Hello, everyone, and welcome to the Wednesday column for London Ontario Online News. This is your super summer fun City Hall Notes, coming to you from right here in this great city of creativity and problem-solving. I’m here to guide you through how our civic leaders addressed problems this week, and, boy oh boy oh boy did they have a go.
We have much to discuss today, following a rare summer meeting of London City Council in its chambers at 300 Dufferin on Tuesday afternoon. I dropped by in person for a while and picked up the vibe, which was tense1, with all 15 councillors EDIT: members of council (mayor and 14 councillors) taking part, in person or online. (Hi to the candidates in the public gallery hanging out and finding out - I saw Lois Ward from Ward 10 and Alex Main from Ward 12.) And I’ve noted which media went for which stories (they had choices, oh my) and I’ve included them as resources here.
We might note that nobody else is doing this. Large-scale corporate journalism will credit others for stories when needed, but generally will try to keep everything in-house for business reasons. Here at The Loon, we’re focused on collaboration, not competition, and we will promote good journalism by all the fab folks working in our community. Then we’ll share it with you, community leaders, in a way that may help you to make good decisions. We think this has value and, judging from our traffic and subscriptions, lots of you agree.
And off we go. Let’s examine some local government issues that are bubbling away this week.
Special constables are go - well, possibly
tl;dr - Full Council voted 10-5 to have staff explore bringing in special constables to carry out so-far-unspecified duties on our streets. A report will return in the first few months of 2027, so after the election. This passed after a long and quite tense debate.
Daryl Newcombe from CTV London gets it right, as usual: Decision on London special constables pushed to next council, and I’ll share the rest of the reporting, too, as I see any. Just the LFP to add for now.
And, as always, let’s add some context from the room and the community and more. In this, I feel we should focus on this quote from Councillor Susan Stevenson:
“We’re being asked to approve something without any information. We don’t even know what special constables do.”
Well then. To my mind, by the end of the meeting the plan was actually less clear, with arguably less information available. The process had begun with a Mayor Josh Morgan letter to council that spoke of 11 special constables and a budget of $2 million but, as Morgan explained during the debate, those aspects don’t necessarily carry over into this week’s bylaw (recording and enacting council’s decision) and there was much discussion to come about details.
So the debate was open on this issue.
And there was indeed a debate, with most of the 15-member council making comment of some sort. Notably, Councillor Sam Trosow tried to have the issue sent back to staff for more consultation, claiming there were flaws in the report before council. Others were more keen, with Councillor Corinne Rahman successfully leading an amendment to make the special constables program permanent, and not a pilot. But, of course, its actual details are still to come.
Leave it to Susan Stevenson to pick the argument apart. Again: “We’re being asked to approve something without any information. We don’t even know what special constables do.” Stevenson pointed out that this proposal would start a public conversation without clarity, and leave it running until spring.
Stevenson, along with Trosow, David Ferreira, Skylar Franke and Anna Hopkins, voted against, while the 10 other members of council voted for the special constables program to go ahead… subject to learning what it is, presumably.
A note on the debate
It’s a symptom of this council’s dysfunction that it so often gets lost in its own procedure when there’s conflict. This has happened again and again and, true to form, this Full Council meeting involved points of order and points of privilege, plus various amendments and rulings and other items that, for watching members of the public, may cause the process to become opaque.
While focusing on the outcomes as usual, let’s note this seemed a testy meeting, even among meetings of its kind, with a lot of tension in the air. People looked straight ahead as they referred unhappily to the comments of nearby colleagues, delivering their own comments gravely, knowing they were themselves subject to challenge in return. It was the epitome of a late-stage council meeting: heavily overlaid with political needs, even as municipal business must continue. I found myself wondering, as I often do, about the resources being put into a debate that was - as suggested in the comments of some participants - of questionable value.
Anyway, this will be back in the spring, when we’ll do it all again. (And we’ll probably do it a few more times in between.)
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Carfax latest: ‘don’t diss Westmount’
Our next issue is a Planning one.
Did I mention this was a testy meeting? Over at CTV London, you can find an account of Councillor Paul Van Meerbergen clashing with Councillor David Ferriera over a perception the neighbourhood was being dissed.
Oh dear. I hope they haven’t heard my comments about sleepy Westmount on our Ward 8 podcast. (But we still need to go to Ward 10, PVM’s patch, to record one later in the summer, so I will ensure I am fully respectful.)
Anyway, that’s the ongoing argument about planning approval to turn part of Fahri-owned Westmount Commons (previously Mall) into offices to rent to expanding company Carfax Canada. The outcome, for now, is to delay a decision. This will come back to Planning and Environment Committee after some work behind the scenes.
Development charges ‘unfair’
Here’s an unusual municipal story. The much-quoted Andrew Sancton, a Western University academic who retired in 20172, has written a report that calls development charges into question. That’s a fee levied by the City to pay for infrastructure.
In this CTV London story from Bryan Bicknell, Sancton says these charges are unfair to homebuyers. There’s also comment in there from Deputy Mayor Shawn Lewis.
Also approved at Full Council this week
Other much-discussed issues that passed through the process and reached a final decision on Tuesday.
Pet waste pilot. Everybody seems to like the idea of this, but of course the calls from the public haven’t started coming in yet. Here’s a chunk of Rogers’ community news on YouTube, with the background:
Heritage designation. This important issue generated heat, with some councillors arguing to protect heritage and also comments about the financial burden that heritage status can place on property owners3. Here’s a really good CBC story from Andrew Lupton, who covers the meeting but also approaches it as an issue-based story, which is good good good work.
I’ll keep an eye out for more and will likely report back on some planning issues.
Plus: London firefighters agree two-year contract
Always an important part of local budgeting: those contract negotiations with key groups of workers. Here, we have an outcome for the firefighters - for now.
One to watch: opioid overdoses increase
If there is one issue in your brain this week, I think it should be this one. As predicted by all the experts when drug consumption sites were closed by the Province of Ontario, overdoses are increasing rapidly.
Opinion: I consider this a municipal issue because the need for better services is apparent on our streets.
Here’s some CBC reporting that shows local EMS calls for suspected opioid overdoses have tripled. Here’s an extract from that story:
The paramedic service responded to 642 suspected opioid overdoses between January and May, up from 182 calls during the same period last year.
Again: everyone saw this coming, and said it would happen. Now it’s happening as predicted. This paragraph may be transmitting my opinion. I’ll mark that with bold, just to be safe.
Enough
Is that enough? Perhaps for now. I’m still working away on content, policies, planning and more for The Loon, and I’m having a lovely time thanks to everyone else who is involved.
We are gathering likely volunteers who may wish to contribute here as writers. Do you have a speciality? For example, you might know a lot about education, or policing, or a similar local government issue. If so, we’d love to have contributors for full or partial posts, recognizing this is a community effort and at some point we’ll need more than the five of us.
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- Mike
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[Dons hat as Vice Chair of the Eldon House board] This city should protect its heritage better, and worry less about costs and more about what’s being lost. Listen to the heritage planners. [Removes hat]