hey everybody Welcome to tonight's city council meeting of Tuesday February the 27th and as is tradition customary we start off with the singing of O Canada so I'd like to introduce our O Canada singer and then I'll ask everyone to please stand uh maybe so we've got uh Alejandra if I've got that right and the last name is elati not bad very good okay not bad not bad so I welcome Alandra she's a singer and a Pianist and she started singing in her church choir uh she's been singing for 15 years an
d she's performed the national anthem before and is looking forward to doing so again tonight for our city council meeting she enjoys baking music business and she's a business student at Brock University so I asked ask everyone to please stand for the singing of national the national anthem by Alejandra so proud I can say that prop that's why I keep repeating it Oh [Music] Canada our home and native land true patriot love in all of us comment with glowing Hearts we see the rise the true north s
trong and free from far and wide Oh Canada we stand on God for thee God keep deer land glorious and free Oh Canada we stand on guard for thee Oh Canada we stand on guard for the Alejandra on behalf of city council and everybody at home watching and following along thank you very much you did an outstanding job we appreciate the Vigor the heart the emotion that you put into the singing of it you did a fantastic job thank you well done thank you very much thank you well done wow me all right we ha
ve that technical sound thing a oh it's Kim Creator's called got it Kim creators audio uh first off I know that I want to welcome we've got Regional counselor Joyce Morocco in the house and we've got Kim creator online um Bob Gil and Bob Gail is where's Bob Gil he where is he he's out there oh he's out there okay and we've got Regional counselor Bob Gail here today as well so welcome to everybody uh next up is Our Land acknowledgement and I'd like to invite Chief R Stacy lefor chief of the Mrs s
agas and now former Chief of the Mrs sagas of the credit to share his testimony as we acknowledge and thank the indigenous peoples who are stewards of this land for a millennia before us I gima Chief our sta form m is the credit i' like to acknowledge the Creator the world around us and our place within it I acknowledge the many nations that walked this land in the past the many nations that walk it today and welcome you to the treaty lands of the missas of indish bay the treaties with the missa
s are the niagar Treaty of 1781 and the between Lakes Treaty of 1792 I would also like to ackn knowledge the Treaty of 1764 that recognized the Royal Proclamation of 1763 which set a new relationship between the indigenous people and the crown K wi one p all right sorry about the uh video there but the audio was still good we're grateful uh we're grateful together for the land that we share thank you Stacy lefor now moving along to item two on the agenda is the adoption of the minutes from the F
ebruary 6th meeting looking for a motion councelor Thompson second by councelor Patel if there's no count comments we'll call the vote to receive and accept all those in favor okay and that's unanimous thank you for that uh next up are disclosures of a pecuniary interest do we have any disclosures of council guest councel new estate I I sit on the uh Victoria Bia so I'm declaring conflict Okay so we've got a conflict um by counselor new and then of course you will fill out your procedural notice
uh form or send an email to the clerk so he can have written record of your declaration next up is everybody's favorite part of the meeting and of course it's the mayor's reports and announce announcements so I know everybody's really excited to be here so good for you guys you won the lottery of the meeting Perfect Day first off we start off with old bits and offer our sympathy to the families of Marcel peler father of uh Cameron pelich of our Municipal works department also to George kislin t
he father of Steven klin of our Municipal works department and Crystal kubic mother-in-law of Kelly kubic of our fire services our sympathy goes to all of those who have lost their loved ones today I'd also like to announce and ask for some support from city council um Dr Ken Walker who has been writing under his pseudo name for many years is Dr gfer Jones uh for National Publications across the country well he's going to be turning a 100 tomorrow yeah it's hard to believe uh he's a Falls boy C
what's that it's the vitamin C it's the vitamin C and he's been writing about longevity and health and nutrition for a long long time he's Harvard educated doctor NS and I'd been reading about Dr gford Jones years and years I've been reading his column then one day my mom pointed out he's actually a doctor doctor by name of Ken Walker from niagar Falls which I was blown away he used to deliver the Niger Falls Review at one time back in the day and we did give him the key to the city uh not long
ago 2022 so tomorrow as I mentioned Marx's 100th birthday he's been a celebrated long Lov newspaper columnist he boasted 7 million readers as I mentioned he he lived and was raised and raised his family here in aiger Falls and as I also mentioned 2022 we did give him the key to the city he's published nine books after he suffered a heart attack at the age of 74 he famously started taking high doses of vitamin C and shared his health findings with the world well that was 26 years ago and he's sti
ll quite well he's very sharp still living with his wife in his condo downtown Toronto uh guy's unbel still writing articles still writing books so I'd like to ask for a motion of councel to make tomorrow Dr gford Jones Day in the city of Niagara Falls we got motion by councelor neest EG second by councelor Campbell going to call for a vote all those in favor and that's supported and if anyone wants to has any comments that you want to add now would be the time the other thing we were going to a
sk that the Falls be illuminated in red his favorite color in honor of tomorrow meet uh evening so he will be down with his family having dinner in Niagara Falls to celebrate and uh I know he'll be thrilled that Council unanimously uh approved this so um um I don't know if anyone had any interactions with uh Dr Walker but I know he was well known and uh involved in our our hospitals here uh councelor Thompson when I was mayor neus uh the she was the secretary for 11 Mayors and she was going to u
h the doctor in Toronto all the time yeah so a former uh you know secretary to executive secretary to 11 Mayors was going to Dr Walker for her treatment so that's a guy knows how to live long so so thank you for your support appreciate that I know the the tour star people are doing a story on this I understand yeah do it give it come on yeah give it Dr gford Jones uh so we do have a a few announcements of the the week since the last council meeting one up uh you'll notice the pictures on the vid
eo screen is the opening of the Niger Falls racket Center uh I was joined by councelor strange Patel newest EG and Thompson as we domed the courts at um at our park at John Allen Park on Kaylor road so pretty amazing days as we partnered with tennis Canada and Rogers and uh now those Court surfaces will last longer kids can get lessons for more of the year including the winter time and a great opportunity uh for us to partner with them so thank you very much to tennis Canada we had the grand ope
ning finally of the nager falls exchange uh we didn't know when that day was coming but finally we we did get there um I was joined by counselors Thompson Campbell newest Patel Loko and strange and I know we're very grateful at this amazing facility we've got great sport sports and recreation facilities now we've got great Arts culture and a farmers market that everybody in Niagara Falls are going to be able to enjoy so congratulations to all those all of our staff that work so hard it is a very
cool looking space we had the uh rotary trivia night the other night I know counselor Patel put a couple tables together and I was joined by counselor strange as we sat at her table and we proved to everybody that we are not the Champions nobody played we are the the champions for us uh we struggled to get answers to questions but we did have a good time right we have to give ourselves credit for at least that we did have a good time it was fun it was a soldout event congratulations to the rota
rians for a great event next up as you can see this picture uh it was the hustle for healthc care fundraising Gala that took place on Saturday night uh at the casino Falls View Casino big fundraiser for the hospital Foundation where they raised $550,000 incredible night you see those outstanding outfits and I want you to know yes that's me in the middle uh yeah with that stash and the wig and those pants are vintage velvet pants from those things are older than I am uh broken zipper and all but
uh what a oh yeah every time I too much information yes every time I bent over I heard weird sounds coming out of them anyway it was a great night we raised lots of money great awareness uh fun to hear the the BG's again I know Council strangers favorite band and uh definitely we had a it was a good time had by all so thank you to uh counselors baldelli strange and Patel for joining us I know our CEO was there as well as many staff in the room I know uh um our staff um Mr niichel was there and w
ho else uh K she was a dance machine with that fancy coat of hers of Many Colors it was a good Heather and Cary from marison cao's Office uh it was a good time so definitely add that to your list of things to do uh we had our Irish Festival launch took place yesterday at Doc mcgilligan I was joined by counselor Patel and uh a lot of fun this summer at the Fireman's Park we're going to be having the big second year of the Irish Festival that's going to be the day everybody is going to be Irish an
d we're going to have a good time I think there'll be a little bit of Guinness flowing that day so it'll be a lot of fun also want to thank counselor who represent the city at events that we can't all be at I'd like to thank councelor Patel representing the city at the COO flag raising and also joined by counselor Thompson also uh want to we did have some business openings we had a grand opening of all talls Hair Studio on St Paul Street congratulations to our newest hair studio we had the grand
opening of Dosa eery and Shake therapy in the cisos plaza I was joined by Patel and newag for some great eats and some amazing milkshakes uh like you want to try a killer Milkshake the KE the the leachy milkshake was that amazing that the food there was so good too also we had the emoa Black History Month popup Market I was joined by councelor Patel that took place at the exchange and uh was a great event for black vendors and entertainers uh where we help celebrate Black History Month so upcom
ing we do have the solar eclipse which is going to be taking place on the 8th of April it's going to be a very big event and we've been uh in touch with a major US documentary company who travels around and follows these events and they told us to expect 8 to nine times the biggest crowd we've ever had so the biggest crowd we ever had in recent times is for Nick Wenda that was 2012 as he walked across the falls on a tight rope across the Canadian Horseshoe Falls we had 130,000 130,000 show up th
at day GO train put extra trains on we shut the roads down well just imagine if we had 8 to nine times that number I we are imagining I know our chief is uh concerned about what might happen so we're working closely with the Niger Parks Commission with the regional police with EMS uh we're working with all departments to prepare for something we really don't know what to expect nasau will be here uh the Canadian space agency will be here was announced today glorious Suns will be performing in th
e park uh and the reason and not that we want to draw more people here because we're going to be in the path of totality uh National Geographic has declared niiger Falls will be the best place in the world to be that day the the last total eclipse in Niger Falls happened 99 years ago some people think it happened in the' 70s that's incorrect that was a partial IPS the last total Clips was 99 years ago the next one will be in 120 years so it's safe to say none of us are going to see the next one
so you have a chance uh get your goggles if you don't already order them on you can order them on on uh Amazon or go buy them be ready for this it's truly a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity I can tell you most the hotel rooms are already sold out campgrounds are filling up I've already kicked my kids out I'm going to rent my house out that day too and uh just the money is just too good I just can't resist it and um and that is going to be a huge day so what we're telling people is make your plans
in advance and get there well in advance because they're predicting the highways we will be full I've been in touch with metr links they're adding trains Niger Falls tourism is helping like all Hands-On deck there's going to be programming by the Niger Parks Commission it is going to be an absolute incredible day in Niger Falls and also we're going to be breaking a Guinness World Record that day Guinness is going to be here from the UK uh there's it's going to be the most people dressed up in a
sun costume so we're going to be doing that as well so it's going to be a really crazy day so make sure everybody plans so again it's Monday April the 8th the school boards are giving the kids a day off now because they know it's going to be a a real crazy time it'll be a long weekend so Niger Falls will be a very very very busy place that day so uh coming up we know March break is going to start on Monday March the 11th so hopefully everybody's prepared for that to have a good time be safe have
fun our next council meeting will be Tuesday March the 5th at 4:30 that'll be a special council meeting to discuss our official plan and then on Tuesday March the 19th at 4M it'll be our next regular scheduled meeting and I'm sorry folks that's all I got today for the mayor's announcements we'll have to move on so Mr clerk would you like to uh introduce the next item on the agenda yeah thanks your worship uh next we're going to move on to deputations and presid presentations and the first uh th
at we have this evening is uh Jackie Hall project manager from hemson Consulting will be providing a presentation to council regarding the 2024 development charges study great thank you Jackie welcome it's great to be here did we take the other mic down we're missing a mic you can bend okay you can bend that yeah just pull it right over perfect can everyone hear me okay excellent okay floor is yours excellent thank you so much Mr Mayor and members of council it's a pleasure to be before you this
evening um my name is Jackie Hall I'm an associate at hemon and I um have the pleasure of leading the city's DC background study update um today over the next 10 minutes or so what I want to talk about is what we've done to date with the study process the key assumptions that have gone into uh the draft rate calculations which I'll also be presenting this evening I'm going to also do a bit of a rate comparison in terms of where the city's current and calculated rates lie within the context of o
ther neighboring municipalities and other jurisdictions within the GTA um I'll then talk a little bit about some of the policy considerations that we're exploring with staff right now and we are proposing to bring forward as part of the DC bylaw that will be um brought forward for adoption and then we'll wrap up with next steps uh what you can see on the graphic on the slide in front of you is an overview of the Citywide development forecast that we've identified uh for the 10-year planning Hori
zon so 2024 to 33 which is uh the planning Horizon we're proposing to use for this study it's based on achieving the targets that were identified as part of the Region's Municipal comprehensive review exercise to 2051 it also takes into account the housing pledge that Council has made as well to 2031 um this uh the four will be examined as the city is currently uh in the process of reviewing its official plan and so some of these numbers might change around a little bit as we go through that pro
cess but this is essentially a point in time analysis and based on the best available information we have uh so you can see here on the chart uh this is census population by the way so it might be a little bit different than your official plan numbers uh but we're achieving a population of about 13,000 individuals by 2033 um uh working our way up to about uh 47,000 households and uh employment excluding work and home employment uh looking to uh achieve a total of 4,300 employees by 2033 uh the c
harts you see before you um some of you might be familiar we do have area specific rates for the core tourist area and outside the core tourist area um as part of this exercise we've done a review of uh the antici anticipated development within those two defined uh geographies so of our population growth over the 10-year planning Horizon about 1% of that will be in the core tourist area primarily in higher density development uh such as AP partments uh the other 99% of residential growth or popu
lation uh will occur outside of the core tourist area um employment on the other hand is a little bit more balanced recognizing that uh the downtown core tourist area a lot of the major office development retail functions uh that type of growth will occur within that area um outside of the core tourist area we are looking at more industrial uh ground related employment uses um so we're looking at about uh 62% within the core tourist area and about 30% of that growth happening outside of that are
a uh the capital programs are a fundamental input to the rate calculations um it's been informed based on a whole host of different documents so the previous 2019 background study has been examined the city's 2024 capital budget um there's also really great work happening right now with the master servicing plan um and so we've had a great dialogue with consultants and staff on those inputs and have brought in some of those updated costs into our calculation we've also had um numerous discussion
s with staff on um what infrastructure is needed and where um now the development charges act requires us to make a whole host of adjustments to those Capital costs that I've just mentioned so we have to adjust for any anticipated grants contributions um or subsidies excuse me anything that would effectively relate to a benefit to the existing residents of the city we have to take that out if there's any sort of replacement of existing facilities we can't ask growth to pay for that so that's tak
en out of our rates uh we then look at the available Reserve fund balances so whether or not they're in a surplus or deficit position and we do account for that in our calculations as well and then finally we make an adjustment for any shares of projects that are oversized will benefit growth occurring Beyond 2033 it's not that it's not DC eligible it's just that it's not relating to growth in our planning Horizon so we're going to look at that and consider that as part of future DC study update
s uh I appreciate there's lots of numbers on this slide so just really quickly though this provides a snapshot of the hundreds of capital projects that we've identified through discussions with staff um the various projects have been categorized into different Services um that are legislated and permitted under the under the development charges act so we have General government which is essentially studies Library fire Park and wreck engineered Services which includes Public Works roads and rela
ted water sanitary and storm so the net cost which are the cost to be borne by the city amount to about 588 million over the 10-year planning Horizon of that amount only 50% or 295 million approximately are brought forward into the rate calculations our development charges that I'm presenting this evening the 160 million in benefit to existing shares that has to be funded from other Revenue sources such as property taxes or utility rates uh there's about 26 million in available Reserve funds whi
ch we have adjusted for through a rate calculation and we're saying about 110 million will be recovered under subsequent studies and related to growth occurring after 2033 uh with respect to the calculation that I'm going to get to in the next slide um I am uh would like to stress that it is draft we're here today to provide information we're planning to release a study uh at the end of March and we are showing the maximum permissible rates that are permitted under the legislation um we're conti
nuing to review assumptions we're meeting actually with development industry Representatives early next week to review the draft rates and discuss the capital programs I'll also note as well that Council does have the authority and ability to implement lower rates however that is a revenue loss that cannot be made up for through other development charges so that would be a direct impact to your property taxes or to your utility rat um the residential rates are based on uh unit types that have be
en identified uh consistent with the 2019 uh bylaw your current bylaw with the exception of uh we are proposing to add a new rate category for Special Care special needs dwellings this is consistent with the region of Niagra um it's a lower residential rate than the other units and is pretty much becoming the um the standard practice across municipalities um for the non-residential rates we have calculated them once again um by the two areas core tourist area and outside the core tourist area so
um the pie chart on the slide here uh provides a breakdown of uh what makes up the rates that we've calculated so uh the largest component excuse me of the charge relates to sanitary sewers Parks and Recreation roads and related services and water that's not disimilar to the relationships that we see in other municipalities as well engineered services are typically the driver of most of our rates Parks and Recreation in recent years has also been creeping up quite a bit as well um and it's a fu
nction of the magnitude of the infrastructure and the cost of that infrastructure as well and what's permitted under the legislation and that's how this relationship shakes out um what you see in the table on the left hand side of the slide is the fully calculated rate so a single detached unit once the bylaw is implemented and the phas in is done it would um essentially say that a single detached unit would pay 39,600 $150 and uh a row would pay 27,300 Apartments would pay $1,673 and so on and
so forth the reason for the differences in the rates relates to the occupancies of those units so a single detached home has a higher occupancy than an apartment and that's how we make that relationship and that distinction between those rates once again that's um the industry standard in terms of how we calculate development charges it's been adjudicated at the land tribunal um and is the way in which we uh fundamentally calculate the residential development charges in Ontario this slide provid
es a comparison to the city's current rate if you were to come to the counter today and were to build a single detached unit you would pay $177,000 $239 per unit the rate we've calculated is uh 39,6 47 um now the legislation requires us to phase in the fully calculated rate over a 5-year period so in year one you can only charge 80% of the fully calculated rate year two is 85 so on and so forth and 5% increments until we get to the fully calculated rate in year five so year one it's quite a jump
it's an 84% increase so you're going from 17239 to 31$ 3,720 um some of the reasons for the rate increase is that we have done a very fullsome Capital program update the last background study we didn't have the benefit of going through a master servicing plan at the time uh the cost escalations in that infrastructure is significant and in many places is outpacing the cost of um uh construction price indexes uh we also have updated development forecast we've opened up new lands for some of the s
econdary plan areas uh and Associated projects with those lands as well um and so essentially what this is showing is how the phas in would work over the 5year period period um I would also note as well in accordance with the requirements of the development charges act DCs are also Frozen at site plan and rezoning so if you come forward with a site plan application you are frozen at those rates in place at that time so there are transition Provisions um it does provide the industry with a little
bit more um ability to have a good sense of what rates they're working with when they're bringing forward their projects so how do these rates compare to other J addictions in the region uh the Red Arrows show um the city's current rate the year one rate and then also the fully calculated year five rate now I would also stress as well a number of these municipalities will be going through their own development charges study background updates um and so we would anticipate that their rates would
increase over time I also um always am hesitant to provide these comparisons because it's really challenging to do a true Apples to Apples comparison of one municipality to the next there's different growth pressures there's different servicing needs there's different lands that are coming on at different times all of that can impact the development charges rate nonetheless we get asked for it so it's here um so what you can see is the red arrow towards the mid lower area that is the uh the cit
y's current rate at $41,800 that also layers in the Region's development charge as well uh in year one we would anticipate that the uh the city's rates would move up to about $55,500 a unit and then in year five it would increase to $ 63,64 uh a unit um this is fairly in line with what we see with some of the other municipalities such as Ford Ary and the City of Burlington we'd also note as well that the city of Hamilton is in the process of updating their DC background study right now so their
2019 current rate sits at 69,000 and they're jumping up to about 92,000 so we're seeing these increases not only here here in the city but other jurisdictions as well um so what I'd like to show now is the draft non-residential rates for the core tourist area and outside the core tourist area now historically these rates have been quite different in terms of the core tourist area has paid less than outside the core tourist area and now you can see um the rates are effectively the same the reason
being is that as part of this update we have now looked at the anticipated growth and infrastructure needs for both of those areas and calculated the rates based on those unique circumstances and so this is a revenue neutral approach to the city the city can certainly provide discounts and exemptions for specific geographies there's no issue with that however that does impact um your ability to fund infrastructure and would have to be made up from other Revenue sources such as property taxes or
utility rates so the calculated rate for the court tourist area is $139. 78 and outside the quter tourist area is $139 68 so um looking at your current versus calculated rate uh the OC stands for outside the core tourist area which is the green box at the top of the slide so the current rate today is $572 um looking at our fully calculated rate of $139. 78 it's a 95% increase in year one which we understand is quite significant once again similar reasons for that increase is the fome update of
the capital program looking at uh the anticipated development over the 10-year planning Horizon and also um the uh timing of development for the new secondary plan areas and the infrastructure needed to bring those lands online the core tourist area which is the black box at the bottom uh was had a lower rate than the outside the core tourist area so the rate for that area was set at $33.60 the rate we've calculated is $139 68 so I do appreciate it is a staggering increase in year one of about 2
32 so we're looking at $11.75 per square meter um at that time but similar to the residential side I will stress again the DCs are frozen at site plan and res zoning so if an individual has come in with a site plan or rezoning application they would be frozen and at the current bylaw rates uh so what I've done on this slide is provide a comparison of the retail rates in the region the Green Arrow represents the core tourist area and the red arrow represents the outside the core tourist area and
I appreciate there's a lot of text but I've also indicated whether or not it's the current rate the year one rate and the year five rate recognize again this is a point in time analysis we would expect these municipalities in this comparison to update their rates before the 5-year rate would come into force and so we would certainly see changes in terms of the relationship of where Niagara Falls lies compared to others so you can see that the current core tourist area rate the Green Arrow near t
he bottom of the chart is um quite low compared to the other municipalities in the region um the current outside the core tourist area rate is say middle of the pack um once we do the update as the rates are draft rate now um that would move the city essentially to the middle um with areas such as Ford eie pelum uh Burlington Hamilton and Lincoln having higher non-residential rates than the city and then the year five we see a little bit more of a jump but still a similar relationship there uh q
uickly on the DC policy items there's a few uh recommendations that we'll be bringing forward to council as part of the adoption of the new bylaw um similar to what the region of Niagara does town of forer has also just followed suit um we are recommending that a grant program be implemented for the industrial DC exemption right now the city provides 100% exemption for Industrial Development it's within the bylaw bylaws can now run for 10 years instead of five you're locked into your policies in
your bylaw unless you repeal or amend it sooner so our recommendation is to establish a policy outside the bylaw in which it would provide the city with greater flexibility should that have to change before the bylaw has to be repealed or updated um we also recommend a similar approach to the CIP policies right now they are embedded in the DC bylaw once again you would be fixed to what that says even if you repealed your CIP uh or made changes to your CIP so then rather than having those polici
es embedded directly in that bylaw we're recommending those get pulled out as well other policy considerations through discussions with staff um look looking to add an exemption for places of worship um I discussed uh the addition of a new residential rate for Special Care special needs dwellings which would align with the region of Niagara um and continuing to review the area specific rates for the cour CH area outside the cour rist area I recognize that relationship is changing so depending on
the feedback we get from uh the discussion tonight and also through the public consultation process we may want to look at that a little bit further um the requirements for the development chares Act I think I've mentioned this a few times you can certainly introduce her discount at DC rates but it requires funding from other sources so just a quick um overview of where we're headed today's a council information session we're meeting with the industry on Monday next week um we have started our
work on drafting the background study which will detail all uh the capital projects and assumptions that have gone into the rate calculations uh the we're proposing to release the background study on March 28th and that Essen eventually starts the formal public consultation process um the idea being is that we're going to have a statutory public meeting on April 30th and then the bylaw would be passed at the end of May there is an appeal period with the bylaw as well um so 40 days after bylaw pa
ssage that's when an individual can bring forward an appeal at to the Ontario land tribunal of the bylaw itself and with that I will open it up to questions okay thank you thank you very much for that councelor strange yeah thank you Mr Mar and thank you for the presentation um just looking at development charge breaks you know we're looking obviously to attract uh big business Big Industry here um I think you saw recently in in Windsor they had a big uh the EV battery program where they're gett
ing grants from federal provincial grants from everywhere um we know we lost a couple times I in particular GE went to well and where they were looking at us potentially we didn't have the land at the time now now we're getting some industrial land um are we looking at like 100% development charge breaks for some of these we want thousands of jobs we want them come we want we want to let them the world know that we're open for business you know you see it right now in China Europe uh in the stat
es are actually giving free land out to to Industry that comes in so we want to know and let our government know provential Regional uh Federal that we're open for business we have the land to accommodate some of these big uh EV uh uh battery uh industry or or car industry um other different plants Amazon whatever it may be um I'm just wondering maybe we can hear from our Economic Development uh I don't know if Serge is online or anything like that just I want some feedback from him what we want
to do and hopefully that will come back as as part of the discussion okay that's great we'll get is Serge online he's not online is he uh I wonder if that's OD we're dealing with DC's okay maybe we can one of the staff someone could phone him and find out where he is like he should be here I don't know if something came up um so maybe we can get some clarity um from Miss Hall on so what uh what councilor strange is asking obviously you heard him so currently we don't have any DCS for industrial
you're proposing that we do charge DCS but have a CIP program so um maybe you can maybe help us out with a rationale of what's going on when some of our competitors even here in Niagara don't charge DCS and they are landing some big factories so we're just wondering what the strategy is on that if maybe we can until our Economic Development officer arrives uh yes certainly um so through you Mr Mayor um to councelor strange uh it's a it's a great point that you're raising and certainly something
that a lot of municipalities are grappling with um we certainly aren't proposing necessarily to 100% do away with that exemption um it's rather our recommendation is to pull it out of the DC bylaw and as the mayor indicated look at putting it uh in place through a CIP a community Improvement plan which would allow the city to have much better flexibility in terms of the extent of the exemptions not only through development charges but um interestingly through some of our other work that we've d
one we were recently involved with um a grant program review for the city of Toronto development charges are small piece of that component that helped to make a municipality attractive so when you can couple it with other incentives such as uh tax increment equivalency grants Brownfield remediation grants uh that really allows municipality to become more attractive and so by pulling the DC exemption out of the bylaw putting it into a CIP you're able to then couple that program uh the DC exemptio
n with other programs making it more attractive and it also provides the city with greater flexibility should things change perhaps you want to incent office development at a point in time in the future versus industrial the cips allow that that flexibility outside of an amendment to the DC bylaw the DC bylaws uh last for 10 years now they they were five um so there is a real chance that this bylaw could be in place till 2034 or 2033 um and so things could change in the city before then um and s
o if you want to avoid opening up your DC bylaw which is subject to an appeal you could do it through CIP yeah I just I just think it's more attractive for a lot of Industry when they come here they know they're not going to get charged uh you know develop charges uh they want to open up a big huge Factory which is going to create thousands of good paying jobs to Falls which we need we're growing population and people need good jobs here so I'd like to see that in place and hopefully we can get
surge online from our Economic Development and get his comments yeah okay maybe we can get our coo in the meantime until we find out where it is you can make a motion let have a well I think she's coming com back with that as well like we're not making decisions tonight yeah this is just goes out to the public yeah so I I think um if um if Serge was here uh he would you know he would uh he he likes it inside the DC policy but he understands I think the benefit is the credit his concern might be
that um if you put it through a program how bureaucratic is that program and that would be on us to make sure that it's not a bureaucratic process um but the cost to open up a DC study is it's several $100,000 and it's a year process and because it's lasting for 10 years if you want some flexibility that's why most of the people are moving it away uh from that and you can also add other programs into it so you can provide a full Suite of uh exemptions the other thing um I will say on behalf of t
he treasurer uh is just to remind Council every DC dollar you don't charge or you provide as a credit has to be levied so if you think of a teeter totter um if I'm not going to raise DC dollars for a particular piece of infrastructure through a DC um then you have to tax the tax pair uh for that dollar so by not putting into the DCS the other Advantage is is you can take a look at how the program is working whether you're actually attracting it maybe you need to change up some of it or maybe we'
re spending DCS on things and charging the taxpayer for things that aren't really achieving the goal instead of opening it up you you know if you moved one company from one end of town to another end of town and you gave away DC money for that and you charged taxpayers for that dollar you might say taxpayers got a raw deal on that so I think one of the advantages is you can more fine-tune the program a little bit uh but I think what Mr filisetti would say is it better not be overly bureaucratic
because when he's attracting businesses they want certainty on the program and they want to make sure it can access fast so I think that would be a challenge to um uh to the council I'll also remind the council quite frankly this Council can charge zero in DCS you don't need to have DCS uh the only difference is every again everything you raise in DCS have a tax levy is tax levy so it's always playing that balance no I understand that I just like for that attraction we want the big companies com
ing here we want those electric vehicle factories with the batteries coming here and creating all these jobs would just be amazing and so if we can come in with some kind of agreement I know it's going to come back no decisions are made to today but um I think it's a great incentive to have some of these big companies outside or we're going to lose them to the states we well we know that I agree if I could uh as well any luck no okay are they phoning him okay great um so yeah councelor baldelli
and then Patel through your mayor uh can you give me an example of EX exactly let's say it cost a factory $10 million to move here what would be a DC charge is it kind of static or is it relative to the size of the building and where it's located um it's based upon square footage um if it's a move in that's a little different um and I'm a little rusty on my DC rules um uh if it was an existing Factory that was expanding for example they get the 50% uh exemption you can expand uh a factory by 50%
without uh it but um I'm sure our consultant would have the number more readily for what would be on a per square foot or per square meter basis for a DC uh yes through the mayor and that was a great response it's essentially just based on um the prevailing rate at the time on a square meter basis so it would depend on the size of the facility that's moving in and also the use so industrial uses um an existing industrial use that is expanding uh they do receive an exemption of up to 50% of the
existing square footage of that particular site um I would also note as well if a development is coming into an existing building and they're refurbishing it they don't necessarily pay DCS on a conversion of that space if they're not creating net additional space either so there's certainly um rules around specific developments as they come forward that answer your question counselor okay great thank you I've got councelor Patel then Loko through you Mr Mayor to Jackie or maybe Mr CEO is we are
currently having hard time getting Builders or devel ERS to put the shovels in the ground and that is for the reasons that we can't control you know cost of borrowing is high inflation is high but with the DC Charges going high is that going to affect is that going to affect to attract the home builders to come to negative Falls I'll start and I if I miss anything uh my consultant's a lot more u a lot smarter on this topic than I am I think one of the challenges is you'll hear some Builders will
say I don't really care about the DCS because I need the INF infastructure if if they don't have servicing it doesn't matter they can't build anything if you don't have the roads they can't you know they can't do that uh because usually what delays a lot of expansion is the infrastructure you know the reality is a DC and I'll always say this uh the reality of a DC is developers don't pay the DC the homeowner pays the DC uh the other thing is it's the only tax that I can Finance over 25 years um
so because it's embedded into the cost of your house or your plan um if I move money from DC's over to tax levy you got to pay that every year there I can't go to the bank and say I can't afford my taxes can I get me some financing on that I can finance a DC so you know no one ever likes to see prices going up uh but it is the balance of uh you know if we want to grow we need the infrastructure we need to figure out a way to pay for the infrastructure um and DC should be part of the mix so you
will hear some people that say DC's if you're increase DCS it impacts housing affordability I don't disagree but housing affordability is two things it's buying it and living in it and you have to balance both and if you don't have the infrastructure um you won't be able to build anyway so if we can't get the self um sewer plant uh complete it all this is academic because quite frankly we're not building anything building will stop but we need a $400 million plant we need some ways to pay for it
that's the reality of it I don't know if I missed anything um no that was an excellent response thank you point okay thank you for that I've got councelor L coko thank you Mr Mayor to the speaker thank you so much for your presentation I know a lot of work goes into this and I do have a few questions um on age seven of your presentation uh there's the breakdown of percentages for the different um sectors parks and rack Road are those percentages are we allowed to um change those percentages so
for example parks and wreck is at 26% and roads are at 18 and then there's all of the different percentages are we allowed to change those percentages put more DCS to more roads and decrease something else or where do these percentages come from uh yes sir the mayor that's an excellent question um it's essentially the percentages that you saw on slide seven which is the pie chart graphic is um the uh rates that have been calculated for each individual service based on the rules and regulations i
n the development charges act so the parks rate representing 26% of the overall charge that is essentially fixed through the various steps that the development charges act requires us unfortunately it's it's quite regimented we're not able to say we've calculated a rate of 100,000 and we're attributing 10% to this service and 20% to this um it is specific to the calculation and to um uh the service itself great question okay good thank you um another comment I'm I'm very confused about um the pr
ovincial mandates about telling us to decrease the cost of housing we have Bill 23 and in one one respect we're supposed to decrease it and then in another respect we're increasing our fees when we look at the outside of the tourist industry for for 2024 it would be increasing 95% for inside the tourist area that's 232 it we sort of had two competing methods about what we're supposed to be doing lower the cost but yet let's increase the cost and I understand if we don't charge DCS then the taxpa
yer pays it but we have these two competing thoughts here and it's 84% for residential um looking at the the costs the charges the tourist area I guess had a preferential uh percentage DC from before and now we're increasing it and the report explains some of the reasons why we're increasing it so much but I really have some difficulty in increasing it so much all at once when for whatever reasons we didn't increase it before this is um it's very challenging to try to work on both sides affordab
le housing and and increasing DC charges does anyone have a comment for that is yours Jason's not taking this one um yes through you Mr Mayor uh it's another great question and something that certainly every municipality right now is grappling with um I will note that the development charges act has been amended to bring forward exemptions for affordable and attainable housing the idea being is that those units will not be subject to development charges now we're not quite sure when that is goin
g to come into effect um it's likely that that will probably happen in the next couple months prior to the city introducing its bylaw um there's going to be be very specific parameters around um how we Define those units there will be bulletins posted by the province in terms of the thresholds for incomes and um property values that will fall within that affordable housing threshold and those units will be exempt from development charges the question then becomes who will pay for those exemption
s will it have to be uh property taxes will the government step up and provide some grants to municipalities it's certainly uh up in the air right now but it is something something that we are following very closely and we'll certainly be reporting back to Council on as soon as we know more information okay thank you that was pretty much my whole next part of my question is that we're supposed to be building affordable units and then giving an exemption to the affordable units so do you get the
affordable units and not the DC charges so then those those missing monies that we don't make from the DC then go somewhere else I know that Premier Ford said that uh he would be making the municipalities hold but we haven't heard anything about that so my other questions were um about when and you did answer that maybe in the next couple of months uh with the the certain um requirements so is there a requirement for development about a certain percentage of a development that needs to be afford
able I know we've talked about this in our housing study but through this process is there a certain percentage that a developer has to have affordable unit uh yes through you Mr Mayor so my understanding the way in which it will work will be based on the individual unit it might be based on the income um of the individuals who are moving into those units or based on the rent that's being um offered as part of that so that will be brought out um and it will be region specific is our understandin
g because obviously an affordable unit here in Niagara Falls might be different than one say in kitchen or waterl or in the city of Toronto so it won't be um a blanket definition across the province it's going to be very specific um to those individual properties I will note as well the legislation does provide discounts for rental housing which is different than affordable housing that's defined as four more units so if you have a three-bedroom rental housing unit uh you get a 25% discount from
your development charges two bedrooms 20% discount one bedroom or less it's 15% discount and those policies are already enforced today so that's specific to rental housing not to affordable housing though okay thank you I was going to ask you about rental so you've already covered that um what I meant about the percentage of affordable units is not the dollar amount or the income level the number of units that the Builder is going to build if a builder builds a $900,000 unit there's no way that
that's going to be affordable if they have a 100 units do they have to have 25% so for example there's two development applications on our agenda tonight one has 7% % affordable one has over 75% so my question is is there a percentage that needs to be um addressed through this okay we're going to direct this one to Kira doch our general manager of planning thank you worship through you to the counselor so in terms of the DCS um there's nothing in that legislation that would allow that but in te
rms of our official plan we did put in a policy based on our housing strategy requiring that uh the developers do provide us some information on how they're contributing to our affordability housing Target which is 40% so we do ask that in every application and that's why you're seeing some kind of address that now um some of the older ones don't have to address it because the policy wasn't in place we do have some of those as well uh but the ones that have been in place since this policy or the
ones moving forward since this policy has been in place we've been asking those questions and the planners or or the developers themselves have been answering those questions okay great thank you um regarding about the timing of an application if an application has already been in when do they pay development charges based on their application date or based on when they start building so could there be people grandfathered um uh yes um through uh you Mr Mayor um there are specific rules uh as s
et out in the development charges act for one DCs are payable so if the application or the proposed development goes through site plan and resoning the development charges are Frozen at the time the application is deemed complete by the municipality the DCs are then payable at building permit issuance um if for example a development does not trigger a site plan or resoning the DCs are calculated and payable at building permit um the city is also able to charge charge interest on the development
charges that are frozen recognizing that there's a time value of money um uh that occurs as a result of that and that the municipality is potentially losing out on Revenue um so that's also built in as well and there's maximum interest rates that is set out in the legislation um so I believe that's set at the average uh bake of Canada rates uh plus 1% okay great thank you um it the report talked about additional exemp exemptions uh at one point we talked about Office Buildings what other types o
f exemptions and then I know that it talked about places of worship is that an exemption and I wanted to bring that one up because a lot of places of worship now are doing community centers daycare centers uh are there going to be different DCS for those types of um venters uh yes through Mr Mayor that's a great question and something that we are certainly looking into right now um the city's current bylaw provides an exemption for charitable institutions um which may or may not cover places of
worship um so as part of this update we are looking to provide clarification around that to exempt the places of worship we have had discussions about how there are instiller uses to those um types of buildings whether or not there is a child care facility that could be provided or some sort of school programming We are continuing to review whether or not it's reasonable to say you only get the exemption for the portion of the building that's related to worship or do you get a full exemption um
we're continuing to review not only with the city's in-house legal counsel but also with external legal counsel as well who specializes in development charge matters so um we're expecting to bring forward a fome report with the draft bylaw and policy recommendations um at some point in the future okay thank you and one final question for this report I had questions for 5.2 but I guess we'll deal with them later um there there's obviously different rates for different sectors so we had outside of
tourist uh inside of tourist residential commercial can the city look at a new area um I have brought up about the um infrastructure around the new hospital um we're we're um investing $27 million of infrastructure out there um I know when a developer comes and puts in an application they will be paying development charges as they would have paid anywhere else in the city but could could we look at a spe area at around the hospital to have a certain percentage charged because of that extra infr
astructure that the taxpayers are paying for uh yes for you Mr Mayor excellent question um we certainly can look at um the uh possibility of introducing area specific development charge for uh the hospital lands um one thing though I would caution is that we have to be able to draw a distinction between the area that is benefiting from the infrastructure and the amount that we're charging them so um typically services that are charged on an area specific basis or things like water and wastewater
infrastructure that's how we've actually set out the core tourist area and outside the curist area rate it's recognizing that linear infrastructure a pipe going to a building that's really easy for us to say this is directly benefiting your development and so therefore this is the cost to you um so it's certainly something we can take back and look at um it just may or may not be appropriate based on the the way in which the infrastructure works and who's benefiting from it okay thank you I wou
ld appreciate if it could be looked at and I do understand it may or may not be appropriate thank you so much for your your answers uh thank you for that uh councelor new estate thank you Mr Mayor um in your presentation you made a comparison um different residential rates and with development charges and to uh Council Strange point it is a very competitive when we're out there competitive for Builders for housing competitors um competitive for attracting industry do you also look at all the bes
t practices that and um different models that other communities have been using to attract CU sounds like this could be very you can be very creative when it comes to development charges um do we do you sit down and look at that through all your your planning uh yes that's a great question so through you Mr Mayor um we certainly do look at the uh policies and Provisions and the city's um objectives in terms of the type of development they want to uh you would like to attract um development chare
s as I mentioned is just one of those tools there's other tools that are available to municipalities in order to help incent different types of development um we often find in the work that our firm has done um it needs to be a DC exemption itself is often not enough um the rates that we calculate however um just to be clear the legislation is extremely prescriptive in how we arrive at the charges that we do so the rates that we calculate for the city of Nia Falls are very specific to the develo
pment the infrastructure needs of Niagara Falls itself however the steps in which we do it is consistent with what we would do in any other municipality because the legislation has very specific steps in how we go about doing it so I I'm not sure if I totally answered your question but I hope I provided some claric okay perfect okay thank you for that do you have any other questions of councel so I've got a couple too if I can ask um now yeah and I know you made reference to the fact that the co
re tourism area jump is significant 232 right that's massive so I'm sure we're going to get some push back from the industry I know you're going to meet with them and I know You' have given us some timelines of implementation but is that reasonable that I mean you're just going to be meeting with them and then we're going to implement I think there's going to be a a lot of dialogue and I I have a like I don't disagree we need the infrastructure but I definitely can see the point of them saying w
hat you're hitting us awfully hard with a big big number I mean even the 95% outside the to court T which strikes me as odd that we would charge more outside the cor tour area than inside the cor tour area it's odd I don't know how that can be but it definitely has to be corrected just seems that it's not much of a phasing in year one is a hit over the head and then it becomes very gradual so and I get it we've got to build wastewater treatment plants now I get I understand all that so question
is ability to pay so um I'm concerned like the counselors are brought up this might chase away some opportunities uh of investment for for hotels um we want to be part of the supply chain for the EVs and I know there's some other communities in Niagara I don't know what their intentions are but currently there's no DCS you don't have to go through a CIP and I know I did speak with our minister of infrastructure for the province last Monday and he did say that there's three things are looking for
and this was one of them the DC so it's just a concern when they're developing the supply chain that are timing might be off with an implementation uh so anyway I just and again I don't know I know you don't have a crystal ball or you don't have magic wand or maybe you do I don't know but um but do you have any feedback on because you're doing this for all municipalities so we're not unique um and the same concern we're all going after the same companies but we actually do we are assembling ind
ustrial land to actually go after them because we are out so whether you want to say we've been successful with our current program or not I don't know but we we're out of industrial land so we're going after more for some of these big opportunities that have passed us by so what's your um suggestions and maybe feedback on some of these big jumps in year one uh yes it's an excellent question your mayor and so um you know there's a few different things that could come out of the conversation we h
ave with the development industry next week they could um challenge some of the assumptions we've made with the capital program they could say we actually have um identified certain developments that we feel should be prioritized and then through discussions with staff we're going to take their feedback sit back down and then certainly uh look at the assumptions we've made and see how they align with the new information they might bring forward um it doesn't always happen that way but certainly
we are very open to making adjustments to the rate calculations if there's better information out there that we don't have at this moment um in terms of implementation we are uh meeting with the industry in advance of the background study being released in hopes of addressing some of their questions or concerns prior to us even entering the statutory public consultation process so we we do feel that we're giving sufficient time to have conversations if we reach the point where we feel like we're
running out of time we can certainly reexamine our schedule I know that we've given a little bit of cushion against the bylaw expiry to make sure that we felt prepared and um we were bringing forward a defensible bylaw for the city um you know certainly as well we're open to having discussions with um Economic Development around what would be the best way to bring forward some of these exemptions and the policy recommendations we've put Place put in place are based on what's happening right now
with Niagara region they're also exempting Industrial Development which helps um and so mirroring their industrial grant program you know would help to certainly attract certain businesses um I should also mention the industrial exemption applies to both inside and outside the curist area I recognize most of the industrial lands however are outside the curist are obviously um and so uh we certainly will be reporting back in terms of the feedback we're hearing and how the rates change as a resul
t of that consultation um and if there is significant push back or concerns we certainly will address and perhaps adjust the timelines so I'm not sure if that totally answers your question um but if you have further questions on that I'm happy to address no that's helpful and I'm glad we're going to go to the industries and get some more feedback before and again just remind counil we're not making a decision tonight right tonight's more for feedback so the other question is uh today the CAO and
I were at the state of the city in St Catherine's and the mayor made a comment that 2third of the infrastructure is under the guise of municipalities so I wonder if you have any stats on that too because he pointed out the number that I'm also aware of only eight cents out of every dollar um comes to municipalities so we have the least amount of money but we carry the most amount of infrastructure it's really lopsided if we're going to use the Teeter Totter example of the C which I'm surprised
he usually uses a food analogy and tonight he's going in a playground Direction so you never know where this guy is coming from when it comes to his analogies but so if I could use his analogy for today uh teeter totter it seems really um unbalanced so are those numbers in line with what you uh are aware of 2third of infrastructure fall under the municipalities but only eight cents out of every tax dollar comes to us um uh yes Mr May I'd have to take that back I mean certainly we um understand t
he wickedness of this problem not to mention I'm sure that didn't account for any sort of the asset management requirements that municipalities also have to take on and that's a staggering deficit across the province right now um so I mean I'm not surprised by those numbers but I can't off the top of my head verify them completely okay it's a little bit of homework for you yep uh okay so those are yeah Ed you haven't done enough work already so if there's no further questions of councel so what
is the direction on this one Mr clerk what are you looking at just to receive the report uh yes we could certainly receive the presentation but there is an accompanying report uh listed next at 5.2 uh with five different recommendations listed there okay well maybe we'll start we'll break it up so maybe just to receive the report which is an endorsement uh by councelor strange and second by councelor Campbell all those in favor just to is just to receive the presentation that's all and then now
we go to 5.2 which is the development charge draft rate and capital program so now who is going to be uh speaking to this is this staff uh that are going to do this Mr CAO Mr D oh Mr Dowling okay great Mr Dowling so the floor is yours so through the chair this is simply um a companion report to the presentation that that Jackie did um essentially it's really just reiterating um in the report we've included a copy of the draft rates that Jackie presented today um and really we're just looking for
support from Council to sort of continue on in the engagement process um you know we're looking essentially for an endorsement of some of the um inputs to the report that we've used to date things like our growth forecast and our um the information we have from the capital program so far uh we're looking for um apologies further endorsements around some of the recommendations that um jockey had brought up earlier about um looking at cips and Industrial Grant programs as a means for us to contin
ue on so that um when we do bring forward our official draft bylaw we can incorporate some of those changes in there to present it more formally to council um so really truly um you know it's it's a lot of Direction more or less from us to give us a little bit of homework to sort of continue on in the process and make sure that when we do come back um and release everything to the public it's in a little bit more of a finished State okay do we do we have questions uh from Council Mr ding so I ha
ve one question if I could then um oh sorry I've got councel Loko uh go ahead Council Loko thank you Mr Mayor um in the presentation it talks about that if we don't increase the the DC charges it's going to prevent us from meeting our housing goal we have we've talked about this many times we have over 14,000 approved units and we can't force the builders to build our pledge is 8,000 I guess my question is when is enough can can the municipality stop approving applications what is our city going
to look like if we keep um approving development and having all of these units in I don't know through the um through the legislation people have zoning on certain properties they're allowed to bu things but when is enough enough what what do we want the city of nagar Falls to look like are we going to keep approving things we're going to get our coo to weigh in on this one yeah I'll I'll let Mr Dowling off the hook uh since Cesar Capital accountant uh it's a good question uh councelor coko um
you know the challenge is yes we can't put a gun to a developer's head uh we do have situations quite frankly that um there are developers that we don't believe will ever actually build anything and they do come in and you know they're looking for an up Zone and and a flip um what we are doing uh which you'll see later on in the agenda uh quite frankly is we are starting to do as much as we can um uh you know putting a Sensei Clause into the approval so that if they don't actually build it they
lose uh they lose those rights um so we can do as much as we can but at the end end of the day a planning application uh has to be accepted on its face merits uh as a planning application and we have to make uh a decision based upon that um I think one of the things that you may see with DC charges uh anytime you have an increase in DC charges especially if they have to go they don't start getting their DC charges until they get a building permit guess what if there's a deadline coming and and t
hings are going to jump up 20 or 30% a lot of them will then start pulling permits because to get that la locked in so there is some motivation sometimes with a large uh DC increase to to do that so I don't know if I missed anything Miss dolch but okay does that answer your question Council the Coco yes thank you I just wanted to make the comment that we have a lot of land still in the city and if we have to accept the applications we have no control over the amount of development that's going t
o come in if they meet the criteria so again my question is um is this something within our strategic plan that we can look at on a bigger picture I know we have growth numbers from the region from The Province but at some point do we not stop just a thank you okay thank you for that and the one question I have um to uh staff I guess uh to Mr Dowling number four or whoever wants to answer it so here's my based on the the questions and comments of councilor strange uh if we ask you to to bring fo
rward an industrial DC grant program but we decide to stay with the current program and not have a CIP DC grant program does this in any way way bind Bond bind us to to do no okay okay so we'll still be free to make whatever decision when the time comes okay I can answer that real quick so yeah yeah jump in um yeah to be clear it was really just for us to go back and look at options sort of bring forward some language currently you're right it is it is includ Ed as an exemption in our bylaw so y
ou know really from our perspective I think we really just wanted that direction to say you know let's look at consideration of that as an option um and that way when we do bring forward the bylaw we're not saying here's the bylaw without the exemption and there's no exemptions on the table any longer so we really just wanted to make sure that from a from a transition perspective there's a smooth handoff if we do consider um a program to kind of add that flexibility in for us without the potenti
al or the perception that we're losing out on a program on a temporary basis until that program's compl place okay all right thank you for that and if I could just if because saying there's no other oh I'm sorry Council coko has got her hand up floor is yours sorry Mr Mayor um with with the five recommendations that are there as long as it can be amended I know it says draft and a list of but we can change some of the things later we're not written in stone for what it is is that correct yep so
Miss Hall says yes the answer is yes okay and could we also add um regarding looking at area specific uh DC Zone as Jackie said earlier that she would look into that can that also be added into the recommendation yes cioo is going to answer just I just want to be I just want to clarify are you looking for an area specific Zone in the if if I call it the hospital Zone Council of Coco is that what you're looking at okay yes uh we we can certainly take a we can certainly take a look at to it I thin
k we're also offering Council um an education session for more detailed questions on this uh so like why would why would one zone have a different DC charge than another Zone there's a whole bunch of calculations that go into that infrastructure planning and that kind of stuff so um we may be able to address that for it and I just wanted to note to council we expect changes to come back uh the whole purpose of today is we have to go out make calculations uh it's a bit of a prescriptive kind of u
h process um and we have to present that obtain feedback and then come back uh with different recommendations so some of the input that um you know we have today especially around the CIP program will Circle as a team um because I think you know DCS as one aspect of attracting business I think we can actually maybe get a much more uh compelling package and really Target what we want and not waste a lot of money on low value uh ads uh but the problem with a DC bylaw it becomes very kind of All or
Nothing uh type of uh item so uh we can come back with different options for Council to consider that they can actually change every year uh unlike a DC bylaw um so we today was about moving to the step two of this process um and U and rest assured we'll receive lots of feedback and there'll be some changes to this coming forward great thank you okay thank you and um the other question uh so so I know you're going to go back you're going to consult and again I'm I'm really curious to see the pu
sh back or the feedback whatever you want to call it and also um justification so and I know you're trying to make things equal in a you know perfect environment residential versus core tourist outside you know commercial and Industrial when you put together and our with our staff the CIP you know the uh DC grant program for CIP for industrial will you show the benefits of how this could potentially be better than the current program for incentivizing Industrial Development here I I don't even k
now if it could be better or not I know the way you described it it sounded like it could be till I know the devils and the details but who look everyone's got their fingers on the everyone's getting right ansers so like I'm in a game show here I'll start and see if they M I think one of the so there is a administrative benefit right off the bat that if you put something in the DC bylaw and you want to change it um you have to open up the whole DC bylaw which means couple hundred ,000 worth of s
tudy a year of time um and uh then you're subject to appeal again uh so you have lack of certainty and one thing business wants a certainty uh your DC bylaw can be appealed um you know every time you bring one in so there's lack of certainty for business on that front so there's an administrative issue that if something's not going right with your incentive program uh or somebody some other city does something that's unique or Innovative and you want to copy it well you're stuck with this thing
that's there for 10 years you're Frozen uh your credit card is frozen in the freezer takes a long time to thaw that one out non- food allergy um but anyways uh so that's there's an administrative issue I think the other thing that we need to take a look at is when you have these blanket uh things that says all all industrial get um uh you know get a break you may not be attracting the best Industries you might not be attracting the big ones that you want and you're spending a lot of money on ver
y small ones that may not be what your goal is or maybe your goal is small ones and there's better ways to incense small businesses than DCs so you know by taking it out of the DC program you can customize programs that might be actually richer than what you're offering up to Target the industries you want and then in five or six years let's say we did a really good thing and we want to move from an EV manufacturing to whatever else is there well maybe that other industry requires other things t
o benefit and we can put those in the CIP program so you can uh amend uh that um so you know those are some of the advantages to it it uh but Mr Fetti if he was here I'll play Mr Fetti U he'll say listen a lot of these cipu programs have been bogged down in bureaucracy they're slow moving um and you can't have that and and that is a legitimate um you know criticism um and you know and if you want to be competitive so that's something that we would have to work on and it would be something that w
e would evaluate what are the advantages of it and I think what we should do is really test out some of you know some sample packages to uh you know there are companies that do Lo their locate companies they they take uh very large organizations pay for locate companies to go finding places globally in the world uh I think it's a better exercise to go to them and say what is the package that makes us competitive and they'll give you the list and then we can say we can take that list and put it i
n our package and then every 3 or four years we can go back to them and say what's the list what's you know and then you can change it and that's one of the advantages I think that would be U uh good for this organization it is a big change of how we've done things in the past um and with change there'll always be some learning so I will see if I missed anything okay to that point yeah to that point Council so what what you're saying is that we could Target certain industries like say it's a EV
or whatever it may be and give those particular Industries some kind of break and make it kind of our own policy yeah for example um let's say you say said well if I have a manufacturer with more than a million square ft of space you get all this stuff uh if you're a manufacturer that has uh 20,000 uh feet square feet of of development you get this stuff which might be less than the million the same could be with employees employees will give you this I think that's great I think that's so you c
an customize the package you can't do that in the DC by you say all industry gets certain rate we don't want that we want particular industry what we want here in our city and what's what's happening now especially with electric vehicles that's that's exactly it but again I'll play surge for a minute uh so he'll say but if you make all these things so fine-tuned and we're arguing over well how do we know that they have 999 employees versus a, And1 you know what is the administrative burden to do
that you have to evaluate that so you have to really pick and choose what's there um but I think if you get it right uh I think if you look at some of the more competitive jurisdictions they have more sophisticated uh incentive programs than than just saying blanket exemption on industry and and plus there's huge grants from federal and federal and provincial which you can yeah which you can stack on perfect okay did you want to add anything to that Miss Hall um through you Mr Mar I was just go
ing to also say that in terms of protecting the city from a financial perspective as well some municipalities Simco County for example had a similar program outside of their DC byw for affordable housing they capped it at $250,000 a year it was doled out on a first come first basis if they did not use that money that year they would roll it forward to the next and so it also gave some certainty about how much the municipalities was willing to contribute towards the program for DC specifically th
ey could also do that as well with property tax incentives Brownfield remediation grants there's as the CEO is saying there's certain stacking you can do with those okay got it yes councelor Patel Mr Mayor meeting after we sit there and talk about how do we get developers to put the shovels in the ground and me and Council new were talking about that quite a bit and once we were out and we ran into president of the Home Builders Association Chuck mcshain and we brought up the discussion we start
ed talking to him we only had a brief chat about that and what he suggested we thought it was very interesting is instead of collecting DC charges up front give them time time to pay for it when the home occupancy happens because people are borrowing cost of borrowing is very high right now so there's a they're borrowing for the land they're borrowing for the building and cost is racking up so if they have some um lean way for paying for development charges I think that could attract more develo
pers to put the shovels in the ground I know we were going to bring that up in maybe next meeting but I think we're talking about the DC's right now so that's a great point maybe we can get some feedback because I know you're exactly right you can't get financing for soft cost and DC is a soft cost there's nothing tangible right it's just you know so could that be worked into and has that ever been worked into a DC bylaw where it's upon occupancy uh yes um through you Mr Mayor so it's a great qu
estion and great comment certainly has been brought up um in other jurisdictions the city of Peterboro had a policy for quite some time I believe it's removed now um it was specific to a type of development I'm not sure if it was high density or I can get the example but essentially what they said was based on these parameters this type of development um the legislation allows you to enter into something we call a section 27 agreement which is early or late payment of development charges the rat
e would be set at x% as agreed upon by the municipality and the developer it will then be paid at occupancy so it certainly is something that can be done um just I would caution the administration of it could become a little complex um P perhaps something to Target for specific areas for specific uses but then again you might end up creating some um some challenges amongst different development types if they all you know would like that type of access so certainly something we can take back and
provide some examples of what's been done elsewhere I would say though it's often done on a site specific basis or development type basis M yeah go ahead what I would suggest Mr Mayor is when you at the mar Mar 4th is when you have a meeting with developers maybe bring this uh specific topic up and see what their reaction and what their feedback is on that thank you it's a good idea it's a really good idea at least gives us more things uh more options to consider councel bald Dell on on that pre
mises uh through you mayor uh if if they're allowed to pass on those charges until the developer or till they sell the house and the roads and sewers need to be there or else you're not building anything who's paying for it in between are we paying for it and allowing the Builder to then you know build and then get recoup costs at our our expense we get their investment right coo is going to give us an analogy play surge again let's see oh play surge no no no puppets um generally we pay UPF fron
t uh and um the then we borrow or we take from the DC funds so generally the infrastructure is in place place before uh the DCS we don't have a significant DC Reserve uh at this point in time um and um so most of the infrastructure that's planned over the next 10 years is to be built and therefore we would be funding it and then collecting DCS over a period of time okay any other questions or comments of council okay and I think that was really good discussion good feedback and curious to DC tha
t's a great point to bring forward right at least something else another tool in the tool box potentially so we're looking for a motion to um for the five recommendations in the report motion by councelor strange second by councelor bald denell is there any discussion to the motion okay we'll call the vote all those in favor okay and that's unanimously approved and thank you Miss Hall appreciate your time thank you okay all right Mr clerk what do we have next do have time uh your worship next we
have uh Mr Jim bizy from BMA management consulting and he's going to provide council with a presentation pertaining to uh water Wastewater long range financial plan okay thank you is this online oh all right Mr broses are you there hi good evening Council and chamber um I'm AIA I'm um working with Jim Veri um I'm supposed to share the presentation but Jim is supposed to be uh on presenting uh if if the staff can give him um mic so do we have to give permission you have permission oia okay I'm g
oing to share the presentation thank you uh if if um if Jim BR is on the line uh he can have his microphone unmute yeah he has it on yeah he to un himself I okay so Mr broses if you're there you'll have to unmute your your own mic can you hear me now yeah we can hear you fine okay thank thank you sorry apologize for that um what I'd like to do this evening is uh share the results uh and background information with regard to the uh long range financial plan for water and wastewater operations um
so just by way of background the ministry of the environment under the Safe Drinking Water Act in 20 uh 2002 they require municipalities first of all to obtain a a drinking water license and secondly the plant the license has to be updated uh every 5 years and one of the requirements of the uh updated uh licensing is to prepare a financial plan and uh this is the to meet those licensing requirements uh the last financial plan was prepared in 2019 uh this financial plan uh covers a six-year perio
d from 2025 to 2030 uh one one of the things I'll note that uh the city has taken a uh Pro proactive an integrated approach to this uh exercise and they were including you've included both Water and Wastewater although Wastewater is not requirement uh Wastewater operation financial plan has also been included and this is to help uh ensure transparency and sustainability of all of the utilities uh one one other thing to note is the financial plan uh is not binding on Council uh it's based on assu
mptions which I'll talk about in a second uh and uh assumptions do change and the province recognizes that uh however what it does provide council with is a framework for guiding future operating and capital budgets bless you go the next SL um there's multiple inputs that we've utilized in the preparation of the financial plan and and you can see the sources of information on this slide here uh so we we looked at uh things like the uh the operating budget the uh the 10year capital plan uh Reserv
e balances uh consumption Trends and the number of accounts uh we looked at the asset management plan including uh included in there um recommendations from the asset management plan uh am existing debt and uh the growth forecast uh so there's multiple sources of of input that was uh uh inserted into the plan if we go to the next slide uh so although uh great effort has been made to present ACC accurate Financial Pro projections uh the financial plan is a living document and as I mentioned it's
based on assumptions and assumptions do change and um we we recommend is that uh you compare on an ongoing basis the actual results of the operations with the projections and this leads to improved future planning uh next slide so as I mentioned uh it's based on assumptions so these are the assumptions that we applied in the the preparation of the financial plans um generally inflationary increases at 3% uh we have used the capital budget 10-year capital budget uh plan that was provided to us uh
in terms of the uh replacement requirements uh we used the uh 2023 year end Reserve balance es and uh finally a big component you'll see in a minute a big component of the expenditures are the regional uh expenditures associated with the purification of water and treatment of Wastewater uh they they prepared a 10-year plan and they projected a 4.3% annual increase for water and an 8 48% annual increase for Wastewater and as I mentioned that uh these figures have been Incorporated in the financi
al plan um the next slide in the preparation of the financial plan uh first of all what we did is we established guiding principles uh goals and objectives to guide us through the process um and The Guiding principles is uh first of all to ensure reasonable degree of stability and predictability in the rate burden um we last thing rate pairs want to see is a lot of volatility with regard to rates the other component too that is supporting affordability we're cognizant uh that there's uh affordab
ility concerns of the r Pairs and that was built into the uh uh forecast as well uh the next thing is fair sharing and the distribution of resources uh we want to ensure intergenerational Equity um we want to ensure that there's a sustainable level of Revenue to provide for future Rehabilitation and replacement needs um as you're aware the uh water and wastewater operation ations are extremely uh Capital intensive and the rehabilitation replacement is a significant portion of your budget uh we w
anted to make sure that there was maximization of uh Financial flexibility and that's through the use of reserves and and uh where possible limit the use of De and then finally to maintain the ensure that the programs and services are maintained uh meeting all Environmental Protection standards um so if go to the next slide so I said uh so first of all with regard to the guiding principle ensuring that there's a reasonable degree of stability and and predictability and the rate burden uh while s
upporting uh flotability you can see from the financial plan here um based on those assumptions that I talked about in terms of inflation and and the other increases uh we projected the rate Revenue requirements for water and wastewater and the 2024 budget we used as the base and you can see the increases uh throughout the period from 2025 to 2030 um as I said one one of the objectives is is to have uh repair affordability and stability rates and what we're recommending is a water year-over-year
annual increase of 5% and a Wastewater year over year increase of 6% and the total combined change to to a rate pair would be about uh to to a rate pair would be about 5.5% um the the this would not translate necessarily into rates because other factors will come into play these are the r Revenue requirements but in terms of the calculation of the rates uh the municipality has to also look at assumptions and and growth in that type of thing uh next slide so the next slide to maintain the progra
m services that meet Environmental Protection standards so when we analyzed your 2024 water budget uh you can see from there uh we put the major components uh of the water operations Regional costs represent about 47% of the budget there's some debt charges uh about 1% uh the contributions to Capital reserves and this is for the replacement of the infrastructure on a timely basis that currently represents 22% a significant portion and as I mentioned the operations are capital intensive uh in fac
t water operations the replacement value is in excess of uh about 777 million uh and then the uh final one is uh operating expenses 30% of the of the budget so essentially uh when you look at control of the municipality the only real control that they have is that on that 30% uh Factor um and then when we did our projection and based on those assumptions and increases um the um Regional costs are in 2030 we anticipate to be about 49% of the total budget almost half and a uh other expenses the op
erating expenses at 25% and then 25% contribution to Capital replacement reserves um so you can see one of the driving factors is is a major component of the budget is the regional costs and and they are increasing at a higher rate than inflation uh next slide uh in terms of the Wastewater operations uh the regional Char Regional cost in the Wastewater operations in 2024 are 60% uh and in 20230 that grows to about 69% uh and then you can see the other components uh um the operating cost in 2024
is only 18% and when you look at the proportion of the budget in 2030 it drops down to 14% next uh slide uh so as I mentioned one of one of the guidelines uh is to have uh water Wastewater affordability and the uh American Water work Association they recommend that uh for a typical residential home um it shouldn't be any greater than uh 1 and a half to 3% of average household income so we calculated the uh estimated average household income in each of the municipalities and then we based on the
2023 the latest information we had available at the time and using 200 cubic meters of water uh we calculated the rates the water rates for every one of those municipalities you can see Niger Falls at the bottom of the chart uh based on that 200 cubic meters a year it works out to $1,128 and if you compare that to the other Niagara municipalities you're actually the second lowest in the in the comparison of all of the ner municipalities um you're at 1.2 in terms of affordability you're at 1.2% w
hich is lower than the awwa recommendations uh a slightly lower than the average and and of course that's also triggered by the average household income and in Niger Falls the average household income is below the nagra average so obviously that has an impact on the uh affordability metric of of a water and sewer as a percentage of average household income next slide uh and then we looked at the uh other property classes and and we estimate consumption for example on a on a industrial commercial
uh institutional we estimated we did a a comparison based on 10,000 cubic meters a year uh mid mid level uh uh property 30,000 cubic met and then a high of 100,000 cubic met and you can see uh in terms of nager Falls and the nagra average in each of those different property types you're significantly below below the Niger average uh just for an example uh well the residential which we just talked about you're 20% below the average uh a small uh industrial property you're 28% and when you get in
to the extremely large water consumer property it's 35% uh below you're cons so you're consistently below the ne average next slide um then we uh also one of the guidelines is to maximize Financial flexibility and so like I say uh affordability is a is a big factor in in the whole exercise so what we did is um your your replacement needs in the water uh and Wastewater operations are very significant uh their Capital intensive operations um so to uh recognize uh repair affordability uh what we bu
ilt into the forecast is a an annual phase in increase of the capital contributions to match the replacement costs so if we just look at the chart on the water Capital contributions uh the blue line is the capital contribution to the reserve to replace the assets the red line is the anticipated Capital expenditures for each of the years so you can see in the in the first uh couple years there's quite significant Capital expenditures um and the contribution reserves doesn't quite match that howev
er you do have reserves on hand that uh can uh supplement uh what's required and then when you get to 2028 uh and Beyond 2028 um your um contributions are slightly higher than your uh requirements um so it's it's a CH and then when when you get Beyond 2030 uh we looked at the the capital replacement costs and they they uh they become quite significant in some years so you want to build for that eventuality uh and then so the same exercise in the waist Wier kind uh Capital contributions a phase i
n approach next slide so so the city's plan uh water and wastewater uh supports Financial sustainability uh it's able to meet the financial obligations throughout the forecast and it provides sufficient flexibility to respond to changing circumstances um there's a positive Reserve balances throughout the forecast in terms of debt when we look at the capital needs that I that I just talked about um we have no debt forecast in the U in the plan uh it's it's all based on pays you go uh and then the
re's sustainable cash flows so if we go to the next slide so in terms of uh matching it to the uh guidelines we have smooth the rate increases throughout the period uh we kept the rate burden under 1 and a half% of average household income uh it supports of fair sharing and the distribution of resources uh between current future rate pairs um we funded all of the capital items that were anticipated over the next uh six years and as I mentioned mentioned it's all based on a pyo so there's no debt
issued for the replacement of existing assets which again provides some additional flexibility uh provides a sustainable level of Revenue to provide for the future uh replacement needs uh and as I mentioned the uh approach on that was a gradual increase in the reserve contributions uh maximizes Financial flexibility there's positive Reserve balances uh throughout the forecast and it maintains the programs and services that meet Environmental Protection standards uh and so we from that we've Inc
orporated all the anticipated operating expenditure increases um and uh next slide so as you say the the the the whole plan is is based on on assumptions and uh so what we recommend is that the city continue to monitor the uh financial and operational environment and then report to council if there's any significant changes to the uh to the operations and overall the position for water and wastewater is healthy based on what we know right now and what we built into the forecast uh that will driv
e funding needs over the forecast period um be happy to answer any questions you worship okay thank you very much I've got counselor um Patel first up and then Loko through Mr Mayor thank you thank you very much for the great great presentation I only have two question one of the question is what is the factor for regional cost being higher than inflation in terms of the regional increases the region prepared to take near financial plan and uh that was the outputs of that financial plan they hav
e some significant uh Capital replacement needs and so as a result of that uh they they are requiring uh higher than inflationary increases the other thing too that impacts it is uh when you look at the construction costs uh especially at the regional level because it's uh the you're talking about the plants the construction costs uh are significantly higher than inflationary increases so that also drives uh the requirements of from the region thank you another question is this where did you get
the data for the average income for n just just uh there there's a firm uh manifold data mining it's called and uh they uh do an analysis each year based on tax returns Etc and uh that was uh from their uh analysis data data M manif manifold data mining okay thank you very much okay thank you for that I've got councelor Loko thank you Mr Mayor thank thank you so much for the presentation um I did have two questions so you said that this would not translate to rates but this is a a funding for t
he plan so how does that not translate to rates because if we look at the total cost for 2024 it was an 8.9 increase and then 5.5 and then 5.6 how does it not relate to uh increase rates for our taxpayers or rate payers yeah uh there will be there will be increases but the uh the amounts of the revenue increases that outlined in the in the presentation uh 5% for water and I think it was 6% for Wastewater um in the actual calculation of the rates um the calculation involves the total expenditures
which essentially are those uh Revenue requirements uh divided by consumption and because consumption changes and there could be some additional growth which would increase your consumption that could decrease the uh actual um rate to the rate pairs okay thank you so just to confirm we're not increasing we're not um approving these increases for the next five years as is I just want to make that thank you okay thank you Council NE thank you again Mr for the Wonder I had it on sorry thank you um
thank you for uh through Mr Mayor thank you for the wonderful presentation um you mentioned one of your last slides in the summary that the city should continue to monitor the financial and operational environment report back to council changes that would impact are you recommending a um a an annual report back or just when anything um changes like any at what point um is kind of a broad um your worship uh whenever there's a major change that that could affect the operations and and generally w
hat municipalities do is they they uh report that out through the B the annual budget process okay thank you okay thank you for that any other questions or comments of council okay seeing none so uh Mr clerk what is the uh intention here receiving uh we do have a recommendation listed there on the agenda uh and that is that Council approve the financial plan as outlined in the BMA management consult in water and wastewater long range financial plan presentation and Associated report okay so look
ing for a motion um to this in this regard motion by councelor Patel second by councelor neag there's no further discussion we'll call the vote all those in favor okay that's unanimous thank you for that all right Mr clerk where where we at next our final presentation is uh from the nager region we have with us gour s uh cazi project manager housing development at nagar Region along with John pots he's the board director of The nager Falls nonprofit housing uh and they're here to discuss uh deve
lopment uh taking place on McLoud Road gentlemen welcome thank you yeah do we have control of the slides here or y they're going to give you control yeah okay perfect just click to move ahead yeah okay great uh well thanks everyone for having us mayor council uh it's really exciting to be here to talk about Niger Falls nonprofits uh proposed affordable housing development project my name is Gord sazy I'm a housing development project manager with the nigar region with the Housing Services Divisi
on and I'm joined by John pots who's a board member with Niger Falls nonprofit uh so this organization is the largest private nonprofit affordable housing provider in Niagara and John's a board director and he's been volunteer with the organization for over 20 years something like that yeah close so the goal of the presentation is to introduce city council and the public to Niger Falls nonprofits proposed build and this is going to be located at their McLoud Road property and Niger Falls nonprof
it is seeking Municipal and public support which are both critical for Success on any type of affordable housing project like this so I'm can to ask John just to give some background on who the organization is so as Gore just mentioned uh we have uh 221 units affordable units they're all in Niagara Falls and we have a piece of land um at McLoud Road between east of the building that we now have on M Cloud Road which would be on the uh North uh north side next to Lowe's going to the uh West there
's another piece of property that we own that's attached to that property and we're going to be discussing that property as we go through this proposal before I go on I'm also joined by uh two other board members on our on our volunteer board just so you know it's volunteer I have Anna tartaglia and I have Elaine bald and they're both directors with our with our nonprofit corporation um the uh McLoud Road property uh is going to be discussed and uh we have a couple of different variations that w
e'd like to make sure you're aware of one is a 200 is a 10 story and one is a nine story and the only difference between the two properties are the amount of stud studies that would be required in the 50 or $60,000 which she don't have to do those studies so we would like to uh put that on the table as we proceed uh for Council to consider how we how we could address that going forward I'm going to turn it back to the brains of the operation okay so I'll just briefly touch on uh why Niger Falls
nonprofit is considering a new build so I think everybody's aware that there is a housing crisis in Niger Falls and Niagara as a whole uh just some brief statistics uh Regional core needs data suggests that uh about 133% of the seniors households in Niagara Falls are in core housing need and this equates to almost 2,800 homes and Niger Falls nonprofits internal weight list for their properties currently includes 829 low-income seniors households and these people on their internal weight list are
waiting anywhere up to 133 years for a unit and it's it's a pretty sobering number and that's basically what led Niger Falls not profit to consider this new build and the project focus is to provide new housing for low-income seniors which is a demographic that's facing increasing barriers to safe and affordable units uh the project does look to align with the city's official plan targets for affordable housing and int intensification and density and that includes the uh minimal annual Target o
f 135 new units rental units for affordable households per year uh within the 30th 20th and 10th income desiles so just some uh some project details uh this is going to be an infill project so it'll be located adjacent to Niger Falls nonprofits existing McLoud Park affordable housing properties so that consists of a uh six-story low-income apartment and the adjacent low-income townhouse complex and the site is located in between Kor Road and pinoke drive it's on the north side of McLoud Road um
it's it's ideal for them to be able to build adjacent to their existing properties because that can help uh with sharing operating expenses across the different properties and this could translate directly to uh deepening the affordability in decreasing rent rates for their for their tenants it's a perfect location for high density development in terms of proximity to public transit shopping Highway Parks Healthcare Providers and other amenities and uh our understanding right now is that there c
urrently already are several uh approved highdensity residential projects in the area we believe there's 8056 McLoud Road just south of this site which is 13 stories 8100 McLoud which is 7 stories uh 7449 Montrose Road which is 13 stories and then at the corner of kar McLoud Road the northeast corner there there's proposed 12 and 13 story residential buildings so this project would fit nicely in that area just some quick details on the site itself so the the vacant parcel that Niger Falls nonpro
fit owns is 2.4 hectares uh unfortunately the northern portion which is the hatched portion on the site plan that's a provincially significant Wetland and we've included a 15 meter development buffer around that which was confirmed by the mpca and our ecological consultant so that's uh the PSW is about 1.25 hectares so that leaves about or sorry that's 1.1 so it leaves about 1 one and A4 hectares for suitable development and sniger Falls nonprofit it retains npg Planning Group and AC architects
who completed feasibility studies and a schematic design in 2023 So based on their work our current concept is a nine-story 100 unit apartment and we'd be looking for our 5f zoning Den or density zoning and we'd be asking to increase Max height from 28 M to 34.1 parking we're showing at 1.2 spaces per unit uh we would be looking for a minor landscape reduction uh there are we're showing two driveways off McLoud which is good for traffic flow and fire access and all the parking nearly all the par
king has been designed behind the building to help with the Urban Design streetcape just some details on the building itself so again it's a ninstory 100 unit apartment unit breakdown is looking at this point to be 51 bed units 161 bed plus Den units and 3 for two bed units and the unit types were selected based on core needs data in terms of who on the weight list is looking for what type of unit so one beds in one beds mainly but two beds as well are are in high demand and we'd be looking at a
minimum of 20% of the units is fully accessible for the building and barrier-free and living in and aging in place designed throughout all of the other units and the common areas uh there'd be onsite laundry scooter bike storage community room and uh a pathway leading to the adjacent Park north of the site and like any new build Energy Efficiency is going to be critical we're we have a pretty hard target that we're looking at of 35% above the national Energy building code or code for buildings
and any any high efficiency we can achieve should translate directly to lower operating costs and lower rents for the tenants and just touching on depth of affordability for the tenants themselves uh this is we're trying to achieve very high depth of affordability on this project good okay so uh we're looking currently at 4 45% of the 100 units to be at 70% of cmhc's medium Market rent and we're looking at this target to help maximize the amount of Grant we can achieve through the cmhc co-invest
ment program uh 21% of the units are going to be set to Affordable rates which are which would be the cmhc medium Market rent and 34% of the units would be attainable and we we currently show them at about 115% of MMR um Niger falls on profit does tend to enter into agreement with the region for rent subsidy on a certain percentage of the units which will be determined as the project moves along uh I think everybody knows that it's it's extremely difficult to develop uh and and Achieve affordabl
e units in today's market just based on construction costs and financing fees supply chain issues operating cost issues but even even in that market we we think this project can achieve the goals that we're setting out here and any way we can look to decrease capital and operating costs we will and that will translate directly to lower rents for tenants so like any project we've met some challenges along the way we've been doing planning for roughly two and a half years and two major issues we'v
e come up against one being this uh the PSW uh we lost a lot of time having to work with the mpca in the region to actually confirm what why the PSW was put in place and what allowable land was remaining to build so that was roughly a year and significant cost with Consultants to get there but we we work through it and uh a second challenge has been um so we had our pre-consultation with City staff and City staff's been working with us very well on this um the original 10 story 112 unit design i
t was going to require several studies which we weren't expecting and John mentioned it earlier and that speaking with Consultants these could run anywhere from 60 to $100,000 ner Falls nonprofit it's a nonprofit Housing Organization they don't have lot of capital to work through these studies uh even with CC seed Grant which we've received and some of their reserves the budget's really really tight any nonprofits working with a tight budget so we we made the decision to look at a redesign decre
asing the number of units and this helped us to eliminate several of the studies that would have been required and that's that's how we ended up with the nin story 100 unit design right now we would love to go back and provide more density and more units if we could but that would that would require having additional studies waved so it's a conversation to be had just to be clear the board favors the 10 story unit uh we believe that uh being restricted to one and a qu Acres because of the Wetlan
d behind the property uh means that we have to go up to get any reasonable D any reasonable density as well as any reasonable number of affordable units and uh we hadn't anticipated that the going from 9 to 10 stories would result in a whole series of additional expensive studies and we're not certain I'm a Layman on this subject I'm not certain of what value they add particularly when you have four other projects that have been approved on that corner basically that probably already have those
studies in place and could the nonprofit organization lean on those organizations or those studies of likely were done for those organizations as a basically a way of the city helping us get this project done so quickly I'll just touch on the timeline of the project so I I've listed all the work that we've done over the last few years to get to where we are uh over the next two years we're looking to to work through uh the rezoning process lot Severance and completing several of the other studie
s that are required to get us to uh to application ready basically we're going to be targeting cmhc and if any other programs come along in the meantime we'll definitely look at them and uh there is work to be done to get us to that application stage so we're hoping by the end of 2025 we'll be ready to go for full Capital funding and uh and look to get spa and building permits in place and break ground in 2026 again this is all being done on a very limited budget so I'll let John speak to you ab
out uh what support and what ask Niger Falls nonprofit has for for Council the uh the project obviously needs the support of the city to go forward it needs the support of the community and we uh would hope that the city would help us uh by demonstrating that support verbally or in writing so we can go to some of the not for-profit organizations that help with funding um such as the Community Foundation for example um we also would ask and I know there's a meeting coming up in March where uh DC
charges which I just learned a whole M more about this evening and other uh other uh costs uh or fees uh payable to the city for permits Etc we would hope the city would uh eat those on our behalf um the uh only other thing I think uh we need uh is to move forward is uh to to work get get the severance in place uh so that we can uh look at talking to uh CC and other Capital funders uh until we get that done that Capital funding is really a a discussion rather than uh a reality so on that note I
will open it up for questions do you have anything else to add I I just wanted to quickly mention touching on the the ask that we have which we will be bringing formally in March for the next meeting um it it's working on the projects that I have it it has to be a partnership between every level of government private sector Community donors community members to get a project get this off the ground and make it work successfully a partnership has to be in place and we're really excited to work wi
th anybody that's willing to to step forward and help us on this and be that planning fee waivers be that expedited Services uh letter support we'd be asking for to include in our funding applications and anything that can be provided goes a long way and uh yeah we're just we're excited to move forward and and we look to do it with the city so thank you any questions we can that's great thank you very much for the presentation I've got councel neest and then strange and then the Coco I to you Mr
Mayor thank you very much for not only the presentation but the wonderful work that you do um for nonprofit um going back to 198 3 it seems like you were above U ahead of the curve knowing that this whole issue is going to explode unfortunately as we've seen um I'd like to comment on or kind of expand on what you were asking for Mr Potts um Regarding why like being creative and things that do cost money making things um affordable so to your point about going from a n story to a 10 story and St
udies have already been done um through you Mr May to um um Miss dolge why can we not do that why can we not look at creative ways and ways to save money that just make sense and keep um things more affordable when everything that we've seen is just costing so much including water and everything else so I I think his suggestion makes sense to me but I'm a late person so through you Mr M to miss DOL yeah M dolch thank you worship through you to the counselor obviously we like to be consistent wit
h all development applications not just obviously for affordable housing so once it does hit a 10 story Mark things like wind studies obviously parking is a requirement based on our our bylaw any reduction to that would require a parking study but again we can have further discussions with Municipal Works uh look at the wind study a little further uh but it is very sight specific uh I know the presenter did indicate that perhaps it can use other um studies from the area that is not possible for
a wind study because it's based on the building footprint itself um in terms of noise that's still required archaological still required water balance assessment I'd have to get more information on why that was required for a 10 Story versus a nine though I could into that further I know um through you Mr there is consistency and I I appreciate that but what makes this difference from one story to the next for all these different um requirements it's just it is that important through the worship
to the counselor um so in terms of that it's just part of our Urban design standards and it's just a a number that that has been selected obviously you know it could be 50 story could be 20 stories could be 30 stories but there's a certain Threshold at 10 stories where where it will impact wind at The Pedestrian level um you know is there a huge difference between 10 and N I can't tell you you know it's based on the specific building uh but there are design parameters you can do to reduce wind
impact at The Pedestrian level okay step backs things like that uh I don't see any step backs on the building but um something maybe for their architect to determine okay so is there something we can do to work with them to maybe um help modify uh these additional expenses thank you counselor um yes um we can we can look further into the studies have further discussions um but it's it's not just my department so I'd have to obviously uh get back to you on that okay all right thank you so much um
a few other questions so this really um I think it's wonderful that you've really tackled this whole issue of affordable housing all in one location you've um so you mentioned that um now is this a senior building or you just mentioned that 829 low-income seniors are looking for housing it will be a it will be a senior's build okay which is defined as 55 plus I believe yeah that's right oh that was my next question was what are the qualification that you have to um have to be able to apply for
this and how do you pick who gets to when you have such a waiting list of 13 well the we work with the region closely on the waiting list the the the waiting list is basically man managed and organized by the region and we uh we work with the region because they are the ones who subsidize uh the rents on those that are uh geared to income and then the our own management company which manages would then work with uh perspective tenants that aren't aren't coming from through the Region's uh uh wai
ting list and but they would be required we would still look at income and we would still look at uh age as uh to determine whether they fit the criteria for attainable um and this 829 number does that is that consistent every year are you seeing an A substant or what kind of increase are you see it's raising every year and yeah and that's not just so looking at Niger Falls nonprofit and the roughly 60 other housing nonprofit housing providers that work under the region of service manager everyb
ody's weight list is going up and it's it's correlating to the amount of uh houses in core need in each municipality okay um you and more and more people are are looking for affordable housing getting on Niger region centralized weight list putting their names on the different buildings and the municipalities they want to and potentially move to and where do they stay in these 13 years by the time they get there like good question it's like if they in need we have a solution for 112 yeah and I'm
hearing you and did you hear I tried to help you I'm I'm with you I'm with you um if I don't make these is they um also um you say you're nonprofit where do you get your capital from to CU this is well that's a that's a good question the capital would come primarily through the cmhc program which has been recently changed with all the focus on non for-profit housing we've owned this piece of land for 20 years and we've tried to uh run the flag run it up the flag pole a couple of times in the la
st 20 years but couldn't come up with the funding the funding model used to be around U um so much per unit and then you as a then the developer would have to come up with a difference well we're enough for profit organization no one's being paid on this so that model didn't work for us so we H until they changed the funding model with CC two years ago year and all of a sudden we now can work with CAC to get the funding we need to do this uh and one other thing is three of the four properties we
own will be paid for by the time uh that one is already paid for two of the other ones will be paid for outright before this build starts next year so they so we have Capital uh that we can go into from the existing properties for any uh shortfall there is or any Equity component other than the land that we'll need to come up with so we'll be able to lever those properties to fund help fund the new one so it's a real Testament to how well your board is managed yes it's any project like this cur
rently it's a pretty complicated funding model we're looking at uh obviously the organizations bringing its own Equity through land ownership and through whatever reserves they can they can uh raise uh sometimes there's a capital fundraising campaign we're hoping to avoid that on this project because it's always a risk but then we're also looking at uh while development charge waivers they they'll happen through Bill 23 because they meet the nonprofit threshold and the affordability threshold so
those are already in place um any assistance from the municipality the region we're going to be looking at any provincial grants cmhc Grant and financing the majority will be done through financing through cmhc so the building will hold a mortgage for up to 50 years but even with that it should be self- sustaining with the low income rents that they're going to charge do you have any other um proposed buildings after this one or do you have land or this is this well we'd like to see that wet la
nd dry up and put another building a third a third building to go with the one that already exists and the one we're talking about today that ever happened I well you never know you never know it was it became a wetland suddenly after we owned it uh and uh uh when we met with the just as an aside when we met with the uh Niagara the conservation Authority they originally deemed the Wetland wet to the sidewalk on M Cloud Road uh that we had to spend tens of thousands of dollars to uh display to th
em that it wasn't wet to the sidewalk that it was wet at the back and uh that's why we now have a building envelope what a what a one and A4 hectares M but they didn't start out that way so you never know that land might be drier than we think so that would be your other than that do you have other no we do not and the reason we aren't pursuing that if we were to try and deal with the Wetland behind us and try and move it to something we could develop it could take years so we we decided as a bo
ard that we would take what we could get as a way of a uh concession as to what was uh everybody agreed to was not wet and that's the project that we put forward today well thank you very much for providing this for our residents great thank you got councelor strange and then the coko yeah thank you Mr Mar thank you uh uh John and gour for the presentation and two members on your board I think it's I think it's amazing what you guys are doing and and you've already had it go through a few Hoops
obviously with the npca and the 15 meter buffer I'm surprised you got them down to 15 m true so um I think it's amazing I think Council as a whole should be should be helping whatever we can do on our on our behalf and and and obviously with the um DC charge is going to be waved because of Bill 23 and I I like it because it's affordable for seniors and you don't see too many places like that where you're just geared to seniors and and with everything going up you saw today with water and you kno
w we talked about DC charges and you know these these some of these um uh older people who who are retired and maybe not have a pension they need a place to stay and everything's going up but they're not getting any money for that right so it's so important uh what you guys are doing and I would I would love hopefully that npca can take a a relook at that Wetland to see if it actually is a wetland it just appeared the last couple years I should through a bunch of rain or whatever it may be sorry
I should say the npca has been great to deal with it's it's a provincially designated it's a provincial designation and it's something that it's it's out of control of of I know a lot ofans are are Sim they've been really good and so I'm glad that you you're able to get to the nine stories but I would like to do anything we can to to add that other story if we can to get more units in you know it's a perfect location you can and even with parking you know a lot of the sceners won't have uh uh c
ars because they can walk they're within this now we have grocery store right there um we have Starbucks we have breakfast there it's just almost almost in a little gated community so I think it's a perfect a perfect location for this type of build so congrat prec congratulations cuz I think we should do anything we can do possible to help this development okay thank you for that councelor L Coco thank you Mr Mayor thank you so much for your presentation I'm very impressed with what you've done
and what you want to continue to do I guess my questions um through the mayor to miss dolch um I wonder if we can get some guidelines about what we can wave um the ACT is to wave permit fees uh permit fee waivers I know we have a fee waiver on the city site and we wave uh opening and closing streets and uh fees for the G Center but can we wave permit fees for building that's my first question M DOL did you want to weigh on the first question thank you worship through to the oh I see Tiffany's on
the on as well but I will I'll start and let uh Miss Clark answer further but in terms of uh fee waivers obviously you do have to make the the accounts hole and in in particular for building um it is provincially legislated that they're they're fully funded so that's something that um should Council wave that fees they'd have to kind of reimburse the um the fee waiver so um I'll let Tiffany add in anything else you'd like to to add Miss cler thank you uh through the mayor I think Kira captured
it properly and and maybe instead of using the terminology of a fee waiver for a building permit consider it that you're giving a grant to cover the building permit that's how I would look at it same thing with development charges okay thank you and for the development charges talked about uh depends on when the application was put in so this application was put in before uh Bill 23 and talking about development charges being waved can we wave these development charges because of the application
date I I might step in just to sorry to jump but uh the the affordable housing phase of Bill 23 was already enacted and it's been in place since early 2023 so as long as you meet the threshold for nonprofit affordable then it's it's applicable and and I've recently gone through it in port colber on a project that's under construction right now so so yes yes the DCS would be waved in this case yeah okay okay thank you and would would miss dolch agree with that thank you worship uh I haven't I I
don't know the full definition under under the changes under Bill 23 um from the province um but I I will assume um gour knows what he's talking about and uh can can provide that information uh but in terms of I do know as long as they're signing an agreement with the region right now are the DCs are are wav so uh I'm just not sure there's an attainable definition and an affordable definition from The Province so um you know whether he meets that or not I think he'd be best to tell me yeah I I I
'll send the information to you no problem okay thank you um do we have a list of what these costs are could we be provided that before it comes to us or with when it comes to us in March about what the the costs are the cost like the studies you mean counselor the fee waivers the development charges what the costs are that they're looking for us to wait okay and I think but what you would suggest it if I uh if I understood you correctly you're saying you didn't need wind studies at Nine Stories
but you did a 10 correct and you're saying for another 10 feet do we need all these studies correct is that where you're where you're going at correct and we aren't disturbing the wetlands behind the property why are we doing an archaeological study just off of the sidewalk is it just as a as a point yeah and I don't know if staff right now are able to comment or if you are or if you need to see things or Miss uh dolch your thoughts on that thank you Worship in terms of the studies we'll have t
o get back for uh to you on that uh it's not just my department so I'd have to confer with other departments as well um but um yeah in terms of um what the building permit fees the planning fees all those things yeah we can have a calculation on the planning fees uh building permit fees I just need to make sure you're you're firm on your number your bedroom units that's all u in order to calculate that yeah the the uh the planning fee waiver that we're going to be looking for in submitting in Ma
rch that those numbers were provided in our pre-consultation uh minutes or the agreement so we we have those numbers those are I think roughly 23,000 um the building permit fees that's something that that came up through the initiative that the city of St Catherine has undertaken I think it's very new in terms of building permit fee waivers for affordable housing projects so that that's just something that we wanted to start the conversation with the city of Niger falls about I don't think there
's anything in place that would M dolge that exists currently thank you worship and I don't know if that's part of the city of St Catherine's half funding announcement that could be part of it um we're still waiting for a half funding announcement I'll put a bit of a plugin right now uh we do have a number of initiatives that we were going to look at as part of that um but we just don't have that funding yet and our CEO is going to weigh in on this as well I'll just I'll just um staff will bring
back a report that is you know um affordable housing is a strategic initiative both uh in the Strategic plan will'll bring back u a recommendation to council U staff are generally supportive uh of that there'll be certain conditions that uh the organization would have to meet you know including uh timelines for them maintaining the units as affordable units and that kind of stuff but um you know there will be a cost uh that's there but there's always a cost to do anything um and that'll be some
thing Council decide but generally um you know it's something that staff will support and we'll give options to the council when the full application comes back and we'll present you with all the full numbers as far as the studies go though I do agree with Mr pots and we have a bit of a history uh in in Prior life uh there are just certain things that legally we you know can't do because if we do it then we're assuming liability at that point in time when we should have um initiated it uh but we
'll look for you know some options uh for that but overall staff will be supportive of that it will just be a budgetary decision at that point in time thank you I had one one more comment and one more question U Miss Clark talked about a grant is this something that we could look at putting a grant together for nonprofit housing affordable housing I know we have um affordable housing being one of our our pillars in our strategic Plan and there's money set aside for that could we look at that mon
ey to either do a grant towards this project or um be waiver whatever the words we want to use or uh permits or DCS could we look at that money that's already set aside for affordable housing to go to this project I think it's a wonderful project and I think we need to try to do whatever we can to um accomplish this goal Miss Clark um through the mayor when you say the money that's set aside for affordable housing are we talking about uh the cao's um special purpose Reserve no um make a note may
be the CAO can jump in not not the special purpose reserve for the affordable um project there was another line item affordable housing oh like a capital project yes gotcha okay um in terms of a grant program so we do have in our budget um I think we've got 20,000 for building permit waivers and 880,000 for DC exemptions but the reality is those numbers are way too low um I did want to increase them but I pulled them back uh just given the magnitude of of the budget and the direction given for t
he 24 budget so it is certainly something we could look at but with any grant program we have to raise the levy and fund the grant program so that teer totter effect it has to come from somewhere if we're going to wave them on one side then the taxpayer picks it up on the other side thank you that's what I was talking about before you have these two competing um interests you want to have affordable housing but the money has to come from somewhere does it go to the taxpayer so um you know maybe
those are things I've talked about looking at the OGG funding uh where we're put putting that maybe OGG funding can go to affordable housing um maybe we can look at that but I I think whatever we do I know it's all the taxpayers money but whatever we do if we can try to do this because it will have 112 or 100 units I think that would be a huge impact on our community at okay so are you good Council coko yes I'm finished thank you okay great any other uh councelor strange yeah thank you Mr Mar an
d uh when I spoke to you earlier I forgot I like the way you have the timeline in here too because we just talked briefly about the holes in the grounds that people are building and not finishing it's nice to have a timeline we'd like to move that up yes and we would love that too and and um you know you mentioned about all levels of government and partnering with them I think that's so important whether it's the city the region the province is when we when we apply for or you apply for Grants c
an we apply on behalf of them because it's housing and N Falls for the province um and and how does that how does that how would that work can you apply specifically for a a a a development like this and say it's going to be here in three years you know we we you know you want to make you know wave fees all this sort of stuff can we get some kind of Grant um towards this project and how how that works M CL M thank you worship so in ter terms of applying for Grants uh for individual properties no
that's usually done by the the owners themselves but in terms of affordable housing uh we are looking at affordable housing CIP program um we are hoping to again fund it through the half funding some of it uh in order to offer those incentives but uh we're still waiting uh to to find that out but generally it's more across the board on things like that for us for our applications but in terms of um you know a regional more joint point partnership at the regional level perhaps if there was some
funding that we were aware of that we could do that for um the half is something is is closed it's closed now but we and what what about just some maybe I don't know if supporting letters help when you approach these grants from from our mayor and Council yeah that is something that we'll definitely be asking for and it's it's always really helpful to include anything from Municipal staff the mayor's office Regional Offices local MPS local local mpps anything like that goes a long way especially
for cmhc applications just show that that support is there the Partnerships are there so that's perfect so I think us as a council should endorse whatever we can to to get to get grants I don't have to put a motion for that think or we just just for that specific specific Grant to actually get a supporting letter for this development so maybe what we could do is um because we're going to end up receiving the presentation because there's nothing no report no specific ask and then maybe we can pu
t uh uh some support behind it you know in principle we support uh what you're asking and then of course subject to a report back from staff perfect an actual application so if you're yes uh so we can come I'll come back to you if you like to do that councelor Patel through you Mr Mayor thank you for a great presentation and I really like this project when you talk about affordable housing seniors infield there all the words everybody in this Council terms that everybody likes and everybody like
s to hear those terms I have one question that cost off everything is going up so have you factored that in in your project for example in 3 years everything cost maybe 10 times more I'm sorry not 10 10% more so what happens if the UNS are not affordable anymore yeah so something that our team does uh with the Housing Services New build division we we have a lot of projects underway and we've completed quite a few over the last few years so we're using that historical indexing information costin
g information information so we have kind up to the minute accurate pricing and we're we're always putting in inflation fees and escalation fees so that we feel really comfortable with the budgets that we have and we're in constant conversation with uh private developers General Contractors suppliers so we we have a good grasp on where where pricing Capital what where are the capital budget should be and uh in terms of affordability down the road um you know we we can only we can only set Rent r
ates and uh assume the financing interest rates and and build the budget the way we can with the numbers we have so we just we adjust as we go as as things change we adjust the budget and we adjust the operating performa and we just if we have to look for other sources or start a fundraising campaign to keep the affordability we do the only reason for my question is you know in the last couple years everything has gone up or paycheck and even fixed income hasn't gone up that's the only reason I
asked that question yeah yeah yeah because your uh units are geared towards most of the seniors who are on fixed income right so correct that's the only reason for the question and actually I like the answer that you're saying that you're up to date and everything is counted for so it's very well measured project and out of your three ask I know counselors strangest taking care of the third one and number two ask is uh staff working with you to uh get the process mov and our staff actually has a
good reputation most of the developers who have worked with our staff they always say that our city staff is one of the best one they worked with but that's in that uh aspect not to worry about that so second one is covered great thank you thank you thank you for that so if we have no further questions or comments uh we're going to go to councelor strange uh to receive receive the to receive as well as add that you know um get a supporting letter from from Council and yourself Mr Mayor to help
them in any way we can uh as they're trying to get grants from whether it's regionally or provincially or F federally we can help them out yep okay great youve got the motion by counselor uh strange second by councelor Thompson we'll call the vote all those in favor okay and that's unanimous so thanks very much gentlemen appreciate your hard work thank you very much see we can do to help you good thank you thank you okay Mr clerk would you please introduce the next item on the agenda uh public m
eeting is now being convened to consider proposed amendment to the city's official plan and Zoning bylaw to permit the development of a 10 story mixed commercial and residential building at 8885 and 8911 Lundy's Lane notice was given by first class mail in accordance with the planning act on January 26 2024 and by posting a sign on the property in question anyone who wants notice of the passing of the official plan and Zoning bylaw or preserve their opportunity to appeal to the Ontario land trib
unal shall give notice to the city clerk immediately after today's public meeting or leave their name on the signin sheets located outside Council chair thank you very much all right thank you very much Mr clerk where am I here okay I can ask Alexa Cooper uh to please exp our planner to please explain the purpose and the reason for the proposed amendments thank you mayor Di and uh good evening uh tonight I'm here to present an official plan and Zoning bylaw Amendment application uh for the prope
rties mentioned by our clerk to permit a 10-story mixed use building with 192 dwelling units and 1,330 square met of uh commercial space at grade okay thanks so here you can see uh the location map uh the property is located at the northeast corner of Garner Ron and Lundy's Lane to the West is a campground and uh an industrial use or BB glazing to the north we have um Scott Campground and beyond that the CN rail and then to the southeast we have uh some tourist commercial uses so the subject lan
ds are approximately uh9 hectors in size um and as mentioned we're looking at a 10 story mixed use building uh the official plan designates the property as tourist commercial it's also within our Lundy Lane satellite tourism district and it's within the Lundy Lane intensification Corridor in the city's official plan currently the official plan permits a maximum of six stories and 100 units per Hector as of right and the official plan Amendment that's been requested is to permit a increased TI to
10 stories with an increased density of 214 units per hectare for the zoning bylaw Amendment uh the land is currently zoned tourist commercial under zoning bylaw uh 79200 and the application requests that the subject lands be rezoned to a site specific tourist commercial to permit uh the proposal on tonight's agenda so there's been um a couple iterations of the proposal for the 10 story building here you can see what was originally submitted um there's some stepping down towards the east um and
some stepping down at the corner as well and here you can see the renderings that were provided with that submission and then uh a resubmission was received I think it was about um month and a half ago now uh and the main change you can see here in the Box in red is that the 10 stories was pulled to the corner because this is identified as a Gateway location in the official plan so this was to provide a little bit more um gravitas for Urban Design at the corner which again you can see here in t
he revised renderings the site specific is requesting a couple of things so I'll just go through them here uh they're looking to reduce the rear yard depth to about 4 M for some above ground fire escapes from the uh underground parking where as required as 10 m uh they're looking to increase the Max total floor area of dwelling units to 92% they're looking to increase maximum permitted height to 36.5 uh to permit balconies in to encroach into any required yard uh to reduce parking to 1.25 spaces
per dwelling unit and one space per 28 square m of commercial space they're looking to deem lendy's Lane is the front lot line and also to add a home occupation as a permitted use so staff held an open house on December 4th 2023 and we received um a few comments from there and then also a few leading up to the meeting uh the main ones were compatibility with the surrounding uses such as the campgrounds and the industry so the subject site um in staff's opinion has appropriate setbacks and heigh
t transitions to neighboring properties uh there was a land use compatibility study submitted which determined that the proposal is compatible subject to m ation measures and warning Clauses which staff have included in their recommendation um in a holding provision and uh staff are further recommending that warning Clauses be implemented at time of site plan to alert future purchasers and tenants of the neighboring uses in the area uh which has also been added to the holding provision there was
also a concern about um conversion of employment lands so our official plan does identify uh tourist commercial as uh an employment use for the city however there's no uh request to eliminate any of the current permissions in the tourist commercial designation um and they're just looking to the proposal just looks to increase permissions that already exist so for height and for density for residential uh there was also concerns for the amount of density proposed and if servicing capacity was th
ere um um in speaking with Municipal work staff there was they confirmed that there were no concerns for capacity um however staff are now recommending a three-year Sunset clause and this is to ensure that the development connects to Municipal infrastructure in a timely manner um for City and region Transportation staff uh they said there were no concerns and that there would be adequate parking provided for the proposal uh so staff's recommendation is that the amendments be approved as outlined
in the report on tonight's agenda subject to the three-year Sunset clause for the execution of a site plan agreement on uh for the property and that the amending zoning bylaw include a holding provision to require um an updated wind study with wind tunnel modeling Implement air mitig uh air quality mitigation measures submit a revised noise study to evaluate the new proposal and implement the appropriate warning clauses and mitigation measures um also a warning Clause advising future purchasers
or leas holders of nearby industry and campgrounds Implement archaeological warning Clauses and uh to secure a rooftop feature SL detailing that's distinctive but complimentary to the style of the building uh at time as site plan thanks thank you uh do we have any questions of council for Miss Cooper okay so yes Council l coko thank you Mr Mayor just one question and then some more comments later um I guess through you to miss Cooper regarding the air quality mitigation would that be for the ca
mpfires from the campground and from the industrial and what type of mitigation air quality mitigation can you do so through you Mr Mayor uh there was an air quality study submitted with the application the the conclusion was that there were no concerns for air quality from the the surrounding uses that the concern was um actually from Lundy's Lane and the traffic that is present on Lund's Lane and the mitigation measures recommended were uh the Strategic placement of things such as um air vents
uh putting in AC so that they can close their Windows um things of of that nature okay thank you I'll wait for the rest of the presentation for the rest of my comments thank you okay thank you any other questions of councel for Miss Cooper okay seeing none members of the public are advised that failure to make an oral or written submission at this public meeting could result in the Ontario land tribunal dismissing any referral that it receives failure to notify the city clerk to preserve their
opportunity to appeal will result in staff rejecting an appeal as per section 3419 of the planning act Council will now hear from anyone other than the applicant who wishes to speak to the proposed amendments Mr clerk do we have anyone registered to speak uh yes your worship we did have uh one resident that reached out Mr uh slavi rosev I believe is going to be here in attendance I believe those was there um I with the applicant okay thank you um so no one from the public perhaps you could ask i
f there are any from the public present before we uh go to the applicant or the representative okay thank you Mr clerk is there anybody here in the gallery other than the applicant who wishes to speak to the proposed amendments okay yep you can step forward if you like to I'm on the list and so is Sten Rivers uh you're on the list okay Mr clerk other than the applicant yes so we have you uh listed here as being with the Consultants uh we're just asking if there's any members of the public that a
re wanting to address this matter yeah so is there any members of the public who wish to speak to council about this application coming forward other than the anyone speaking on behalf of the applicant no I'm not the applicant we're the ones across the street but we we supplied ahead of time our names okay sorry then yes that now would be the time for you to come up I think Sten Rivers is first he's on the zoom okay so he's also not with the applicant right okay gotcha okay great so uh Stephen R
ivers are you online he's online he's muted though he's muted okay Mr Rivers you need to unmute is he unmuted he's still muted no Mr Rivers I don't know if you're listening or if you can hear us you're muted right now you have to unmute to join the meeting okay Mr William Mr Rivers you hearing things all right uh so Mr Rivers if if you can hear us we can't hear you so you might need to sign out and then sign back in and then unmute yourself so you can do that right now did that work oh there we
go yeah yep we can hear you okay okay great uh welcome to the meeting you've got you've got five minutes to State your case okay hopefully we can get through it then in less time than that um uh the Garland property uh that uh is across the road the industrial property uh certainly the the analysis that has been done for that uh uh is assumed it was a Class 2 industry U I think if you look at some of the criteria for identifying a Class 2 industry under the provincial uh guidelines it may well b
e a class 3 Industry which requires a greater setback and greater uh uh mitigation measures but that's you know that's something to be looked at Future the property of the application uh is is tourism as as I'm sure all the counselors know and your official plan defines tourism as an employment area uh employment lands your official plan amendment number 40 147 uh talks about safeguarding um of uh adjoining uses and in particular your policy 8.5 under that new fish plan Amendment talks about pro
viding a suitable environment for employment uses such as the uh PL use at the Garland uh Garland property or uses that may be there in the future in the past uh the uh industrial land owner has had concerns uh about the potential of in residential uses uh adjacent to are nearby hence the subdivision on the north side of the railway tracks that has caused at least one of the uh and of that property to move out uh the complaints from the the residential users uh became so own that the user U red
path left and uh you know luckily the uh the owners of the property have found a a new industry move in there your policy 8.12 under under the new official plan Amendment 147 actually prohibits residential uses not inciler to the employment uses um the residential uses that are being proposed for this this project it it's hard to contemplate that they're in sillary to the employment uses that are going to be there uh the employment uses uh restaurants U doctor's offices things like that uh the r
es you know the 10 story residential 10 stories of residential or the nine stories of residential above the ground floor it's hard to M hard to contemplate their ancillary to to the to the employment uses that policy section also under e14 uh talks about looking at alternative locations and I saw nothing in the uh uh background studies that were prepared or in your staff report uh where an alternative location was considered for this building uh you know it there there may well be alternative lo
cations the 10 stories of residential doesn't need to maybe go where it's going um the um that policy also uh directs your the development to consider the potential impacts of on the employment uses and um I haven't seen again any any uh anything any of the background studies or your staff report looking what potential impacts of the residential uses are are or could be on the employment use uh certainly we have as I said earlier an example of how the residential use uses have caused at least on
e uh employer to leave that site uh the types of uses that are permitted in that on that site by your official plan in your zoning bylaw uh can be considerably more onerous than the used there now so I I overall I think the the application was certainly amendable in what it's trying to do in terms of providing uh uh residential uses is probably not really appropriate in this location uh and the key thing I think the the council has to consider is that uh policy um 8.12 of your official plan that
prohibits residential use is not inary to employment use uh the planning Act is very and the planning Prat policy statement is very specific about the importance of particular words of May should shall and in this case prohibit so uh Mr uh Mr Mayor that's the the gist of my presentation okay thank you for that maybe we can get our staff to uh I don't know Miss dolch would it be yourself or it be Miss Cooper or who would be the one to answer some of those questions okay M Cooper it's you hi um s
o through you Mr Mayor um as I mentioned in the prop in my presentation the property is designated tourist commercial in the city's official plan um our official plan does consider the conversion of tourist commercial designation to a separate designation as a conversion of employment Lance however in this instance we're not looking at um converting the tourist commercial designation again we're not looking at removing any permissions from what's currently permitted in the tourist commercial des
ignation we're looking at increasing as of right um permissions So currently six stories at 100 units per hectare mixed use buildings are permitted in the official plan and uh the application is looking at going up to 10 stories and 214 units per hectare again still with the commercial um on the the ground floor as far as um the class of the property um for BB glazing I'm not an expert in in that nature um the report that we received designated it as or evaluated it to be Class 2 industry and th
e reports through the noise study and the air quality that were provided recommended mitigation measures as well as warning Clauses to determine um that it would be suitable uh the proposal in relation to uh the industry across the road so I I think that covers most of the points that were made if there's anything else you'd like me to address just let me know uh does that uh answer off I mean I wasn't taking notes I'm assuming that that was the main ones Mr Stevens are you or Mr Rivers sorry ar
e you still online uh yes I am so do you have any followup to the comments uh or the rebuttal from Miss Cooper uh I think Miss Cooper is correct in in what she's asking for uh isn't necessarily impacted by the U by the industrial use but again your policies look at are from the other way around as well as as you know the impact of the industrial use uh it also looks at the potential impact of the residential use on the industrial use and there hasn't been a lot said or anything said about that u
h and and you know it's OB it's historically obvious that that the residential uses can have a negative impact on Industrial use and potentially future industrial uses and again your policy prohibits incil residential development within ter commercial employment area unless it's inciler to the tur commercial use itself and there's been nothing uh again in in any of the documentation that I've seen that gives any indication that the residents of a 10 story Residential Building are inary to one st
ory of commercial any further uh I mean we can have a difference of opinion but I mean anything further you want to add uh Miss Cooper thank you Mr Mayor so through you um it it does sound like it's a difference of professional opinion but I would like to further add that the property while I understand where Mr Rivers is coming from that and using the employment policies but this property is designated tourist commercial so we use the tourist commercial policies to evaluate proposals that come
through um residential uses are permitted as of right in the tourist commercial designation um and we're looking the application is looking at um increasing those as of right permission so I I think I'll leave it at that okay great thank you very much all right thank you very much for your comments uh Mr Rivers my pleasure okay Mr clerk who do we have up next uh well seeing that uh Steven Rivers was also lubed in with Mr David Mueller and Mr Bob naen I'm not sure if they had anything further to
add y welcome thank you I'm not going to take all five minutes I'm only going to take three I apologize ahead of time for speaking so loudly I have a hard I'm hard of hearing so I speak a little louder than is socially appropriate um and I do want to say before I start that the last time I was here was in 19 September of 1992 uh with my father Henry Mueller of blessed memory and he was here with a colleague of his this was in his Houdini days and he was here with Doug Henning and they were doing
an application for V land and I remember the honor honorable Wayne Thompson was here in the in the mayor's uh seat and um we had a very good laugh that day everyone here in the uh in Council and I remember in particular one uh City councelor Norm pck of blessed memory was giving Doug a very hard time and Doug wrote a little note that he passed over to my dad that he said uh if this guy keeps growling at me I'm going to levitate his seat by 10 feet so I'm hoping and I'm counting on mayor and Cou
ncil to have as much fun tonight as we did uh the last time I was here 21 years ago yeah wow uh so my father Henry Mueller his Epitaph was uh you know Niagara Falls Ontario was clo very very close to his heart and his Pro his his uh Mantra was always that there has to be an enormous industrial base without an industrial base the city can't can't survive not everybody can be selling tours on Clifton Hill so we he spent his entire lifetime really along with Bruce Ward and Bruce Peters of buying uh
empty industrial buildings in niagar Falls convincing outof town uh Industries to move into those buildings he would rent them to them for five or 10 years at a low rate and then convince them afterwards to buy the building and he did that they the that group did that for 28 different buildings uh they built a lot of the business park uh as a group and uh I am here because I've inherited the last few build bus that he had and one of them is what we call the national grocer building and the Nati
onal Grocers building is at on Garner Road near Landes Lane uh after National groceries closed he bought the building got red path sugar to come in they were there for 10 years they left seven years ago and now we have BV glazing which is a division of exchange income corporation which is a multi- very very large Toronto Stock Exchange traded company and uh for those of you who don't know about BV glazing they have the patent on uh mirrored panels that go on skyscrapers so when you see skyscrape
rs in downtown Toronto or downtown Manhattan those were are covered in a mirrored envelope that is a product of Niagara Falls and it's absolutely fascinating to be in there if you haven't been in their Factory several hundred people who are making good money 52 weeks a year they run three shifts and it is absolutely fascinating to take a tour of the glass making factory uh you'll see after you go in it I mean it's a class three operation there's no question about it it was there was some discuss
ion by the applicants person they'd hir that it might be Class 2 she drove by and saw a nice building could say it's class two but as soon as you take a tour of it you'll realize it's it's heavy industry and it's an amazing amazing product that they something that we should all be very very proud of um so it's 150,000 Square ft uh they store a lot of their finished product and their raw materials outside as as you know if you've been down there and the idea of putting a 10-story apartment buildi
ng next door to this Factory is totally ludicrous it's ludicrous for the people who are going to be living in the building they're going to be overlooking a glass making factory who would want to overlook a glass making factory it's noisy it's full of dust and it's just unless they're looking for a job and they want to be close to work it's not a place where anybody would want to be living and the idea you know she said you'll see in the report it's 38 M away so 38 M you know for those of you wh
o are oldtimers 38 m is kind of like a a mid-range pass from Don ory to Derek Sanderson it's not a th000 meters that is that is required for a class 3 Industry it's 38 not a thousand so it's it's really and by and the residents are always going to be complaining you're offering something to somebody who you know is going to be complaining ahead of time we know that for the factory it's also going to be a problem if you look at the investment information on site online for this building it's not
for people to live in it's for people that buy the units and rent them out it's what's called in in prons an Airbnb Hive and so what's going to happen is you know we don't have a fence around our property we always say to these companies from Toronto you don't need a fence you're not in Toronto anymore you're in Niger Falls now you don't need a fence but you can be sure when they have frat parties Etc in these property that they're going to go across the street they're going to they're going to
break the glass Etc and in no time I'm not only going to need a fence I'm going to need uh like an electric fence there so it's totally inappropriate so that's the end of my time to conclude uh my family wants to tell the mayor and the counselors uh we have tremendous gratitude to you for all you've done for for the city of Niger Falls your hard work does not go unnoticed thank you for listening and God bless you all thank you very much before before you run away before you run away uh Dr Muelle
r do you have any questions of councel I think councel newest you have a question I I do just uh through you Mr Marin thank you very much um quick just a quick question how many people work in that factory that I you said it night a couple hundred a couple hundred and is and not at $15 an hour either and they're all local residents that working there um if this apartment building goes up what is the CH well they is that a situation where they may not stay um well their their leases up in the sum
mer of 2026 and as I said our plan has always been they we try to convince companies to rent for 10 years at a reasonable price they're only paying 450 a foot right now the market rate is nine and we try to get them to buy it because once they buy it then they're stuck here in town like we just did I just sold bright canning and ABC rail uh to foam cor and foam cor is doing an now they're local company but they're doing amazing things there they've hired tons and tons of people and that's the id
ea to get people to buy the building so that they're in town forever thank you thank you for coming and speaking to us thank you any other questions or comments and yeah we do have fond memories your dad and uh I was a tenant uh as Bob will know it one of the buildings and uh a lot of funny stories definitely did a lot for our community and I have been through when it was um you know the different iterations including BB glass so we have toured the facility so it is quite impressive and you're r
ight there's a lot of people working there have to acknowledge that for sure so thank you for your time appreciate it thank you Mr clerk just Mr naen from the applicant no you're good okay all right so there's is there anyone else other than the applicant who wishes to address Council okay seeing none Council will now hear from the applicant or his or her representative good evening worship members of council um I appear on behalf of the applicant m5v the Lundy Inc uh with me I have Mary Lanner
who's the land use planner from npg planning Solutions and uh slaby grf uh who is a senior engineer uh re noise and vibration from rwdi there he is here great uh I'd like to begin by confirming that we have reviewed planning staff's recommendation report and we accept all of staff's recommendations and at the end of this meeting We'll be asking that you move and approve all of the recommendations before I call on Mary Lou and slavy to discuss the technical merits of the application I'd like you
to keep in mind the following facts fact number one uh the concerns raised by the campground use uses and letters and by the speakers this evening um have been dealt with by the consultants and have been taken into account by staff uh in short staff has confirmed that their concerns have been appropriately dealt with through large setbacks and appropriate mitigation measures and warning Clauses that will be on title in purchase agreements and in lease agreements so all buyers and tenants will ha
ve prior notice before deciding to purchase or rent or occupy a unit um and I'm going to ask slavy to go into some detail as to the work he's done and truly he is the only expert in the room tonight dealing with noise and vibration there is no other expert fact number two as mentioned by Alexa as of right our client could build up to six stories with a density of 100 units per Hector without us being here this evening so in short the application basically results in an addition additional four s
tories and greater density greater density which will allow for the potential of increased affordable housing units the fact number three The Proposal includes 71 affordable units being units defined as being sold at % of the total units in this building being affordable I can't think of any project that you've approved that has achieved that number in a building fact number four as you heard earlier through the uh presentation by the uh um nagra uh nonprofit housing group the city has a target
of 135 units annually being approved as affordable if you approve the application this evening you will achieve 53% of your annual Target and you still have 10 months left to go fact number five this is the perfect site for affordable housing the property is located on two arterial roads it is on major Transit routes it's within walking distance of grocery stores convenience uses restaurants Etc more importantly it does not abut a existing residential but instead AB buts a seasonal Campground wh
ich makes higher density much more compatible in this situation I've been in front of you many times when I have applicants doing infill applications right up against neighborhoods those are always problematic you're not dealing with that here now to give you some background on my client m5v Inc and the principal of the company is here this evening Mr Shard McQueen a regular complaint I have heard um at Council and it was mentioned this evening is the frustration of approving developments but no
one is putting a shovel in the ground no one's in a rush to build the recommendation before you requires my client to get a site plan approved within three 3 years otherwise it loses its zoning rights that's the sunset Clause that's been included and my Cent is fine with that Clause being included respectfully this Builder has a proven record of getting approvals and actually building and selling units he has four phases of primarily townhouse units on McLoud Road consisting of 261 total units
all under construction as we speak with 54 units complete and fully occupied finally before I pass it on to to Mary Lou and um and our noise and vibration expert I want to leave you with some numbers to illustrate the economic impact of this development total development charge is based on current rates and it'll be a lot more if you approve a new DC uh bylaw given the numbers I saw this evening but current numbers you're looking at over $5 million in DCS for this project total annual property t
ax assessment will be approximately $990 million total annual property tax is just for the residential component not including the commercial units will be $1,554 th000 using current property tax uh rates in terms of labor hours we're looking at 18 months worth of work 135,000 hours in total of labor hours the the total cost to build the project is approximately $60 million so I I respect what Mr Mueller uh had to say and uh I have mixed emotions uh this night because you may not be aware but I
actually did some legal work for your father who I respected greatly so I'm a little torn um but industry is important um but we have an expert that has studied this industry and has put a plan in place which will allow these units to be developed 71 affordable units will be in this building and I think that's amazing so I'll leave it up to Mary Lou to uh to speak to the planning mer excuse me planning merits and then you can speak to noise and vibration uh thanks very much uh this is actually n
ot the first slide in the presentation so just while we are queuing it up I will um introduce myself my name is Mary lieuten I'm the president of npg planning Solutions and uh you heard our firm earlier this evening my business partner Aaron Butler is doing the work for Niagara Falls nonprofit and we're happy to support affordable housing in the city of Niagara Falls this is an image of the building and I'm going to spend a bit of time on that in a second although I am slavy is going to do the b
ulk of uh the presentation as Alexa indicated this is uh the site of the property this air photo shows you both Garner and lendy's and you can see our neighbors uh surrounding us all of whom we have taken into consideration with this application the broader context of the area is the Lundy Lane intensification Corridor there's uh tourist commercial uses around us there's also BB glazing the industrial site as well as uh the two campgrounds and through the work that we did with staff and through
the reports leading up into this we did take into consideration all of what was going on around us including the tourist commercial designation and the permissions that are on the site as of right right now and I'll touch on that a bit more in a second so you can also see more broadly that there's a lot of really good things happening in and around this community including um a lot of residential neighborhoods some employment uses as well as Community facilities all of which are very very import
ant as is Transit on Lundy's Lane operated by Niagara region and weo this is um the revised image of the building and we made changes based on the Urban Design comments from uh your staff and updated the design to incorporate their Urban Design feedback and some of the things you can see are the corner presentation the three-story Podium and then in this drawing you can see what it looks like from Lundy's Lane including that the building is closer to Lundy's Lane we have in fact pulled the build
ing as far forward to londes and Garner as is possible on the site recognizing there is a bit of a road widening that we need to contribute uh to the municipality for garner road you can also see that there is commercial uses on the ground floor and they have a lot of windows and doors so that you can see the businesses from the street as you're walking along Lundy's Lane and I did mention earlier that I would speak to the issue of the tourist commercial this is a tourist commercial site it does
permit residential as Rocky indicated what we are asking is for a bit more residential in order that we can achieve a few things including provision of the affordable housing units I agree with the opinion that Alexa and the planning department has provided to you about the tourist commercial policies and their applicability here residential is a permitted use let's be clear it is permitted on this site um just want to touch on a couple of other Urban Design Elements in terms of the design um m
aking sure that there's a really good presentation at the street so the building doesn't feel overwhelmed and that we are able to provide uh different treatments to uh break up the facade so it doesn't appear as the sheer wall from any of the streets just uh the official plan Amendment Alexa has touched on so I won't spend time on that and uh just on the site specific zoning we do agree with the recommendations of Staff including the two adjustments to the zoning relative to um the height and we
we fully support the zoning bylaw that they've drafted including the sunset provision I'll turn it over to slavy now thank you Mary L Mr mayor council uh I guess this is where I introduce myself U my name is slavi rph I work at rwdi I may look young but I've worked for the ministry of the environment I was the second person to hold the noise portfolio MTO had a lot of input in some of the Noise Pollution Control guidelines that are used in The Province as well as the land use compatibility guid
elines I do a lot of training for Industries for Developers for planners and how to use those regulations how to implement them into their design into their facilties ities I've coached a lot of uh municipalities over the years so with that in mind I want to do cover a couple things uh I think I skipped the slide so applicable documents there's one overarching mostly encompassing document that applies to both developments and industries in the province of Ontario it's developed by the ministry i
n environment it's called mpc300 if you work for the municipality for a number of years and you've been at these meetings I'm sure you've heard lease the abbreviation the letters so this document applies to both developers and industries different parts but the idea is more or less the rules are very similar for both how do we do NOS assessments for land use planning well we look at the surroundings so the development we look at what influences the impacts on the development in our case that's r
oad traffic rail traffic the industry in the area so we take those sound levels cumulatively and we determine whether or not they meet the provincial guidelines best manager practices for comfortable living environment and this is where we recommend changes to the design maybe improv building controls that have better acoustical properties than what the Ontario building code specifies the idea of the assessment is to ensure compatibility can be achieved between the industry and the development t
his is not a case of one over the other we want to balance the two because we understand how important both industry and Residences are so with this in mind Mary L mentioned that we've done the noise assessment we've made some recommendations um based and these recommendations are based on the road and rail noise this is not because of the industry this is not because of the campgrounds this is strictly because of the amount of traffic both from Rail and and uh vehicle traffic so we are recommen
ding improved building controls for the windows so this number SDC 34 doesn't really mean much to you but Ontario building code has one specific number this goes way beyond that number so what that means is the windows that are facing north industry and the rail line will be so much better at reducing the sound levels than your typical window that's in your house so unless you live downtown Toronto you're overlooking Gardener the windows that will be implemented in this development would be so m
uch better than the typical residence uh in addition to this we're also recommending noise warning Clauses again for rail for road traffic and to proximity to industrial commercial establishment in addition we're also looking at the outdoor amenity spaces so every building has an outdoor Amity space and it has to be protected so you want to be able to go out enjoy some fresh share uh you want a barbecue on the communal area so in our assessment we're recommending Some Noise burial walls that wou
ld keep the sound levels down in those spaces to protect the occupants if you want to use them so we determined that based on the the rail traffic information that we've gotten based on the road traffic information that we've gotten from the city those spaces will be a little bit noisier where you may not be able to carry a normal conversation so by putting in noise barrial walls there you're reducing the sound levels to a point where you can comfortably carry a conversation without raising your
voice BB glazy Industries in Ontario are required to have an environmental permit issued by the ministry of the environment what that permit does it limits the sound levels that an industry can generate at noise sensitive land uses around them and in this area there's a number of noise sensitive land uses so these would be the seasonal campgrounds the houses to the north of the rail line as well as the vacant lot the vacant lot does have an overnight accommodation allowance the ministry of the
environment NPC 300 that document treats that allowance as if that's a noise sensitive receptor so an industry if it applies for a permit through the ministry of the environment it has to consider that vacant lot as if there's something there a residence someone living there and it has to assess its cumulative sound levels at that vacant lot and ensure that it meets the sound level limits set in that guideline mpc300 here's an image of the existing noise sensitive land uses you can see to the no
rth there are the houses uh just past the rail line there's the seasonal campgrounds to the west to the South to the east as well as the vacant lot so you can see how close all of these existing land uses are to the facility essentially completely surrounded by them and there is some talk about classification so I want to give you a little bit of context what that means where that number comes from in addition to noise guidelines the ministry environment also has a document related to land use c
ompatibility the you may have heard people refer to as the D series guidelines there's a number of guidelines for specific uses D6 refers to a compatibility between Industries and Residences in that document the ministry suggests a methodology for assigning an industrial classification one two or three depending on the intensity of the industry how it's used and the scale of it so class one is usually the lightest of Industries that's your mind shop one paint booth maybe one truck that comes in
every day shipping receiving very small scale CL three on the other hand is the very large scale facility and if you're from here I'm sure you know Washington Mills salad steel those are examples of class three facilities large footprint 7 days a week three shifts a lot of dust a lot of vibration a lot of noise a lot of things they have to comply with significant environmental regulations here it's the service to call this a class one even though the D series allow a downgrade of classification
if they're completely surrounded by existing sensitive receptors so instead of calling this a class one which again is a disservice this isn't a class three this is a class two because of look at how close it is to existing sensitive uses 70 m is the minimum recommended distance based on a class two classification by the minist the environment you can see that the 70 M buffer is already encroached by existing the existing campgrounds so our field work when we did the field work a few years ago a
nd I was there today uh you cannot hear the facility over the the sound of the traffic over the rail meaning that uh when you move in you will not be able to hear that facility meaning that the sound levels the facility would have to meet are the sounds of traffic so the facility essentially slips in between below the radar of the noise if you will seasonal campgrounds was already mentioned that we're implementing a number of uh noise control uh sorry noise warning Clauses as well as some uh mit
igation measures to the building which would allow the the windows to remain closed we have air conditioning so close the windows uh we have improved building controls so better Windows which would reduce the sound levels within the interior of the space we're also recommending uh noise barrier walls for the outdoor amenity spaces meaning that we're going to reduce the sound levels within those amenity spaces as well so through implementing those we are demonstrating compatibility from a noise p
erspective with the campg grounds mainly to the east but as well as the ones to the to the West believe this is it uh thanks very much slavy I won't take much more of your time we have done um a number of studies and you as you just heard from slavy a very detailed assessment of noise the relationship to our neighbors and what was driving the actual noise and how we can mitigate that and our client is committed to implementing all of the recommendations of the rwdi study as well as the recommend
ations that your staff have included in the report we're asking that you support this application this evening it is an appropriate location for housing you've already approved that with the tourist commercial zoning and designation we're simply asking for more housing and the opportunity to provide you with more uh affordable housing and achieve some of the multiple goals that this site will achieve for the city Rocky I'm not sure if you have anything else uh to add where' you go I just wanted
to mention there was uh there was a mention of the units being used as Airbnb that's not possible at this site it's not legal so if anybody would like to use a unit as Airbnb they're going to have to make a site specific application and come back before Council and that was mentioned in the staff report okay thank you for that uh so do we have any questions of council for the presenters uh councelor strange councelor NE yeah thank you Mr to our presenters all three um I'm sorry what was what was
your name again slavy um in your opinion wouldn't wouldn't the the Bey glazing have more effect on the campground beside it than the building that you're proposing just seems they're always outside they whether they're having campfires or not they don't a lot of them don't have the opportunity to close their windows on on their uh on their accommodations there you think it would be a little bit more detriment to them than it would be to you know and and I don't know if they are complaining or n
ot through the mayor um yes we did look into that um so we could not find any uh environmental permits for BB glazing but there's there's some facilities that could be exempt so we assumed they may have been exempt and we did a due diligence exercise where we studied their effects on the campground we assumed that they would comply meaning that our um building would experience far less of a noise impact than the campground so we did do that exercise and you are completely correct they're a lot c
loser and it will be more impacted okay thank you and and maybe to Rocky um you know you're building a a a two a 10 story where you would have you could as of right not even come to council for a sick story am I right that's correct so you're just coming to add to the four stories basically so coming at four stories and increasing the units and the affordable units which is pretty incredible and I I don't I haven't seen uh a development quite like this where you're you're adding 30% to Affordabl
e units you got 192 units and you have 71 affordable units which is pretty pretty amazing and you mentioned the target um that we have to try to reach is35 annually and and just on this we have 71 so we're we're over uh 50% which is which is a great start to the year so um and I love I love the look of the building I think it's it's very attractive it's it's a nice building and I love the like uh McLoud Road it is a great location because you can walk to the grocery store walk to restaurants the
re's there's Stores um and you know a lot of people might not even have cars so you can just walk to those different places I think it's a great look plus the uh the transportation you have a public transit uh that's coming through all the time time on Lun l so I I I love the development and um when the public meeting is over I can make a motion okay thank you for that I've got councelor new tag and then the Coco uh through you Mr Mayor just one quick question to uh Rocky you mentioned the affor
dable units what's the square footage sh an affordable unit in this building um I'm not sure Shard do you want to answer that question what you think the square footage would be for the uh for the one-bedroom affordable units 550 ft okay 550 and they're all one bedroom those are all thank you all right thank you thank you for that I've got Council Loko then Thompson oh you're waai thank you Mr Mayor to the speakers I really love this um this presentation and the development it's in the correct u
m zoning TOS commercial we can have residential I love that you're um bringing all of the affordable units in and and not only the affordable but the attainable you have 72 units um that are under under the 539 so you have both but I do have some questions and concerns where do we get the classification class two or class three is there somewhere um within your presentation it's class two um it's been stated through BB glazing it's class three where can we get confirmation because that's sort so
rt of for me where it's hinging on is it a th000 meters or is it 70 M where can we get that confirmation of the facts Mr GR through the mayor uh this is entirely uh based on the opinion of an expert um the way the compatibility works is there are a number sort of U examples of the ministry environment provides on what could be considered class one two and three that's based on the the footprint of the site the intensity of the activities how much outdoor activities there are if there's dust ther
e's odor there's vibration there's noise um and also and this is this is why we've um selected the class 2 you can downgrade an industry based on existing sensitive land uses and in this case this industry is completely surrounded meaning that a class 3 just doesn't make sense in this area because um a class three would have to have a th000 meter minimum separation distance and in this case you have people living next store um so by using this which is written in the D series guideline there's a
n entire section in the guidelines that talks about downgrading because of this we can say that it's a class one is in a light- scale industry but we don't think we don't agree with this which is why we called it a class two we think that fits more appropriate appropriately it's a medium-sized uh facility it's definitely not a class 3 again I mentioned Washington Mill salad steel those are examples of class 3 facilities in this area thank you those are the things that I was thinking of because w
e're all very cautious when we um put residential near Washington Mills and salad steel to me there needs to be a better way of classifying it just than a professional opinion like I I would assume that the city would have some sort of listing about you know we have zoning this is Zone this this is Zone this do we not have something through economic development that can guide us to what the classification is and my thoughts about the 70 MERS that there's existing there sometimes when we have exi
sting things it doesn't mean that they're necessarily the right thing now they could be grandfathered or they could be um there could be other permissions I just want to make sure that the classification because everything for me is hinging on that class two or class three when we maybe talk to Miss DOL or through our economic development is there something else that we can look at for the classification other than a professional opinion between two different people who have different um thought
s on the matter yeah we're going to go to Miss D thank you worship through you to the counselor um in terms of whether or not we would get involved in that we're again we're planners we're not experts in that field so the experts in the field are obviously the gentleman before you this evening he's the expert in noise and assessment uh although myself and and my staff have done the training on noise assessments we can um you know obviously review those noise assessments make sure that um more sa
tisfied with kind of the the experts opinion um but in terms of the two experts obviously planners are not necessarily experts in in noise compatibility that that's left to the noise Consultants um so that's what we do similar to traffic I wouldn't provide expert advice on traffic um so so that's where we rely on the experts to provide us the advice um and then we uh we review those reports um if we have questions we ask the noise consultant um in this case we we were satisfied with with the res
ults of the the study Council C thank you um thank you I'm not so much concerned about the noise I'm concerned about the setback and to me the city should have some sort of um guideline about what is tourist commercial what is class one class two it doesn't make sense to me that somebody can classify it something like I I think there's there has to be a listing somehow of um in real estate of what what it is it doesn't make sense to me that somebody can just decide what it is and I'm not talking
about the noise I'm just talking about the setback from from the place is there nothing that can provide us that listing within our city to say here's the classes Mr thank you worship through you to the counselor so so the D6 guidelines are controlled by the ministry the ministry provides those D6 guidelines gives you examples of class one class 2 class three that's that's where we get our guidance from um so they control that through through their regulation so that's something um you know not
something the city has done but something the ministry provides us advice on and and guidance through that guideline um the experts have to rely on that guideline and and and um determine through their analysis how they meet that guideline are they class one class two class three um not something for the city to do um you know if there's something you're looking for um you know the city could hire a noise consultant to to determine what industries are What in in the community um you know based
on that but that's that's something we would have to hire a noise expert to do okay thank you how long have the houses that are around BB glazing how long have they been there which houses within the 70 M buffer just outside the there was a I think that's aamp that just came up and there was houses within the 70 me buffer you talking about um uh the subdivision on the other side of the train tracks that's than yeah that's way more than 70 M it's a campground right directly south of BV glaze coul
d we get that picture up because maybe I was looking at it wrong there was arrows and it said 70 M and then it looked like there were houses maybe they're trailers from the C Campground is that what it was I'm not sure there's the arrows right there yeah yeah so are those all RVs yeah that's a campground okay and so how long's the campground been there I can yep Miss T uh thank you uh your worship through you to the counselor um that particular Campground has been there since at least the 1970s
um they do have um zoning that permits them to be there both campgrounds have been there for decades I would I would say prior to the 1980s at least because the city um adopted uh specific Zoning for campgrounds around 1980 and uh they were there prior to that thank you and how long has BV glazing or a red path or whatever else it was how long has that building been there believe 2016 was mentioned at a 10-year lease someone mentioned this yeah I may I may be able to assist um I know the the red
path building was there before the Fernwood subdivision that's my understanding so it has to be at least 15 plus years so and would a campground 70 meters be different than a residential permanent housing besid this industrial building would that be different is the reason why it's 70 M within 70 M because it's a residential Campground compared to sorry a campground in comparison to a residential permanent being there how close is the the nearest house to this 3 um in the province treats them e
xactly the same they people living there so they're treated exactly the same way the same sound level limits would apply to both um the distance to the nearest house I believe is about 100 m right across to the north the rail um to the east a little bit uh less than 100 met uh but also the vacant Lots it's already mentioned that they allow for residential and uh again based on the provincial guidelines for noise that is also treated as a noise sensitive receptor um so the same sound level limits
would apply to the vacant lot same same as the campground same as the houses to the north okay thank you I'm satisfied with the expert's opinion regarding the clas just seems to me that there should be more guidance on on that moving forward but I know that's my question so I'm in support of the application I'm very happy that we're getting the affordable unit thank you okay thank you for that do you have any other questions uh or counil for of councel or comments okay all right the sorry just
one thing I just I never said uh the barrier walls that you're putting in so will that help both Industries I guess so you're kind of doing them a favor by putting the barrier walls in so seems like you're doing everything you can to accommodate absolutely even with the campgrounds U Mr yes absolutely so because we are mitigating Transportation noise levels that would have a secondary benefit for the stationary for the campgrounds for all the noise in the area but we're making these recommendati
ons based on Transportation noise that's the primary goal okay thank you okay if there are no further questions or comments of councel the public meeting with respect to the proposed official plan in zoning byw amendment is now concluded counc strange you're moving the recommendations councelor Patel or no okay councelor you're going to make the second councelor Thompson Okay so we've got a motion by councelor strange to approve the three recommendations staff put forward seconded by councelor T
hompson is there any discussion to the yes councelor Patel to you Mr Mayor I want to thank all the speakers and all the presenters for great presid presentation this is a great development it has affordable units and they are willing to put their shovels in the ground but in my opinion it's in completely wrong place it's the wrong uh it's the right development in the wrong place let's put this in perspective there are two campgrounds on two sides and there is a BB glazing that's industry that em
ploys 200 people well paying jobs and there is a one tall building in the middle and as Mr River said that before there's other industry has left BB glazing because there was a residential development around it and I'm sure they probably got complaints for me I'm always against Residential encouragement onto businesses because those business will those businesses will get up and they will leave with the jobs you need a job to build a buy a home not other way around and when it comes to K campgro
unds people use those campgrounds for weekends Summers lots of the residents in Niger Falls they Park their RVs in the campgrounds because they can't park them on the driveway and with the campgrounds uh let's further to the campground just the usage of the campground when we look at our new way of U development we are looking at in intensifying all the development we're talking about building up not building out because we're trying to protect the green spaces and farmland and this is the one o
f the time it's uh campgrounds are very important to have because lots of families will not have backyard they will park their RVs or campers in the campgrounds where kids can enjoy the backed amenity for example barbecue campfires and what happens with the campfires you get complaints from the neighbors from the smoke and we are a world class tourist destination we should be providing all sort of uh accommodation for all the budgets because you know what currently everything is so expensive fam
ilies can't afford to go for lavish vacation they can't afford $300 a night if they have RV they can park for cheaper parking SP uh parking fee and they can cook their own meals they don't have to buy meal outside and look at the L this Lane is filled with all the hotels motels and all the restaurants we have a transportation right there I don't think this is a right development in the right place is a really good development hopefully it goes through in some other place but not in right place a
nd there is the adult entertainment joint right across the street it's not a good place to raise the family so I don't think it's a right development so I will not be supporting this okay thank you for that councelor bald La I too agree uh it's great great development uh it's exactly what the city needs I just don't think it's it's proper development in the proper area um in my opinion it doesn't fit or support the surrounding residents or the established businesses in the area I don't think tha
t any development should have a negative impact on the current businesses that are surrounding the area and I hate to see 200 jobs leave and like Mona's mentioned about the campgrounds they've been there and established for a long period of time and I hate to see their businesses negatively I understand uh the taxes and the and the collection and and the value of the of the project I just don't think it fits in that specific area there's proper development and the proper location is in my opinio
n I won't support it either thank you okay thank you if there's any other comments then we're going to yes councel yeah thank you Mr and and I you know I agree with some of their their comments but you know here's a developer who could actually get a six story as of right he wouldn't have to come to council it would be an as of right so all they're doing is ADD adding the four stories and the affordable housing units we can't look past that you know we're we're going to be over uh 50% of our Tar
get for this year for affordable units that's just amazing thank you for that any other comments or questions okay so that's we're going to call the vote now so again motion by counselor strange the three recommendations of Staff seconded by counselor Thompson we're going to call the vote all those in favor opposed and councelor new state has to pick aide okay I'm going to go I will go with four with with four okay so the recommendation passes okay so I'd like to thank everyone for coming out to
night appreciate your time and uh you've been approved you can be on your way thank you very much yeah is there anyone of the public here to speak to the matter on the corner of St Paul and Mountain Road no okay we've already registered our concerns okay thank you for that uh the reason that we was asking is uh there has been a a staff error on the posting of the sign on the property in question about uh giving proper notice for the date and time of the meeting uh the meeting was advertised uh b
y public notice and it was uh also given by first class mail uh to the properties surrounding the property in question uh but perhaps uh at this time I'll turn it over to uh Alexa from our planning department and she can explain possible next steps uh it looks like we're uh possibly uh considering deferral and bringing this back at the next meeting on March 19th but I'll I'll have uh Miss Cooper give some further explanation thank you Mr clerk Miss Cooper thank you I'm just going to go ahead and
and skip to the last uh slide here since we're going to be um reconvening reconvening um so I'm just going to jump right to next steps um so since notice was failed to give with the minimum requirements of the planning act at this time uh council's unable to make a decision on the application until we meet those minimum requirements um therefore staff are recommending that the application be deferred until the minimum notice requirements under uh the planning act have been met we are currently
setting up to have that meeting be on March 19th 2024 uh in accordance with the minimum notice requirements um and following the statutory public meeting in March Council can consider staff's recommendation contained in our report and make a decision on uh the application at that time it want to speak okay so we looking for a motion for deferral is that right okay yes okay motion by councelor strange seconded by councelor Campbell that this matter be deferred to the March 19th 19th meeting motio
n for deferral all those in favor okay and that's approved thank you for that thank you uh thank you for that Miss Cooper and then next up Mr clerk uh there was originally one more planning public meeting scheduled uh that was listed on today's agenda 6.3 uh it the public notice did go out but that request for deferral uh came in uh after that public notice went out so we kept it listed here so that anyone looking at the agenda would see that it is been has been deferred uh to a later date so th
ere is no no further planning public meetings okay so we don't need to defer that one okay now Mr clerk we're going going in camera if I understand correctly all yes the next item on the agenda would be in camera there are two resolutions listed uh the first resolution at 7.1 is regarding all the topics uh on tonight's in camera agenda and then because council is coming back uh at an in camera session on March the 5th uh to deal with development charges that will be an education session uh and t
hen a special meeting right after that uh uh that evening on March 5th we also have another resolution that resolution will cover off that in camera item on March 5th and then also a education session listed for May 14th so that's just some explanation as to why there are two resolutions listed on tonight's agenda okay so we're looking for motion to go in camera now and then again on May four um I'm sorry March 5th and May 14th motion by counselor strange second by counselor Campbell all those i
n favor okay that's that's great so we are now going to go in camera folks I know you're filling the chambers maybe you're a bit ahead of yourselves we're going in camera uh we might be in there for it's hard to say could be half an hour uh it might be a little bit longer so we'll be back soon as we're done okay everybody welcome back uh we just came back from our in camera meeting and we're resuming now at 9:53 in the p.m councelor Campbell went home he wasn't feeling well so just a reminder to
everybody we do have a full house here tonight in Chambers uh we just ask that we maintain decorum typically that just means we just keep it professional we don't clap or Boo or go this way or that way um we just try to keep it professional that's all decorum in the chamber so I appreciate everybody being here and uh we are going to because of all the attendance for one of the items we are going to rejig the uh agenda and we're going to start with 8.3 fire Communications consolidation and I am
going to ask our staff if they would maybe uh lead us in the report and who's going to lead us second actually I believe there's a delegation there's a delegation Mr Mr clerk do you want want to lead us in this regard please let we present it first uh yes your worship we do have one delegation request on this item uh Mr Justin uh canisto uh he has asked to speak on behalf of the uh firefighters Association and if he's present we can have him come forward and uh as stated we'd have up to 5 to mak
e his presentation good evening everybody thank you to the mayor and members of council for allowing me to speak before you tonight and just once again my name is Justin canisto and I am the President of the falls professional firefighters Association tonight's vote put before you could be a defining moment for our department and our level of services that we provide and that's why sitting behind me is a united front made up of members of all levels of seniority members from all divisions retire
es and retired Chiefs and though I do not represent the volunteers within the nffd it should be noted that members from station 4 five and six of our volunteer stations are here sitting and standing shoulder-to-shoulder with our full-time staff as we all share the same passion for public and firefighter safety I have stood before you and previous councils numerous times over the past six plus years thanking you for your continued support and investment into public safety and firefighter safety t
here's been difficult decisions decisions made over this period from continuing to build our station 7 during definitely uncertain times to listening to our past Chief and voting to continue Staffing our apparatus with four firefighters and the latest hiring additional staff to fill in for our members who are currently off on long term and providing a relief valve for firefighters that are currently filling the gaps every one of these issues are directly related to the safety of our residents th
e visitors of our city and the safety of the firefighters behind you who vow to protect them tonight I stand before you to ask the same and that we continue this trend I am not here to ask for more only to keep what we have I ask that you continue to support our core values of Public Safety and firefighter safety I ask that you continue to ensure we have everything necessary to safely do this already dangerous job I ask that you unanimously vote no to removing our Communications division from th
e nffd and sending it to St Catherine's as this will be detrimental I have said this often to you and I could never that I would never stand before you and ask for something that we plainly want that you would only hear for me if I had to ask for something that we need and that anything we would ever need would be directly related and attributed to our core values of public and firefighter safety I stand by this statement and I ask that you keep this in mind as we move forward our department is
second to none and it is almost impossible to compare us against any others in the province The Falls The Gorge the waters that surround it bring some of the most unique rescue operations and anywhere the tech rescue operations that we respond to in our city and neighboring cities include but are not limited to high angle rope rescue Swift water rescue ice rescue helicopter short Hall Hazmat and confined space and they all have unique challenges that come along with specialized radio terminology
and operational guidelines no other municipality or departments in the province have the vast challenges with their landscape as we do which in addition to the responses I've listed above include an intern AAL border major High highways rail systems that transport both people and dangerous good and the fact that we have more high-rise buildings per capita than any other city in North America and from what we hear tonight the possibility of more and more to come as we try to build this city and
continue to grow we have always done more with less here in our department as we're built for a population of about 100,000 with about however with 14 million visitors coming here yearly we've always made due and we're not asking for more everything listed above goes directly through the heart of our department and that's our C Communications division with my staff my members sitting behind me losing this Division and their service they provide will be a detriment to our department as a whole th
e benefits of having them inhouse just an office away from our platoon Chiefs and suppression captains is vital to Our Success during during an emergency call either full-time or volunteer you can find the platoon Chief or suppression captains in the division listening and providing advice and guidance also giving the ability to upgrade or downgrade a call as they see fit in livetime our communicators in bottom 16 staff are trained to a higher level than most communicators in all of Ontario in m
eeting the NFP NFPA 1061 standard our communicators are brought out on ride alongs in fire apparatus and brought to training sessions down into the go and other treacherous areas so they understand the places that we are when we do rescues and they understand what we need when we ask for it on the radio we have the ability to make real-time changes to protocols and operational guidelines we have the opportunity for realtime training for all staff in the Comm Center watching and listening the abi
lity to call a chief over at a second's notice if something goes wrong and is needed we also use this as the internal understanding they have the internal understanding of our Communications lingo special specialized gear and tactics and now I ask how can we continue to boast that we have first class City if we aren't going to provide it with first class Services how can we continue to approve new high-rise buildings hospitals factories and businesses if we do not have the sufficient tools to pr
otect them if we lose this Division and base just on those instances above we have lost our level of service and this will take a direct blow to our core values which I know are also value of yours this will create a massive loss of control and in our business that can be deadly our staff does not care about making more money in St Catherine's they want to stay here our captain will lose her position as a captain our acting captains will lose that designation all seniority gained will be lost lo
ss of educational opportunities that are available here and the possibility of divisional transfer or promotion will be lost there is a reason we don't lose staff to other departments this fire department is an amazing place to work and so is this city and that's why people don't leave to speak to some points on the report this is not a merge by any means as a merge takes two willing parties yes our budget is high for fire as we offer the highest level of service in the province and that's alway
s been something that the association the Chiefs counselors and the mayor have been proud of and we want to continue to be proud of it we are poised and ready to get going with next gen 911 even though it seems we've faced numerous roadblocks the points that were made about our junior staff covering for sick time actually saves US money also to point to having a captain during the day and not at night with the suppression Captain overseeing is also a cost savings and it was pointed out that we s
hould be worried about the unknown costs of NextGen 911 but nothing said about the possibility of the unknown cost of moving us somewhere else and what comes along with that can be detrimental it also must be noted that this report and the possibilities that come of this report is a direct violation of our Collective Agreement and a yes vote from you all today to move this to St Catherine's will put us in a lengthy and costly arbitration and it should also be noted that some aspect of this repor
t could be a direct violation of the fppa as a taxpayer in this city I understand the difficult job that you all have finding money to cut from any division or department or any service is no easy task however never in my almost 20 years here has the possibility of major cuts to our service been an option quite frankly I will admit that I'm worried that we're even here discussing this I'm worried that today will be the day we never thought would come a day where a number or a price will finally
be put on the value of somebody's life whether whether it be a member of the public or one of these men and women that are standing behind me you have all been to our Memorial services at station one where I stand alongside our chief and read the names of our fallen I wish we never had a memorial or walls that were built with so much empty space for other names to be added but that is a risk we all know exists and that we're willing to take this decision could directly affect more names going on
that wall if we lose the tools we have to do our job safely please note we are not asking for more we are only asking to keep what we have thank you for your time I will attempt to answer any questions that I can and anything else I will direct to the chief uh thank you very much I've got councelor strange yeah thank you Mr Marion thank thank you Justin for uh for that and I've known you for a while and I don't know if I hopefully there's not a fire tonight cuz I don't know who's going to have
few people left at the fire station we still got some yeah I like the a few of the guys are keeping the the movember going all year round which is which is nice um you know you you picked a few few points so you don't realize how different Niger Falls is different from other communities especially in our region you know where we got that the the high-rise hotels apartment buildings condos as well as as the river the canal um and I know we had we had one gentleman uh come here I think it was last
year who y who rescued someone and almost lost his life at the same time so we know how important it is and what's different about uh this fire department and the City of nagar Falls I this is a growing population we're going to be growing so much we just put the the new uh the fire station in um as well as the one thing that we had to buy a special apparatus this year because of special rescues you have to do at hotels in The Gorge um as well as as a helicopter you know not too many communitie
s have that where they can contact a helicopter and maybe you can explain how that is in Communications where you can call Niger helicopters and they come andly help you during during a rescue maybe you can explain a little sure so that that is uh that is a direct communication with the pilot that's the way he wants it um our dispatch contacts him directly and we are now we have about 17 staff now trained on our specialized rope rescue committee um in what's called short Hall where they dangle f
rom a 75 ft rope underneath the helicopter which can get us in and out of scary situations um it was at one point done by Parks police we are now lucky enough to have taken that over um just because they didn't have the Staffing to do it and it is we are the only people in Ontario only fire service in Ontario that does this right now and do you get any extra funding from The Province for doing that for just we we get uh I might have to put to the chief but we get um I believe it's just a handsha
ke and and and a thank that we give to Renee I don't know if we have to pay anything but that's to the chief yeah that's just well I'm just saying it's an amazing partnership that we're lucky to have yeah through you your worship um the um there are no expenses to the use of uh the helicopter with Ager helicopters um everything that he does including the training of our of our staff is all is all on a handshake and a thank you and if we're so lucky to have that I can imagine giving up that servi
ce and connection between you guys and going to St Catherine's and and having that connection you know kind of that networking kind of breach there um I mentioned the uh the the population growth and we don't even know what's going to happen with amalgamation because right now they're talking about a three or four City model so we could be actually hooked up they're saying with uh Ford eie and Niger Lake which kind of makes sense we have the same quarter of water the same um Parkway um it's in i
n in my opinion I think if anything we should be the center of Communications especially if we're going to be amalgamating with N Lake and forer what what is your position on that could you take that on if you had to I don't know if the chief or yourself I'll give you my quick stance but I will have to go to the chief for that my quick stance is today right now I'm here to make sure we keep our Dispatch Center here in Iger Falls I'm open to anything that we can do after and I believe we can and
do have room to take some stuff on but I'll have to go to the chief for for him to elaborate on that okay chief did you want to weigh on in on the idea of potentially uh for e as an example uh again thank you your worship to the counselor um there's always that possibility um their call volume is uh uh very small uh in terms of uh you know the ability to do that uh the fluctuation in our call volume over the past few years is a um has been as high as 6,000 we're down to 4,969 in 2023 so uh we ha
ve the potential to absorb um either forer or N Lake yeah because I think that's what the way it's kind of looking we're not sure yet we're waiting for the announcement from The Province but if it does happen I think we would be the perfect kind of Center for that's between Niger Lake and uh and for E to especially along the Parkway and the gorge and the communications with with the helicopter you guys do such a fantastic job and I would hate to put uh anybody in Jeopardy especially you guys and
people you're helping so I will I will vote no to this thank you thank you Council do we have any other I've got councel Loko online thank you Mr Mayor the report talks about um St Catherine's being on a s a cost recovery basis do we have a set Fe structure um will they charge us per call per number of dollars per number of call how is that going to work and how does the 240,000 Savings in the report factor into that who would answer answer okay we'll go to the CAO on that specific question is
a contract it is a fixed amount it varies as uh call volume changes uh but U and it is done as a St Catherine operates it as a cost recovery basis so the costs are spread out um over you know who's generating those costs by the multiple agencies but the but it's a 15-year contract that locks in the the cost um and the only variable there is if you're Department's growing and taking up more of the cost you have to you have to take that burden on at that point in time Council thank you yeah yes I
have some more questions so um sorry I just lost my train of thought here um so the cost recovery um the report also talks about admin calls and I was speaking to the Chief and he explained to me that all admin phone calls go through the dispatch as well so those would also Happ have to go through St Catherine when I say admin calls it was um I'm going to pull my fire alarm right now please take it offline if somebody was calling for education at a school um have those admin calls been factored
into the cost recovery and the price that n Falls would pay if we went to St Catherine's or are we looking at a different plan of taking those admin calls away from dispatch in St C Mr C no those cost uh those costs were factored in uh the other Administration calls so other calls that go to the fire station for particular staff would be handled through a voicemail system um and and you know go from there and just to be clear cost recovery isn't specific cost recovery to uh the proponent because
when you're in a larger call center the costs are spread out uh over um you know all the parties um so it just to be clear it's not um nager Falls generated the specific call and therefore you get ding for that it's it's it's pulled together that's where you get your um that's where you get your cost efficiencies from okay thank you it it's been said numerous times that we have um very special unique situations here in Nels that other communities don't have and it's also been stated that we're
a very expensive fire department here in agricol I'm equating the two we're expens because we have all of those extra uh unique situations um I got some figures from the chief today and I asked him I said what would um the cost of some of these extra special features that a normal fire department wouldn't have and he he gave me a few and I'm just going to go through them so we can see that there is is that cost for having these extra special features 150,000 for hbat not including dedicated fire
apparatus high angle rope confined space rescue 150,000 to 200,000 fire truck aerial 1 one Skyhook 250,000 best guest estimate water ice rescue 800,000 trench rescue 140,000 and then if you think about the um the amount of firefighters that we would not have to have if we didn't have those specialty issues could be anywhere from 12 to 20 Personnel so I really do believe that we are expensive because we have these specialty things here in N Falls um as councelor strange said about is their money
coming from the province when I think about tourism and I think about um money being distributed in different places is there any other money coming from other places federal or provincial that could assist in cost for these extra special features that we have that we wouldn't have if we didn't have a tourist industry it we'll go to the ca CAO again yeah just I just want to clarify I know that is said a lot um well we do Gorge rescue so we're more expensive or we do this if it's more expensive
the reality is fire is a fixed cost structure uh and if you go back to covid where a call volume dropped and we didn't respond to calls it's not like 2third of our cost disappeared at the end of the day we have to have so many uh firefighters on on on you know on the job uh to respond to any call if I said tomorrow we're no longer doing Gorge rescue we're not going to save any money just to be clear there's there's no one going to be laid off because we're not doing Gorge rescue anymore so there
you know the cost savings is there the trading costs yeah there are some training costs but but at the end of the day it's a fixed cost structure so um you know so whether there's no calls that come in to fire for a month my cost is the same so you know this this concept of of well we do these things and therefore we cost more no it's I have X number of personnel on you know that I have to be paid for coverage and whether whether they never get a call or they get a thousand calls my cost relati
vely stay the same um you know there used to be a debate about whether uh you know in some fire departments they won't roll on certain medical calls well my view of it is whether they're rolling on a medical call or they're not rolling on a medical call I might as well roll them on a medical call because you know there is a potential that they could have a positive impact and my cost doesn't change so I just want to make sure that there is no misnomer that if someone says well if we no longer do
Gorge rescue or we no longer do these things that all of a sudden my costs are going to be significantly different that's not that's not the case uh with regards to you know uh getting extra money from from The Province um you know there are other municipalities that also have unique challenges and every municipality has a unique Chen I went from Norful County which had you know during my tenure there uh you know three children lost their life because we have unsupervised beaches in a long peri
od of time complex you know um Lake rescues that are undertaken and with you know with the Coast Guard and with you know our fire folks you know um dense forest and and uh black hole communication areas you know everyone has unique challenges and I'm not saying that our challenges aren't unique and I'm not saying that our guys don't do a good job but I just want to make sure that this the economic argument of if we didn't do something then we're you know then all of a sudden we're going to save
um a lot of money um you know our our cost is fixed um and we've continued to support the high structure but the reality is you know we do we do uh have a high cost per and we are one of the most most expensive forces um in Ontario and and at the end of the day you know the taxpayer is is paying for that um so there is no government money out there for other um you know for other pools of funds to to do something thank you councelor thank you yeah I had a few more questions I'm wondering why we
didn't put out an RFP on this that we went straight to St Catherine's for soul Source um I know there's other ones out there like wienberg possibly others why why are we doing Soul Source Mr C yeah that was a specific decision um I did not want to as my report outlines the number one thing was um the employee issue um St Katherine was willing to absorb them all um and absorb them um at their current level and and absorb their acquired benefits at that point in time uh nobody else would do that u
m and um you know we will have a professional dis agreement of opinion uh from the union they believe it's a nature of grievance we we do not uh but that was one that was the reason why we think St Catherine's offers um an opportunity for U no loss of employment or no reallocation of employment uh for communicators uh because they can continue to be a communicator uh in St Catherine so that's why it was a single Source um and um and uh and frankly the other reason for the single source is every
other Regional Department uh except for uh 4 are and Wellen are already dispatched by um by St Catherine's um and St Katherine does do some of the similar trading training uh that we do here with ride alongs and that kind of stuff so um we thought that there was some uh good similarities and like I said the number one reason I listed in the report was uh the employees themselves thank you okay thank you I guess my next question would be through the mayor to the fire chief I'm a process person so
I'm trying to understand how um a 911 call would work now and how it would work if we went to St Catherine's so if I call 911 it goes to the nagar Regional Police and then the nagar Regional Police if it was fire it would go to nagar Falls so the nagar Regional Police um sent it to nagar falls nagar falls would be talking um to to me if I called and we would figure out what was going on if it goes to St Catherine's am I correct in understanding I call 911 it goes to the nagar Regional Police th
e nag Regional Police then sends it to St Catherine's St Catherine's then sends it to nagra Falls now say I'm in a special situation that I'm lost down in the board St Catherine's would they understand what our issues are so now N St Catherine would be talking to me lost in the Gorge they don't know they they tell nagra Falls where I am and then nagra Falls says oh well it could be here it could be here does nagra Falls then go back to St Catherine's will there be this back and forth sort of lik
e a telephone chain is there going to be more people involved in there that my my issue could get lost that I'm not dealing with people that are experts and knowledgeable in our locations Chief thank you your worship and to the counselor that that is uh F fundamentally and that's the the real challenge that I'm having with regards to uh the knowledge base that our communicators have about our city uh in particular um and it's not whether St Catherine is a poor communication uh service that's not
what I'm saying what I'm what what I would like to say is that our our communicators do the best job for our city and for our staff from a health and safety perspective and and and and to follow up with that uh they also can give uh because they know the demographics of our city uh not only the streets and in in the complexes but also the underground tunnels uh that they've physically walked and the gorge the path that they've actually walked they understand the benchmarks they understand the g
eography and those Communications between the 911 caller or an AG Regional Police or wherever the calls coming from in my opinion uh it's more accurate information it'll help the responders that are down there because we do lias with the parks police nagar Regional Police including our nagar EMS Partners when we're all collectively and we're getting no uh firsthand information directly from our communicators not from another uh Dispatch Center regardless of who they are um and and that's what I
believe the true benefits are from a level of service thank you thank you if I I know um over the past few years with our new CAO he's looked at all of our processes at City Hall and we find that we're spending more time on certain things so we've upped our fees um to to address that would by chance St Catherine's ever charge us more and I don't want to pick on St Catherine's just the the new merging company that we're looking at could they charge us more if our call duration was longer because
of our unique situations if we come up with a contract and a dollar amount and then they find that our call duration is longer because of these could they change our fee structure who wants to answer that CAO yeah I think the short answer is no I think the counselor raises a good point which is in my in my report if call duration time increases or regulatory changes uh happen such as you may need a second communicator on staff uh to handle video and you know text and and the other stuff um if ou
r call handle time changes and for safety reasons um you know we need to increase our uh increase from one seat to two seats um you know that's when you get into you know 60% increases into our existing budget for comms because you know once you go from one seat to two seats you're you're doing it so um you know at the end of the day it is uh attempted to be a cost recovery model the broader your cost is um the more you're spreading your cost out over more people the lower your cost per call uh
is so if everyone's experiencing more call handle time because an ng911 that's going to spread out against everyone if we experience it we're spreading out only against ourselves at that point in time so if everyone's call Cost call handle time goes up by 20% uh and the costs go up we're the only ones absorbing that cost if we're on our own if it's in a Consolidated environment it's spread out over all the parties there and the ability to absorb more is is better with a larger unit you thank you
I understand that about the cost recovery spreading out more but I think what I'm asking is if St Catherine's figures out that nagra Falls cost are now um calls are now longer because of our unique situation could they come back change our costing because the report basically says that there's $240,000 um savings and unknown cost later on more Capital more technology there's a lot of unknown costs but I'm afraid that who if whoever we merge with if they find that nagra falls is a unique situati
on could they come back and start charging us more do the chair St Catherine's is knowledgeable about our situation and I you know if the risk if it's around cost certainty there's greater cost certainty in s cther than us going alone if if it if that's the issue cost certainty it's great it your your cost certainty is greater in a larger call center um because as I said it's a step it's a step rate cost structure call center U that's why you see very few one seat call centers in any business uh
you know they they consolidate there's you know organizations in the private sector that consolidate uh cost centers because it is a STP rate cost center so um I have a tax base of 100,000 people if I need one seat it cost me so much as soon as I go to two seats my costs go up but my Revenue base stays the same uh and that's you know that's the challenge you have so with a larger cost with a larger call center with more volume through that your cost certainty is always better in a larger uh Cal
l Center thank you thank you the report also talked about possible um Regional amalgamation of counselor strange talked about amalgamating with nagar Falls and um nagar on the lake and for Erie um thinking about merging because of amalgamation but if B Erie is with tilsonburg how would that work with in an Amalgamated City with already one city with a different uh dispatch or or does that matter I'm only bringing it up because it was brought up in the report about amalgamation yeah I think what
I brought in the report was if we were a single City there would be no debate about two call centers you'd have one call center now your Regional Police has one call center EMS has one call center um you know and and they successful call centers the only reason um you know the opp you know has a few call centers for the whole Province uh you know the only reason um you know so I brought it up as an example that if if if the province came in and said it was one call center or or sorry one city th
ere would be no decision we'd move to One Call Center period uh I I don't see any potential that anyone logically would ever make a decision to say well nager Falls is going to get their own special call center under a one city model so if that would be the case under a one city model what is what is the rationale to to not you know show leadership in that position that's why I put it in the report because there's another way to look at it cuz I get taxpayers all the time that say we got to do t
hings differently we got to do things differently you know if we were Hamilton when they Consolidated they you know they they did things differently we got to start looking at you know showing leadership the mayor and I were at Mat Cisco State of the Union Address he made those same you know comments today and the reason I put it in the report is just the way to think about it if we were one city if the if Doug Ford came and said you're one city tomorrow there is no two call centers it would be
one the other ones would have to deal out with their contractual obligations at tilsonburg they'd all have cancellation Clauses in them but they would probably most likely migrate over or honor the contracts but I I can't see I I I can't see any situation where you say well the police are okay with one call center EMS is okay with with one call center but somehow Niagara Falls is so special that they're going to have their own call Center thank you thank you um the report talks about the 15-year
contract um to me any 15-year contract is a long period of time is that something that we can negotiate if we're not happy CE you could I think the reason they put a 15-year contract in place is you have to remember if they're going to absorb our employees um they want some certainty that we're just not going to leave and then they have those employees um at that that point in time um you know if they're going to make investments in technology upgrades and making sure that you know they are you
know at at the best of the game and Investments and training you want to be able to have that relationship over a long period of time so uh could it be negotiated yes um there might be less cost certainty under um a shorter term contract though thank you thank you $240,000 is a lot of money and I know we've talked about trying to find Savings in different places at the end of the day it says $240,000 and there's all of these unknowns what is to through the mayor to the CAO can you put a dollar
amount on what you feel that this would save um the the taxpayers for say 2025 uh 2024 with capital and um human resources and and um um cost recovery what what would we save what is the dollar amount because there's a lot of unknowns there see yeah and and I'll I'll talk about this in my in my comments uh later on about what 240 actually means or 250 I put a conservative amount in there um St Catherine's did give us a price it would be fixed for a period of time um the unknowns are a lot less u
h frankly uh with St Catherine's um um the one biggest unknown would be the additional cost of training and movement of procedures when we on board to S um you know on board to a different call system approach and policies and procedures uh on that um but the unknowns of going forward is I don't know what the maintenance of the new equipment is I don't know what the unknowns of regulatory changes is because you have to remember that ng911 is going to come in with text and then it's going to come
in you know with video and there's going to be additional complexity uh currently we do not have dedicated communication supervision at night um and you know and that's because of an exemption that's granted that you know anything that's just an exemption that's there because of a stroke of a pen could also be taken away with a stroke of a pen um so those are those unknowns that I I that I I am not sure of I have greater cost certainty in a call center that is you know doing 177,000 calls 20,00
0 calls is you know uh doing it for multiple departments Than I Do by myself because any cost increase that occurs I have to absorb 100% of the cost increase when you're in another call center I might only be absorbing 10% of that cost increase or 15% of that cost increase because they might be able to absorb that cost increase through other you know through other means and that's why if it's a cost certainty issue your cost certainty is always the greatest in a larger uh in a a larger based mod
el thank you thank you I'll um I think those are all of my questions I'll save some of my comments for later on thank you thank you uh councilor strange yes thank you Mr May and to Justin or maybe the chief could answer this do you see any anything possibly in our unique uh position in ner Falls especially with with the helicopter um just miscommunications by seconds or or minutes um possibly by going to St Catherine's back and forth because of your connection with the helicopter and sometimes y
ou only have seconds to Save a Life do you see any delay or anything like that from this new communication not having that networking with the helicopters oh yeah uh through you your worship to the counselor uh I believe a potential delay could be the unfamiliar territory of our city that they're not familiar with areas um um and the uniqueness of where you know tourists which we have a few of those that come to the city are just not familiar with the area they may not even know where they are i
f you're familiar with the area you can provide you know some direction to the to the 91 caller you can try to get information and you can help um because you understand the surroundings you understand the demographics of the city and I believe that that's where a delay could potentially be if a communicator is totally unfamiliar with the area that they're communicating to which which could happen cuz it's s The Gorge and you know you get tourists already trying to hike down there and think it's
a good good time to walk down there and if you miss them by seconds or minutes it could be could be the end of them thank you thank you any other questions of councel all right thanks Justin appreciate that okay so we're going to go to the uh first before we do I need to get an extension to go past 10:00 which we're already half hour past uh so I need a motion from Council councelor neag councelor baldelli all those in favor okay that's approved unanimously thank you for that so I guess we'll g
o to the CAO now on the actual uh fire communication consolidation report so if you want to orate it for Council thank you hopefully Council will indulge me in a few minutes i' I prepared some notes this is a tough decision uh by Council and a tough decision as as me as CAO and I don't want to under estimate uh that um you know as CEO um I challenge my staff all the time uh and I've always made that promise to you as Council that I'm going to believe I'm going to bring a report and a recommendat
ion that I believe in I'm not going to give you something that I don't believe in and I challenge my staff to do that and it's tough sometimes you know when when you're faced with significant opposition it's easy to always kind of take the easy way out and and not do what's right because sometimes doing what's right um is tough it there's there's conflict involved and and um if my staff don't have the um if I don't have the fortitude to do it uh I can't expect my staff to do it and that's why th
is is a CO report and not a staff report um but and sometimes when you're doing something new and you're leading it's always easy to take the shots when you're the first one out of the trench you're you're the one that generally gets aimed at most easily and I respect that of council too because you will also be in the line of fire on this one um I also understand the association is a is a powerful Association you can clearly see their their uh um you know their their passion for um for their pr
ofession and you know I would say that you know the fire Association is probably one of the best associations uh in in municipal government they have been able to do things that no other uh QP Union or anything else would do because of their um effort and they've even been fairly active on social media the last few days on this issue and another issue um and that's not a bad thing I don't say it in a negative way that's their role that's their job their job is to represent their members and I un
derstand that and I respect that my job as CEO is I also have to represent their members I also have to represent all the staff and all the other departments and I also have to represent the taxpayers who can't lobby as effectively may not fully understand the issues so when I have to bring a report to it uh to this Council I have to balance everything and that's why I laid out you know how I ranked uh those items in it safety is an issue that's been brought up we can discuss safety you know you
heard here tonight um that the the association's position is that it' be an unsafe environment I would argue that if it was an unsafe environment that there should be people pounding the table at Wellen should be people pounding the table at Fort eie should be pounding the table at all the other places that have a dispatch outside of their own dispatch and because if that was truly the case they would have to say that their fire chief is operating in an unsafe manner that their fire chief is pu
tting their staff in an unsafe manner that they're putting their residents in an unsafe man and I don't think they'd want to say that because I think those Chiefs those councils those firefighters will say that they are operating in a safe Manner and that they are respecting the safety of their members and the residents um you know and in reality there is complexity to dispatch but I can give you other examples in the world a Canadian Jet Pilot is you know would be in a war zone being communicat
ed by a German a wax coming out of a US Air Force Base in Germany they can figure it out other communities have figured this out and they operate in a safe manner because like I said if they weren't operating in a safe manner then this argument should happen at all the other cities that are there that are using some other dispatch and I sent you a few cities that just recently made the decision to move and safety was not was not factored in and when it comes to safety and public policy it's alwa
ys a tough decision I don't like V you know I don't want to see anyone die in a car accident I could say no more car accidents I'll ban cars it's unrealistic you can't do that I can say speed limits 20 kmet unrealistic you know you can't do that but you could you could claim that if you had no cars or if everyone drove at 20 it would be a safer environment and I'll do a personal one I'm a dad there comes a time when your kids need a car I love my kids if I wanted to buy them the safest car I'd g
o get them a mercedesbenz they have all the safety technology in the world and every kid should have some of the safest cars they should have the newest cars with the newest technology but the reality is we don't make that decision because of afford ility and it's just not realistic so even as parents I don't love my kid less because I didn't buy them a Mercedes I made a calculated decision on that the other thing you know that I have to say is that Council gave me a direction to find a million
dollars because Financial affordability was a primary um thing for Council if safety was the primary thing for Council if Community benefit was the prim primary thing for Council I could say well I'll take the $240,000 I'll go to Chief 40 and say hey chief give me two extra officers and I'll pay for their cars I want them in Niagara Falls could they save another life could they do something better than the impact that we have on keeping Communications in Niagara Falls versus St caths I can go to
the EMS Chief and say Chief I want here's 240 a year uh here's $400,000 in capital could you put more paramedics on the street to help Niger Fall's residents would that have a bigger impact than you know than uh keeping Communications here this Council had a state of emergency for homelessness you know drug addiction and mental health I could go get a mental health or addiction nurse to work with my bylaw officers and the NRP could that save additional life we had an unfortunate death in on the
chipa River on the Wellen River in chipa I pay uh St John's ambulance a pittens I could double their budget would that save a life so when you look at it the the savings that are there or just my Gerald and bylaw if he was here what could we do for additional money or if it's homelessness or or affordable housing which has a whole bunch of Ripple effects in the community I could go borrow $3 million and put $3 million in affordable housing today with the savings that are here does that have a b
igger impact in Niagara Falls for safety of the residents for the health of the community then a dispatch in nagger Falls versus being dispatched in St Catherine as a CEO I have to weigh those things as Council you have to weigh those things as the association they don't have to weigh those things and that's the difference of opinion is it a it's an easy decision to say keep everything the same keep raising taxes don't invest in the emerging issues of the community underinvested that we spend no
thing on drug addiction as a city but my my inbox is full with drug addiction issues on the street so as a council if you told me safety was a priority and not a million dollar savings I'd probably still make the recommendation because when I came to council I've always said said I look at the spend that is generating the least amount of benefit I'm not saying it generates no benefit I'm not saying that it's wasted dollars but could I generate more benefit for the community by diverting the spen
d someplace else and if if safety was the priority I got a lot better ideas than maintaining a call center in Niagara Falls and Council should weigh those decisions the association will all due respect that's not their job their job is to represent their members and that's that's why there and that's why there's a difference of opinion when we talk about affordability I just want to put it in context what does $240 or $250,000 mean if you told me Burg you got to go get it out of Arenas I have to
close the chipa hockey arena that's the impact on the community $250,000 will not fall easily out of the budget if I told Bill Clerk's Department 250 that's half his budget the budget you know if for comms or for that is 8% of the fire budget alone 8% less than a percent it's half a Bill's budget if it's pools and Aquatics which we spend a lot of time around here it's more than 30% of the pools budget $240,000 I'd have to close all the outdoor pools these are so when I make these decision I hav
e to weigh all these other variables before I make a presentation to this Council it is a complex decision and what I would say is that um you know I'd also want to reverse the question sometimes when I Ponder these things if I came to you today and said comms doesn't exist in N Falls hey I want to build comm's department for our fire department this is how much it's going to cost where would you rank that out of all the priorities that the city has would you say yes let's build a comms departme
nt Forget About affordable housing don't put $3 million in affordable housing put it in the comm's department n or false this is how I analyze these problems so I understand that there may be a disagreement on this I just want Council to understand that the these are tough decisions and the other thing what I like about this being in Open session is the cost of fire Services is a struggle not just for Niger Falls but for most communities in Ontario the costs are rising and we don't know how to c
ontrol it so no matter how Council votes tonight my only ask as a CAO is that we have more discussions on fire fire is the single biggest departmental budget we have we almost never talk about it it never comes up at a Council debate there are significant issues going on in fire that we should be talking about that the taxpayers should understand they should understand what a 24-hour shift is and what that means they should understand about retention pay they should understand you know what is h
appening with the cost of equipment and what's our Fleet strategy like we spend far more time analyzing a pool than we do a $30 million division that frankly we have and I supported it I've invested very heavily since my time here in fire this isn't me about trying to cut down fire I added staff to fire CU I thought it was the right thing to do I've added more staff to fire than I think the prior CEO did so it's not about me against fire it's about me trying to figure out of all the things we ha
ve to deal with where is the best bang for the dollar it's the right price at the right service at the right time that's what I come back to and if this is important you know if you told me Burgess you got an extra $250,000 in your budget you got some Capital it's home it's homelessness it's mental health it's affordable housing that's where it put the money but this Council said come back to me with a million dollars with the savings because the taxpayers were lined up here at budget time so if
Council wants to put it back to the taxpayers pocket that's what was my initial thing but if it's Community safety or improving the community lives of people in the community I still back this decision because what I could do with that money I believe has a much better impact uh on it there are lots of communities that have figured out how to do dispatch uh from somewhere else I don't lose the employees are are uh taken care of um it is just down the street there is flexibility if there's a gov
ernance change so it was a wellth thought out decision I didn't stand up here and say go to the cheapest one because I'd be going to tilsonburg I didn't do that because I didn't think that was right didn't think it was right for the employees didn't think it was right for the community it wasn't about saving a nickel or a dime it's about saving money and investing it somewhere else and or investing it back to the taxpayer because this Council said taxpayers can't afford to stay in their homes wi
th these taxes going up we need to find something and I can go and we can say anything you want about our fire department being the whether the they're the third or fourth most expensive but what's the answer what's the where am I going to save money because counselor Patel and I'll put her on the spot she stood up budget and said well Mr CEO what happens if you don't find the million dollars and you can go back and replay what I said I'll find it but I doubt you guys will make the decision and
what I will tell you is the other Cuts I got to do to find a million dollars people aren't keeping their jobs kids aren't playing hockey or swimming those are the cuts I have because if I can't touch fire which is my biggest budget everything else needs to take much bigger hits and they are much smaller budgets which means the service levels are much greater impacted so that's the challenge um I have so safety is a concern yes but safety is always a decision and like I said if this was a major s
afety issue then there are a lot of other towns that are doing it and if I go to other examples like I said if you're in a war zone and you're NATO you're you know you have Joint Forces that that operate jointly you know with different nations uh dealing with it you know I think we can overcome those issues a lot easier than I can overcome some of the other issues so you know I'll answer questions on the report I think the report was well laid out uh but I wanted to put context in the council ab
out this decision and the fact that you can't just have singular view on a particular item I always tell this Council every night's budget night and a decision you make today impacts nine other things that you can or can't do going forward and I would just list some of those things like I said if you don't want if you don't want to give the money back to the taxpayers in the savings and you told me come up yeah and if I went to a th000 residents and had a you know and explain okay this is what a
ll the other communities are doing you know with dispatch you know this is we can keep dispatch or we can have more police officers on the street more paramedics on the street mental health nurse on the street deal with their homeless population deal with what's going on um you know around this Maine and Ferry area you know my gut feeling is those other issues would win out and it's not because I'm putting anyone In Harm's Way because I believe St Catherine I believe in our professional firefigh
ters they could handle the switch over you know and I think they could be able to be able to to accommodate it very well and I just you know but like I said it's council's decision I'll execute It Anyway Council once it but the implications of the decision does have an implication on fire but it also has an implication on many other things because then you don't have that money to give back to the taxpayer or you don't have that money to give back into the community into an investment that might
drive more results so I'll take any other questions thank you Mr CEO we have questions of council for the CAO councelor strange and and I I agree with this here we asked him to try to tighten our belt and you know we you know our tax levy we're trying to bring it down as much as possible um for the residents um and and and he's trying he really is he's trying but this is something I'm not an expert in in in this you know I'm I'm looking to the chief I'm looking to to Justin to find out whether
they need this or not they're saying I'm not a guy that that that repels falls down to the gorge or goes in to a a burning car to rescue somebody or a burning house or go up onto a helicopter and repel into the water to save somebody if they say that they need this service and that they need it or seconds or minutes could be lost in miscommunication whether it be with Renee from the helicopter not that these guys are the experts I'm not the expert none of us in this council chambers are the expe
rts in how to save people's lives so if we can save seconds or minutes by keeping the service and I I'm not going to go against the chief and firefighters who are the experts in this I'm not expert in Saving Lives I'm not expert of of going into a building or saving people's lives and and and you know you mention about uh drug addiction I I I I remember there was one circumstance where one guy jumped in I don't know if it was mental health or he went jumped in the canal three or four times and t
hen at the last time one of our firefighters almost died so it's something that you know I'm not an expert at I'm not but if we can find savings somewhere else I don't want to take it away from this I'd rather keep I'd rather keep and maintain the current service okay thank you any other um questions or comments of the CEO of council y councelor baldelli uh is is there a timeline on this decision to be made um well the U 2025 dat's not going to move um I like I said in my report um I do have you
know I think there's risk um in doing it ourselves so I would give uh the chief and his team as much time as possible uh to you know start the conversion process um the window to go to St Catherine's um I think closes um today uh if you can't make a decision that say keep the call center in Niagara Falls and then a year from now or 2 years from now or 3 years from now say you know what it's not working out I need to close uh the call center because you won't be able to do it for for contractual
reasons at that point in time I would agree with the association um that it would be against the contract at that point in time um and uh there is no guarantee that s cther would say yes um you know we're we're going to come on uh come on we'll we'll take you so once you spend the money and once you commit to it the technology changes now with ng911 once you do it you're locked into this decision for uh unless you know until something else major changes no I'm just saying I'm asking is it is to
day the adop date for a decision or can it be deferred to another date I would not I there's a lot of information I I would I would defer it to Chief zambo because you know if you lose another 30 days that's 30 days less he needs he has to um to move his system over so I you know I would defer that decision I would say that the longer you take the greater the risk is Chief uh your input on the timing I I do agree timing is of the essence and what I will add is that the second phase of funding th
at we received the $189,000 I it's in the report the exact figure um if we don't spend any of that money we'll have to return it back to the provincial government by the end of March okay I've got councelor Patel and councelor Ne oh are you done councelor baldelli our next meeting is in three weeks next week well that's a special meeting that's why I want to know you said you till the end of March uh yes through you your worship it it's not the last day of March it's near the end of March but I
don't have that exact date uh might be in the report but I don't believe the exact date is in there but it is in March for sure yeah the next meeting is going to be what March 19th three weeks yes three weeks March 19th getting down to the wire okay I've got uh you're done I've got councelor Patel yeah councelor Patel and then newest and then I'll come to you councelor Thompson councelor Patel okay counc you thank you um through you U Mr I think there are two issues that we're hearing very loud
and clear here and um one is a safety issue and I know um with respect to what the CEO has said um there's safety all over but I I do want to just address the safety part so we're hearing two different things the chief believes um that there will be greater risk associated with service quality due to size Outsourcing and we'd not be able to provide the same level of service to our residents um and safety just going back to um counselor strange is very important to our resident on the other hand
the CEO believes that there will be decreased risk exposure on service quality due to size and integration going to the um the call center this point I have no idea we're we're hearing both sides so safety is going to be a I think it's 5050 one side the other side so the other thing that comes very clear is the whole issue of cost and I'm listening I heard very loud and clear on what the CEO is saying um it does strike a core with us because um yes we want to support all of you because you do an
amazing job for us but we do we are responsible to the to our residents for cost and tax and as councilor Patel challenged the SE we need to find this million dollars I'm now going to ask if this if the through you Mr Mayor if our chief it comes down to cost is there any way you can come back and say we can do this call center but let's go get other contracts so that we can negate this $240,000 so that we have that 240,000 that um can be used in different can be used for the other residents is
there any way that there's cost savings something that um can be creative that we can manage to have both things that so we're responsible to our entire Community I realize you're responsible to this community but as a whole we're responsible to all the residents of nagra fall so is there something there's two other departments locally that outsourced at tilsonburg is there a chance that they can come on um there's also another cost to all that equipment that we already have is that for nothing
too so there's there's a whole bunch of costs all over um I think there was a lot of discussion and Council Loko was asking um about us going to we there's still a lot of uncertainties whether we keep the call center here what's it going to look like with the NG um 911 but then is there going to be more costs if we go to St Catherine's 2o so there's still a lot of uncertainties but is there any way you can come back with some sort of plan um to say this is a way we can save money so that we are
responsible to everybody so I'm putting the Honus on you um through your worship Chief there was a lot in there but I'm going to try my best to answer your question um there is opportunities moving forward if we if Council so wishes to make the commitment to keep our Communications uh you know we've had uh departments uh approach us uh you know and ask us if we would take them over but uh because of the nature of this conversation uh and we didn't know whether we were moving forward or not uh we
couldn't commit to those but there is always a willingness again subject to um you know contractual obligations between those municipalities there there there's definitely an opportunity for us to you know absorb those other departments and and communicate on that um what I will say also is that as the CAO mentioned we are in the middle of negotiations right now and uh you know there are you know there's an ability to work towards and find efficiencies and cost savings through negotiations you
know it's very preliminary at this point I can't really talk too much about that right now but um there's there's definitely another opportunity uh I I will say I completely understand having gone through the budget process right now that you know times are tough uh times are tough for our community times are tough for counselors to make difficult decisions uh this is uh one of them uh and we're and we are challenged by the CEO every day to find efficiencies and cost savings and and and and we'v
e done uh and we've done that through certain policies that we've implemented um you know with with the uh additional hiring from this ccil um you know we we did have additional staff and and I'll just remind we uh we we managed to in our fourth quarter last year lower our overtime budget by a quarter of a million dollars so uh unfortunately we didn't have a full Year's worth so we we are doing that but in terms of dispatch uh and Communications um absolutely if that's the will of council I will
definitely uh you know Entertain You Know opportunities to uh absorb other communities can you do more than that and come up with something that's very concrete cuz we we're being challenged and um and is there something that you can say yes definitively and come back fairly soon so to councelor baldinelli's point we can make the decision based on real facts uh again through you your worship um specifically about Fort Erie and Welland uh they're already in contractual obligations and uh I'm sur
e they have an exit clause of some sort so for me to to tell you that it's def you know there's definitely an opportunity for them to come uh I don't know what those Provisions are in those in those uh in those agreements between those municipalities but I can definitely uh try to find other opportunities if they exist and you will look seriously and come and report back on something so we can balance out this 240,000 call center if that's what council wants then that's what I will do thank you
okay thank you but and that's great I think that's great if we're able to bring on some other and help offset this it helps I've got counselor Patel and then Thompson and then strange oh and and then uh uh the coko and strange so no I've got councelor Patel first councelor Patel and then Thompson we're going to go with councelor Patel first no no I had her from before I I had her up from before go ahead counselor through you Mr Mayor do everyone in this room and Chief and Mr CEO I'm not going to
repeat what the councelor strange said I'm a big supporter of first responder and our military 100% but what I'm concerned about is a saving for the taxpayer we were here earlier this year and we were earlier here last year when we were looking for savings when we were talking about budget and this year we gave Mr CEO a challenge to save million dollars and that million dollar cut has to be across the board so if I understand what councelor new said that she wants to and councelor strange said
the same thing that we want to bring other cities on board to mitigate this cost but beside that I would like to see savings coming from across the board from every department so it's just not that it's other savings has to come through this this year so if we if we are keeping this Command Center here can we look for some more savings to support Mr CEO's million dollar initiative I'm I'm asking everybody because every department is going to get cut because I remember last year even this year af
ter the budget passed so many residents called us they were all angry they were saying all you're doing is cutting services you guys are not cutting your operating cost cut your cost so cost has to cut across the board every department so I would like to see some cost cutting measures from every Department including fire department thank you so maybe depending on direction we go we can make that part of the motion that we ask ask them to come back with us to us with uh some ideas so that's a gre
at idea now I got councelor Thompson thank you I I have spent my life with the fire department and um when I was mayor I we got the the high hotels and the tourism and and I had the first time of dealing with the nagra helicopter uh with the the problems of turus and the river and uh this is is not a difficult to me and the nagger Falls peep know all of the this business and and the how to carry over properly and uh 24,000 uh is not a a problem with uh our um U City um that we could do the mag u
h to look after that and and uh were selling some property and the the terrorism is coming back and the casinos is going to be more money so I I think we should deal with this and and to to put it off and I haven't had any problem dealing with this sis and I will make a motion that we call the the determent of the nagger Falls fired keep it going and and not go to St Catherine's I that's my feeling okay so are you making that emotion Now councelor Thompson okay so okay and second by counselor st
range so you're asking for recommendation a a that we maintain the current operations for dispatch and Iger Falls are you open to adding on what councelor Patel suggested that we asked the fire department to come back you give us the insight into some future savings and also that uh what councelor neest asked for that we asked the chief to go talk to a couple of the other municipalities to see if it's possible that we could absorb them into our dispatch are you open to adding that to it as well
I don't see why if people are really upset about this and and I think we have to tell them we're going to support them and I would let well so we're that will support them counselor we're going to support them but we're asking for some information to come back to us no no you're not open to that okay so it's just simply a seconded by Council yeah yeah I'll second that motion and just wanted to talk again and and totally we can appreciate our our CEO's cence for sure yeah I think this is somethin
g that you know you know we're get we're potentially going to save some money but I'm I'm only going by what these professionals are telling us I I'm not a firefighter I'm not a guy that goes down and rescues people I got to go if there's they think there's a delay of minutes or seconds that could save someone's life I don't know how much you put 20 $20,000 against someone's life I don't think there's a comparison there so I'll second uh councelor Thomson's motion and I still have counselor Loko
yeah go ahead counselor thank you Mr Mayor I can appreciate where the CAO is coming from I can't imagine how hard this is to go through all of the um the costs and the savings and what to cut and being told by Council we need to do certain things and being told by residents we need to do certain things so I I I really appreciate the these conver ation when we look at the um the cost of certainty that the the CAO was just talking about I think about the amalgamation of Transit we looked at that
and we thought we had a plan we thought we knew where we were going we thought it was going to save money and it hasn't so amalgamation doesn't necessarily save money excuse me I think we do need a commitment from all of of our departments all of us to look for savings we just had our budget and I find that we have our budget once a year but then throughout the year there's a lot of Peace meal things that come through and you have to make decisions excuse me on our budget there was a $700,000 fo
r the Innovation Hub to me that's for a very few number of people fire department is for every single person in our community every single visitor in our community I think we need to re look at our strategic plan we can't ask staff to go back and cut things if our strategic plan sets things out for 10 years we're going to do this we're going to put a cricket pitch a tennis pitch aing cage all of these things that we put in our strategic plan we as Council have to look at that and revamp it I kno
w we've done it but I think we're looking at very different times coming up but my suggestion and I would like to put a recommendation should forward excuse me that we relook at the Strategic plan and figure out what our levels of service are figure out what our Capital costs are going to be look at the operating cost a lot of it is peac meal and it's very hard to get a big picture to say I want to spend this much money on this but not this because we spend money on this and a little bit later s
omething else comes up and then we have to make a decision I think we need to completely revamp our strategic priorities and start from scratch and what else did I want to say um that that was all I think $240,000 savings is worth um what what we could do to keep the Fire Department dispatch in nagar Falls and let's find other ways and it's not just upon staff we have to redo this thank you okay thank you uh councel baldelli well very difficult uh I support all you guys I understand the toughnes
s of being a firefighter and I know many of you guys but you're on our team and we have to make decisions that are based on what's best for everybody and everybody here can tell me or can't tell me that you make a good living and a lot of people in a Falls are basically not making a good living right they're making minimum wage this is what's m u major in this city uh but I I I support firefighters uh but I'd like to see those amendments come in I think they're a team player just like we are and
if they can come back with some type of savings or some some Avenues of Revenue that'll help cover the $240,000 that would be great so I'd like to see amendments to that to the proposed seption or a separate motion okay I do like that okay so there suggestion from the so maybe we just do it as a separate motion so two parts yeah you can bring that back okay so why don't we vote on the one and then you can bring that forward okay that sound good okay I would appreciate that okay so we got a moti
on by councelor Thompson second by councelor strange that we approve recommendation a to maintain the curtain operations of fire dispatch for the city of Niagara Falls everyone recorded recorded vote Mr Mr clerk clarification question clarification yes so we vote on one can we vote like can we vote Yes for both or no so there's going to be two this is motion on the floor right now is just for a whether you support I got it counselor I got it I got it so you're just voting for a whether you want
to keep dispatch I that's what this vote is simply and then councelor Bal nelli is going to make another motion after for the Amendments which says we are in favor of keeping the call no it doesn't that that will be done this will be bring in savings ideas back and also trying to get some other departments to be part of our correct yeah okay Mr clerk we're ready he your worship the current motion on the floor is that Council directs staff to maintain current operations of fire dispatch for the c
ity of Niagara Falls councelor baldelli no yes yes sorry just getting a little confusing so just to repeat we're maintaining the current operations for dispatch in the city of nagar Falls and your vote is in favor correct in favor councelor Loko in favor councelor neest in favor councelor Patel in favor councelor strange in favor councelor Thompson yes and may deaddy I'm for and that passes unanimously thank you for that now councelor baldelli if you want to put your motion forward to motion is
to have the have the fire department come back with some cost savings measures and also with the fire chief to possibly come back with Revenue sources for the on call right for some other departments potentially to join got it and that's seconded by councelor Patel okay so recorded yeah okay recorded again Mr Clerk councelor baldelli councelor Loko in favor councelor neest in favor councelor Patel in favor councelor strange in favor councelor Thompson no mayor dood daddy in favor and that carrie
s thank you folks have a great night thank you m Mr Mayor Mr Mayor I I'd like to put uh Mr Mayor put another motion forward I brought it up as a recommendation and I was waiting for councelor baldelli I put a motion forward that we review our strategic plan and our 10-year plans um to see if there's any changes that we can make to save some money counselor that's out of order this is we're dealing with fire right now you'll have to do that as a notice of motion that's a different direction I'm n
ot going to accept that motion y go ahead Mr canister floor is yours I once again want to thank this Council for continuing your investment I can tell you that we will work with the Chief to come up with something okay I can vow to you that we will come back with something um that we can do as a team and work together um not something that we're normally that we normally do as an association but it's something that I will say we will make every attempt to come back with some savings thank you on
behalf of everybody behind me and all the residents of Niger Falls and on behalf of us we appreciate you thank you for your time thank you no sh decorum deorum counselor to save money she got caught up in the moment she got caught up in the moment save money I know I know you in here you're out of the room I deced decorum eh look at that hick guy look at that hi guy I know I know I I didn't even see you you're absorbed in between them all they I told usually when there's some issue people that
come as soon as they issue is done they're gone they won't stick around I can't believe no one sticking around for the rest of the meeting so early and it's so much fun the record we almost midnight so right Stan a lot of fun close all right Mr clerk where are we we we bypassed a couple 8.1 yeah we can continue with reports and uh go back to 8.1 on the agenda okay thank you Mr clerk we are at 8.1 Main Street chipa road construction there are three recommendations uh basically that we go with the
lowest bidder VI Vio construction uh to do the Main Street and shipw reconstruction Sodom Road to Dock Street looking for motion by councelor Thompson second by councelor baldelli all those in favor that's unanimous May yes may I have a question yes go ahead councelor um we just went through the B budget process and this is 1,100 um ,000 why now uh Mr why didn't we know about it before the these are I I know nothing's perfect and when things happen things happen and we have to pay for them and
that sort of thing but this is where sometimes our money goes wh why now okay we'll go to Mr nickel yeah through you Mr Mayor um we knew at the time that the budget was being prepared that we would likely need an amendment for 2024 um what we didn't know is how much so we needed to go back out to Tender I could have come before you and asked for about 1.8 million to make sure that we were meeting the average tender price or contingencies but I felt like it would be appropriate to come in as low
as possible with the accurate number so we decided to Tender it and then come back and um you know that explains the the value that uh you see in front of you today councelor you good okay thank you so we voted on that uh were you in favor of that counselor okay great that's unanimous uh Mr clerk item 8.2 that's sou chipa infrastructure Improvement cost sharing there are three recommendations from staff that St be directed to enter into cost sharing on the upsizing of the sanitary sewer and wate
r M along Sodom Road and and that's basically what the uh direction of the three recommendations are looking for motion councelor strange seconded councelor neest all those in favor okay and councelor you're opposed okay 8.3 we did now we go to the consent uh agenda okay oh hold on councelor uh uh we've got councelor Loko did you want to pull one councilor Loko yes thank you I wanted to um pull 9.2 the parking meters and 9.3 chip was speed control okay let's do 9.2 then I was wondering if we cou
ld through the mayor I guess to um Mr Nicholl what $98,000 is a lot of money for machines um what is the the ROI on them when when do they pay for themselves Mr nickel yeah thanks Mr Mayor um I mean each machine receives a different amount of traffic so it's really hard to answer that question in the dense core it you know that machine could pay for itself right away I think the question can only be answered if you know what alternatives to that machine could be so I you know I really don't have
a great answer for you today um what we're hoping to do is have machines that last a lot longer than the old machines that were there thank you did did you want to add for Council of Coco's information uh Mr Brown had did an analysis and we've removed machines that weren't uh getting a sufficient payback period um and we've gone to the U what's it called yeah the hon mobile and but uh the one that you don't need the app4 also um so Mr Brown does an analysis of payback period on each of the mach
ines and we've actually reduced a few of them okay okay uh and then 9.3 yeah chipa Parkway speed control it's great that the speed bumps are reducing but if you look at the the speeds the speed limit is 40 and most of the speeds are so much more than 40 58 55 like even the reduced speed after 51 48 49 50 there's a couple that are below 40 but they're all above is there's anything else that we could be doing is that not a safety concern uh Mr nichel yeah through you Mr Mayor is a report indicates
that road will be subject to reconstruction when we look at reconstruction we'll look at additional traffic calming measures like bump outs or um Lane narrowing to help reduce the speeds um for now we think it's is uh the best we can accommodate within the road section that we have today okay thank you okay thank you so motion from councelor Thompson to approve the um uh consent agenda second by councelor Patel we'll call the vote all those in favor favor okay that's unanimous Mr clerk so we go
to 10 Communications and comments of the city clerk so the clerk suggesting that we approve and support 10.1 through 10.7 do we have a motion to that effect councelor strange second by councelor Balden Ali we'll call the vote all those in favor okay and that's approved and just very quickly that's flag raising for Polish Constitution Day May May the 3rd Proclamation request for Jewish heritage month for the month of May Proclamation request Nights of Columbus week that'll be April 21st through
28th Proclamation request for World autism day uh April the 2nd Proclamation request apraxia Awareness Day May the 14th flag raising request Italian heritage month is for June and flag raising requests for children's mental health awareness May 6 through 11th so did we vote on that yes we did we vote on that thank you okay now we're at 11 Communications and comments of the city clerk what was the last one titled same title the same title different direction oh okay re oh got it oh I see what you
're doing very clever okay our clerk has put a different one these are receiveing file 11.1 through 11.3 but I just glued in now okay motion by councelor Thompson second by councelor strange all those in favor okay and that's approved thank you for that and we go to 12 Communications and comments of the city clerk again the third time so um 12.1 Falls you Bia budget so recommendation that we approve their budget councelor uh Patel seconded by counselor newest all those in favor okay that's appro
ved thank you uh 12.2 Victoria Center Bia budget so this is that recommendation that we approve their budget for 2024 approved by councel sorry yeah I'm coming to you councelor okay uh we just have uh questions by councel Loko yes Council Loko uh not not a question just a correction um the administrator called me today uh in the letter it says board meeting of January 14 22 it should be 2024 uh in the minutes in the letter in the I see gotcha gotcha okay okay so we'll make that notation and uh m
otion I'm sorry who made the motion again councelor Patel seconded by councelor Thompson yep all those in favor okay it's approved okay um ratification of in camera Mr Clerk thanks your worship uh for the items that were in camera tonight uh the only thing that we're going to ratify is that Council approved the potential sale of land located at 42000 Queen Street and uh the rest of the subject matters is uh direction to staff look for a motion to ratify in camera Mr Mayor uh yes I was I was oppo
sed to that okay okay so we're looking for a motion to ratify in camera councelor strange seconded by counselor Baldin alley all those in favor okay so with one opposed counselor Loko opposed and now we have item 14 uh counselor new's motion uh Mr clerk do we need to read that or is it just need to be on the agenda uh I think it would be appropriate for uh councel new estate to introduce the motion uh again this was on last agenda brought forward as a notice of motion and for the purpose of toni
ght's meeting it does appear as an actual motion uh when she finishes uh introducing that then we could entertain a second her okay councelor the floor is yours thank you Mr Mayor um that the region be asked to consider amending bylaw 96- 206 um a bylaw to establish criteria for applications for tax deferrals by lowincome seniors and low income disabled persons to remove the $200 threshold as identified in definition of eligible deferral amount and throughout the bylaw okay motion can sorry can
I just um there I remember the article came out there was a lot of comments uh in below the comments a lot of people didn't understand what actually was going on with with what she's trying to do I don't know if if our Tiffany or anybody can explain or James is he on or yourself okay all right put unfortunately originally it was my idea but U the um the intent is currently the region has a similar program uh but the property taxes have to go up a a significant amount before you can apply for the
program we have a program that it doesn't matter what the taxes go up you can get the credit back uh currently what the program we have today is you get an $80 check doesn't matter what it is the $80 isn't enough as you know property taxes start to increase to really keep seniors in their home and the challenge with the regional program is that you have to have taxes go up by a certain amount before the program ever kicks in and there's very few people who ever qualify for that program now we'v
e been in discussions with the region and they kind of recognize that and they didn't really have a good reason why they set that limit um so for us from a legal point of view to have this program the region has the make make that change in the bylaw and we can run our program there but the intent of the program is that low-income seniors no matter what we raise our taxes by will be able to U get their taxes reduced by uh an amount that council's going to set so let's just assume it's $500 a yea
r we'll give them a $500 credit they can take that credit each year so that they're paying $500 Less on taxes every year until that amount accumulates to again an amount that will be determined by Council let's say it's $10,000 when they sell their house they'll pay us back the $10,000 so when they're in their house and they need support from us we're giving them the support and when then they've sold their house because of for whatever reason um then the taxpayers get paid back uh that amount i
t's like an interest free loan we're giving uh lowincome uh seniors that we'll collect back once the um house is uh once they're no longer living in that uh house so it's a much richer program than what we do today um and councelor neeg was on the um uh I'm going to get the committee wrong but senior's advisory senior's advisory committee um and uh and it was quite interesting and councelor Campbell was there too because they actually had some really good uh input on how to structure the program
in the educational piece they said will have to be a very big part of of that program uh to explain it to seniors but once they understood it they said they actually sent a motion to endorsing it once they understood it but the educational piece I agree with you councelor strange will need to be taken but I view it as an interest free loan some people call it a reverse mortgage I view it as an interest free grant um that the taxpayers advance them while they need their the help and when they no
longer need the help the taxpayers get their money back okay and that this is just for seniors it's for low low income uh low income seniors or those on ODSP um so um so you have to be on uh guaranteed income supplement um uh for a low-income senior or on ODSP uh for those on disability okay and what would happen circumstances say you made it $10,000 and they made that up to that senior or whatever once they sell or what happens to them once Council if it goes over to a family member the house
um no so once they're no longer the owner we have a lean on it you can't to to a family member can't inherit it no well once once the title transfers we get the money okay what about if someone claim bankruptcy uh well you claim bankruptcy you still have to sell the house and because it's registered on the house then every Bank knows that there's an amount owing so when you um no different you claim bankruptcy we we have a prior what's called a priority claim anyways we collect our property taxe
s U and that's not as big of a risk in in in this case okay he's not a firefighter he's a solic that's what he is at those question it was good I've got um I'm sorry I've got councelor Patel she's been throwing things at me so I get attention and I've got you too Council coko I see you too uh to you Mr Mayor to Mr CEO in this motion there is no staff report so what exactly are we voting on um in this report we're uh voting on giving staff direction to uh send a letter to to Regional Council to r
equest that change in the bylaw that's okay that is all we're doing uh because we can't run this program without it uh we've been in discussions with u staff with regional staff on this matter um and it's been a discussion at the regional treasurers um uh thing so what we'll do is we'll send a more fome report to Regional Council there was a previous report by to this Council on this program uh but we'll send the report um and we'll work with the regional staff to bring it to council um and they
'll present it in the best way because my feeling is regional re Regional staff will probably support this also and it'll go to that Council so what to councilor I'm sorry councilor strangest questions would we have report coming to us in the future yes so once the region allows us to uh would agree to make the changes that we're asking for then we'll bring another report to this Council uh that will give the details of the program out fully and then we can uh educate it but I don't want to star
t something if the Region's not going to do it I don't want to go down the road and invest that time so we need the region to say yes we we will um adopt our bylaw so we will vote on it in a later yes that's correct thank you thank you uh we do need a second uh Mr May oh I'm sorry I'm sorry yes Council second okay thank you we do have a seconder council L coko Ju Just a couple of questions um I did some research on some other cities that do this and I'm glad to hear that there's it's going to be
interest free it to grant that there's no charge cuz some some municipalities charge 5% um or or more is there going to be a fee or an admin fee I saw some that were a $200 onetime fee a $50 per year fee are there going to be any fees associated associated with this yeah um the recommendation is we'll have a fee but we'll back in the fee when the uh the initial recommendation it'll be up for council's decision but staff's recommendation is that we would have a fee at the end of when they're wit
hdrawing from the program so we would apply an administration fee to clear the lean and all that stuff uh at the end of the program uh that's the early recommendation at this point in time it may change after we take a fome look at it but I agree with you counselor I don't like the interest I don't like the annual fees that's not something I'd want to recommend because I think that takes away from the program disagree and and one final notation I know that our rebate you had to um be uh 65 or on
ODSP ODSP is the provincial disability there's a federal disability as well we look into a federal disability recipient to receive the the the benefit yeah that question has come up we have a harder time uh administrating it based upon the federal guidelines but we'll take a further look at it uh but the income thresholds are different so uh and this is targeted at lowincome individuals um so we will take a further look at it but there is complexity if you add in the federal disability uh credi
t okay thank you thank you so we do have our U motion from councelor nead seconded by councelor Patel we'll call the vote now all those in favor okay okay and that's unanimous and now we go to the uh is it the B got new business yeah new business do we have any new business councel C uh councelor okay I've got councelor Patel then counselor Loko I just want I sit on the Dei committee and Sor I sit on a Dei committee for our city and the Dei committee is hosting a Dei Summit yeah March 4th and th
ere is invitation for that so I just want to invite all the council and all the staff if they can attend and I believe mayor is delivering some remarks there I think I am I think you are should be exciting or not so during the summit we have a is she trying to attract people toct people to it clearly turned them off of going so we we have a uh uh director from uh well and Multicultural Center Janet mum is the Kino speaker and we have a panel discussion with three other panelists and Naga Regiona
l Police Services uh inspector Paul I'm sorry I'll forget his last name he's moderating the whole panel discussion and we expecting up to 100 people to come there and what day is that March 4th from 1 to 4 what day it's Monday it's a Monday okay Monday March the 4th 124 at the ex is there a cost oh it's all free free parking everything is free fre will there be Donuts or anything yes there will be there be Donuts strange I'm not saying Donuts I'm saying some some snacks there be something there
there'll be some swags there to like bags and stuff oh he'll be there for sure he'll bringing too it's just the raising the awareness about Dei especially at the workplaces and other small businesses and for people at home that don't know what what that stands for Dei diversity equity and inclusion okay good so that's what I just want to make sure cuz people at home going they heard it so quick di they don't even know what it is and I would appreciate those send all the counselors and staff the
invitation I will appreciate if every be can promote that on their social media so we can have more turnout more people can come out that'd be great even if you could re-email it to all of us and ask us to do that and then we'll we'll put it out that's a great idea yeah excellent thank you for that I've got councelor Loko thank you Mr Mayor for um notice of motion after our discussions today regarding uh looking at Cost savings and not having all of the information at one time I'd like to put a
not notice of motion forward that we review our strategic plan and all of our Master plans okay all right thank youings yeah thank you for that Services thank you do we have any other new business or notices a motion no so okay the bylaws need to give it yes first second to reading oh okay motion by counselor Patel second by counselor Thomson that we give the bylaws a first second and third reading all those in favor okay that's approved motion forj motion for adjournment councelor Patel second
by councelor Thompson all in favor I'm opposed I want to hang around a little bit longer excellent thank you everybody
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