor Longo's call out that we have some tremendous examples of excellence within uh the town team and staff. But, um the gap analysis is something we should we should be we should be looking at land use planning. we should be looking at traffic congestion and we should certainly be looking at at whatever role we have within uh from a crime perspective. Um so those were my my general comments on it. I do have one further followup and that is the qualitative feedback. So when we get our ward specific will we get the qualitative open-ended feedback as well obviously with no identifying information uh through you Mr. Mayor. Uh yes, thank you for that question. We will be providing um the qualitative data and thank you for noting the um personal information does we we will need to review it to remove any of that. Um and we are going to provide there's 815 comments. Uh we are going to do a uh themed review for council uh so that you can see across the entire town uh what the main area of of concerns and comments were as well as your specific ward uh comments. I I will say related to your earlier comment, counselor, the um uh the comments uh did draw a lot of the concerns that you mentioned. So while it may not have been in a specific question um the comments almost half of them are focused on growth and development and traffic. Uh so it is coming out uh through the through the comments as well. So I appreciate you reinforcing it is but it's not on the gap analysis and that's why I felt I needed to call it out but thank you very much. Thank you counselor councelor Nolton. Thank you worship. Um a couple quick questions here. So on the demographics and thank you uh your worship for um asking for the uh clarification on waiting because this is where I I got this question from and that is you um our delegates indicated that the waiting was only on age and gender. Is that correct? What why was there no uh um waiting provided for um ethnicity? because I I I just I I'm very uh shocked by the fact that 70% of the respondents identify as white. Um when that's certainly not the makeup of Oakville anymore. If you look at 2021 Statistics Canada numbers and then going forward the estimates, it's you know it's it's it's I won't say it's 50/50, but it's getting closer to that number. Um why was there no waiting applied to that? Or is it not statistically something that that you worry about? like I I'm I'm asking from a a genuine want to be educated perspective not a critical perspective. Uh that is a great question through you Mr. Mayor. Um so I mean uh technically speaking there are a lot of number of variables that we can wait with as long as we have the population data for it. However, when you add in multiple variables to weight by it becomes more complicated. And so that's why we usually only weights by age and gender. So, if you're not waiting, then what? And I know I having contracted a number of surveys myself in my career, I know that it's challenging to find people to respond to these things at all. I know it's back in the day it was, you know, you'd have to call 25, 30 people to get one person respond. It's probably higher than that now. Um, so I know that's a challenge, but why wouldn't you uh attempt to achieve a a better balance when it comes to uh um going through your random sample to find that appropriate um demographic mix? Um it's definitely possible but it comes at um there's a balance that we have to play. Um so you know for example we can implement something called quotas in the survey. So um if it whether it's for race or age or anything like that for example if we um if only 21% of the population is aed 65 and older and we want to cap it at that um we can set quotas so that we don't go over and over sample those groups. However, that also means uh now when we're calling and we find out that oh, they're 65 and older, they're willing to do the survey, but we've reached our quota there. We have to turn the call away. That uh creates um more challenges as well. Uh creates the fieldwork period more challenging, more timely, more expensive as well. So, I get the the cost factor for sure. Um, and this is this is a question of education. Again, not attempting to be critical, but in terms of in terms of this the the validity of a survey like this, does that factor specifically the race factor, does that does that in any way inform um the uh applicability of that survey? If if you've got if uh what's the number here? If 42.5% of our population is non-white, um, but 71 70% were white in the survey, does that have a in in the world of survey science these days, it have a does that have a significant impact on the validity of the results? You know, usually we think age and gender are the most impactful. So that's why that's the standard for waiting. And keep in mind when when we when you when we age when we wait on age and gender we have to simultaneously wait on both. So we have to so we have for example if we have say six or seven age categories and two genders now we have 16 set of weights. If we do add in a third even if we had three or three we end up with 48 sets of weights. Well I'm not specifically talking about waiting. I'm talking about the the the val like the the ultimate um uh results of the survey. What what I'm asking is really is an educational question in terms of survey science. Is a a survey that is skewed towards one race group statistically valid um if if you're not getting a full snapshot of your communities demographically. I don't know the answer to the question. I'm not trying to lead you. I'm I'm I'm genuinely curious if if not picking up the representative sample of visible minorities and and non-white residents of the community. Does that have an out does that have a genuine input or result negative result in terms of the validity of a survey? Would would be a matter of couple of factors. One is how far out it is and secondly do do the groups who who were under represented do they differ in their attitudes? If they don't differ wouldn't matter. If they do differ then it would have an impact to answer your question. Okay. Um if I drill down just a little bit. So a large portion of our population now in Oakville is South Asian. Would you c categorize as South Asian community having differing attitudes or are they similar to uh non South Asian members of the community? And again I'm genuinely asking because I'm curious about this. We we would have to look at that in the data set. Like we would have to look at those responses see if they in fact do differ from the the majority population. Like I say, if they don't differ, it wouldn't matter. There's a compounding problem of uh and possibly why we've under representation is um does that population speak English. If not, we have to get the surveys translated and and interviewers who speak lang, which we can certainly do. Um but it does add to the complexity of the project. I guess you can do anything with money, right? Money and time. Okay. Uh thank you for that information. And I'm going to move on to um the uh question regarding finding town information. There are two charts obviously one for the uh scientific survey and one for the online survey. The categories or the results are um they're not the same categories or they're not the same headings. Um are these self-identified um methods or were the were the respondents given a pick list? And I'm specifically referring to I get to the nub of my question on the uh scientific survey. It doesn't mention from my counselor, but from the online survey it has from my counselor in terms of receiving information. So I was curious why that didn't appear on both. Um let me just take a look back. I don't have the full reports on me. Um but our analyst, Caitlyn, I believe she does. Uh so the reason for that is um in the chart itself we only showed the top answers. So um any mentions that are less than whatever percent they're not shown just to uh you know make the slide look less busy. Um but the difference between the online and the telephone is that in the online survey we do share we show the full list of answer options for them to choose from. But in the telephone version um because it is a telephone format um we oftent times avoid you know sharing or you know saying the full list because sometimes it is quite lengthy and so um what happens is the interviewer will ask a question the respondent will respond and um the interviewer will select from a pre-generated list. Okay. Um similar question to um the scientific portion of the survey. The top three categories are through the uh website, internet and social media. The interesting thing is all three of those are effectively very similar. I mean the internet covers website and social media. Why why are they broken down like that and where would the internet be attributable to? Uh so this is from the pre-generated list. Oh, so it's open. Okay. Um is it possible that came from the openness? So um sorry about that. In that question, I we do have an other uh answer option where they can kind of, you know, write in anything that they think wasn't on the list. And so we do review those comments and they if you know any particular themes come up we kind of create a new category for it. And so I believe that was what happened. Um it's kind of based on what people are writing in. When you say people writing down are you talking about your operators? You're talking about citizens because the survey the the chart that I'm referring to is the one that came from the scientific portion of the survey which would have been a telephone survey. That one also has an other. Yeah. So even with the telephone portion um even if we have a list you know sometimes respondents they give an answer that doesn't fit into that list and so the interviewer will write down what they wrote as an other and then again we review those. Okay. I have two more and I feel the the metaphoric hook coming for me soon. So I'm going to be try to be really quickly uh go really quickly on this. I I'm curious about the trend here in terms of through the website. It's a pretty substantial increase in terms of how people got community information from the town. Um, is this a trend that you're seeing that that websites are more reliable than social media or is it specifically because of the really excellent job our staff did? That's not a plug. That's just the reality of redesigning this website. Like I I'm curious how that happened because it seems like that's a pretty substantial change. Are you referring to the telephone results or Yeah, I'm talking I most I'm mostly concerned with telephone results. I don't really find online surveys very valid, so I really haven't paid a lot of attention to them, but the I'm talking about the telephone survey. Yeah, I mean it's um hard to say why they chose those options. Um it could be a number of reasons and um yeah, because we don't really ask them any follow-up questions, it's kind of hard to um you know, point out what what the reason for that is. I'm sort of curious if this was a trend though. That's what I was asking like are you seeing this in other surveys that that more people are looking at websites now than social media. I'm looking I'm trying to find out whether social media is becoming less effective in terms of communications to the public. That's what I was my question was related to I don't have an answer for you on the top of my mind. Um we can kind of take that back and look into I'd be curious. Yeah. Yeah. In general, there's increase in digital communication methods for sure. But the difference between website and versus social media, I would have to kind of take a look at. I have one more. This is probably a quick one. Um the the bottom the bottom feeder of our services and this unfortunately was public transit. And I'm curious if that information has add are there cross tabs to identify um whether or not our users are satisfied with public transit. So are you able to because this is this is a 5% of the overall survey. Are you able to go into the cross tabs and pull out users of of the tr of public transit to determine their uh favorability of the service rather than just the general population because obviously the whole population is not using the service. Um so unfortunately we do not have that information like Julie mentioned. It is a really broad survey covering multiple topics. So um it's not transit specific survey. So we don't ask them if they've taken transit. However, to your point on that question, we do notice a high proportion of uh don't know responses, right? So, yeah. Well, notwithstanding my questions, thank you very much. I really enjoyed reading the survey. I think it's a great snapshot of what our community believes. Thank you. All righty. Thank you, Councelor Null, and thank you, Council, and uh uh Miss Clark and uh you lovely people from Forum. Uh uh I will look for a motion to receive it all the volunteers. Uh councelor Chisum and councelor uh Lchenna. Um is there any objection? There being no objection the motion carries. uh I want to say this is very helpful to identify the opportunities and work clothes that uh exist for us and uh and they the survey has also identified some places where we can be pleased that there's less work in some areas to get to 100% approval than there is in other areas if I could put it that way. And I want to congratulate and thank staff uh on behalf of all the people of Oakville and all of council uh for the outstanding results uh that the public have shown you in in regard to the way you interact with them and the unfailing courtesy that I know that you provide. Uh if uh if no one else has a reason to go away from this this evening feeling happy and pleased with themselves, you do in terms of that at least. So, thank you very much for that. Um, our next item is the indoor asset naming procedure and I believe that the clerk will have circulated a u a motion on this item. U and uh I just wanted to call everybody's attention to that. That's um uh councelor mcnes and councelor has the deal would like to move when we get to it the uh uh the recommendation that council receive the facility and indoor asset naming procedures outlined in appendix A and then they have language that amounts to uh adopting option three as the uh way forward and uh I'll I'll uh I'll read that out if any member hasn't had a chance to already see it and uh at the appropriate time if it's needed we'll task the clerk with putting it up for anybody who wants to see the exact wording but I I think the intent is understood by all of us so uh if we uh if we turn our attention back to Mr. Manager in intergovernmental affairs he has a presentation on indoor asset naming procedure Mr. Yes. Next slide, please. Last year, council directed staff to bring forward an approach to naming indoor assets such as rooms at town facilities. At the town, naming frameworks do exist for other asset types such as parks, streets, as well as naming rights in exchange for donations and sponsorships. But there was no documented process for facilities and indoor spaces. The current practice has now been formalized in the facility and indoor asset naming procedure that is attached to the report under the town's recognition policy and staff are seeking direction on whether to permit commemorative indoor naming that is naming in honor of individuals or organizations who have made significant contributions to the town and under what framework. Next slide please. The attached procedure includes that for new facilities, geographical characteristics are the first consideration for new names. For instance, street name, neighborhood, or topographical characteristics. New facility names are decided during the capital development process and presented to council through a staff report. This does not apply to operational facilities such as fireh halls or work or works yards that are given more functional standard names. And for indoor assets such as rooms, official names shall be based on the functional use of the space, follow a logical structure, ensure consistency, and be simple. Next slide, please. Again, we note that there is currently no process for non-financial commemorative naming of indoor spaces, which should staff receive direction, then a commemorative naming section would be added to the procedure. Staff have completed a jurisdictional scan and note that in jurisdictions where commemorative naming of indoor assets is permitted. It may be implemented through the use of a secondary subordinate name that does not replace the formal functional name of the space. This is similar to the practice for commemorative street name signs. Most jurisdictions that were reviewed permit commemorative naming in some form with variations in process and approval with council approval as the most common model. The report also includes an example framework to illustrate how a process could operate for commemorative naming of indoor assets. Next slide, please. This slide outlines the options available to council to determine whether to permit commemorative naming for indoor assets and if so, the appropriate level of oversight and community input. Option one maintains the current approach where commemorative naming of indoor spaces is not permitted. Options two, three, and four would permit commemorative naming each with a 10-year term and no requirement for postumous naming only. Options two and three include a required 30-day public review period while option four does not. And the main difference between option two and three is approval authority, staff in option two, and council in option three. Option four maintains council approval but removes the public engagement requirement. Next slide, please. In the report, staff have included draft language to show how a commemorative naming framework for indoor assets could operate in practice if council chooses to proceed. At a high level, commemorative naming would be applied as a secondary designation, meaning the formal room name remains in place for wayfinding and operations with a defined term and an opportunity for review. The framework includes defined criteria, including meaningful contribution to the community, alignment with municipal values, and a logical connection to the facility along with a structured submission process through the town clerk. From a process perspective, staff would review requests against the criteria followed by a 30-day public input period with a decision made after considering both the criteria and any feedback received. The core elements, criteria, submission, and process are expected to be consistent across options, and council's decision will determine the approval authority and overall governance model. Next slide, please. As next steps, staff will update the procedure based on council direction, including incorporating the selected approval model. If approved, facility services would administer the program and maintain a record of commemorative names. And with that, we are happy to take any questions. Well, councelor Mcnes, you can be first. Thank you. through your worship. Um, not as much a a question as a compliment for the great work that staff has done on this. It may have sounded like something simple to uh just uh recognize someone um who may have significance inside a building instead of on a park bench or a tree. Um, and I think this is just a really nice token of our appreciation to those that are involved in our community. And it's a very good news uh story. So, uh, which is why I moved, uh, option three at the appropriate time. So, thanks to staff for all your hard work and something that may have sounded so simple, but you've really done a thorough research on what other municipalities are doing, and it seems that we're in line with what many other municipalities do. So, thank you. Thank you, counselor. Your your motion and the second. Uh, your motion is fully on the floor, moved by you, and seconded by councelor Hazitfield. And the clerk tells me he's prepared to put it up if anybody needs to see it. Councelor Chisum. Well, thank you, worship. Just a couple quick questions just on a kind of administrative level. Uh, with respect to there when you put pro I'm just using history. When you put processes in for things like this, it becomes becomes difficult sometimes and challenging in selections and so forth. Um, and I know the the motions to move it to council. um and I'm fine with that. But with respect to the um the financial um obligations to this um I see there's no fee uh associated for this to put an application in and so forth. Is have we looked at the financial uh side of it and what the uh implementation and administration process would be? Councelor, I would suggest that when the when the matter comes before council for a decision, council could consider that at that time. Or we very hypothetical at this point, right? Okay. So, so just for clarity, so we are approving this this this new program tonight if if this motion carries. Yes. Okay. So what I'm suggesting there's there's no within the report there's no financial line on what this going to cost. Well, if you never do it, it's not going to cost you anything. And if you do it once, it's I mean it's how do you how do you estimate that? I I think the the the method I would recommend is that council leave the cost to its cons to the consideration of council when a proposal comes to council. You know, the the question would be what's this going to cost and the report on the matter would say and and so otherwise you have to forecast how many times you're going to do this I mean the you'd be guessing into the wind I think so the suggestion is that this will come down the pipe uh later on is that where you're saying your worship the proposal is that the things come back to council as I understand it no council has is it is it not the uh coming back to council is the selection of of what rooms will be in the dollar value. I was understanding that uh councelor let me let me turn to Mr. Man to clarify this for us both. Thank you through your your worship. Uh yes, we have engaged staff on the topic of how much this is expected to cost. Uh and while there has been no uh template that's or design that's been designed for what the sign could look like for a commemorative indoor asset, uh the expectation is that it would be able to be covered through our internal print shop uh at a nominal fee. Uh so we are not expecting a significant volume or a significant cost purely for at least the signage. Well, that answers my question. Thank you. Um second second uh question with resp more of a statement uh when when these signs commemorative signs go up in the rooms. Can we make sure that our front uh desk staff uh have a bios on those uh um selections because when you read that a lot of people would not know who that person is or what they're representing. So if there's so staff should be familiar when they're going onto the rooms that they know who those people are through a bio. Can we make sure we consider that through your worship? Uh yes, we for sure can consider uh some messaging for staff and uh there typically would be a commemorative uh uh sign uh giving a little bit more context and explanation as well uh adjacent to uh the commemorative uh sign. So yes, we will take that back. So just to be clear, so I understand it's just not a name. There's also some relevant information uh below the name to give some um a little bit more detail. Is that correct? Through your worship. Yes. It's just a small sign that provides a little bit of extra information. Great. Thank you. Thank you, Councelor Chisum. Councelor has a deal. Um thank you through you, Mayor Burton. I'm I'm pleased to second this um uh with C and appreciate councelor McNiss bringing it forward in part because it's a wonderful way to recognize geographically uh because in the in the report you'll see that we talk about it being uh any names coming forward it would make sense uh logistically geographically in that uh uh in that room or or that area. Um but we have such a wonderful depth of volunteers uh who give uh significant amount of time um and uh knowing that there is an opportunity to recognize somebody before they die which would be you know is actually quite wonderful um uh is uh I'm I'm pleased to support it and I hope others will too. Thank you counselor. May I put the vote? Is there any objection? Mr. Clerk, there's no objection and the matter carries unanimously. Thank you everybody. Uh councel, I uh I call your attention to the staff of a Miranda which are uh circulated for you for information in the agenda. And I uh I would like to uh uh I'm I'm going to move item 12, a confidential discussion item to the end so that all of the public matters, public facing matters are done before we go into camera. So there's no reason anybody to stay up late. And uh uh and in that vein, I recognize councelor Omera who has a motion he'd like to bring forward. Um thank you, your worship. And um this motion was circulated earlier today. And uh um I I would ask at the appropriate time um if we might uh consider waving the uh procedure bylaws. The bill 100 is moving at a pace that's that's beyond breakneck speed. It was uh introduced, referred to committee Thursday evening of last week. Uh committee hearings are happening tomorrow and will be dealt with. Um well, I I'm not sure how quickly they're going to get through it. Um but at regional council last week, uh regional council unanimously passed a a motion along the same lines by Mayor CR and Mayor Lawler. Um it was spoken to passionately by members at regional council and and I thought it would be um app propo for us to have our uh views on this as a lower tier municipality in the region of Halton as well uh for submission to the province as it is soliciting comments right now. So um I'm not sure your worship if you would like me to read it now or if we will go through the procedure issue or what what you would like to do. Councelor, um, having read your email, I had understood you to understand that the first matter is to move a waiver of the procedure bylaw, and that's what I thought you were going to move. Perfect. Uh, and if we wave the procedure bylaw, which I have no doubt we will, then it all of that other stuff would be in order. Fair enough. Sorry. So, you're moving waving the procedure by to consider the matter. Councelor Dudik is seconding you. And with that, may I put the vote? Any objection? Councelor Hzil, are you objecting? No. No. Am I moving too fast or not fast enough? Uh, Mr. Clerk, there doesn't seem to be any objection. The procedure bylaws unanimously waved. And uh with the permission of councelor how it deal I'd like to uh recognize again councelor unless there's some reason to jump in front of them if you don't mind your worship I'll just read the motion quickly for um for those who who might be listening or watching um whereas Hton regional chair has been directly elected by residents of Halton region since 2000 and whereas the election of the regional chair has provided an important element of democratic accountability in Halton and a public mandate for the position. And whereas on on April 12th, 2026, the provincial government introduced bill 100, the better regional governance act 2026 that would allow the minister of municipal affairs and housing to appoint regional chairs in Durham, Halton, Muskoka, Niagara, Peele, Waterlue, York, and the Warden in the county of Simco. And whereas in connection with the introduction of bill 100, the provincial government indicated it intends to provide such appointed chairs with strong chair powers akin to the existing strong mayor's power provided for in the municipal act 2001 following the 2026 municipal election. And whereas providing strong chair powers to provincial appointees shifts regional decision-making to individuals not chosen by local voters and weakens democratic accountability. And whereas under the direction of the provincial government, the Halton community moved to elections for the position of regional chair, which is a democratic process that has been in place for 26 years now. And whereas Halton Region has continued to be an effective, efficient, and well-managed upper tier municipal government, which has consistently maintained a AAA credit rating, supported significant growth, is one of the fastest growing communities in Canada, and provided highquality and fiscal responsible programs and services. And whereas Holton Region has continued to work collaboratively with the pro provincial government to deliver on shared priorities including housing and infrastructure. And whereas the next municipal election for the 2026 2030 term of council will take place on October 26, 2026. And the term of office for the next regional chair and council begins on November 15, 2026. Now therefore, be it resolved that the town of Oakville reaffirm its preference for the continued direct election of the regional chair, ensuring that the chair remains accountable to the people and reflects their interest, and that Oakville Council reaffirm its ongoing commitment to collaboration with the province and governance practices that support collaborative decision-making and accountable leadership. and that a copy of this resolution be sent to Premier Ford, Municipal, the Minister of Municipal Affairs and Housing, Halton's MPPs, Halton's local municipalities, AMO, the mayors and chairs of Ontario as well. Um, thank you uh very much uh your worship. I'll seed the floor over to um to uh councelor Hazdale. Well, councelor be before we do that, I wonder if you would consider adding after uh the paragraph about Halton region being effective, efficient, and well-managed um an additional whereas to recognize the fact that Halton Council two weeks ago on April 15th unanimously passed a similar motion calling on the province to um uh you know avoid this move. And I I suggested because I think it might strengthen the the resolution. Absolutely. That would be a a a right in for sure. Thank you. Thank you. And uh councelor has a deal as a seconder. Are you okay with that? And you have the floor. Absolutely okay with it and thank you for suggesting it. Um so I was pleased to stand with my regional colleagues uh on April 15th as Mayor Burton suggested um and in particular um hearing the passionate uh uh speech from councelor Duduk about the history of where we've been and I'm not sure if she's going to bless us with it today again but it was outstanding. My comments are pretty simple and straightforward. The concentration of uh authority in a single individual who's appointed by the province not elected by Halton voters is not good governance. The individual have significant influence over multi-billion dollar budgets and the ability to advance or block bylaws by a very limited amount of counselors that who are elected and there will be no accountability to Halton voters. The accountability will be solely to the province. Such a shift is concerning when it comes to accountability and democratic representation. Ensuring that decision-making authority reflects the will of the electorate, not just the will of the province, is an important safeguard we all have to take seriously. I shared with the regional council uh some highlights from the role of regional council and then the role of the regional chair. And the only two that I'm going to really highlight tonight is that regional council is responsible for representing the public and considering the well-being and interests of the region. And of course, our interests often uh must align with the province because they provide us with a significant amount of the funding to run some of the programs and services on their behalf. But we equally have had to step up and do more. and having the ability to stand up and have that dialogue to say this isn't aligning with our region's need and we need to do uh better is is part of having that independence and having an individual who does reflect the region. Some people will will argue that, you know, an appointment, you know, suggests stability or efficiency. Um, but those gains come at the cost of transparency and legitimacy. And this isn't just a procedural change. It's a shift in who holds power and how that power is justified. and residents and all of us should always question whether we're comfortable trading the vote of somebody being elected into position and trusting what happens behind closed doors. True region regional leadership needs to be both accountable and effective and I would add collaborative in all aspects. The region has makes great efforts to be collaborative. It takes two parties to be collaborative and I hope that we will stand for this important foundation of democracy and that's electing our regional chair. Thank you councelor. Um I think this is a very important item and so I'm going to call for a recorded vote on it and uh I uh I recognize now councelor Elgar. Uh Mayor Burton, thank you. You actually uh beat me to the punch. That's exactly what I wanted. I don't need to go on and on about how important this is. This is democracy and yes, I was going to ask for the recorded vote, but you beat me to it and thank you. I appreciate it. Ah, you're very welcome. It's a collaborative game. Uh, you want to take your hand down? Thank you. All right. Um, are there any other speakers to the motion? Councelor Romero. Sorry, your worship. Yeah. And just with that recorded vote, I I think it's important to let council members know that I will be delegating uh to the uh legislative committee tomorrow at 11 o'clock. And it would be fantastic to have two unanimous uh motions from uh from council both at the region and at the town. So, thank you. Thank you, councelor. Um Mr. Clerk, would you uh call the vote? Thank you, mayor. Councelor Ramira, yes. Councelor McNe, yes. Councelor Dick, yes. Councelor Chisum, yes. Councelor Hazit, yes. Councelor Giddings, yes. Councelor Elgar, yes. Councelor Longo, yes. Mayor Burton, yes. Councelor Null, yes. Councelor Grant, yes. Councelor Adams, yes. Councelor Lea, yes. Councelor Nanda, yes. Councelor Shei, yes. Carries unanimously. Congratulations everybody and thank you for your support. Uh, we now have a um request for report from councelor null and councelor grant. Councelor null. Oh, I'm sorry. Councelor has the deal. Are you you're going to wait? All right. Thank you, councelor null. Thank you, worship. Um, at risk of uh dragging the meeting on too long. I just wanted to uh ask for your support for this request for report. I think everybody will recall the discussion that we had. It was a lengthy discussion about um uh presumed property rights and the uh uh on Mun's uh road in our W five constituency. And I know that those residents are very anxious and were at the time very anxious to hear the outcome of the legal matter that was before the Supreme Court at the time. That decision has now come down and rightfully so. These folks are looking for uh further guidance on that uh before it's too late to uh potentially reverse that decision should that be legal. um uh legal opinion. So, thank you for your consideration. All right, council. Is there any objection to the request for report? Mr. Clerk, there's no objection. And so, the request is approved. Um I believe that completes all the public facing material for tonight. And that brings us to uh Mayor Burton, I have I have one new business item. It's a congratulatory I'd like to do. Oh, I'm sorry. I thought I I beg your pardon. Go ahead. Okay. Thank you for your indulgence. Um through you, Mayor Burton. I just tonight having had the community satisfaction survey, I thought it was an appropriate time um for us to acknowledge um some pretty tremendous results of the staff team. Um and that's acknowledging the staff's ongoing commitment to the community through their participation in the United Way Halton and Hamilton campaign. And in fact, the United Way team of uh from the town of Oakl was acknowledged with a together we care award um by the United Way. This past year, the town's campaign team raised more than $85,000 to support the vital work of the United Way and all their affiliates. These funds help deliver critical services across Halton and Hamilton, including food food security programs, housing supports, access to employment, mental health services, reaching tens of thousands of residents, and strengthening community connections. Overall, the United Way of Halton and Hamilton, which will now be called the United Way, the Golden Horseshoe, I understand, raised over 12.1 million last year, supporting the local agencies and programs, um, and the essential services to more than 20,000 individuals and families in need. I'd like to recognize our dedicated campaign team, co-chairs, Kalpana, Kendall, and Brent. You guys rock. communication support from Allison and uh the golf tournament organizer Mitch and many others who made a donation through payroll or one-time donation. Oakful's contribution is something we can all be proud of and I want to sincerely thank them for their generosity of time and donations, their leadership for making a meaningful difference in our community. Thank you councelor. I'm sure we all join in those sentiments. Councelor Shi. Uh, thank you, Mayor B. I also have a new business as well. So, uh, May is Asia Heritage Month. So, this is a time to, uh, recognize and celebrate the rich history, vibrant cultures, and countless contributions of Asian communities to Canada. So, Council Nana and I will host the Asian Heritage Month flag raising ceremony this Friday, May 1st, at the 10 at the town hall. So we uh warmly invite every uh invite everyone in the community to come together in celebration of this culture, diversity and inclusion. So we are looking forward to see you Friday. Thank you. Thank you very much uh councelor Shia councelor null. Thank you your worship. I have an exciting opportunity to offer everybody and their families and their grandchildren and that is the Halton Police Day is coming up on Saturday May 10th. I want to make sure that everybody in the community and everybody in the council chamber is aware of this that it's a great fun day uh that takes place from noon to 4 p.m. at Halton Police Headquarters on North Service Road. Uh there'll be police demonstrations of the tactical unit, K9 unit, explosive disposal, uh lots of public interaction with the police officers as well as the police chief and the deputies. Um we're going to be the event is totally free of charge. There'll be activities for the kids. There's food. It's a fun. It's a great day. It's rain or shine. I go every year. where I've been taking my kids and my grandkids since we first moved to Oakville uh many years ago and it's certainly a a great day to circle on your calendar and get your kids and your grandkids out and those that are young and those are young at heart they'll all have a great time. Thank you, councelor. No, counselor Dick. Thank you through your worship. I wonder if counselor Z would be able to share the time for that event so that people who may want to participate know. Thank you. Uh Cassie, it's 10 10 in the morning at town hall. Yeah. Thank you. All right. Thank you very much. on the assumption that council might like to move into a confidential discussion sess session uh concerning the memo uh from the legal department uh I need a mover and seconder for that and u the the prefaratory and thank you for your hands I'll I'll name two of you in a second uh councelor Elgar and counselor Hazel I'll name as a mover and secondary So I need now to to read the uh the disclaimer. This is a matter that may be considered in the absence of the public under section 239 sub two of the municipal act because it deals with advice that is subject to solicitor client privilege including communications necessary for the purpose related to item 12.1 supplemental confidential memo regarding application for judicial review Midtown TOC minister zoning orders and uh is there any objection to that motion? Mr. Clerk, there's no objection. So it carries and uh and with that we will have a short fivem minute break or so until we have the room rigged for the uh session closed to the public. Recording stopped. Recording in progress. All right. Council is returning to public session, having met in a session closed to the public u for a matter that may be considered in the absence of the public under section 239 sub 2 of the munipal act because it deals with advice subject to solicitor client privilege including communications necessary for that purpose. related to item 12.1 supplemental confidential memo regarding application for judicial review Midtown TOC ministers zoning orders. Uh we uh we have a public recommendation. Um if we have a mover and a seconder uh is there a mover and seconder for the public recommendation? Councelor Null and Councelor Lisch. Uh all right. The public recommendation is number one that the confidential memo from the legal department application for judicial review Midtown TOC minister zoning orders dated April 23rd be received. Uh is there any objection to part one? I'm going to call the motion in in pieces. Mr. Clerk, there are no objections to number one. The report is received. Second part is that staff be instructed not to proceed with an application for judicial review and have a recorded vote on this given the scope of the review would be limited to procedural and jurisdictional issues and does not provide an opportunity to challenge the merits of a decision. Mr. Clerk, would you call the vote? Thank you, Mayor. Councelor Omera, no. Councelor Mcnes, no. Councelor Dick, no. Councelor Chisum, yes. Councelor, how's it feel? Sorry, you were muted. Counselor, how does it feel? Councelor, you're muted. Uh, no. Councelor, thank you. Councelor Giddings, no. Councelor Elgger, no. Councelor Longo, yes. Coun. Mayor Burton. Yes. Councelor Null. Yes. Councelor Grant, yes. Councelor Adams, yes. Councelor Luca, yes. Councelor Nanda, yes. Councelor Shei, yes. All right, that carries. Item three, the third part is that council urgently requests the federal transport minister and transport Canada take the necessary actions to control building heights, structures, and other land uses that could affect navigable airspace or the safe operation of aircraft in areas potentially impacted within Oakville. Mr. Clerk, would you please call the vote? Thank you, Mayor. Councelor Romera. Yes. Councelor Mcnes. Yes. Councelor Dick. Yes. Councelor Chisum. Yes. Councelor Hazit. Yes. Councelor Giddings. Yes. Councelor Algar. Yes. Councelor Longo. Yes. Mayor Burton. Yes. Councelor Null. Yes. Councelor Grant. Yes. Councelor Adams. Yes. Councelor Lasha. Yes. Councelor Nanda. Yes. And councelor Shei. Yes. Thank you. That part carries unanimously. Uh thank you everybody. Uh we now need to turn to consideration and reading of the bylaws and I need a motion to uh consider and approve the bylaws listed in 171 to 17.6. Councelor Grant and uh councelor Longo again. Thank you. Is there any objection? Mr. Clerk, there being no objection, the bylaws are considered read and passed. And that ends the work of this meeting. I want to thank everybody for all your contributions. It's been terrific working with you and uh as soon as May 4th, just around the corner, we get to do it again. Thanks for uh joining us tonight and good night. Recording stopped.

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