my notes [Music] no [Music] okay ladies and gentlemen if I could ask uh all of you to stand please our first order of business tonight is the Performing of old Canada I know we've got Giancarlo felcher in here is John Keller here Step Up welcome Giancarlo I'm going to read a little bit about Giancarlo you know a great guy uh today uh you know we we had a cancellation for our Oh Canada singing and John Carlo at the last minute stepped up he also sang at the council when we're all uh helped me with the inaugural of city council we're very lucky to have John Carlo here with us tonight it's not off that we have an anthem singer join us with the accolades on his resume that Giancarlo has I'd like to thank him personally as I said earlier when we didn't have someone available he agreed on short notice to step up and sing for us he's a composer a music producer and he's a teacher right here in the Niagara region he's also one of the music directors at St Thomas More Church his band Giancarlo and the scar phones have a new album this year by the way and uh that was the deal he said I'll I'll sing if you nothing to tell you about that he says I'll sing if you promote my album so no no that's not that's not true at all we're just promoting them because he does a great job special thanks to Giancarlo this evening thank you for sharing this couch so whenever you're ready thank you Oh Canada [Music] true patriot love in all of us command with glowing Hearts we see the rise the true north strong and free from far and wide O Canada we stand on God for thee God keeper land glorious and free Oh Canada we stand on God for thee Oh Canada we stand on God [Applause] John Carlo just before you run away at one point I gotta say I closed my eyes at one point and I thought it was counselor Peter Angelo that was singing but no no that's that's not true but I do want to say John Carlo on behalf of the city thank you so much we appreciate you stepping up and helping save the day thank you very much [Applause] so ladies and gentlemen a little little change that we've made on the agenda it's National poetry month as I I had to be reminded today by Council strange he's following along and uh in honor of national poetry month Amanda Schiltz will be reciting a poem is Amanda yep there's Amanda so if you could step up to one of the microphones here that'd be great Amanda we soldiers sigh with our guns drawn we soldiers sigh we March and defend well into the night we strike when the time is right the blasting goes on for hours on end we can't come home until every last one is dead the actions we take don't match the thoughts in our heads we race for victory only to spread blood and misery in the distant faint booming sounds the last cannon goes off in the background I'm the last one to lay my gun to the ground thank you very much thank you [Applause] next item on the agenda is the adoptions of the last meeting of March the 19th who by counselor Peter Angelo seconded by counselor strange that we approve the minutes there's no other business we'll call The Boat always in favor okay and that's approved thank you for that do we have any disclosures of a pecuniary interest of council for tonight okay seeing none we'll move along to everyone's favorite part of the meeting which is the mayor's reports and announcements huh yeah to the end oh thanks thanks very much so first off uh there's two birthdays this week we'd like to draw attention to First our CAO his birthday is on April the 12th and counselor ioni's birthday is on April the 13th so there'll be parties at both of their houses everybody's invited other announcements uh it's Kate Cancer Awareness Month the month of April you'll notice I've got on my yellow daffodil and uh we've got them we've left them at all the counselors desks if you want to put one of those on and I've got a few more up here if anybody is looking for a daffodil do we have them up top there too or no we do okay good so we've got them for our senior staff as well daffodil sales are taking place throughout the city at various grocery stores and various locations if you want more information you can go to cancer.ca you can support the cause with your donation and by wearing a daffodil pin a daffodil pins raise much-needed funds in promoting and supporting cancer research and the people that have to suffer through the cancer council members as I mentioned have been all given a pin we can all wear them with with a lot of support last year alone the Canadian Cancer Society was able to help nearly 250 000 Canadians through services like their cancer helpline Council Representatives I want to thank counselor Campbell uh for representing the city at the trans meet and greet certificate presentation to Irene Monteith for her 90th birthday and ribbon cutting ceremony for the 40th anniversary wonders of wood show all sort of counts are strange for representing the city at the Niagara training and employment agency recognition night the Paul Harris fellow recognition event and the flag raising for autism awareness and to counselor dubrowski for representing the city of the Canadian critical incident stress Foundation conference so thank you to counselors for helping represent the city these various events and our next council meeting will be Tuesday April the 30th so now we'll move along on our agenda to 6.1 literacy link Niagara I understand that we have Gabe Douglas here who's going to be speaking to council is gay here gay had to inform me that he wasn't able to make it tonight and has asked that perhaps we can reschedule for the next meeting okay so we don't have a problem do we need any motion for that misters no okay so we'll move along I'd like to call up our chief our fire chief Jim budelier we do have some recognition that we're going to be doing here at Council and just before I do I've got a couple extra daffodils for anybody who uh wants them help yourself and I'd also like to acknowledge before we get started we're fortunate tonight we have a couple of our regional counselors here tonight we've got Bob Gale and Peter Nicholson both from Niagara region so welcome to city council [Applause] so um so now we've got two people recognizing tonight just want to make sure that they're here is Brian Clark here is Brian okay good great and how about Steve Heinrich is Steve here terrific and I understand Marie Fleming is not here is that right okay great so tonight ladies and gentlemen we're pleased to recognize three very special citizens too who will be recognized in person who put the well-being of another before their own during a recent fire so if I could call both of you up here uh into the Horseshoe both Brian and Steve okay sir how are you welcome so I'm gonna come on up here and we'll come this way and face this way so everybody can see us kind of thing and the Chiefs the chief's going to present you with something and he's gonna see a couple words but I'll read first a little bit about why these gentlemen are up here with us so uh Brian and Steve and Marie Fleming who as I mentioned is not here tonight all three citizens showed exceptional bravery when they rescued a local resident at a recent structure fire in Niagara Falls on the afternoon of March 10th of this year a fire broke out in a ground floor apartment on Ethel Street alone elderly male Resident was inside his apartment when the fire occurred when the smoke alarm in the building sounded a few tenants went into action after calling 9-1-1 both Brian Clark and Marie Fleming from nearby apartments known as smoke coming from the neighbor's apartment they quickly entered the unit and together worked to remove the elderly male resident meanwhile a third tenant Steve Heinrich was actively alerting residents to get out of the building and helped to safety bring the elderly man out of the building prior to Emergency Services arriving on the scene all three of these citizens are to be commended for the selfless acts of Bravery in this emergency situation and on behalf of the city of Niagara Falls we want to acknowledge and recognize bravery uh what do they say self above others and we'd like to do that here today so help me join anything thank you it's uh thank you very much and I I know these folks really appreciate being acknowledged like that I know that's not why they did it but I'm sure it feels nice to know that we acknowledge what they did it was very selfless act that they did and it could have played out a different way we could have been reading about a fatality from that day but instead I'd much rather be getting certificates of Bravery along with our fire chief so Brian on behalf of the members of city council and the Niagara Falls fire department it gives us great pleasure to recognize you for taking quick action upon noticing an apartment fire to ensure your neighbors safe exit from the unit their boy thereby avoiding further injuries or loss of life thank you very much Brian congratulations okay yeah you can clap it's okay and it looks really the same and Steve on behalf of the members of the city council on the Niagara Falls fire department it gives us great pleasure to recognize you for taking quick action upon noticing an apartment fire and ensuring your neighbor's safe to exit from the unit also there by avoiding further injuries or loss of life congratulations to Steve is this crazy day I want to thank everybody for the dogs tonight [Music] playing the Falcons right yeah anything you wanted to add to it no it's uh happy all the time to help me standing across the hall when it all happened ran open we got them out Steve got him upside and stuff and we're coming back in you want to get back in I ran back in and I called the fire department fantastic they just went from there thank you very much just on behalf of the department we have a challenge coin that we've developed um and it basically says great opportunities to help others seldom come but small ones surround us every day and we just want to make a presentation to you gentlemen and say thank you it makes our job a lot easier thanks very much thank you very much and by the way uh for anyone this well wait wait we're gonna do a picture Chief come back here both sorry I'm sorry counselor Peter Angela wanted to update us on the uh the connects do you want update us no just you said that they were playing football but they won last night series so they're now in the semi-finals the Canucks go against Waterloo let's get in this picture yeah yeah thank you thank you thank you very much yeah definitely okay next item 6.2 the mayor's youth advisory committee we have Representatives here tonight that want to talk about the elimination of plastic straws and stir sticks so if you'd like to step up and introduce yourselves welcome to city council thank you everyone for having us here today my name is Daniel krotchuk and I'm Chantal Tran uh and we are here today on behalf of the mayor's youth advisory committee could all the attend members in attendance please stand up so we have the mayor streets advisory committee here and we're also speaking on behalf of the park in the city committee could all the members and attendants please stand up we'd like to thank everyone for having us here today we um are very gracious for the opportunity to speak to you about the um ban on plastic straws and stir sticks in the Niagara Falls facilities so just to have a have a clear understanding on what single-use plastic is they are also known as disposable Plastics and typically they're used only once before they are thrown away or recycled some examples of single-use plastic would include plastic bags straws stir sticks plastic water bottles and most food packaging as well as take out containers are made of single-use plastics now we can look at some Recycling and consumption although many of us believe that all of the Plastics that can be recycled are recycled it's not the case unfortunately some of these Plastics are not recycled due to either a lack of education on Recycling and Plastics or individuals simply unwilling to recycle the average person uses 1.6 straws per day this is equivalent to 58 million 736 000 straws used daily in Canada 91 of single-use plastics such as straws bags and beverage containers are not recycled since the 1950s over 8.3 billion tons of plastic has been produced and still exists today so where is this plastic showing up typically the plastic will end up in our oceans and this has a great negative impact on our Wildlife as seen through killing this fish as well as harming the sea turtle an art sculpture was made out of wasted plastic was found from the sea and this is used to illustrate how much plastic actually ends up in our oceans as well as how it has such a great negative impact some recent Trends um are that more and more cities and countries worldwide are moving towards establishing bylaws to ban single-use plastic bottles bags and even straws in recent months many major companies have pledged to ditch their plastic straws leading to considerable media coverage straws have been seen as the easy step to eliminating Plastics altogether celebrity actors such a celebrity stars such as the actor Adrian Grenier from the Entourage have even become advocates for the straw band movement grenier's organization the lonely whale was the leading cause in the city of Seattle to Institute a straw van in June of 2018.
so looking at other notable plastic bands around the world in Kenya 2017 anyone who has found selling producing or using plastic bags could face up to four years in jail or 38 000 in fines closer to home Montreal in 2018 banned single-use plastic bags and first-time offenders could face up to one thousand dollars in fines for individuals or two thousand dollars for corporations also France in 2016 became the first country to announce a total ban on plastic cups plates and Cutlery and this is to be introduced in 2020. around North America there are a lot of plastic straw bands Vancouver BC is one of the notable Canadian ones as well as Montreal which was stated earlier some other bands which are in the United States are Malibu California Fort Myers Florida and even Miami Beach Florida in the United Kingdom Queen Elizabeth II plant banned plastic straws and bottles from all Royal Estates cafes and gift shops and the permit prime minister of Theresa May announced a britain-wide ban on the sale of plastic straws stirrers and plastic cotton swabs looking at more local bands the city of St Catharines in January 2019 banned the sale and use of plastic straws as well as stir sticks at City facilities in addition the city also banned the sale of plastic water bottles in 2018.
The city of Niagara Falls implemented a city-wide ban on the sale of plastic water bottles in back in 2009 and similarly the city of Thorold also implemented the span so after looking at all of these trends that are happening in bands through cities countries and provinces we have a Graphic for you today contrasting plastic straws with paper straws so first is the cost plastic straws cost approximately on average half a cent per straw while paper straws cost two and a half cents per straw the decomposition rate of plastic straws however is approximately 400 years while paper straws use paper straws start to break down in roughly three days the disposal of straws is unfortunate in plastic straws as they are recyclable yet this is has not been a successful disposal method of these straws paper straws are compostable so that's a much more successful way of disposing of straws on the right side we have a small list for you of many large-scale food chains which have either started the process or finished the process of eliminating plastic straws from their restaurants some notable ones are Swiss Chalet Harvey's a w and even the kick McDonald's has also announced in June that will switch to paper straws in all of its United Kingdom and Ireland locations and also test an alternative to plastic straws in some of its U.S restaurants later this year so moving forward with our next steps the park in the city committee put forward a motion in support of banning plastic straws and stir six at all City facilities the committee also encourages that staff Implement an educational component to complement the span this motion was carried in addition the mayor's youth advisor Committee of Niagara Falls also put forward a motion to support the ban of plastic straws as well as stir sticks at all City facilities further that the committee will work together in partnership with staff to create and Implement an educational component to complement this ban and begin to look forward in regarding the reduction or possibly the elimination of other single-use Plastics this motion was also carried as we were on the topic of single-use plastics and bands um mayak was inspired to look further into these reduction of single-use plastics so mayak also motioned to reach out to The District School Board of Niagara the Niagara Catholic District's School Board the French Catholic School Board and French School Board to recommend the implementation of environmental initiatives to greatly reduce or ban the use of single-use plastics at all schools um now before we conclude we have our Maya members here today we'd like to present all of the members of city council as well as the senior staff with reusable metal straws sure go ahead you go ahead it's okay go ahead I'm listening so in conclusion we hope that Council supports the elimination of plastic straws in City facilities as well as we hope to continue to move forward with reducing the use of single-use plastics as well as raising awareness for the environmental impact of our city and the world thank you for your time thank you very much well thank you very much foreign because I'm worried about the counselors taking shots at me right yeah uh we've got Council right Noni and then strange and then Peter Angelo thank you Mr Mayor I think I'm going to stay consistent here as the person who put the motion on the floor to ban plastic bottles in all our city facilities I'd like to make a motion that we move staff's recommendation and remove all Plastics per the recommendation in front of us see I can't see when I get it all plastic straws and plastic stir sticks in All City facilities owned and at City events to complement the existing plastic beverage bottle ban and the rest of the recommendation and I so move move bike how's ryanoni and seconded by counselor strange did you want to speak to it too counselor can I can I just speak to you yeah absolutely I remember when we first did the water bait the water bottle ban and people thought we were crazy people in the in the Arenas were upset that we took out the water bottles people the family said well we can't you know we bring plastic water bottles we even stopped using plastic water bottles around the council table because we used to bring our own so thank you and we're glad that you're carrying it forward and congratulations thank you very much counselor strange yes uh thank you for uh the presentations uh part of the committee this year and I've been to a couple meetings and it's very nice to go in and see all these these uh young students from our five high schools doing an unbelievable job and come with different ways of thinking including the plastic straws and um just amazing you know what thinking back on how many years ago and they banned smoking in bars and everyone's freaking out like that'll never happen ever happened now you know you can't even smoke on city property like that just a norm you see someone smoking you're like you've got to get off that property now with the implementation of banning plastic bottles and now plastic straws I want to thank your whole group and I know you guys are here not talking about um you have a few couple different events coming up I know one of May 5th so maybe you can just maybe let the council know about a couple events that you have coming up if you wanted to just quick me fifth I know you're gonna barbecue coming up did you want to talk about that or okay or no it's all right I just thought I'd give a good heads up for the council knowing that you have something coming up um so it's Mental Health Week correct so we have a barbecue coming barbecue coming up on May 5th thank you um Mr Cario counselor strange strangers I'm just on TV it's not like it's everyone's seeing it um thank you for reminding us um so the barbecue is to um begin our campaign for mental health week so we're having a barbecue on May 5th for mental health week I believe it's at the McBain Center so nope it's not not a good night for me do we know where it is it's at the Niagara Falls History Museum and what did what day is that that's what day is the fifth what day is the fifth Saturday Saturday May 5th Saturday May 5th Sunday Sunday May 5th yeah is there really a barbecue happening so Sunday May the 5th there's going to be a barbecue held by mayor's youth advisory for mental health awareness at the Museum the Niagara Falls History Museum on Ferry Street so everybody knows Sunday May the 5th thank you for that yes and you've got some other event as well or was that it um currently that's all we have coming up right now okay that's great well and counselor uh Peter Angela would like to comment as well thanks to worship I just wanted to uh thank the representatives of mayak and also the members of the park in the city committee that are here I know both groups are very passionate you worship about the environment and I honestly believe that if we're not going to put our best foot forward in trying to change habits then then those habits won't be changed part of the motion that came forward at Park in the city was to do an educational component and that was one of the best things that I ever experienced myself we had we had someone come into the school and they had a number of different items on a table and what you had to do was there was about 30 items there and you had to sort it into the blue box into the gray box and into the garbage and it just kind of teaches people you know what's recyclable what's not recyclable and I give a lot of credit to the younger generation coming up because I know you always talk about the fact that you know we're the older generation and they're going to inherit so if they're not coming forward with the idea is then you know I guess they're going to make it a better place when they inherit it so thank you absolutely thank you very much counselor and uh maybe one other I don't know if the Mover counselor ioni would uh maybe amend as well that uh a recommendation is brought to you by one of our regional counselors that this should be also presented to the Regional Council for regional facilities and that's what they were just thinking yeah okay okay so that and that was good with the seconder so if there's no further comment and for those of you at home watching Maya could keep hearing mayak that's an acronym for mayor's youth advisory committee and this is the group that works with our office together to help move the community forward and truly give the youth a voice in the community not just say it but actually do it here's another example of you helping lead us to the right Finish Line so we'll call that vote the three recommendations in the report first of all that the city of Niagara Falls eliminate the use and distribution of plastic straws and plastic stirred sticks and all city-owned facilities and at City events to complement the existing plastic beverage bottle ban also brought To Us by the mayor's youth advisory that staff develop and recommend an implementation plan with input from the stakeholders and thirdly that staff create and Implement an educational component to support the ban and raise awareness regarding reduction of single-use plastics and encourage the use of multi-use pla units and third and fourth that we encourage the region to invite you to make a presentation the same presentation so if we can get the region on board as well okay we've got moved by counselor and only second by counselor strange or Carrier which is it going to be okay he called himself he called himself he goes we're like twins you know Schwarzenegger and DeVito and I'm not sure if you see the the resemblance between either of them but we'll we'll call that moment all those in favor thank you okay and that's unanimous thank you very much thanks very much for coming out appreciate it foreign next up 6.3 is the Niagara Falls cultural Hub and Farmers Market presentation and I'd like to call up Megan torza of detox Consulting she's going to go through and give us an update I know this has been in the works for a number of years from when we had our cultural master plan and she's accompanied here by Clark Barnett of the city as well and they're going to give us an update on where we're at with the project and uh for all of your eyes here tonight sit back get comfortable get your popcorn out we're going to hear where we're at all right it's all yours Megan thank you worship and members of council thank you for having me today briefly going to share with you an update on the design of the farmers market and cultural hub for Niagara Falls I'll remind you of the location of this proposed facility it's at the mainland Ferry neighborhood on the screen you see the site area outlined in pink fronting onto Main Street as well as a significant Frontage on Sylvia place and Ferry immediately adjacent to the Niagara Falls History Museum and the location of the current Sylvia Place Farmers Market we had shared with Council about a year ago I believe the original Vision or the preliminary vision for this facility which you see on the screen here a facility to support ongoing Market functions on the property as well as a facility to support the local Arts Community to provide um artist studio space a cafe for Gathering a workshop and other facilities that were identified as being in dire need in the cultural plan for the city the the current uh work that we have undertaken since that original Vision has established an indoor program area of 21 000 square feet including a Market Hall of just over four thousand square feet a cafe a workshop and significant volumes of artist Studios on the second floor of just under 4 000 square feet as well as a basement for short-term storage and potential long-term flexible program use as well as a good complement of public washrooms that are gender neutral and administrative office and utility spaces the building materiality remains very consistent with the original Vision that it is an industrial type of of aesthetic a very raw space where artists can leave their Mark so um cast in place concrete uh floors uh steel frame that is left exposed and a male laminated Timber structure for the roof as well as the floor plates that you would see as the ceiling of most spaces the current design will be shown here in a series of of renderings showing you in this view the the updated elevation or perspective from Market Street looking towards the facility so in the foreground you have the the kind of cultural Hub with the cafe facing onto Main Street and a plaza that is intended for outdoor Gathering and events and in the distance the The Market Hall facility that addresses Sylvia place and that presents a really Dynamic opportunity for public art on the property from the Sylvia Place end of the site looking back at the facility you see the very prominence what we call a Sawtooth roof which provides North light into all the studios as well as the Market Hall but also provides a surface upon which photovoltaic panels will be installed to provide Power for the facility and you also see in this image of flexible outdoor space that can be used for parking during the week but can also be transformed at special events for an expanded Market or another kind of Festival similar to our the original Vision that showed even a food truck festival on the site so it's intended to expand the utility of the space for public gathering throughout the year A View From Main Street at the at the ground plane so at the location plus or minus of the existing bus stop looking at the cafe and the facility in the distance artist Studios that take up the entire second floor of this portion of building that you see in the foreground and the Market Hall again in the rear the main entrance for the facility also visible here that would be open extended hours to provide access to various spaces including the washrooms within the building you can see the language of of the Interior finishes being very raw the exposed steel structure the exposed Timber roof decks allowing for the reading of the building very simply and a lot of territory within this Gathering space at the ground floor especially for additional public art and art display the upper Studios again having 100 North light both through the Sawtooth roof as well as the windows and the facade giving artists a really high quality of light in which to work um around the building at what I call the knuckle so the place where the two halves of the building meet an outdoor Plaza that could be the place for concerts for Gatherings for informal places to eat on Market Day and then the Market Hall itself the same language of Sawtooth root wood deck steel structure again lots of opportunities for art and interpretive material within the the interior but a very simple building that can be highly flexible and adaptable for future needs and public art has been considered throughout the project opportunities to demonstrate public art not only within the landscape as Standalone sculptural elements but also opportunities within the facade of the building that itself to have a murals that might be permanent that might be rotating on a seasonal basis allowing local artists a chance to show their work also even perhaps projection onto the building the top left-hand image shows you what what video art or even film could could add to this kind of a project the outdoor space program as I've mentioned includes the Civic Plaza facing Main Street what we call the art alley that brings you to the main door of the facility from Main Street the parking Court which is designed as a kind of elevated parking area to be used for special events signage and wayfinding program that will connect all the pieces of this puzzle together in a singular Vision in a singular kind of brand public art throughout the site as well as adequate Power Audio Visual infrastructure and lighting for the outdoor space to really participate actively in the life of the building and the life of this part of Niagara Falls the overall project budget noted here includes a geothermal heat pump system that would provide heated and cooled water to serve all of the radiant systems that heat and cool the building photovoltaic array over the entirety of the roof surface that would provide significant proportions of the energy required to to Electrify the building as well as all the rain water from the roof being captured to flush the toilets within the facility so the the infrastructure for a really Leading Edge Sustainable Building is also included in in the budget so 10 and a half million raw construction Cost Plus a series of soft costs permits consultant fees signage and wayfinding ffne which is uh fixtures Furnishing and equipment so all of the furniture all of the equipment within the cafe kitchen Etc and a contingency adds up to 12 million three hundred eighty five thousand including HST I'm happy to take any questions that you may have thanks very much Megan do members of council have any questions for Megan or want to make any comments foreign great project for the municipality I'm just wondering uh whether we want to approve the motion that's on the agenda or do we have uh all you know I know we like the project in the committee and we want to move forward so I would so move okay a second okay motion by counselor Thompson that we move the recommendation second of my counselor Peter Angelo do we have any further discussion or dialogue councilor Peter Angelo yeah you worship I just want to say that I think we've waited a long time for the coming and so of other groups in the community I think a lot of people are you know have been waiting to see this go forward so it's a great project it's beautiful and it'll definitely improve main Street's after a second emotion excellent all right well no yes counselor the Coco through you Mr Mayor I know when we've been looking at this project it started at a very small amount in comparison to this so I just would like to say that we are cognizant of that amount and we could be looking at Grants from the federal provincial government and maybe even fundraising opportunities absolutely there'll be sponsorship opportunities there could be some sort of naming rights we raise a lot of money like that I know uh the Gale uh family gave money for the museum the Niagara Falls History Museum as well maybe he'll cut a check for this one too you never know he'll tell you yeah uh counselor well I'll support the the project it is going to come back to us in regards to whether we get that Federal funding first yeah we can maybe get a comment from uh yes Mr Mayor what we'll do is um we'll carry on as as the motion states but as soon as we know that that infrastructure funding has been provided to us we'll report back to council and after that we'll also have to report back subsequent to that on the tendering process as well and so so we still have opportunities to maybe not be paying 12 million dollars and that was very important to all of us yes thank you that's a great point I mean there's uh there's federal grants right now that we're going to apply for that we look very good looks very good on this project and uh hopefully it'll work our way as well between that the private donations you know it'll work out well for us so we'll call that vote all those in favor okay that's unanimous thanks very much Megan great job thank you [Applause] [Music] I'm so glad you came oh yeah [Music] reports okay okay yeah yeah [Music] I know that's what I mean yeah [Music] how about James speaker is James stika here bitey chance James stika of our water department oh okay okay wanna try it okay okay okay ladies and gentlemen what we're going to do we're a little bit early um we expect that to take longer we've got a few planning matters but we've advertised them to start at six o'clock is that right Mr clear so we can't start them yet they're publicly advertised so we're gonna go to 8.5 if everyone's following along in the agenda that's cd201904 the licensing of commercial parking lots for 2019.
so Mr clerk um what is our first uh is the deputation request our first order of business there is a staff report and the staff report is really just outlining what council has done leading up to this point and just reminding Council that as of May 1st uh staff are prepared to enforce the current bylaw that exists within the licensing agreement there has been a deputation though by the Victoria Center business Improvement Association and it might be proven to have that deputation take place here before Council makes any decisions okay well I see that Tim Parker is here he is the Victoria Center office administrator he wears many hats this man does and I'd like to welcome him to council to speak and yeah you're here with Eric Marcon I think that is correct our chairman of the chairman of the uh the our other members were coming but we thought we'd be here at 10 o'clock so they're across the street having a drink so yourself and Eric Marcon chairman of the board of the Victoria Avenue uh yeah so Mr Parker the floor is yours thank you your worship City councils and staff thank you for allowing the Victoria Center Bia to spend a few minutes with you tonight as a world-class City we have seen so much development since the late 90s when we built two grand casinos the city of Niagara Falls went from a romantic honeymoon City to a bustling world-class destination that now hosts up to 13 million visitors a year private entrepreneurs have stepped up to the plate and invested millions and millions of dollars in new attractions hotels and fine dining the city of Niagara Falls continues each year to challenge the private sector to keep investing as the city of Niagara Falls does their part with infrastructure and opportunity for the private investment as we sit today we have some 20 or more major developments waiting to break ground and continue the growth by the end of this year we'll see a new 5000 seat theater that will draw again thousands of visitors to our world-class City not only has the private business person stepped up to the plate with development but collectively the bias have also made major Investments the city of Niagara Falls the Victoria Center Bia is directly in the middle of a major streetscape Improvement project collectively this partnership has seen more than 13 million dollars invested in Phase One and in phase two phase three and phase four will be completed over the next two years out of that 13 million dollars of Victorious Turner Bia has done its part with more than six hundred thousand dollars of private monies towards the project we at the Victoria Center Bia are so proud to have this partnership and do our part to keep this world-class City evolving as early as 1999 the Victoria Center Bia developed a plan to transform 100 year old area into a new vibrant hustling tourist area as the plan developed the state of Niagara Falls was integral part of the final design and turned the ground with phase one in the fall of 2016.
along the plan was developed and changed the bylaw 2001-31 this bylaw was an integral part of finishing the city of the Niagara Falls and Victoria Center streetscape master plan Improvement with a huge amount of input from not only the city and City staff but also with the operators of all commercial parking lots in the city the bylaw was carefully developed and completed all participants were fully aware of all the details in the plan and the timelines of the plan to conform to the bylaw as a world-class City this bylaw was crucial as when the guest arrives to the city to this world-class City the first thing they see and they go to are parking facilities as we know first impressions are lost in impressions as time went on the bylaw was never enforced and operators enjoyed operating this in this world-class City with no investment or worries about the bylaw in November of 2017 the bylaw once again was introduced more improvements to the biolog were enacted with several meetings all involved which included City staff operators and other interests of the parties the bylaw was once again passed several letters and requests from the Victoria Center Bia to the city of Niagara Falls was sent asking when this bylab was going to be acted on as it's a legal binding bylaw of this world-class City finally in 2018 City councils passed a one-year extension to have operators comply with the bylaw since then commercial parking lot operators have enjoyed business of our visitors the world-class City without an investment or business license how this actually is possible where business owners operate a business in any City for two years without a business license is yet another mystery since the extension of the Victoria Center baa has informed all of its members this bylaw is in place and they need to be completed and being compliant by May of 2019.
Victoria Center Bia hosted its annual general meeting in December of 2018 and once again informed all of its members that they needed to conform to the bylaw by May of 2018. recently City staff sent another letter to all commercial parking lot operators and form them again they must comply with the bylaw which will go into effect May of 2019. the Victoria Center Bia has done all the work we can possibly do to inform our members of this bylaw we have ticked all the boxes we've worked diligently with its Partners the city of Niagara Falls can form all the parties of this very important piece of our master plan for this world-class City the Victoria Center Bia does not want to discourage business or shut down parking lot operations as we feel the victory Victoria Center Bia is a place to stay Park dine and enjoy that everybody wants to come to to Niagara Falls we are respectively request that the city of Niagara Falls do their part upon holding the bylaw as an assistant business owners to arrive at the final goal for all a world-class City that operates like a world-class City thank you thank you very much Mr Parker do we have any Mass questions of members of council for Mr Parker counselor Campbell I just uh questions through you to worship um the intention of your attendance tonight is not to put these people out of business but rather have City staff have them adhere to the bylaws as they've been set up right so your worship that's correct so I I think that's fair I mean if it hasn't been reinforced or enforced over the last couple years this will be the last opportunity for anybody to fall under the guidance thank you now um I understand um some feedback I've received and maybe I wonder if you could give me a little bit of feedback on my feedback is that some of the parking lot owners who have been trying to be compliant they've paved their parking lots they've signed them they've done it up really nice but maybe there's some subtle Parts where they're not in compliance whether that be setbacks stall widths or some things like this so we don't want to penalize those operators that have been trying to do it the right way so I'm just wondering if you have any feedback on that versus some of them that have disregard for what the area looks like uh to you Mr worship that is correct there are being operators over the last three or four years that have spent millions of dollars on on fixing the parking lots um unfortunately some of them have not adhered to some of the minor setback issues with green grass or five feet parking stalls at a certain at a certain size so there are some variances out there but at the very least um you know this is this is some of the the effects that we don't have where nothing has been done nothing and every year it's an extension and it's extension an extension so uh yes Mr worship at the end of the day um the ones that have um adhered to 98 of the bylaw um are the ones that we're not concerned about but we are concerned about uh the ones that have done nothing so I just wondered if I could ask our CIO if hearing this and knowing that we've got some that are really trying to do the right thing we don't want to punish them we just want to make sure everyone comes into compliance right so the idea is that everybody raise the bar so the place looks like the destination it should look like I'm just wondering if we have a suggestion based on what we have in front of us right now system here what the report through you what the report had talked about last year was really upping the standard and mainly we were focusing on hard surfacing drainage lighting and having standards for signage and sort of the uh you know the way that the attendance behave themselves if you will when they're if they're on site the report also indicated that if there were other tweaks if you will to the bylaw that needed to come forward as we got further into this we could be bringing back those amendments to this at that time so if there are things that existing lots have whether it be you know parking space size or or we even had conversation about the uh the buffering the the side here which allows for a reduction uh previously the thought was there was a 10-foot buffer well that's not the way the bylaw is worded it allows for that to be constricted so those are things we could be be bringing back later the purpose of this report was to get those common standards on the lighting Paving drainage things that would really have a significant impact in that area and that's what we'd be going forward on what we would be working with bylaw and the clerk's Department would be that notices already get gone over uh Mr Madison's Department's already given notice that this is coming up council is going to be dealing with it if Council says to us go ahead and enforce the bylaw that's what we'll be enforcing so there'll be a requirement before they get licenses this year that they comply with drainage Paving lighting signage so they'll need to fulfill that requirement we're not trying to put them out of business we want them to comply with the regulations the councils put in place that's good thank you counselor Thompson well I just saw the motion from a year ago where I made the motion let's give us another year to try to get compliance with all the parking this has been going on for how many years probably five or six this is a mile five or six so and there has been a lot of effort put forward to try to get compliance and some of them just don't seem to be interested in or they don't have the money to do that or something so you can't argue with five years trying to get everybody to abide by the bylaw so I think that it's going to be a tough few months coming up and we're probably going to have it back on our lap a few times with people who are going to be affected by this but the Bia wants compliance and wants to have a visitation area that people are going to enjoy so I don't know what else you can do I think we all want the same thing right yeah so keep the standards and respect the standards that we set so yes Council Cario and then just to question your worship the motion as it exists to bring everyone into compliance is going to put some people for sure they won't be able to open so are we is there going to be any leeway on some of the things like the grass strips the size of the Stalls if we say enforce the bylaw those things are in Cloud so if we say enforce the bylaw anyone that doesn't meet the bylaw will not be getting a parking license is that correct Mr Tom yes and that that's the intent of this is us moving forward but I think there has been some confusion over what some of those requirements are because I don't believe that there has been talk of that 10 meter buffer and I don't believe that's what the standard is so there's things like that we still have to work through with if there are requirements that we see in an established lot that's been operating that seems to be working we can always be bringing back reports to deal with those and look at further amendments to the regulations as I said earlier to tweak to tweak that part of the bylaw but again our intentions not to put them out of business we want to see compliance is what we want to see but I think there's certain things that the Bia and the other business people just don't want to put up with any longer they need to have a hard surface they need to have proper drainage they need to have proper signings they need lighting they need to get rid of the the fences the buildings that are that look like a shot from I don't know where we named it and they have people walking around with a car site that's going to stop the other thing is that I don't know if you want to mention it today the other bylaw that gives us a lot of grief is that there's people that are infringing on the city property with whatever with their signs with their t-shirts with their whatever and I would like to know if you want to mention what you were told when I asked you why you thought that wasn't being done I mean uh you if you don't I I don't mind doing it but if you want to do it in respect to your worship and respect to uh Council of strangers carriers discuss it once once the phase one and two of this of the um streetscape was done it was always a question of where people could put their business owners could put their clothes racks and their clothes bins and anything else they had Matrix anything outside on the sidewalk to impede on pedestrians and and the reason that we let it go for so many years because nobody knew where the property line was well when we did the the streetscape we know where the property line is now because the city went through all that work we still have these t-shirt shops and other businesses on Victoria Avenue that continue to impede on The Pedestrian walkway we spend a lot of time and money to make The Pedestrian walkway a nice walkway for pedestrians to go through and so when we when we did discuss this last year with with um the staff with uh staff members who were told that they they'd like to enforce the bylab but they were told by by somebody not not to enforce and then to back down so yeah it seems that we have a an issue here to follow up on that I think that if we're going to do the one we should do the other and uh there are business people that are renting space from the city for sidewalk cafes or whatever but I think along with this other enforcement of the parking we should be enforcing that no one can use the city sidewalks as their own personal space that we have to clean that up as well and we are we're happy to do that once we do that and if that's going to be the motion here tonight but we need to support of this Council as well because once we get into it we are going to start getting phone calls and you know our staff is going to have direction of this Council and that's the way we're going to be carrying on if that's the wish and our staff is quite happy to do that we now have a couple of additional bylaw people that we have we are working uh weekend shifts now where we've got additional staff that were not there in previous years so we're quite we're quite happy to do that I think we have to do it uh Mr Todd because it's not fair for the people that are spending all the money to maintain their properties to have the others not do it so we have to do both commission uh I'm not sure how it's gladly added to this [ __ ] if you know to enforce that part of the biological that the city sidewalks the city sidewalk camp we don't think you can use them permission from the council okay so why don't we uh do this so do you want to put that so first of all we need to receive the recommendation that Council it's the basically Council receives this report and direct staff to enforce the app uh the applicable commercial parking lot licensing bylaws and add to that that they also enforce the sidewalk bylaw at the same time so do you want to make that your emotions okay and that's second of my counselor is strange okay now do we have any discussion to that motion of council okay and Steph any concerns or comments from staff on this we're the motion we're making on the Fly no okay well let's call the vote all those in favor okay and that's unanimously supported our staff get the fun job now we're going to deal with all the entrepreneurs thank you all right thank you very much appreciate it thank you so we're going to go what's that but Miss America if I made it that point yes I can tell you staff's quite happy to follow this action it's just my point was we're going to need the support from around this Council horses as well so staff is quite happy to do that I think Mr Todd if any anyone calls it emotional counsel is very specific yeah that a single counselor calling has no Authority that's right to stop the staff from doing their job I got that four to three times [Music] all right ladies and gentlemen uh we're moving back on to the regular order of the of the agenda Ryan we're on item seven of the planning matters for those of you following along so we're back into the public meeting portion of the council that has been advertised so I now ask our clerk if you would introduce the next item on tonight's agenda foreign public meeting is now being convened to consider a proposed amendment to the city's zoning bylaw to permit a six-story 55-unit apartment building at 8100 Mcleod Road notice was given by first class mail in accordance with the planning act uh on March 11 2019 and by posting a sign on the property in question anyone who wants notice of the passing of the zoning bylaw Amendment or would like to preserve their opportunity to appeal to the local planning appeal tribunal shall leave their name on the sign-in sheets that are located outside the council chamber thank you Mr clerk I now ask our director of planning Mr holovich to explain the purpose and reason for the proposed bylaw Amendment thank you worship the uh this property is located on the south side of Mcleod Road just west or east rather of kaler Road immediately to the east or west is a residential dwelling North across the property is a apartment building and townhouses there's a couple of 10 story 96 unit Condo building proposed to the East and the subject lands have an area of about six and a half acres because the south of them are the lands of the Niagara Peninsula energy offices the property proposed development is to propose a six-story apartment building fronting onto Mcleod Road there are a number of other buildings on the property these are garages which would house the cars or the residents of that building accessory buildings are permitted under the R5 B Zone which is a requested Zone they're requesting some modifications to the standard r5b zone so they're looking for a height of 23 meters this is a six-story building with a peak roof uh we're looking to have the building located seven meters from the front lot line uh again this is a move towards uh providing uh buildings with uh Frontage that engage the street they're looking for an amendment to the modification to the standard square footage or square meter meters in this case 125 square meters per unit for lot area they're looking for a 28 landscape open space we are recommending a six meter buffer or a setback rather from the Environmental Protection lands the rear part the south portion of this land is uh there's a large PSW that provincial is significant Wetland that is to be protected there is a 13 meter buffer around that property that too would be uh zoned Environmental Protection and so we wanted to make sure that those lands are protected thus the uh the six meter buffer or a setback uh the look of the building would be uh the one before you so basically a very attractive building with a roof design very much residential in nature uh differentiation of uh building materials so as to uh very engaging and again this is looking southford Mcleod Road and the parking garages for this project would be the left just off the screen the applicant has requested that the lands be changed from light industrial to an r5b Zone in part and Environmental Protection in park um I already mentioned that that is to protect the provincially significant wetlands and the 13 meter buffer they're looking uh for the modifications to the standard Zone requirements which I outlined on the previous slide so our assessment of this application was it does comply with the provincial and Regional policies it contributes to the city's annual intensification Target of 40 percent housing within the built boundaries the application was reviewed by the Niagara Peninsula conservation authority to ensure that the proposed apartment building would be located outside of that Wetland and the buffer area and that would have no negative impact on those natural heritage features the the lands are designated in the Garner South secondary plan as high density residential it does meet the minimum density of 79.7 units per hectare the zoning amendment is in compliance with the official plan the zoning Amendment will provide appropriate regulations for development to ensure protection of the Wetland and the existing infrastructure can support this development therefore staff is recommending that Council approve the zoning bylaw Amendment application to rezone the subject land site specific r5bzone and Environmental Protection area which would permit the six-story 55 unit apartment building and to protect the provisionally significant Flatlands those are the highlights thank you very much Mr irlovich any questions from members of council for Mr elevich I see on pink housing I was wondering what kind of affordable housing would this be thank you your worship I'd defer that to the applicant or his representative okay all right we'll do that any other questions all right members of the public are advised that failure to make an oil or written submission at this public meeting will result in the local planning appeal tribunal dismissing any referrals that it receives failure to sign the sign-in sheet 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 bylaw amendment is there anyone here other than the applicant who wishes to address Council on this matter okay seeing none Council will now hear from the applicant or his or her representative hello Council mayor I'm John Lally from Lally homes we started this project over two and a half years ago we worked really well with the Niagara conservation as mentioned there is what lands on the property we hired a very good environmental company to come out and make sure everything was protected um in working with Council we came up with the recommended amount of units they were looking for 55 units for this property for the density required you can see the building has started to take shape and we really look forward to bringing this project to Niagara Falls thank you very much that's great thanks very much any questions uh yes counselor Anoni thank you yes we don't have any deals with the government or cmhc or anything for affordable housing but it was something that was always on the on the agenda from the from the get-go but um these are going to be affordable units in in the in my opinion for people getting into the market there is uh units that will be in the 200s starting from in the mid to high 200s so we're looking at people who want to get into the housing market will be able to find a way through buying one of these condos to get into the housing market so I just want that clear to people out there who are looking for geared to income or Regional Housing or affordable housing in that aspect that's not what we're talking about no okay and I don't want to read tomorrow we have affordable housing being built because what's affordable to us is not necessarily affordable to those that most need it okay thank you counselor the Coco I guess I was a little bit confused It says 55 unit apartment building compared to condos yes it's going to have as far as I'm concerned both so rental and or sell Mr elevich uh yeah sure just to clarify for Council um the intention is that these this would be a condo um by by the owner so once the building is under construction he would be applying for a condominium application but this would go through site plan in terms of how this appears as a land use land use we call it an apartment building a condo is a way of owning the land or owning the unit so condominium is ownership land use is an apartment building got it any other questions of council okay seeing none the public meeting with respect to the zoning bylaw amendment is now concluded counselor Thompson and then ioni thank you I'm uh particularly pleased to get up and speak about this particular development uh that has been sitting idle and vacant for probably 20 years I used to visit a little Italian couple in little white cottage way back in on the middle of the property they've passed away and I'm good friends with their family who inherited the property and every time there's there's a for sale on there everybody was oh there's Wetlands there and it has been vacant all this time I know Mr Lolly and he called me one day and said what about that piece of property on McLeod Road I said forget about us it's got Wetlands you couldn't develop it in spite of that he went ahead had it all checked out went through the conservation Authority I had the proper environmentalists uh do the work on the property and came back with this development of 55 units so I congratulate you on what you've accomplished and I it's my pleasure to make the motion to approve that development okay thank you for that we've got a motion to move the recommendation by councilor Thompson seconded by councilmanoni do we have any other questions or comments of counsel to the motion he's seeing none we'll call the vote all those in favor okay and that's unanimous thank you for Mr Lawley thank you very much okay thank you um just while I'm here I want to say this after you voted of course um I I really wanted to thank the Niagara uh planning department um Anna Mika was my rep in the planning department and she worked with me very well she she would call me to follow up to see how studies were coming she got involved with the conservation Authority she was really Hands-On and to find a planning department that you know as a developer time is is important and this one had some hurdles so it took extra time but your planning department did a great job and I would really like to thank the the Niagara Falls planning department for being so engaged and let you guys know that and on a second note it'll be very quick I know there's lots to get to um there's lots of counselors here that are on their second or more terms and they were involved with the emerald retirement home and that was again a vacant empty building and today I just wanted to let everybody know thanks to the help of of the council who was very important in that project and thanks to the help of 40 great employees we now have 40 great employees that work there year round and it was never ever a building that hired anybody year round and today day we take 112 seniors living there and we have 40 great employees working year-round so give credit to the Town Council for that thank you very much thanks for sharing that thank you very much [Music] okay moving along run item 7.2 on the plug of the public meeting sorry I couldn't spit that out I know ask our clerk to introduce the next item on the agenda public meeting is now being convened to consider a proposed amendment to the City Zoning bylaw to rezone the majority of the lands to a site specific Prestige industrial Zone and Associated buffer on the lands be rezoned to Environmental Protection area and this is occurring at 8488 and 8550 Oakwood Drive notice was given by first class mail in accordance with the planning act on March 8 2019 and by posting a sign on the property in question anyone who wants notice of the passing of the zoning bylaw Amendment or would like to preserve their opportunity to appeal to the local planning appeal tribunal shall leave their name on the sign-in sheets located outside the council team thank you Mr clerk I now ask our director of planning Mr elevich to explain the purpose and reason for the proposed bylaw Amendment thank you worship this uh property is located on the east side of uh Oakwood Drive uh it's probably more familiar to everybody as Montgomery Brothers I'd say uh Stone and Landscape Supply outlet they have two and two and a quarter hectares of land uh in two properties one of them is both of them are being used in part for the current operations there's a dwelling at the front of the more Northerly property strangely enough this property is zoned open space so the request is to Zone this Prestige industrial and they want to add some additional uses as well the rear portion of the land there's Gully and to the east of this is the Hydro canal and that part of the land is currently zoned hazard I suppose that that would be zoned Environmental Protection immediately to the South is the modern Mosaic the QEW is to the West so uh the two properties 84 88 and 8550 are basically used in conjunction with the current uh business operations on there the rear portion of the East End of the property you can see outlined in green those are the lands that are currently Hazard land and would be rezoned as Environmental Protection they are looking for some specific setbacks in terms of the standard regulations that we find in the prestige industrial zone so they want to recognize the existing undersized Frontage for the Northerly lot of 28.9 meters there's a front yard depth there for that existing house of 8.9 and 11.5 meters so that would be recognized as well they have an interior side yard for the uh Garage on that property which is 1.3 meters then the there's another shed which has a 0.8 meter setback and then they're looking for a building height of 14 meters that's around about 45 feet and a landscape open space of 35 for the property so the um outline that it's already being used as a landscape supply and garden center they want to protect that existing use we want to retain the existing dwelling and they want to protect the natural features on the land so as I said those lands are Hazard land now and they would become Environmental Protection so when reviewing this application staff found that it does conform with the provincial and Regional policies I will bring the zoning into Conformity with the official plan it is designated of industrial in the official plan because they set it Zone to open space for a reason none of us seem to be able to account for the prestige industrial is appropriate for uses that will be fronting onto the QEW they have requested the additional uses of a carpenter shop and Supply Yard Plumbing and heating shop machine shop building materials sales repair service of goods and machinery and of course the landscape supply so those are all appropriate uses for a highway commercial or Highway industrial Zone and the Environmental Protection will protect the portion of the Warren Creek as if discharges into the uh the power canal therefore staff is recommending the zoning bylaw Amendment for the majority of the lands to be recognized as Pi with special provisions and then the Environmental Protection for the portion of Warren Creek property and uh those really represent the highlights of this particular application thank you very much Mr Lewis any questions of council for Mr irlovich my only question was is a garage same as a garage that's my only question we talk about it it is thank you thank you members of the public are advised the failure to meet to make an oral or written submission at this public meeting will result in the local planning appeal tribunal dismissing any referral that it receives failure to sign the sign-in sheet will result in staff rejecting is for Section 3419 of the planning act Council will now hear from anyone other than the applicant who wishes to speak the proposed bylaw amendment is there anyone here other than the applicant who wishes to address Counsel on this matter okay seeing non-council will now hear from the applicant or his or her representative okay it doesn't appear to be anybody in this room I apologize took my glasses off no problem your worship the members council members and members of Staff um I myself and my client have worked very closely with the planning department in setting this application up and uh we feel confident that uh all the questions all matters have been addressed and it's we hope that it will be in favor I'm happy to answer any questions any questions of council for Mr cristelli ations all right public meeting with respect to zoning the proposed zoning bylaw amendment is now concluded I have a motion by counselor Peter Angelo and seconded by counselor Thompson that we approve the recommendation if there's no further discussion we'll call the vote all those in favor that's unanimous thank you very much thank you same number yes okay you're right I'll ask our clerk to introduce the next item on the agenda a public meeting is now being convened to consider a proposed amendment to the City Zoning bylaw to permit a renewable natural gas facility at 2800 thirdstone or sorry thorough Town Line Road notice was given by first class mail in accordance with the planning act on March 8 2019 and by posting a sign on the property in question anyone who wants notice of the passing of the zoning bylaw Amendment or would like to preserve their opportunity to appeal to the local planning appeal tribunal shall leave their name on the sign-in sheets outside the council chamber okay thank you very much an Oscar director of planning Mr herlovich to explain the purpose and reason for the proposed zoning bylaw Amendment yes thank you worship this uh property involves the Walker Brothers Industries on uh thorough Town Line Road um this is the area of the Quarry and uh and the landfill operations that most people are familiar with so as I said it's uh on thorough Town Line Road and the butts Taylor Road on the south and uh Beechwood Road on the on the East the property has an area of 202 hectares about 500 Acres most of the property is zoned envir are extractive industrial with a special provision 72 oddly enough there are three Parcels of land in this property that are not zoned extractive industrial they're actually zoned agricultural and those are identical on the map in front of you in Red so the intention is to rezone those red properties on the east side to environment or sorry extractive industrial 72 the same as the balance of the property similarly a small property on Thorold Townline Road would be extractive industrial 72 and then a larger property which would be extractive industrial 72 and Environmental Protection that larger property I just mentioned then this is a close-up of it and so uh again all of these lands are zoned agriculture they Walkers has operated for years in natural gas recovery facility they came into our office they wanted to expand and we said well wait a minute that's not a permitted use so that's the process began as I said the lands all around our extractive industrial 72 so it'll be exactly the same the natural gas recovery facility is a an accessory use permitted in that zone so that would then recognize that use there is a a stream that runs through that I think a portion of the 10 Mile Creek if you're familiar with that the the Walkers did a extremely good job on renovating that stream and establishing walking trails along there so that stream course will be zoned Environmental Protection the uh anyway most of us of what I just explained uh so uh staff and reviewing this application found that the proposal does conform with the provincial and Regional policies it conforms with the city's official plan with respect to permitting the landfill and the natural gas facility as well as protecting the water Force lands renewable and actual gas facility diverts the greenhouse gas emissions from the the waste and produces a renewable energy source for uh for heating purposes therefore staff is recommending the zoning bylaw Amendment as outlined and that's the highlights of this application thank you Mr irlovich any questions of counsel for Mr irlovich they sing none members of the public are advised that failure to make an oral or written submission at this public meeting will result in the local planning appeal tribunal dismissing any referral that it receives failure to sign the sign-in sheet role results and staff for ejecting an appeal as per section 3419 of the planning act Council will now hear from anyone other than the applicant who wishes to address counsel so anyone here other than the applicant okay seeing none Council now here for from the applicant and his or her Representatives your worship of members of council my name is Joe tomato I'm a development approvals manager at Walker environmental and to my right to my back his Grand guest uh general manager of construction we've reviewed staff's report we don't have any further comments to to the report but what we'd like to add is uh maybe a little more details on the actual project and the benefits of it we did send a PowerPoint presentation so Graham's going to take it over from here and then we'll open it up for any questions thank you uh good evening yeah I just wanted to give some context to the uh idea of a renewable natural gas facility as was previously disclosed we do operate and have for a number of years operated a landfill gas collection facility that harvests the methane that comes out of the landfill and for many years we were sending that to the Abba Tibi paper mill in Thorold as everyone knows that Mill shuttered in 2016 and we've been looking for another opportunity to utilize what we think is an underutilized resource coming out of landfill the renewable natural gas project represents probably the highest and best use of that gas we're actually going to clean it up in all of its take out all of the um non-methane constituents from the gas and we'll be injecting that gas into the natural gas pipeline where it can be used for any number of reasons including to heat your homes go food on a barbecue or hopefully supplement diesel fuel in large commercial transportation Vehicles which is really where you get the net benefit from a greenhouse gas reduction perspective so if we could cycle through a couple slides I'll give you three more minutes of renewable natural gas and uh and that will be good oh sure we can do that yeah so as I mentioned we do get the renewable natural gas is really just the methane fraction of landfill gas that comes from all landfills comes from all wastewater treatment plants all anaerobic digesters and all on Farm ad units so anytime we get the breakdown of the decomposition anaerobically of organic material we do get biogas and so we can use this fuel to clean up it's a direct replacement for fossil natural gas widely used in the transportation industry in the United States and now starting to make its way into Canada there's a nice initiative to upgrade all of the enroute facilities along the 401 Corridor where we see the majority of the heavy Transportation Vehicles traveling from winds are all the way through to Montreal we'll be able to take advantage of this fuel to reduce their greenhouse gas emissions and also we can take advantage of the Natural Gas Distribution Network which offers us storage which is kind of a bit of a challenge for electrical energy but it's not not so much of a challenge for gas and since there are literally hundreds of thousands of kilometers of pipelines in the ground we can really wheel this gas almost to any business Enterprise in Canada so we have a lot of opportunities to to make some good impacts here as a very quick snapshot the Project's about 50 million dollars of investment into the equipment we have a 20-year contract to produce that fuel we'll be employing at least three full-time really highly skilled positions this is really high-tech equipment that sits on the site that upgrades the gas and we're partnering with Enbridge who are constructing another extension to their high pressure line to bring that gas back to the marketplace and the technology we're using to clean up the gas is led by a Canadian firm out of the Quebec area so a good local story in here is generally how we would Envision this to be used in partnership with Enbridge moving that fuel into areas where the heavy Transportation industry can take advantage of it so thank you for your time thank you any questions of council yep counselor an interest question what have you been doing with the gas over the last few years that you haven't been selling it to that other business so currently we generate one megawatt of electricity on the site that's fed back into the provincial grid under a fit contract um so the RNG plant is fairly energy intensive and we'll be adding two more additional engines to offset the load that that facility will take so that we will have almost a net zero impact on the local grid we're also putting in a third generator to kind of get Walker Industries Off the Grid as well so um that is part of our renewable energy application approval that's been in place for a number of years we've just needed a project that could make it work so this has been one of those dominoes that's Fallen that's going to let us more fully utilize that gas and as I'm sure many of you are aware we've also just recently announced a pipeline that was sending this guy cast down to General Motors they're going to generate six and a half megawatts of electricity at their facility on Glendale Avenue which will help lower their greenhouse gas emissions and also reduce their load on the on the local electrical grid as well so kind of a nice full utilization of the of the energy that's great fantastic hope there's no further questions of oh another question okay I get a closed meeting Chris okay the public meeting with respect to this zoning about proposed zoning bile amendment is now concluded counselor Campbell would like to make the motion second by counselor Cario that we approve the recommendation we'll call the vote all those in favor and that's unanimous thanks very much gentlemen thank you it's like to ask our city clerk if he could introduce the next item on the agenda whenever he's ready take your time public meeting is now being convened to consider a draft plan of subdivision and to consider a proposed amendment to the city's zoning bylaw to permit 86 lots for detached dwellings and blocks for Road widening reserves and storm water management notice was given by first class mail in accordance with the planning act on March 12 2019 and by posting a sign on the property in question anyone who wants notice of the passing of the draft plan of subdivision and the zoning bylaw Amendment to participate in any site plan process if applicable or preserve their opportunity to appeal to the local planning appeal tribunal shall leave their name on the sign-in sheets located outside the council chamber thank you very much Mr clerk I'd ask Mr levitch our director of planning to please explain the purpose and reason for the proposed draft plan of bylaw Amendment okay thank you worship those last three applications where our warm-up acts we're keeping it easy now we're working into this one so the property involved is the former 420 extension so the intent was that the Ministry of Transportation was going to extend the 420 from where it ends at Montrose Road was going to meet at Kayla Road and then continue on to font Hill a number of years ago they abandoned that idea and they sold this strip of loudness right away that was supposed to be part of the highway proposal so the lands to the north and lands to the South are residential in nature to the West is the urban boundary and beyond that are agriculturally uses there is a CNR Mainland which backs on to the uh Beaver Valley subdivision and about some portion of this property and as well we've marked the two parks that are in the immediate vicinity of this proposed development so the property itself is about 15 acres in size you heard the clerks say that the intent is for 86 Lots these will be for detached dwellings what we used to call single-family dwellings The Proposal is to do this plan of subdivision and as well to rezone the property to an R1 e-zone there's currently a church on the property facing Kayla road so I would go from an Institutional Zone to the R1 e-zone the majority of the corridor itself is a development holding Zone and the intent is to Zone that r1e as well this property was subject to a number of meetings with the neighbors in terms of various Concepts so the uh uh so uh there was a a lot of um emails that were sent into to council and also saying they support concept too so I've included concept two on on the screen in front of you there are a number of things that the residents of both Ascot woods and Beaver Valley had asked for they didn't want the streets extending from Beaver Valley through and into Ascot woods they were afraid of uh cut through traffic so if there was a train on the crossing beaver beaver dams Road there was the potential that cars might have turned left come up through Beaver Valley subdivision along Beaverton road which is the yellow Street on the map if that connected with the Green Street they could have then exited out by Shoppers Drug Mart creating a lot of additional traffic so we worked a long time with the developer and his Representatives so the Beaverton uh which is the yellow Street will be exactly the way it is now it terminates uh at the uh the land that's in question uh that there's a city-owned road allowance extending south from uh Ascot Circle and that's the Green Street so that'll be a long cul-de-sac street again with no connection into Beaver Valley there is an emergency access between the yellow Street and the Green Street the blue street is a currently a cul-de-sac and it will remain a cul-de-sac when um this street was constructed it allowed for the opportunity that Lots good front either onto that street or onto um sorry the glass Brookside Drive or onto Citation Drive to the north which is in the Ascot wood subdivision and then there's a connection to kaler Road and this is called Street a so in the concept two Street a was kind of a slight curved Street however during the process of developing this subdivision plan we realized that we needed the larger stormwater Pond and that stormwater Pond needed to be expanded right where the red Street connects with Kayla road so we had to swing the red Street up and North to what is currently the church property so the people in uh in Beaver Valley and in Ascot Woods are basically saying this recommended concept so it which is on schedule two of your report and I'm doing a fair amount of talking here but basically we've maintained all of the objectives that the residents had asked for and that is no Sue traffic we have provided for this second means of access this is actually a highly important safety considerations should Beaver Valley be closed for any reason that beaver dams Road fire and emergency vehicles would be able to access these lands through the new Street connecting with Kayla Road it's probably too small to see anyway there is a a walkway between uh Citation Drive and um and Brookside Drive which will allow children in Ascot Woods to walk through the subdivision as they do now they actually walk across the field most of that fences you know pulled down or fallen down and they got reach Cardinal Newman School so as I said 15.07 acres of land and the proposal is that the majority of the lands will be zoned r1e the storm water block will be zoned Environmental Protection just as the current stormwater Pond is so in reviewing this application staff found that it does comply with the provincial and Regional policies and it will add to the 40 percent housing intensification in our built up area it complies with the official plan as it encourages the development of vacant and underutilized land that the requested zoning will provide appropriate regulations for the development and ensure compatibility with the surrounding neighborhood the existing planned infrastructure can support and propose development proposed development will assist in providing housing choices and add to our short-term housing Supply and draft be provides conditions uh the dot plan approval rather includes conditions that would address servicing part-planned utilities and it would also require that the houses on street be sprinklered because there is uh it's a long Dead End Street um therefore staff is uh recommending that the plan of subdivision be approved the mayor has designate the authorized to sign the draft to plan on approval after 20 days of notice is given a council's decision the draft plan approval would be given for a period of three years and will lapse thereafter that the application to amend the zoning bylaw be approved and that the mayor and clerk be authorized to execute the subdivision agreement those are the highlights of this report thank you Mr Lewis any questions of council for Mr herlovich you're seeing none members of the public are advised that failure to make an oral overwritten submission at this public meeting will result in the local planning appeal tribunal dismissing any referral that it receives failure to sign the sign-in sheet 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 address Council in this matter is there anyone here that wants to address Counsel on this matter okay seeing none Council will move along and ask to hear from the applicant or his or her representative thank you good evening Mr Mayor and council members my name is William highkip I'm a planner with Upper Canada Consultants representing Centennial developments the landowner for the proposed development of Beaver Valley Corridor as you're aware the applications consist of a zoning bylaw Amendment and draft plan of subdivision here you can see the subject lands highlighted in yellow the site is comprised of two former properties the former Church site on kaler road and the long strip of land as you know Mr herlovich indicated that was formerly owned by the MTO and intended to be the fort Highway 420 extension the excite is approximately 6.1 hectares or just over 15 acres in size here you can see the proposed zoning bylaw schedule so we'd be proposing to change the zoning from a development holding Zone on the MTO Corridor to an r1e Zone to support the residential single detached dwellings the EPA zone is for the expanded storm Water Management Facility as shown in green and identified as part two the proposed draft Planet subdivision has three main connections to the existing Street Network Street a will connect both into kaler road on the west end of the site and connect to the North Western limit of Brookside Drive Street B will Connect into the Ascot Circle via the existing right-of-way owned by the city adjacent to the smart towns property Lots 23 to 46 will front onto the existing citation Road Lots 47 to 65 will front onto the existing Brookside Drive I just want to highlight here at this point in time when the original subdivisions were developed it was contemplated that if the 420 extension did not move forward there would be the ability to have lots fronting on both these streets the dimension between the existing right-of-ways is just over 60 meters and lends itself perfectly to the creation of lots running on those existing streets the overall density for the subdivision is calculated at 19 units per hectare so as you may know we went through several open house meetings about a year ago and heard a number of different concerns from the residents so first off one of the major concerns we heard was about lock grading and drainage we wanted to show a cross section here an example of how a rear yard swell would work with the proposed dwelling and how that would interact with the existing dwellings that they back onto the grading design will Implement that all Rail Yard swells are constructed and directed to the appropriate rear yard catch Masons which will ultimately lead to the enlarged storm Water Management Facility no drainage will go to any of the surrounding properties as you can see on this image there will be adequate space between the proposed dwellings and the property line to accommodate rear yard swales as is typical in all developments additionally we heard some concerns at the open house about Pathways over time because the corridor was not active there has been some informal Pathways created likely for students going to Cardinal Newman School through the design process there was two connections uh that have been proposed one right at the major main intersection of street a and Brookside Drive and then a second connection from Street B into the Beaverton Boulevard cul-de-sac um these connections will provide for walkability and pedestrian access through each of the existing neighborhoods [Applause] some of the additional concerns we heard were traffic we complete we retained Paradigm Transportation solutions to complete a traffic study um Paradigm has reviewed the proposed development in consultation with the city staff and have acknowledged that all traffic generated from the site Falls within the acceptable Transportation Association of Canada levels additionally a paradigm has assessed the geometric design of the roadways to ensure that they meet the applicable designs requirements these have been reviewed and accepted by the transportation staff transportation department has requested to include a condition of approval for some speed cushions just to keep traffic from speeding up too quickly and that will help to deter anyone racing through Street a here you can see some examples of the proposed building designs which include both two-story and Bungalow dwellings the objective of the design is to create lot sizes and dwellings that are similar and compatible with the existing neighborhood and will reflect design typologies that exist in the surrounding community in conclusion the proposed development meets the provincial regional and local city policies Centennial has been an active developer and builder in the community for over 25 years and have done over 20 projects in the city in the surrounding municipalities just before wrapping one thing up I would like to bring to council's attention condition number 24 which requires all dwellings on Street B to be sprinkler we are of the opinion that the 3.4 meter connection provided from Street B to Beaverton Boulevard would be a sufficient Dimension to provide emergency services with vehicular access to Street B we have asked for these policies a number of times and they have not been provided for example there was a similar circumstance that arose in front of council I believe about a year and a half or two years ago if my memory serves me correctly regarding the German Village Development off of Garner Road at that time council did amend the conditions of approval for the same reason and at this time we asked Council consider the removal of this condition if you have any questions I'm here for any answers thank you okay thank you do you have any questions for Mr High Coop of counselors okay seeing none public meeting with respect to the proposed draft of subdivision and Zoning bylaw amendment is now concluded what's the will of counsel counselor Campbell could we hear from Mr herlovich that's the request that they're making Oh you mean regarding the sprinklers yes Mr elevich I'm going to politely defer to the fire chief okay thank you your worship to through YouTube Council um when I took over as fire chief we put we implemented a program where if there was one means of access So Fire gets the responsibility of talking about access routes into subdivisions we look at it from a police EMS and fire perspective try and get two when we can't get two then we ask for sprinklers in the residence because no we know sprinklers save lives and buys us time and this area here on B it's one way in the building code requires an access for fire of six meters not 3.4 3.4 worked in about 11 feet our truck to this day and age are around 10.4 feet wide so our concerns are we don't have enough room to get through the access and also the other part of the of the bylaw or the building code sorry is turning radius and I don't know that our aerial will be able to turn coming through that access should we require it so we're asking for the safety of the public to maintain the sprinklers and save lives how would you achieve compare this to the one that was referenced by Mr Haiku the one excuse me German Village I was not the chief at the time and I'm not 100 familiar with that um case I know we've been in Council several times since I have been Chief and this condition has gone through okay Mr elevich are you able to compare the two just for comparison's sake but I don't know okay so are you gonna check that now okay all right does anyone want to tell a joke while we're waiting I'll do a magic trick yeah I'm sure this we can't have the public at this point yeah I laugh at my own someone has to right so yeah that's right just kind of small talk while the planner goes through its Google Maps yeah I don't want to lose I would so give us just one second here folks then we'll get on to the next matter and our planning matters and we have another one coming up this yes yeah this is uh essential oils this is helping to purify the air that's oh he's ready I don't have to tell you anything else about that okay good so sorry worship so uh looking at the maps there there are actually 32 Lots on um on black forest so they're I think 14 Lots basically from Garner Road extending to the end of the cul-de-sac bulb and uh here we have I think around 12.
have about 12 but then we have that little extra portion of the street that has to connect with with Ascot wood so it might be slightly longer um I guess that's about the best taking offer similar they're similar similar okay well it's for council's consideration the quest has been made um we have to make that decision so we're looking for a recommendation from Council counselor I would move what's before said in the interest of safety for the inhabitants of those purchases of those buildings and that the sprinklers remain okay we have secondary a second by councilor lococo any further discussion of the motion okay we'll call the vote all those in favor okay and that's approved unanimously so thank you very much gentlemen thank you Mr Aiko thank you and this is DoTerra by the way in case anyone's wondering what kind of oil we're running up here yes I hope I get another sample for that yeah no the companies Doterra the companies Doterra all right thank you [Music] okay now ask our city clerk to introduce the next item on the agenda public meeting is now being convened to consider a proposed amendment to the City Zoning bylaw and a draft plan of vacant land condominium to permit the sorry the development of 53 townhouse dwelling units and assembly detached dwelling on a vacant parcel of land between 2294 and 2472 Thompson Road notice was given by first class mail in accordance with the planning act on March 8 2019 and by posting a sign on the property in question anyone who would like notice of the passing of the zoning bylaw Amendment and approval of the plan of vacant land condominium to participate in any site plan process if applicable or presumed preserve their opportunity to appeal to the local planning appeal tribunal so I'll leave their name on the sign-in sheets located outside the council chamber thank you Mr clerk I now ask our director of planning Mr herlovich to explain the purpose and reason for the proposed amendments thank you worship uh as the clerk outline this property is located on the south side of Thompson Road immediately east of Stanley Avenue to the north and to the West our single detached drawings and then the Ontario power generation transmission lines are to the South the property is 1.36 hectares about three and a third Acres The Proposal is to uh change the zoning from r1e which is a single detached dwelling Zone to an R4 Zone which would permit townhouses they are seeking 55 units in total there would be 53 townhouses and there is one semi-detached dwelling just okay well it doesn't quite reach how far they're just here in the in the corner Mark Simmons uh so as I said 55 units total they are looking for a slight reduction from 250 square meters lot area per unit to 248 square meters per unit so it's only a minor reduction they are looking for one other change from the standard R4 Zone and that is for a 3.3 meter rear yard setback the South End of block seven that really is in essence a acts as a side yard and our side yard requirements for most of our zones and in particular say the r1e that we're changing from would be a 1.2 meter setback so it's more than double what would be required for for a side yard the they are providing the rear privacy yards behind each of the units there is some so the access is sells from Thompson Road and there's some parking immediately as you come in so visitor parking there's a 30 foot wide uh landscape strip between the edge of that parking and the first house uh to the east so the uh basically uh so we did have a neighborhood open house uh in November 18 area residents did come out uh they stated that they would prefer to have the detached dwellings rather than townhouse dwellings they felt that it represented an over development of the site since the November meeting the developer did drop the number of units from 59 to 55.
The residents were concerned that there would be additional traffic on a local Road our traffic and parking people reviewed the situation they found that the road capacity is a thousand cars daily so therefore the road is is adequate to handle the additional traffic the residents were concerned that they always stop that stallion Thompson was ineffective the region has advised us that they intend to signalize that intersection this year there are no sidewalks on Thompson Road that was a concern to the residents and the city's policy that we do not install sidewalks on local roads the size of the proposed dwellings will affect the existing homes or likely sets of beer I don't have a response to that the parking areas are too close to the houses as I pointed out there's a 10 meter 30 foot buffer from the dwelling to the east so our staff review of the situation we found that the proposal does comply with provincial policies with respect to intensification in the built up area it complies with the regional official plan with respect to promoting higher density in the urban areas and will contribute to our housing Supply it contributes to the city's annual residential intensification Target of 40 percent the official plan allows development with a density between 20 units per hectare and 40 units per hectare this proposes right on target at 40 units per hectare and therefore complies with the official plan the requested zoning will provide appropriate regulations for development the applicant is proposing that to add semi-detached dwelling I pointed out that that's a uh that within the whole development there are two units that attached together so that's a 70 task as opposed to townhouses and activities that overall 55 units the reduction of the rear yard on block 7 as I outlined already typically we require only 1.2 meters for a side yard and the reduction of lot area from 250 square meters per unit to 248 square meters is only two square meters per unit so less than 21 square feet from our standard requirement therefore oh the existing infrastructure is sufficient the condominium will assist in providing housing choices and contribute to the C short-term housing Supply and the conditions of drop plant approval are attached to the staff report the subject lands currently drained to the OPG lands the site design proposes that storm water will be captured from the site will still drain to the OPG lands the applicant has already received approval from or power generation for that uh therefore staff is recommending the Council of proof the zoning bylaw Amendment to rezone the lands from r1e to R4 with the special modifications I mentioned uh the vacant land condominium be dropped approved subject the conditions the mirrors designate the authorized to sign the draft upon approval 20 days after notice the council's decision is given the dropped approval will be given for a period of three years and that the mayor and clerk be authorized to sign the condominium agreement those are the highlights of the application thank you Mr herlovich do we have any questions of counsel for Mr hilovich 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 local planning appeal tribunal dismissing any referral that it receives if the party is not made normal or written submission at this public meeting Council will now hear from anyone other than the applicant who wishes to speak to this proposed amendment is anyone here other than the applicant yes if you could step step up to the mic just if you could state your name and your address please okay good evening thank you Mr Mayor and Council for allowing us to provide input in this matter my name is Carmen burtone I'm speaking on behalf of my parents Luigi perton and uh Josephine Bertone who owned the property at the northwest corner of the proposed development and they have owned that property for over 40 years we are strongly opposed to the the plan as it stands right now to this town home development we believe that the development is too dense for this picturesque rural neighborhood we also believe or we know that the plan does not meet the current requirements as well as the requested zoning requirements safety we believe is also a very important issue here at the intersection of Thompson and portage so firstly I'd like to speak to the density issue the developers requesting rezoning from r1e to R4 and a variance to our four requirements the current plan does not meet R1 requirements obviously and it also does not meet our four requirements of weird rear yard depth and minimum lot area we believe the standards are there for a reason and they shouldn't be breached standards are very important the current plan would mean that there are 10 Town Homes directly adjoining my parents property and would be staring down on their property so we believe that this would deprive my parents who've owned the land again for 40 years reasonable and private use of their land my parents emigrated here from Italy many many years ago and they enjoyed to cultivate their own garden grow their own food that they eat they like to hang their clothes outside to dry you could call them true lifelong environmentalists before that term became popular having this many Town Homes adjoining their yard would encroach on their privacy and deter them from enjoying the outdoor activities that they love they are not against development but feel that you know single detached homes in the in the range of about 20 would be more appropriate for this neighborhood more palatable and in keeping with the existing conditions secondly I'd like to talk about safety the intersection of Thompson and Portage Road I'm not sure if you can bring that slide up again but that intersection is currently very unsafe because there's a significantly acute angle at that intersection so we often see cars speeding through the stop sign and there have been many close calls there adding an outlet so close to the proposed development We Believe would increase the danger and would be perilous so I know that the planning department or the transportation department studied that and they've stated that the you know the roads have the capacity to to handle the increased traffic I don't know that they've looked at the outlet being so close to that already very dangerous intersection in addition the current uh parking plan shows that there's provision for 77 parking spaces but they're looking to to have 55 homes and most uh you know families have two parents that are working and children and so we believe there'll be more than 77 Vehicles attempting to park there and that there is high potential for vehicles parking in the road which would amplify the safety issues even further um so in summary we strongly pose this application due to safety and density issues zoning requirements are there for a reason they shouldn't be breached the applicant should consider a reduced density development and thank you all for your time to provide input thanks very much uh before you run with any questions all we would ask is we have to maintain decorum in here I know you're emotional about it but that's all we ask if you could just keep it to comments here at the microphone are there any questions of counsel from Mr baton okay we're good thanks thank you thanks is there anyone else yep you can step right up we'll get to everyone everyone get their uh at their time at the mic if you can just state your name and your address please yes my name is John Raton Carmen's my brother okay uh thank you your worshiping council members for for listening um I I reside at 2498 Thompson Road I just want to Echo my brother's concern I'm not going to get in repeat what he said but I want to speak something specifically to my property I'm concerned about drainage and garbage disposal so I my the there's a dead end that butts up right against the back of my property so I'm concerned in the winter time that I'm going to have snow removal and snow is going to pile there melt and I'm going to have a flood in the back also I'm concerned about garbage disposal is there going to be garbage trucks coming by are there going to be bins if so where are you going to place the bins is it going to be at that dead end then I have rodents in my property as well okay so those are my specific concerns I'm also concerned for safety um I I know you did the studies you have the statistics but when you're out there many times you'll see young families with their young children walking around with their dogs and this increased traffic that is going to come I think because of this new development will will bring safety concerns in my opinion also the parking as well is another concern for me that uh come Christmas time is there is there going to be parking within the the proposed plan I don't know yet so I know that there's parking lots set up for visitors but come Christmas time there might be a lot of parking on Thompson Road which I think might decrease visibility and bring safety concerns as well anyway those are my concerns thank you so much for listening appreciate it thank you very much okay anyone else other than the application I figured your brother covered them too so Council if you do have questions as we have speakers just kind of alert me is there anyone else here uh other than the applicant who wishes to address Council yeah okay we've got one and then you can come up next sir Interstate your name in your address please hi my name is Randy Taylor I live on Stanley Avenue and my concern is more because um I have trouble getting out of my driveway now at five o'clock in the evening because there's excessive amount of traffic on Stanley I've been told by the region that we're going to get a traffic light not sure how that's gonna really help at all but um there have been some bad action to that intersection I've lost a few blankets to covering up guys off motorcycles and things so uh I just don't think that 55 units the density is too much for that area it's like putting a development in an area that it doesn't belong it's very incongruent it we are all single family dwelling houses detached if you will and we would like our neighborhood to remain that way there's no green space allowed for in that we do not have a park in our neighborhood so I'm concerned that the kids are going to end up playing in the reservoir which is probably not a good place for them either and or in our backyards which isn't good either so um I'm just concerned that there's it's just too many houses for one area also I don't know if anybody's done a study because I haven't seen one but the sewer system in that area I'm not sure it can handle the 55 units either thank you okay we'll get answers to all your questions thank you very much sir did you want to step up can you state your name and your address please yeah it's Nick Langley my wife Jackie Langley 1974 Portage Road we have four main objections a lot of which has been covered by the earlier speakers Road congestion traffic safety and related environmental effects basically this community Portage Road Thompson Road we all call it the loop it's a family orientated neighborhood people like going for walks with their dogs all around the block the children love riding their bicycles it's a safe area where kids can play on their front Gardens there are several children in the air including a couple of minors over there who have special needs we have we have four children three with autism I have a low vision daughter we are my neighbors like it or not we moved to the area specifically for my children's safety we chose that area I have a daughter you guys have put up disability signs low low traffic speeds for that we submitted it's the only area my daughter that's low vision can walk she has to walk with an older sibling but I'm very concerned of their safety because that's gonna there's not many places when you have children with special needs the of a safe place and my concerns are the every load of the traffic many of you the families have pointed out that intersection that is an acute angle it is dangerous and you're going to have such influx of traffic you know for many many months or whatever this goes through I'm not gonna be able to let my kids out and that to me when you have children with special needs has a huge impact on their well-being and safety and that and that is that's going to be a concern about during the construction phase and afterwards I mean you know that you did there was talk of this so Road Safety analysis that the city did I mean this this area is on like bus routes for like four or five different schools when it when a school bus is coming down up Thompson Road you basically have to pull over and stop to let it through the same with the garbage collection the road itself is too narrow and going forward that in itself will be an issue plus that I think they're going to be severe limitations on the sewage system and the garbage collection in the area with it basically in that area where this has been proposed this amounts to an 85 percent increase in dwellings in that area right currently there are 65 dwellings around this this development so that's an 85 increase in sewage water consumption electricity traffic okay and uh for those and also General General reasons of like we need to save the green spaces in this city they're being carved off you know there's lots of wildlife in the area too there's deers rabbits all kinds of wildlife that the kids love to go and watch they're all going to be driven away if this goes through anything no just I really want someone to consider children's safety I know there's a few young families there you know you see your kids just the other day kids and little wagons being pulled by bicycles it's good old-fashioned safe fun and we're losing that in the city and especially you know I've got kids with special needs it's a it's a big um scare for a parent okay thank you very much all right thank you [Applause] yeah oh yeah you can comfort so you started a trend we have couples coming up now we both live there good evening my name is Paul Moore my wife Joan Joan has lived in this area for 57 years and our house is 2250 Portage Road but the back of our house is almost right across the street from where the driveway would be to the subdivision we Echo all of the concerns that have been mentioned already and we've talked about them but one that we're concerned about as well is that my wife and I are very Avid gardeners we have won numerous Trillium awards for the city we are been part of the the Horticultural Society Garden Walk and possibly again this year we are concerned about some of the damage that could take place from cars parking on the streets on our property because very very often if cars are parked on the side of the road it's already been mentioned it's very difficult to get around them and with the congestion that would be increased at 85 percent increase in traffic those cars have to go somewhere they have to park somewhere we have concern for the value of our property as well as the intrinsic value that it adds to the city we're both on the board of the Horticultural Society here in the city and we care about what our city looks like the green spaces the flowers the plants and so that's a major concern for us in in seeing this volume of houses being put into this area and even like our house has ample yards and with all the reduced you know requests I just wonder how much yard space these new units will have for kids to play versus you know the addition of the kids walking on the road is the safety issue as well um I know years ago my kids would walk to school but then the school board deemed Stanley and Portage as a Danish intersection so it's being bust and with that many houses and that much increased vehicles I don't see it as a huge increase for safety there thank you very much thank you thank you anyone else other than the applicant who wishes to address counsel going once oh yep we've got another one okay we gotta take her hello everybody my name is Rebecca Coleman um you probably know my name I wrote about the city lights on Stanley and Portage I live at 2343 Jessie court and everything that's been discussed here tonight I think in general everybody has the same concerns in addition to it I do have small children sorry I'm trying to not get upset but they play on the streets all of them it's a good neighborhood there's a good group of kids and they don't have anywhere to go and there's no sidewalks for their safety and the cars if somebody from here wanted to come one day and just sit and watch it's unreal how fast Vehicles fly down there and the thought of one of mine being hit is really disturbing and adding that many vehicles to this to the subdivision is crazy I mean we can't even get two vehicles down that road on a good day and in the winter time getting a snowplow down there we've had to call to get one down it's like we're forgotten so now you're gonna add this other subdivision there and it just really scares me for the kids they have nowhere to go they can't even cross the road to go to a park because of that four-way stop nobody stops I've physically gotten out of my car to tell people to stop like I shouldn't have to do that and I know that there's stoplights going in but I don't think it's gonna eliminate you know there's nowhere for them to go there's no park now you're adding all of these people in addition our subdivision is only made up of 60 houses and you're wanting to add 55 in that little space that's meant for one property I think it's crazy and I just I feel like I need to speak on behalf of the kids because that's the only spot that they have to go where it's safe thank you very much any anyone else [Applause] if there's anyone else that's thinking my window will be closing shortly yes hello I am Zach Langley I live at 1974 Portage Road with my mom and dad and my three younger siblings it is really concerned for our safety with traffic and we had to leave have a neighbor who lost her cat because of a school bus and traffic there because people are just zooming by so fast and not even realizing that there is wildlife out there that can be hit there's children playing who can be hit and you know It's upsetting for those families and our family especially that this is a concern thank you very much anyone yeah come on forward sure if you understate your name and your address please my name is Troy malinkovic and my residence is 2162 Portage Road so there's been a lot of things covered tonight and uh but there's a couple things missed that whole doubling our density virtually overnight is ridiculous you put too much strain on the infrastructure there's one everybody's touched on a lot of good points but there's one in particular that's been missed if you go south Southeast of the parcel land that that's being developed that's going to turn into a swamp fetid water and there's enough of a prod right now with Still Water that's all clay in that area going towards OPG when they develop the canal and the reservoir they put a lot of fill and Clay where Luigi bartoni is he's he's in perfect there's a old riverbed that runs through there and the soil is all sandy loan that's why it's so good for gardening and it runs into Eagle Valley golf course and now in sandpit that was an old Gorge but it's a clay that's a problem there's no sewers there they're all catch basins and if you're going to double just the Watershed you're going to have a swamp there you have prawns mosquitoes and disease and God knows what else that should be a cul-de-sac 12 gorgeous houses not 55 units that's a disgrace that's all I have to say thank you thank you very much [Music] [Applause] you can just state your name in your address please yes uh Mickey Richardson 2701 Thompson Road I actually did submit the written input so I think the planning board should have my letter but just the uh outline I'm objected to the project for basically uh three different reasons one is a negative impact while negative traffic impact of 55 additional household in the area currently we have 65 households on Thompson Road and I pulled a portion of Portage Road that's directly concerning in that same traffic Loop introduction of 55 household possibly 100 more cars Vehicles added to the traffic is a significant impact as others mentioned people in the neighborhood like to walk their dogs children walk around it's a nice little walking booth and people just enjoy this neighborhood for the atmosphere so that's definitely all the impact that will be a different totally different culture the community love of community will change the secondly the this project does not conform with the rest of the residential dwellings in the area all the homes currently are single family homes with the general lot sizes as you see the one just on Thompson Road there are four large sizes and you see the relation to the size you're putting about one lot size about six households townhouse project in there for same low size so therefore it's definitely no conforming with the remainder of the housing and the third reason that I object that many local residents were not informed of this project from the beginning because there's a 120 meter distance requirement for information of this public meeting to be circulated my home was actually just outside of that 120 meter I did not even know about this I did not know there was an initial meeting that was held I guess back in November October I was not informed fortunately one of the neighborhood people decided to put best notice in other mailboxes and I think that's why a lot more people are here I think everybody in this neighborhood share the same entryway of Stanley and we don't have any other accessible Road access so everybody in the household at 365 household should be invited to the project discussion from the beginning so therefore those are the three reasons that I object to that and I don't know of the name of the lady she actually gave me this she collected the signature from our neighborhood and I didn't count them but she told me it's at least over 65 signature on it so I'd like to submit that you want to hand that to the counselor and we can pass that to the clerk okay thank you and I guess my written submission has been already handed in so you should have a copy of this already yes we do it's in the report okay great thank you so much thank you very much all right do we have anyone else Southern if you could just come to the microphone please I just need you to state your name and your address please it's part of the public meeting Sierra 2098 Portage Road I just want to know are you going to ask us the rest of us are you happy or against this no what we're asking is if you have something to say this is not just saying we're all not happy about it that's all I want you to know well I think we get that general feeling okay yes okay it's crazy idea single host is what would be nice yes thank you very much [Laughter] is there anyone else other than the applicant who wishes to address Canada it's your last chance if there's something new you want to bring to the table I made a lot of good notes Here on your concerns what's that stop asking like you said we're not that smart all right well I think we've heard from the uh uh the residents in the neighborhood so what we're going to do now and so here's what we're going to do counselors gonna hear from the applicant and or his or her representative so we're going to get the other side of it and then Council get a chance to ask them and under their questions try to get some answers and then when I close the meeting Council will make the final decision on what we're going to do tonight so we'll now hear from the applicant or his her representative good evening Mr Mayor members of council Scott Arbuckle with IBI group I have a presentation for you this evening oh it's already up there I think we can dispense with the location map we all know where that is really what I wanted to take you through today was a bit of the Genesis of the site design as we have it um as mentioned earlier the original proposal was 59 townhouse units we had modifications proposed to a number of the standards within the R4 Provisions so we did have minimum lot area in this case significantly lower than the revision that we've proposed today we were looking at relief for uh some of the Yards we're also looking for relief for your depth um as well as for um Drive aisles for vehicles so it was a considerably denser proposal and what we did was initially went to a public meeting public open house in Thursday as mentioned one of the things we heard was traffic conditions at Stanley and Portage at the Stanley and Portage intersection as mentioned previously the region is signalizing that intersection we confirmed actually just the other day that that is in the capital budget for this year and that is happening um Thompson Road was confirmed as operating an acceptable level for a local Road earlier in the staff presentation you learned that Portage is a local Road was intended to carry a thousand cars daily what we like to attribute to is the the trip generation for the site itself and that's poor important because it's important to understand not everybody's coming and going at the same time so with a development of uh 55 units as we've proposed today in the peak hour what it really represents is about 26 vehicles moving out in the morning about 27 vehicles moving in in the afternoon again because not everyone's moving at the same time when you contrast that with a single-family detached proposal I think the number mentioned in the first presentation was 20 units really the delta in the volume of traffic in a peak hour and this is what's key is the peak hour is 13 Vehicles so that's the difference in terms of the trip generation not a significant difference we certainly did hear that the proposal was too dense for the area again the revisions been made to conform to the density limits of the official plan and that's 40 units per hectare also we had concerns I heard concerns over the unit count and we've lowered that count again within the compliance of the density Provisions for the Zone limit as well as the official plan we also heard issues of site design so safety adjacent to neighbors rear yards so the first the first house adjacent to the parking area coming off Thompson as planning staff mentioned there's a 30 foot landscape area it's adjacent to parking and that parking butts into the side yard so from a site design perspective Our intention was to do a landscape area includes of some armor Stone um again because we heard the concern that we didn't want cars obviously driving over the curb into the side yard another aspect I wanted to cover was fencing along the adjacent housing our client has committed to a board on board privacy fencing proposed along all the existing lot lines from planning staff themselves we heard issues with respect to zoning regarding patios and decks we confirmed that no modifications are proposed to these regulations so they will fully comply with the R4 provision we also heard of concerns with site servicing drainage to the OPG lands done an extensive amount of work with OPG support to understand the sites as they drain now basically drain from Thompson into this site and into OPG there's absolutely no change proposed to that drainage methodology and we've worked with OPG to secure their approval for an outlet across their lands and then finally there was a concern in terms of an archaeological assessment and that's been confirmed by the ministry as acceptable so the proposal has modified um as mentioned earlier by planning staff is really modifying two standards so the first is the minimum lot area per unit the standard is 250 square meters for each dwelling unit we're perform proposing 248.4 essentially what we're proposing is 99.4 percent of the standard it's an imperceptible modification the second modification is again is planning staff noted just very briefly so the the South property line is a rear yard condition the rear yard would normally be 7.5 meters but it presents as a side yard condition for the proposed development itself so the yard proposed in this case is approximately three meters I did want to assure members of council um the intention of our our clients and and four walls is a is a new developer to Niagara Falls this is their first project um they're determined to make a good impression with this project um and from an architectural design standpoint um the buildings are higher end so as you saw with the previous application on single-family detached homes and some of the building design materials that are used there exactly the same kind of materials are proposed with this development a lot of stone a lot of Hardie board which is a high-end siding it is in your vinyl siding and a lot of brick elements so this is the concept before you I did hear a few concerns in some of the resident presentations I did one who provide some input on specifically there was a concern that there would be 77 parking spaces there are in fact 110 parking spaces proposed for the development the parking as proposed fully complies with the city's owning bylaw hmm excuse me there was also a concern with respect to the Portage and Thompson intersection and again this development is a driver for that concern it's a concern as I understand that exists today we did have our transportation engineering staff take a look at that intersection it is very very much an odd intersection as a why um and they have some modifications that they've suggested to me and unfortunately um I don't have them as part of this presentation but modifications that can be made in terms of the stop line the stop line location the stop sign location on Thompson as it exits onto Portage as well as some directional lining that you can do that basically try and tee up that intersection as it's called so make it a perpendicular intersection as opposed to one of those intersections where you have to look back over your shoulder so there are design solutions that are available there for a problem that clearly exists today again I heard the concern of drainage there's with certainty not going to be any sort of bog swamp or anything else on the OPG lands the drainage Ultra versus in that direction currently the proposal is that that drainage will continue to Traverse in that direction also with respect to garbage disposal just to confirm that the region will be picking up garbage at this site they'll be picking up the garbage on a per unit basis there won't be commercial garbage storage facilities there won't be commercial garbage pads so it's garbage pickup as you have in your house today um and then finally wanted to mention in terms of servicing capacity as a component of our development we were required by the city to undertake what's called a functional servicing study that functional servicing study looked at components of sanitary water supply as well as storm water management and there were no concerns that report was accepted by City staff so those are my submissions to you today I'm more than happy to take any questions and answer any concerns we may have thank you very much Mr Arbuckle do we have any questions of counsel for the presenter yes counselor Coco thank you Mr Mayor through you to the speaker I had a couple of concerns from some residents the tree the bush at the far right where that end road is will you be pushing any snow up there so it goes into if it melts if it goes into other people's backyards yes as I understand that the concern was up in this area and through you Mr Mayor thank you for raising that um concern no the intention isn't to do any snow storage in that area having said that and that can be controlled this is a a condominium development so that can easily be controlled through management but if there was snow storage it wouldn't impede on the properties above simply because the drainage goes in the exact opposite direction okay thank you I have a couple other questions there was a question about another access coming into here I know there's the access is coming off of Thompson Road is there any other way to go through I know it's OPG land and hydro when I was speaking to your colleague Angela she said that she would talk about it um I mean there's certainly always the opportunity to provide another access point the question is why are we providing the access point um for for 55 townhouse units um it really only requires a single point of access the access itself is designed to all Municipal standards so fire service garbage anything of the light can access the site as they need to okay uh the other question was parking on Thompson Road I don't know if there's no parking signs there right now but maybe that's something that we can look at to discourage extra parking out there in the invisibility yes through you Mr Mayor certainly no parking signs would work along Thompson the simple reality is that the visitor parking Arrangement which you can see in this area again more than complies with the municipal zoning standards we have no reason to believe that there would be any overflow of parking onto the local Street thank you very much thank you any other counselors have questions so a couple that I had that were brought up today too one was about the snow yes uh do you have a plan for snow removal uh yes again because this is a condominium development that would be dealt with through the management of the condominium itself so it would be stored on site where it's appropriate so certainly uh could be stored along in this area could be stored opposite driveways could be stored in this area could be stored down in here this was raised as a particular concern so we could make sure that there isn't any storage there but again the grading wouldn't wouldn't create an issue that way so from a design perspective there's certainly lots of locations on site for snow storage if snow becomes like we had this winter certainly uh significant amount of snowfall than provision would be to truck it off site okay um the other question I had was regarding the parking now you said there's 110 spots now is that assuming one in the garage and one in the driveway that's correct it is okay now we had a question about sewer capacity I don't know if I could ask our staff here Kent if we have a commenter if uh if that's uh if we can get an answer for the residents here asking about the capacity um the uh there is a condition in the uh um the condominium approval for the developer to confirm that there's sufficient capacity and Based on data um what the starbucklehead said about the uh functional design study had confirmed that there was a policy there was okay all right and the other thing that was brought up by one of the residents and I know you're looking at places to grow act and whatnot that are coming down from the province with regard to density but in terms of neighborhood character had you considered or looked at any models of uh of detached homes when you're going through the planning because I know that's one of the questions that we're getting a lot of and that's a very fair question and and the answer is yes I mean we looked at models of singles we looked at models of towns we looked at more intensive models quite frankly um and we we rested on Town simply because it provided that balance with singles it wasn't fulfilling the intent of the city's own planning policies certainly wasn't infilling fulfilling the intent of places to grow and again I I look at the Delta so as I mentioned from a traffic standpoint you know the the difference between 20 units and 55 units from a traffic impact standpoint in a peak hour is is 13 vehicles for a road on a local capacity standpoint of a thousand Vehicles a day it's completely inconsequential from the idea of compatibility in neighborhood fit what we've done with the beginning from the beginning with the townhouse design is every single one of the Yards complies with actually the single family detached dwelling provision so their minimum 7.5 meter rear yards they're minimum five meter side yards and then where we have them adjacent to existing residential in these areas in these areas and then down in these areas and these rear yards they exceed the single family standard so other than the fact that the form of development is different from what's there in terms of yards it's completely the same if not more okay thank you last chance for Council if you have any other questions for Mr Arbuckle okay I think we're thank you thank you very much I have no idea what to do with this what's he doing well that worked there we go all right the public meeting with respect to the proposed zoning bylaw Amendment and playing a vacant land condominium is now concluded what's the will of council Council strange yes Mr Mayor um I want to thank you for the presentation it looks like it you know what it really looks like a a nice development um I just think it's in the wrong location uh you know you got a neighborhood here a neighborhood here that's been here for a long time you know close to 50 homes and you wanna double that density and you know it really doesn't conform to the neighborhood like a lot of the residents were saying um first of all the traffic and the congestion it seems like the intersections of Portage and Thompson Stanley uh the safety there and some blind spots as well there's already been concerns about safety just as it is now and I couldn't imagine having 100 more cars and uh you know 53 units there um snow removal drainage but ain't the biggest Factor here is is safety and you've heard every resident come up here and talk about the safety of their kids their show parks there a lot of them are playing in the roads and there's traffic the streets aren't wide enough even to get snow removal down there is uh is sometimes never happening so you know I would look if I was in your shoes and I was having a house hunt down there I wouldn't want this development here either you know if it's conforming a lot of them said you know if you got down to have 20 single family you could make a difference um and then I think the major factor is having that that young boy come up here and and hers concerns about the safeties of of that neighborhood we might be our next mayor so I can't unfortunately I cannot support uh the development um yeah so you're making a motion to deny the applications okay Council Peter Angela yeah you worship I'm happy to suck in the motion I mean I know I've talked before about the provincial policy statement and the uh and the growth plan and that growth plan gets sent down from the province so I know a lot of times uh you know the focus of the reports or whether or not the targets are achieved in in this case it looks like the density chart targets are achieved for R4 but that's going from R1 to R4 I think if you take a look at the R1 zoning it really is incompatible with the neighborhood it is a unique situation in the sense that and I know the one lady mentioned that there's only one in and only one L and and it's just a loop around Portage Road to Thompson Road there's 65 homes on there adding another 55 I think wouldn't be compatible with the neighborhood I'm happy to suck on the motion thank you counselor so your counselor the cocoa [Applause] I'm concerned about the safety as well I took a drive out there and while I was there there was a bunch of kids on their bikes driving by and they waved I thought that was very nice but I am concerned about the safety and I think it is too dense for this area okay thank you counselor councilor dubowski uh thanks Mr Mayor ayako uh counselor strangest comments as well as counselor Peter anselors and the Coco's one other thing nobody really mentioned is that the land we're at Agricultural Center once stood I think uh taking that into consideration as well this could open up a can of worms so I don't support the recommendation I think a traffic signal at that intersection is uh is uh something you should look at immediately I think even in the summer months when there's shade there's a lot of trees in that that intersection I've drove out there a bunch of times I grew up in the north end and I think it's unsafe the way it stands now so again don't support the motion I think I think 12 homes or 20 homes might be a better fit but uh either I Echo those comments and support emotional home Pastor Thompson yes uh this has been a very interesting uh evening I don't think I've seen this kind of opposition for the last uh maybe 10 years so our responsibility here is to listen to people who are going to be adversely affected in their mind and there's an opportunity right here to see that people want nothing to do with this development and I hear them and I support them he's just competing for collapse just so okay we have a motion by a counselor strange that we deny the application and seconded by counselor Peter Angelo we're now going to call the vote all those in favor okay and it's passed unanimously so folks this development is not approved [Applause] so thank you some of you uh want to vacate this is a good time unless it's a very exciting agenda you can hang around yep [Music] yep I thought about that then I thought if we're not there yet from the reports no we got we had a presentation pretty good here next up is going to be Jim bruzzizi BMA so uh we'll get you lined up here I know we're just going to be noisy for about another two minutes is it something I said pardon me is this something I thought it gives just 30 seconds Jim we're almost ready we'll just get those doors closed all right sir whenever you're ready we're all set for you thank you worship members of council uh what I'd like to present this evening is the long-range financial plan for water and wastewater and that's in accordance with the Ontario regulations that requires a financial plan every every five years um the city's taken a proactive approach the regulations only uh require a financial plan for the water operations but the city is also uh have conducted a financial plan for the Wastewater operations as well uh one thing I just want to point out the financial plan is it's a it's a dynamic document and it's projecting six years into the future and of course uh based on a projection we have to make assumptions in in the preparation of the plan um the assumptions were made on the best available data that we have currently and what we recommend is that if there's major changes new new information comes available uh and it has an impact on the assumptions that we're making in this plan that the plan B revised accordingly uh so in preparation of the plan we we developed some guiding principles uh those being maintaining the water and wastewater assets and that means that you have Capital reserves for replacement of the assets on a timely basis we want to make sure there's a reasonable degree of stability and predictability in in the rates uh the last thing you want to do is just because of a large Capital project a tremendous increase in the rates that it's not a good impact on the tax on the ratepayers we want to make sure this fair is sharing a distribution of resources between current and future taxpayers in other words uh the infrastructure Gap shouldn't growth sustainable cash flows we want to make sure Financial sustainability you have adequate reserves and and capacity to issue debt if required and then we also wanted to make sure the programs and services were at the current service level uh just to start off what we did is as we looked at your rates uh we compared 2018 rates uh with all the other Niagara municipalities and we also compared them against we have a database in our office of uh 108 different Ontario municipalities and it represents about 80 86 percent of the population of Ontario so we look at the the rates for the various categories of consumption uh we look at residential and we assume that 200 cubic meters a year your rates are 19 below the uh the Niagara average and in fact they're below much below the uh the uh average of the 100 100 plus Ontario municipalities and then when you look at the other consumptions for commercial industrial uh you can see that you're the second lowest uh for various consumptions in the commercial commercial industrial and when you get into the very large consumption industrial consumptions uh you're you're the lowest in in this in the survey uh to your rates right now are are very competitive Jim excuse me if I could ask you is that just within the region those uh where you say that we're either the third lowest second lowest or the lowest that's in the region in the region okay that's good pretty good pretty good um so so the next thing we want to look at is uh what we call the asset consumption ratio in other words what that shows it's the value of the assets that have been consumed so that gives you an indication like that you have a high ratio that's an indication that you have uh potentially some large capital projects uh into the future into the new near future so when we look at the ratio We compare it to the other municipalities uh your asset consumption ratio for the water is the second highest in the survey and in the Wastewater you're also the second highest in the survey so again that's an indicator that that your infrastructure is is lower than the neighboring municipalities in the region and uh you want to be cognizant of that because as I say it it's reflective of a large Capital expenditures uh in the future that you want to make sure that you have the uh the adequate capacity in terms of reserves and debt to uh to do undertake those projects um so as I said earlier early in the presentation we had to do it uh based on assumptions these are the various assumptions that uh that we use for inflation um the I guess the two main ones that I just wanted to highlight uh the regional expenditure increases the the region sells water to the mid to the nether Falls uh they're projecting a 3.8 percent uh annual increase for water over the over the next six years and six percent annually for Wastewater so that that's a that's the majority of your budget and uh So that obviously has to be reflective and you want to make sure you have the revenues obviously to uh to recapture that the other thing is the capital requirements uh the latest available information is the 2013 and it was an asset management plan that was conducted and I think you're in the process of of updating that but that was the latest information available in that Asset Management plan it recommended that you you transfer 6.1 million dollars annually to the water capital reserve and create currently I believe you're transferring uh 4.1 million and in the terms of the Wastewater Reserve uh it recommended a 6.5 million dollars transfer to the Capitol reserve and you're you're currently transferring about uh 4.7 million so one of the things that we we wanted to do in the plan one of the objectives is to come up with a obviously you can't increase the contributions all in one year because the impact of the rate payers so what we're recommending is a phase-in strategy so you'll see over the course of the six-year plan a phase-in strategy to come up with the levels of the recommendations of the asset management plan um so the uh long range forecast uh assumptions in terms of the rate structure we looked at the rate structure and you have a two-tier rate structure and in fact 90 percent of the municipalities of that 108 that we looked at also have a two-tier rate structure uh you're collecting 60.5 percent of your revenues on the volumetric charge and the remainder is the fixed monthly charge and in fact that's pretty much in line with the uh the average of the municipalities that we surveyed across Ontario and so we're recommending to maintain that proportion that uh split between uh fixed and volumetric uh it supports afford to build the objectives and provides an adequate level of Revenue stability um reserves that reserves are very important uh you need reserves for rate stabilization uh provide financing for one-time short-term requirements uh most importantly to make a provision for the replacement of your assets Water and Wastewater are very Capital intensive you want to make sure that you have reserves to avoid spikes in funding and to ensure a sustainable cash flows so in terms of the reserve strategy uh the the goal the guiding principle is to make sure that you have infrastructure and stayed a good repair in order to do that you have to transfer to the Kappa reserve for the timely replacement of the capital assets and uh in conjunction with the asset management plan that you prepared so you can see as I said earlier uh our plan calls for a gradual increase to to the asset management plan recommendations and you can see in water a gradual increase and by the by the year six uh you come up with the recommended level of transfer to the capital reserve and the same thing in Wastewater uh debt strategies uh you want to make sure they have prudent use of that and we recommend and leading practices is to make sure that debt servicing costs don't exceed 10 percent of the rate revenues and in fact uh you're much below that you're you're about four percent in the Wastewater and around two percent in the water over the forecast period uh we don't anticipate any any requirements for debt as a result of the transfers to the Capitol Reserve uh so the forecast uh the results of that we looked at again a 200 cubic meter residential impact and it works out to about a 3.8 percent increase uh cumulative increase between water and wastewater water is about 2 2.8 annually and Wastewater is 4.8 percent uh annually so you can see it's a smooth increase over the forecast period uh and it takes into account the two large expenditure items those being the uh the region uh increases that they're proposing and also the the increase to phase in the Kappa Reserves uh so in summary your your rates are amongst the lowest of all Niagara municipalities uh your infrastructure is uh older than most other Niagara municipalities and your contributions to the capital reserve is low in relation to the recommended Asset Management plan so we recommended the phase-in strategy to to increase the capital reserves uh your rates even at the end of the forecast period will continue to be relatively low in relation to Niagara municipalities and in fact when I look at increases coming forward in 2019 of other Ontario myths about these uh you'll be uh very competitive in that regard as well uh the rev the reserves will gradually increase and as I said it's all based on assumptions and as if there's major changes to any of the assumptions uh the financial plan should be updated accordingly so that's the end of the presentation you worship okay thank you very much any questions of counsel from Mr blue daisy are you seeing none of them looking for a motion to receive the presentation move by counselor strange second by counselor Campbell all those in favor okay that's approved thank you very much and thank you for the presentation sir uh I'm gonna bring up Mr stika uh for 8.2 Niagara Falls Water Systems overview good evening everyone good evening everyone my name is James stieke I'm the manager of Environmental Services here at the city um tonight we're just going to talk real quickly what the responsibilities are of council and just how the drinking water system is set up here in the city council's responsibilities how you delegate responsibility certain responsibilities to myself and my staff in the municipal works department and be I'd be happy to answer any of your questions at the end of the presentation you're gonna drink City Water yeah absolutely huh kids drink it the pets drink it everybody drinks City water so we're just going to talk about quickly City infrastructure as a whole what we have in the city we're going to talk about the licensing programs that's something The Province runs and we apply for we're inspected we're audited just to kind of show what we have to go through in order to provide Safe Drinking Water to our residents and our customers and then ultimately just kind of the last little bit of how we're inspected and what type of inspection take place what type of audits take place um so here's just a quick summary of our city-owned infrastructure we have about 467 kilometers of water main as of the end of 2018 a little over 4 900 valves 3 100 fire hydrants or so and uh both 30 000 curb stops are shut off valve so those are the individual property shutoff valves so each property almost each property has its own water shutoff valve and that allows us to isolate the home from the rest of the distribution system in the event that someone has a leak inside their home or we have to change the water meter out or or something like that occurs inside a home we are a two-tier system so the region is responsible for the treatment of the water the storage facility so that the the elevated tank on Lundy's Lane the reservoir on Kent Avenue as well as a large diameter transmission Mains I'm in Niagara Falls we're a little bit unique in that the transmission Mains in our city also feed Niagara on the Lake and thold as well through a series of meters that is measured and inducted from our monthly bill so the region is able to calculate how much water Niagara Falls uses versus what goes into Niagara on the Lake or into thorld so this is kind of a snapshot I've used some words like curb stop for example that everybody's familiar with so curb stop is the delineation at the property line where the city responsibility ends and the homeowner's responsibility starts um in your typical Street setup you'll see a fire hydrant set up you'll have a couple valves on either end of the street and those valves are used to isolate water main and the event of a water main break and the water service is just the the line that runs from the water main to the property line the city is also responsible for the water meters within the building we're responsible for the meter itself not any of the plumbing surrounding the meter um often we get questions about shutoff valves inside people's homes or things like that and that's part of your private Plumbing but the meter proper is this responsibility of the city so in 2018 we had 87 water main breaks that is a little bit different than 2017 where we had 55 but in 2016 we had 71 so there's not really any Trend that we're seeing right now it's a lot of the water main breaks are you know weather dependent so whether it's very cold we're seeing more drought in the summertime and and that's impacted the system as well the groundwater table drops when we see drought that pipe bedding moves and we see pipe shifting and that's what's causing breaks so July August has become a very busy time as well as you know December through January we take chlorine residuals on a very regular basis so we make sure that there's adequate disinfection in the water so we take we took 1300 and we're almost 1400 individual chlorine samples in 2018 as well as a little over 1200 microbiological samples that's testing for things like E coli HBC and total coliform in the event that we see a result other than zero in total coliform or E coli we have to report that to Public Health and the Mystery environment climate change in Parks there's certain corrective actions that we have to take place and then those corrective actions are audited and inspected during our ministry inspection at the end of each year so your role as Council the mayor's role and the cao's role as is the owner of the drinking water system so you you hold the license you hold the drinking water license you oversee the drinking water system you delegate that authority to Municipal works and where your operating Authority and the next slide we'll kind of see a little chart to break down how the system's divvied up in terms of responsibility your jobs are Ensure compliance be the legislation these are legislative responsibilities um you delegate those responsibilities to to my staff and myself and then also just to receive presentations and memos kind of like we're doing today so this chart kind of just briefly illustrates you know the how we illustrate to the province who the owners of the system are and who's been delegated the authority to operate the drinking water system important to note not just anybody can go and repair a water main or cut into a water main or sample drinking water you actually have to have a problem a license from the province that licensing process for each individual operator is a fairly intensive process it involves three sets of exams a week-long study course continual education annually each of our staff require 36 hours of director approved training so Ministry approved training over a three year period as well as 69 hours of on-the-job tool training so we're constantly making sure the staff is educated and up to date those things are inspected if we were to have someone operate the system who didn't have a license that would be a non-compliance with the province and we would be you know find heavily or have points taken off during our annual inspection and those things we have to provide to you Council to say that we were we did something we shouldn't have done but we have 25 licensed staff we have lots of trainings we make sure our staff are well educated and and up to date on new trends new technology all the things we need to do to stay current and keep the system in good working order so I've refer to the drinking water license program a few times so with the after the Walkerton inquiry what the province did is they enacted the Safe Drinking Water Act and what that does is lay out some Criterion guidelines on what you need as a municipality in order to operate a drinking water system the permit to take water that really only applies to people who treat water so the region for example but for us a Drinking Water Works permit which is something that we applied for every five years a financial plan which we just heard about and then I've referred to a couple times the word operating Authority and then quality management system so the operating Authority is essentially Municipal works and the quality management system is one of the many steps we have to kind of Safeguard our drinking water and I'll get into the drinking water quality management system next so we call the DW qms because it's drinking water quality management system it's a mouthful at times it's a collection of 21 elements um you may have seen or purchase something that says ISO 9001 certified or 14001 certified so what the province did after 2002 it was enacted an Ontario made water quality standard so what we have to do is make sure that we meet those quality standards there are various elements in place that we have to follow we need to conduct internal audits Emergency Management training Define roles and responsibilities which I spoke about earlier infrastructure reviews we actually have to have documents illustrating how we will document things in terms of having procedure numbers procedure names so you could theoretically open up our manual and learn how we operate the system a copy of that operational plan was included in the March 26 Council report it's a fairly intensive document you can ask questions about it but by all means they'll read it if unless you need some trouble sleeping and really it's just how we do our business and we have a whole bunch of procedures in place in order to kind of teach somebody new in the department or somebody from the outside how we operate our system and how we do it well so we're credited by NSF International um they're our auditing firm they audit our they do a desktop audit sorry um once a year every two years and then in the third year they come on site actually and spend a couple days with my staff and myself going over our paperwork going on our system it's a fairly intensive process this is secondary of course to the ministry inspection that also happens annually the ministry inspection is a very intensive process it's the the inspector is typically on site for two to three days and then they follow up and back and forth usually by the end of the the whole inspection process we're talking about four weeks um once again I'm proud to say that we've reached 100 compliance reading um that's not something everybody can achieve so I'm very proud of myself my staff and our entire department that you know we've been able to achieve 100 compliance rating and ensure that the water that I'm drinking now or you're going to drink at home later today is safe to drink so if any questions there I'd be happy to answer anything you have or any questions of counsel from Mr stika I know one thing when I can't sleep at night I watch past Council meetings that helps me sleep better so but uh so any so no questions no comments that's it all right well that was good on the props for the water very good well done well played [Music] okay the last one okay all right well we'll deal with it so uh I'm looking for a motion to receive the application okay the presentation moved by counselor Peter Angelo second by counts for strange all those in favor oh hola James we have a comment here now yes I just want to say I enjoyed your presentation but uh to have this kind of Statistics is unbelievable I work for 28 years with the health department taking rural samples and dealing with coliforms and E coli in the drinking water and to think that 88 000 people in the city and water system like we have and have zero space throughout a year is unbelievable congratulations and you're doing a great job and I enjoyed your presentation thank you I'd like to take the credit but really it's the field staff who they put in a lot of long hours they take their job very very seriously as you know taking a water sample it's you know if you touch the cap of a water bottle when when you've opened it up you can't do that when you're taking a water sample your fingerprint on that water bottle could end up resulting in a bad result it would be a false positive obviously but it's still something that we take very seriously so you know doing the better part of 1200 of those samples and and our staff making sure that they do it well and confidently every single time they work very hard with that okay thank you very much James appreciate it you're doing a great job you're in your department so keep it up we appreciate 100 compliance can you get any higher or is that it 100 that's all they like to go went down okay all right okay in order to go over down that's good to know uh one a little bit of housekeeping we have to go back to the last um motion for Mr brood says he's uh presentation uh let me just get it here uh we needed to so do we have who made them all so it was moved by Council strange and uh second by councilor Campbell we need to not just receive receive it and approve it required by uh provincial legislation so would you mind making that amendment I thought that's what we do uh yeah but I don't know if we officially did it but now we want to make it clear uh for all the council that we received and approved the presentation from BMA okay let's just do that one again all in favor just in case thanks very much and thanks James uh next up uh mw2019 water meter replacement Boo by counselors uh Carey second by counselor Campbell that we approve the recommendation of the water meter replacement program all those in favor that's approved mw2019 water conservation program update uh we have three recommendations there regarding the rain barrel sale okay moved by councilor Peter Angels second by counselor Carrio all those in favor okay and that's approved uh we already dealt with uh commercial parking lot so we can move along to 8.6 um and this one counselor Thompson can help me on this is PDD 2019 20 section 20 development charge act appeal for um Mr Vaca sure yes he is and uh what's that did you want to present to or speak to council Mr Baka yes okay all right sure thank you yeah I know you know that right now council's already the recommendation from staff is to support the recommendation you know that I do okay all right so just want to let you know they're already I think on site with what you want to do okay you don't have to go into too too much detail you can only change so you do it you feel comfortable doing it I came here to make a speech I guess if you had five minutes yeah sure sure good evening your worship honorable members of council Municipal staff I reside at 80 75 uh Oak Ridge Drive my name is Anthony Baca I'm here today to present a complain about municipality imposing a development charge as part of a building permit application at 3615 gunning drive as per section 20 development charges act where the amount of the development charge was incorrectly determined whether a credit is available to be used against the development charge or the amount of credit or the service with respect to the credit was given was incorrectly determined or there wasn't error in the application of the development charges by law first of all I would like to thank all of you for hearing my complaint being brought forth to council this evening in addition to the letter and email that was submitted by myself to staff and presented to council I would like to further present to you a complete interpretation of the current student development charges bailar um 2014 87 and outlined how all three items were incorrectly imposed as just mentioned most bylaws building codes acts are generally laid out in similar Fashions generally there is a preamble an index and or a table of contents a scope of definitions a set of rules requirements and procedures exemptions that may apply and finally any schedules or attachments and or guidelines with reference to the current City development charges bylaw 2014 87 reading in order the interpretation uh is as follows in the Preamble subsection 2-1 of development charges as amended here in after called the act it provides the Council of a municipality it may by bylaw and post development charges against land to pay for increased Capital costs required because of increased needs for services arising from the development of the area to which the bylaw applies the definitions that do apply as outlined in the development charges bylaw is the definition of the ACT development dwelling unit existing non-residential buildings a mixed-use building non-profit institution non-residential use premise residential use the definition of use the definition of first use which is not a defined term in this bylaw There Are Rules section two one for the purposes complying with this section six of the ACT there's rules for determining if a development charge is payable in any particular case and for determining the amount of the charge that shall be in accordance to sections four through seven and nine There are rules for determining exemptions relief credits and adjustments that shall be in accordance with section eight one to eight four There are rules for determining the phasing of development charges that shall be in accordance with Section 6-3 There are rules for determining the index of development charges shall be according to section 9 and there are rules respect and development of land uh the the Redevelopment of land that shall be in accordance with eight five and A6 the exemptions are that the following are exempt from the payment of development charges under this bylaw for reasons of Section 3 of the ACT which refers you to 8.2 sentence F land in buildings owned used and occupied by a non-profit Institution furthermore 8.6 the rules that with respect to Redevelopment if a development includes the conversion of a premise from one use the first use to another use and the amount of development charges payable shall be reduced by the amount calculated pursuant to this bylaw at the current development charge rate that would be payable as development charges in respect of the first use provided that such reduction shall not exceed development charges otherwise payable in this bylaw There Are Rules with respect to designated exemption areas which are not applicable to this site this is the language of the current City development Church's Bila 201487.
uh the current bylaw rates are as outlined for residential the single-family dwelling rate is 12 594 per unit for an apartment it's six thousand one hundred eighty two dollars per unit and any areas where we deal with commercial in an urban area is 42.32 cents per square meter of gross floor area to demonstrate how the calculations were derived are as follows this is the basement of the existing building there's a hall area a kitchen area a hall storage area comprised of the total amount of 2735 square feet I took half of the kitchen which was used as part of the apartment upstairs and came up with a total amount of 2600 square feet converted to square meters times that by 4232 a square meter and came up with an amount of ten thousand two hundred twenty eight dollars and seventy four cents on the next slide we deal with the main floor area there are two bedrooms an office which was used as a live work unit back to the first slide took half of the kitchen area a portion of the mechanical room used for laundry any common areas for stairs and or hallways came up with approximately 118 square feet which could easily be the size of an apartment so therefore the apartment rate is 6 61.82 if we were to refer back to the previous slides and add up 10 228 with 61.82 come up with a total value of 16 410.
even if I only took half of that apartment rate I'd still come up with 13 319 and 74 cents the current single family development charge rate is twelve thousand five ninety four and therefore by these calculations clearly demonstrated a full credit would apply I'd like to make a note that the interpretation is very similar to interpretation of regional development charges by law furthermore the new use would be converted to only a single family dwelling with an occupant amount of approximately four to six persons the existing occupant load was approximately 240 persons as mentioned in the Preamble The need to impose development charges against land to pay for increased Capital costs would not be required because there are no increased need for services arising from the development of the area to which the bylaw applies currently the building is not owned by a non-profit organization it's owned by myself in which case when calculating an exemption would not apply as per section 82 sentence f currently taxation classifies this building in a commercial category not as a non-profit organization although when recognizing that a use in a building was used as a place of worship which is not defined in this current City development charges by law however it's explained in the religious organization act which is referenced by the bylaw the bylaw here I believe is not clear the building currently had mixed uses which is defined in this bylaw and along with other defined terms it has been used when interpreting the wording and intent of this bylab it has also been used to break up the floor areas when demonstrating how to calculate the applicable development charges or in this case a credit towards the volume churches recently this parcel of land was successfully rezoned from institutional to residential the development has been granted consent to be divided into four Lots one of which this building is situated on part two there are three other Lots each permitting a single family dwelling where development charges would be collected by both the city and region at the time of building permit issuance if I were to bring to your attention what could have been done here without the rezoning or development of this property another example of this would be the retreat is purchased by a single person somewhat similar to myself and similar to this past purchase they would like to make the building into for example a private club which was a permitted use in an Institutional Zone under the current City Zoning bylaw the change of use would be exempt because the use Falls within the same category and analyzed under the building code no construction would be proposed the new intender would probably create a viable business and under the interpretation of this bylaw no development charges would be applicable however all of the existing Services would be needed to be used at full capacity and demonstrating the above calculations and interpretation of the bylaw as was referenced at the beginning of this presentation which initiated this complaint at draw your attention again to the wording reference in section 20 of the development charges act which is the initial reason for my complaint the municipality has imposed a development charge where initially the amount of the development charge was incorrectly determined whether a credit is available to be used against the development charge or the amount of the credit of the service with respect to which the credit was given was incorrectly determined and there was an error in the application of development charges bylaw period because of the above and after further review it's been recommended by the director Planning and Building Development that Council approved this appeal brought forth by myself tonight to issue a full development charge credit for the proposed use as a single-family dwelling thank you for your time and attention to this matter if there are any questions or concerns it would be my pleasure to address them now okay thank you are there any questions yes councilor Coco okay move by counselor Le Coco seconded by counselor dubrowski that we support the recommendation giving Mr Bacca the refund of the 1840.92 we'll call that vote all those in favor okay and that's unanimous that's a correct term yeah it's incorrect I paid full development charges of 12 594 dollars they wanted me to credit 10 000 and still have me pay an additional 1800.
so I brought forth the complaint prior to the issues of the permit for the full development charges rate um it was asked for me to make applications Council which is what I did for my complaint accordance with Section 20 the development charges Act they came back with incorrect um development charge calculations in around 1800 I've just clearly showed you what my calculations were so what's your your suggesting the number is full refund with interest as in accordance with section 25 development charges act okay we'll get our staff Mr levitch can you comment on this the uh whether it was clear in the report or not it was certainly the intention that he not paid development charges of 12 000 and change that he mentioned so we had CR we had determined he would get credits for the various uses that he just outlined but we were different by about 1800 so yes he should get full credit for the entire 12 000.
um he's already paid that so he's going to need the refund for that we're not going to give him interest so you you heard the staff comment uh uh yeah so so we credited him with how we calculated it he's here basically saying can you approve the additional 1800 you're saying yes accordingly then he'll get his 12 000 and change back okay so uh unless there's any further comment uh counselor the Coco then your motion would be for that full amount as it says in the uh in the report here is that right okay yeah I think it always said the description you're right it didn't have the full amount the report right you're right you're exactly right so threw us off a little bit okay so we're going to call that vote all those in favor okay and then it's unanimous thank you okay thank you very much okay uh item 8.7 demolition of the former courthouse and City Hall on Queen Street better recommendation before Council uh that the council approved the demolition the former Courthouse city hall building as approved in the capital budget councilor Peter Angelo thanks you're welcome I just have a question actually uh if you look at 8.8 it's the matters arising from the municipal Heritage committee yeah the the recommendations in there um talk about the demolition of City Hall and they're contrary to 8.7 yet we have like both staff members that sign the report are the same staff members but the two recommendations are contrary you're right so maybe we can deal with them together uh that's the only thing I was going to mention I wasn't going to bring light of the fact that they're different but maybe we should deal with them together the other thing was I I know I mentioned that night at the meeting about the old building on the corner of plenty's Lane in Montrose and I said that we're going to get ourselves into a pickle because it already has a Heritage designation on it so that's not part of the recommendation of item 8.7 or just still in the city hall okay so then I'll wait till 8.8 okay you don't mind so um did you want to just address the same staff serious if I could just address that so the Heritage committee uh being a committee of council uh the job of staff is to bring their recommendations for consideration for you that's why it looks a little odd where there may be at odds to one another but it's just the fact that your your committee isn't agreeing with what the staff position is on you so we're wanting to make sure council's got the whole picture yeah Mr elevich yeah the report under 8.8 actually says that prior to any approval of demolition that they do a Heritage impact state so they're not saying don't demolish it so I don't think that the reports are contrary but they're recommending that you do a Heritage impact study council is going to decide when you get to 8.8 whether you're going to request that or not thank you for that counselor I have a few questions I'm confused about the demolition part which is 260 000.
According to the communications that we're getting from Mr Colangelo he's talking about that it has to be cleaned up first if we demolish it that's the 260 000 or it has to be cleaned up and we use the building so the 260 000 is that everything yeah how can that be everything we'll get you an answer uh I don't know Mr ovich or Mr Todd who wants to answer that question okay okay I'll take Mr Mayor uh the 260 000 includes the uh disposal of the contaminant material so that's the complete bid environmental cleanup uh versus demolition the prices are dramatically different because of the types of processes and labor intensiveness of cleaning up building for restoration as opposed to basically knocking down the building and taking the contaminated material separately to a different part of the landfill so the 260 is a quote that our CBO Samsung here our CBO did obtain and that's what the difference in the price is the questions I had the ones of the the internal pictures of the bill yeah the other question I had is it a Heritage designated building or is it on a Heritage register and I don't understand the difference okay so Alex did you want to address that thank you yeah yes I know the building is not designated it is a listed building so it's on a list of buildings that could potentially be designated but it is not designated but the Heritage act in Ontario does recognize listed buildings as a special category and so therefore they do require the Heritage impact study gentleman a Colangelo no no um Shane yeah I think so he's on here depending on what council does with you Mr mirror uh he's Mr Chez he's here if we have questions we sit and plan on making presentation but if you have questions you can certainly come forward if you'd like them yeah if you have yeah did you have any questions for him counselor not so much questions but I think it would be very valuable for him to maybe give a five-minute presentation of the presentation he gave to some of the counselors earlier what it would take to go through there to look for it why we could demolish it those sort of things I found it very valuable okay all right well maybe if we can uh Mr Chesney did you want to come up here and if you could give a walk us through a real brief overview those pictures I thought were pretty good told quite but maybe people at home will get a kick out of seeing some of these pictures you know it's not exactly the pristine Heritage building that people think it is we can bring some of that stuff right over here a little background we've been doing work here for the city um for 20 20 years assessing all the buildings all the building materials forestbestos for lead for mercury all the designated substances this is one of the buildings that we've uh done on our surveys and you can see the initial ones here what the building looked like not nothing like that today here's what we have this map here shows on the basement floor where the actual asbestos materials are so this year is part of the surveys that we do for this facility every year you can see the colors show mainly the asbestos locations foreign go on the second floor so this here is in the main floor as soon as we walk into this building you can see these materials now there's a difference between Hazard and risk so if you're in at a say you're at an alligator farm you walk up and you got to fence around you the alligator is really not going to get to you so the hazard would be the alligator the wrist would be very low now let's take that fence away let's put a chicken in our pocket and walk close to the alligator the hazard didn't change but the risk elevated so in this condition here we have elevated risk we've got lead we've got the asbestos we've got Mercury we've got mold the conditions would cause imminent sort of Health response to people you would go in you would leave and you would not be able to breathe here's the second floor most of the material you'll see here is from the ceilings that is not a painted Hue on the walls that's all molds that's all growth you can see the materials that are in the hallway all asbestos tiles when that stuff hits the floor the fiber gets released any unprotected workers or any protected person that walks into this building is going to be inhaling asbestos fibers you can see the conditions uh within you know the second floor office while we were going through the survey we had hard hats we had equipment so this stuff is continually falling the water is absolutely just pouring right in you've got the lead paint on the walls that's delaminating you can see here the decking completely failed the lights we had to turn the powers off that's wallpaper on there completely filled with mold there's your main floor ceiling and your second floor shows the significance of how much water has came in through the second floor to get down to the first floor ceiling to make that that sort of damage you see the water in the right hand slide the damaged walls in the ceiling and the other office there and again more ceiling damage this is the main hallway on the right photo that is all asbestos that's landed on that floor all the lead paints and the photos continue and continue in the basements so what we're looking at is elevated risk for anybody to go into this building so if you had to go in there you need to have protection you need to be fit tested you need to have decontamination facilities you need to get rid of that waste as far as our protective clothing after we leave this is a Ministry of Labor regulation they are for designated substances these designated substances cause harm to people so we have to follow those rules and that regulations even just to enter into this facility you can see the significant significant amount of damage here Yes concert Campbell hi I have a question that makes sense but is it possible to remove all that stuff and still leave the old stone walls that are part of the history and around that to build a garden uh benches fountains and things like that could you get rid of all that contamination but still have the stone walls in existence as a remembrance of history in our community yeah there'll be several steps that would be necessary you would have to do the complete abatement once we got to that point of abating all that material or internal building surface then we'd have to look at how the structure has been connected some of those materials where the water has gotten Behind the Walls it is bulging we only see a few locations where that block has been you know sort of observed and I can't tell you what's going to happen after so once we do the interior and then you do the exterior you may find that that block is not repairable but that's a possibility it's a big picture there'll have to be a lot of uh sort of resources dedicated to get it to that point before you can make that determination you're not going to just go and you're gonna empty that mandatory or not yeah the process to Abate it would be to go inside take all the materials out if the procedure was to or the process was to demolish the building you would have to do the whole interior to get rid of that material the Hazardous stuff if we're going to keep the interior or keep the building then we need to Abate all those Building Services to keep the interior sort of Integrity of this but you would find out very very quickly now remember we've got a layer on the inside and on the outside so when we first observed the conditions from the brick to the block there's about four inches of mortar so when they did this they put an extra Foundation had the block and then they added the brick on top of it and then they poured in about four inches of mortar so even when you peel the brick back I don't know how they've connected those layers into the stone so we may find that that stone is completely compromised you won't know until you get into it thank you thank you counselor dabrowski we have an amazing downtown we have a beautiful city hall that we've done some some great work to I'd like to move the recommendation however to councilor Campbell's point I would like to to preserve at least a piece of the original facade whether we create a Cornerstone out of it I'd like to to preserve the plaque that's out in front of the Old City Hall as well but uh that and I support that we need the recommendation okay yeah counselor the cocoa I would like to second that I would also like to ask a question that a lot of residents are asking why did we let it go for so long it's been 30 years it's been sitting there and it's an absolute 50 years well 30 years since the last time oh they looked at it yeah yes that's great I would support that well counselor Thompson was the mayor at the time he put the Cornerstone I think to try to answer the question uh as Mr chezy saying they they've been doing Assessments in there for a number of years uh building's been totally unoccupied for well over 20 years um our staff and and through uh you know repairs and trying to fix repairs in in roofs or whatever it just got to the point where if you're not in there and paying attention to it on a daily basis and you're not spending money and you know to try to justify spending a lot of money on at that time an empty building that we really weren't using when we had other buildings that needed to be fixed was pretty hard to justify I can't say that it looks like the building has gotten significantly worse over the last two or three years to the point where quite frankly our staff I don't think any of our staff have been in there in the last year and a half perhaps just because it's at a condition where it's not environmentally safe to go in there so um you know we kind of uh had set our focuses on the brand new police building that was where we look at the at the future being because this building was pretty much so far gone at that point and now we're at a state where we really have no choice but to demolish it okay so was that a second okay well it's okay so we've got a motion for the recommendation try to preserve some of the stones maybe storybook story sign or book Sign what are they called those storyboard storyboards thank you as for Sherman's Abbotts our official historian and uh we'll call the vote then all those in favor okay that's unanimous so thanks very much if I want to stick around for the next report just in case Council Peter Angel's got some questions I don't know okay so now we move on to 8.8 uh matters arising for municipal Heritage committee um let's call it up here so there's two recommendations uh I'd say the uh first one is a moot point well I guess could they do that at the same time do the designation uh Mr Cao they want to know if they could do a Heritage impact assessment and identify the Heritage I mean is that a moot point or or do they how does it Mr elephant sir well should have went to you we're gonna have to if someone's going to go in there and look at the building they're gonna have to get suited up this last speaker just mentioned and they're going to be going in there to see whether or not there was anything worth saving from the 1866 period I don't know I did circulate earlier today at the request of one of the public members who have commented on this the cultural heritage statement and it basically says the building was gutted in 1954 and then turned into the international style so reading that I would say it's unlikely that a Heritage consultant is going to find anything from 1866 of significance there is a lot of associative value rather than necessarily physical value so the fact that it was the original town hall or the village of Clifton later the town of Niagara Falls and later the city of Niagara Falls so that's all associative history you know someone refer to the the movie Niagara with Marilyn Monroe again that's an associate of History so that's all part of something but I'm not sure that that relates to the physical so I'm not sure whether paying a consultant to go in there to determine that there is something you know we've already heard just the last speaker talk about the way in which the brick and the stone are connected I'm not even sure we could distinguish that with a Heritage impact study that stuff helps thank you so okay folks we've got so two recommendations here the first one it seems to me now to be a moot point the second one uh referring to the Recreation Commission building what's moved okay so motion by counselor Peter Angelo seconded by councilor dubrowski the Heritage attributes in place at the time of designation of the former parks recreation culture building on Lundy's Lane still exists and that the committee would oppose any dis well that's what does that mean so that that would mean you're what's that yeah well hold on one thing at a time okay so get the motion here I think that would mean to save the building I would think is that right what you're suggesting okay comments counselor Thompson well anybody who was in that building in the last 20 years the Recreation Commission was in there they had to move out of that and we had a presentation to us uh it's not just tearing the building down and the Lundy's Lane Bia people would love to see that out of there and we have a plan for columbariums for additional aerial sites for the cemetery up there we could get our money back for you utilizing that rather than if we tear it down and there's a benefit there and we had that presentation which I thought was spectacular it fit in with what the people on Lundy's Lane wanna see Improvement it's not something like that and it's not the originals building anyway you got a big garage on the side of it it's uh we should have the same pictures that we have of this one of that one up there it's not worth saving and we can make money on it you know it's not a bad idea to get that kind of an evaluation done it's not a bad idea I worked in that I had an office in there in 1994 and then we had regular sewer backups regular sewage problems in it and there's asbestos in that building too so I'm not a Heritage expert but I know that building was a big problem 25 years ago so I don't know uh what would be different today that it's been vacant but we have a motion is there any other discussions to the motion okay we'll call the vote no we had a counselor uh dubrowski okay that's this isn't a public part of the meeting here uh Felix this is just a report on the on the uh uh Council agenda is there something specific you because we need a motion of counsel for you to come forward okay so motion by Council Peter Angelo second light counselor carry out all those in favor that you can approach the mic [Music] will you call them so that's why oh it's a buzzer we're doing Mr Mayor remember the console well here we are again I've been here for a while about this building I think the last time we spoke about it is pretty well what the Heritage committee said many semi seven years ago nine what four years ago the last time we spoke and when we spoke the council said we get back to you in three months the staff will report I'll be calling you I called you the alderman never heard nothing of it so we do that it's going to happen the same thing the building that you got across the street should not be an air conditioner it shouldn't be in that condition I thought a few months ago we passed a law that the house they got to be clean got a benign by Hillary is a building that I never saw this picture before I've been in a construction business I've never seen a building like that but anyway that's that I'm concerned about Mount Pros in londis Lane what is the problem with this building are we waiting to get worse I made so many proposals to you to the council and I hear back that I want to make money on it it's not true what I want to do maintain the building the city meant in the building I brought the proposal here there were people that were helped to fix the building rent and we'll carry on won't cost the city nothing you all got that report nothing you elected one I have a copy here and then I brought four years ago you're talking about a to build a gazebo on the outside are you going to put a gazebo outside 20 feet away from the corner of the building are you doing a ceremony 20 feet away from the building from the road you have a building I brought you a proposal one room takes 1 300 Italian Berry you know how much money you make back and you got the building there I made I made this catch I spent money on this and I don't demand to have the money back so what is the problem do me it hurts when I hurt they're gonna tear down the building geez my heart is giving up on me I'm 74 years old how much can I take oh how much can I take you might be in a bad citizen concerned about the history of the building for which they've done all the old building what do you got in a history you got a few buildings that building is so beautiful look the garage are bad the one we built within the 60 or the 50 whenever it was built the original there is one hairline cracked on that building there isn't one go check so what is wrong with that building the stone don't worry about the stone the mold you wash your face is some in there and a stone don't go through the storm believe me and we had people to go look for this bastards you had the spatula I had to report it's point three it's nothing if you don't touch it you go over top of it you're fine so it's a minor work that's what we want to do it and I will help out what else can I do you and I had to get appraisal you want to turn down the building spend all that money you've left and right it might do it I mean I apologize if I'm doing something wrong to save a building because someone believes it cannot be done they say it cannot be done every building is built right could be done and that building is done right believe me I have a structural engineer which I have a report and this the city has it I had two architects went through in Assad you have a report that you paid Mrs Reed from Welland to do the report on the entire building and suggest to you that that historical building you paid for that report I have her here in case someone doesn't have it so why we are wasting time why calcification yeah thanks to worship um and I guess through you to Mr Pingu I think we we get the message but what I wanted to say your worship is that I think Mr Pingu is right in the sense that if we continue to neglect the building then the same thing's going to happen that happened outside with the old city hall I know that the some of the past ideas have been to turn it into a columbarium can we actually look at the idea of creating the columbarium out of the existing building that's there right now um I I I think most people that know the building know that perhaps there's some water in the basement but the structure of the building is very sound the architecture is very nice most of the people that are on Council right now are the ones that actually put a Heritage vaccination on that building so to remove it now would be like I guess going in the exact opposite direction it would be nice to at least have a look at it viewership whether or not we could put a columbarium in the existing building because I think that's the intended use that's there I know that's not the motion on the floor but those are my comments you know part of the question now if we have a Heritage designation Mr elevich maybe you can ask this question can it be converted into a columbarium with something like that on it is it is it limitations well I can ask the planner uh Felix yes you can yeah it could be converted to any use I suppose depends on how much money you're going to throw at it I don't think that was the recommendation of staff at the time I think they said it was going to be very expensive right to do that but uh that's not what the question is okay yes Felix I have a sketch here that I give to all of you only one room you get 1008 so if you sell it three hundred dollars each how much you're gonna make it or four I don't know what they charge for the column bag just there is one room the big classroom forget about the others on the second floor you have something that you could make money on it and that's there it's there for us to see do we have any other any questions from Mr pingio well right now we're just we're not dealing with that building in terms of a demolition right now um we're just dealing with the designation of it as a heritage site that's what we're dealing with right now well they did call me people last week okay well we're not right tonight it's not about uh the demolition fine that's fine no problem I'm only saying that I'm concerned and I still want to help out to do whatever best I can and if you need more information regarding calendar inside I got a more sketch but the guy they did it did for the city for the one that you have done Portage roll down the church the same the same gentleman surprised me this month okay thank you so therefore it's not okay thank you yes Kevin you're strange I'm just thinking would it be possible for Sean to go over there and kind of do the first thing you did to that Hall and just have to take some pics and the condition of the hall and just bringing report back to the next account Shane right Shane Shane yeah that's why he didn't have to call me Vince or Mike so what's the difference Mr Mayor we can we can absolutely have them go in and do a complete uh condition assessment just like they've done here take pictures and and bring back an estimate as to what the remediation is because uh there has to be it has already been indicated there's asbestos there's going to be mold there's going to be probably lead lead paints all of that if you're going to renovate it all has to be cleaned up and cleared out it's different environment regardless right so uh he can certainly do that of course can I answer that or not well not yet right now we're just thinking yes I ask a question no you don't want to interrupt yes counselor Peter Ranch yeah you worship and I would welcome that um but if a condition assessment is going to be done could he also do a condition assessment of the structure of the building I understand that the inside might not look as well as we wanted to and I understand that there's materials in there that we're going to want to get rid of but even if you move forward and demolish the building you still have to go in and remove all those materials first and then tear down the building so really the issue is what's the value of the structure of the building has a nice design has some nice Heritage features and is it structurally sound that would be my question and that's what I hope would come back I think what we should do then is we should do a complete report because there's other issues we can get into on the site um for example we've been arguing for the last probably five years with the region over accessibility into that site they will not provide any other entrances or exits so all of that when you look at the rehabilitation of the site is a factor that would come into its marketability for other uses even uses of the site that you want to get vehicular traffic in and out of so I think what we would do is we'll take our time we'll do a comprehensive report on the entire building including all of all of those kind of issues cost analysis yeah that's a great idea yes Felix I did a lot of their work and I have a design that we went to the regional to the city to have an entrance from londis Lane and they say no that's okay you can't do that entrance on this Lane we're trying to cut the traffic a bit and I turned back then the way the building said if you have to widen the corners you could take 10 feet it doesn't bother the building at all it's enough room there when they were doing the work I also called them but they said you're not telling us what to do well hell they did the same thing so therefore I did some my work you wanted to spend money yes man go ahead the only as best is there it's on the second floor and the walls only that's all it is if you don't touch it it's by an architect a structure engineer you go over top of the drywall you're okay with it anyway and according with the report that you already did it's 0.3 I think 0.3 are some very minimum you have that on the report you want to spend more money that's fine well what we're going to do we're gonna I think yeah go ahead cancer I just had one for the question I guess through you to Mr Todd um if Ingress and egress is a is a concern from the regional standpoint um why would we be looking at building a columnarium there because the plan showed all of the access for the all of that into the cemetery it's circled through our interior roads it was just a pathway it was a Gateway it was an entrance feature it was pedestrian and the columbarium would be accessed through interior through the cemetery we had the design all laid out it was presented you could it still not be achieved leaving the structure there you could bring that with but you use it with the report yeah well that's if the building could be used for the columbarium we envision we envision the building going down and having columbarium like is at uh Fairview Cemetery it was a a walkway feature with several um columbarium like we have on our feature walk at Clearview forgot right so we want to add to the recommendation that staff reports are yeah yeah so this way it gets passed sure okay so okay so and staff come back with a report through Mr Chesney along with the other direction along with the other recommendations full report is that cover everything including the the costing would this be not three years now I hope not I hope not I think this will be a lot quicker and then that was seconded by uh councilor dabrowski okay let's call that vote all those in favor okay and that's unanimous all right thank you thank you very much Mr Pingu thank you thank you all of you for letting me speak thank you thank you good night good night okay so moving on to the uh let me see I gotta write 8.9 The Boarding House interim control bylaw study update there are two recommendations Council received the report and secondly that planning and Licensing documents be refined accordance with the comments received before the council in June before the meeting that took place in June so do we have some comments from Council on that report counselor Thompson yeah is this uh just uh Lundy's Lane area yeah so uh through your worship the uh if this study uh conclusions come in it would be for any commercial Zone where we permit hotels and motels so for instance the CB Zone the happiness in right now operates with uh people living there on a permanent basis so it would affect those that area would affect Victoria so basically no not just Sunday's Lane other commercial areas would have the same opportunity okay what about the residential single family area where boarding houses uh and the complaints we get about that yeah so that it doesn't touch that it's basically talking about the conversion of hotels and motels and what would become a single room where are we going with that other report is that next supporting houses in residential areas yes we don't have a report on that we have you know regarding uh complaint receiver with respect to use of a residential dwelling we don't have any uh where somebody has to apply right yeah so we got a a home with 10 people in rooms oh I know yeah I know but and this doesn't cover it I would make a motion that we have a report back on what we're going to do about the residential area where they're being bothering people in their area with the number of rooms they got sure okay well we've got now Mr elevich can you help me through this um so so we've got two things regarding boarding house was that yeah is 8.9 just simply saying that staff are uh taking all the information and coming back with final recommendations in June is that what 8.9 is saying it's to go to a public meeting okay yeah then I'll make that motion you push it and I think 8.10 then deals with residential yes it does a residential complaint well I know enforcement but there's no bylaw nothing that we've got to have okay so the 8.9 we've got two recommendations that we receive the information and uh staff put it into a report coming before Council in June for a planning meeting or a public meeting rather um so that's going to come back to us in June right so that's moved by counselor Peter Angelo seconded by counselor karish yep okay good question considering that this is going to be uh Citywide how do we do the normal because I've already getting calls from all how do we do the notification on this particular one just to a city-wide notification yeah yeah so normally that would be in the newspaper however we have involved all of the uh the bias I see no reason your worship why we couldn't uh again alert them that it would be coming before California emotion that we do that as well any place where there are that could be affected they should be the bias should be notified and have to notify their members okay so um you can make that part of the friendly Amendment councilor Peter Angela okay for the notification reaching out to all the bias and any other interested parties that should be aware of this Okay so we've got the motion move by councilor Peter Angelo seconded by councilor Cario call the vote all those in favor okay and that's approved thank you so now 810 boarding house enforcement so this is where the recommendation is that Council direct staff to investigate the allegations contained in the complaint received in February with respect to the use of a residential dwelling as a boarding house so that's the recommendation to have staff investigate yes count Superior Angel yeah you worship I think the comment has come forward that you know we'd like to have something in the bylaw right we have to have a report back saying where we have to go with respect to my law so then do you want to make that part of it so the recommendation and add-on that staff come back with a report on a bylaw as well does that make sense okay so let's move by councilor Thompson seconded by councilor Peter Angelo and if there's no further discussion we'll call the vote all those in favor okay and that's approved thank you item 811 Millennium Trail section two south of MacLeod Road there's three recommendations looking for a motion from Council to move forward on the trail as everybody looks down at their shoes look at counselor dabrowski second by counselor strange all those in favor all those in favor I got to see him hi guys opposed okay with one opposed uh consent agenda does anybody have anything they want okay does anyone want anything lifted on the consent agenda beforehand no okay so uh motion and I'm gonna I gotta quickly read through them but I'll be brief uh moved by counselor Cario second of icons are strange that we move the consent agenda let me just read them quickly and then we will um we'll do them all in one uh first thing is fee waivers for Saint Paul high school and celebrate old downtown a second thing hiring of the shared Integrity commissioner with the region third one supportive all wine and beer made in Ontario is part of the modernization modernizing alcohol sales uh the Assumption of Edgewood Estates subdivision the sports Wall of Fame committee membership adding on Dr William lescue uh speed control follow-up with multiple locations throughout the city accessible parking bylaw update Canadian Corps of Commissioners contract renewal for another year demolition charge fee waiver uh moving along sorry is there any other ones oh yeah uh is there is that that's all is that all of them yes okay so those are all the consent agenda items that no one's asked to have anything lifted so it's been moved by counselor cario's second right counselor strange we'll call the vote all those in favor okay and that's approved thank you okay now on to item 10 first item is the Drummond Road Canal overpass and I know that we have someone here to speak to this item if you'd like to come before we have Kathy slee we'd like to speak to the German Road Canal overpass welcome great are you feeling better so my name is Kathy sleet um I'm here I appreciate you give me a few minutes I know you've had a long night so I'll keep it free um regarding the canal at overpass at German Road near Morrison so I'm here basically about saving lives about building a barrier along that section there of the bridge there is fencing that comes across on either end but right across it would be my hope that we would look at seriously take a look at how that could be executed whether it's through the region through the OPG through the city but I understand from the city clerk that that was going to be recommended and the counselors that did get back to me I appreciate it that that would be going to staff for me I just want to explain my passion in my drive and stepping forward tonight or bringing that louder forward is not to get into details to protect these people and their families but one is like a brother to me and his wife is out of town or would have been here this evening there is many areas to this that need to be addressed elsewhere as well but I'm acutely aware of how many times I live in that area how many times has happened where someone has jumped in the canal off that bridge um the the amount of time seems to be increasing but I know it's directly affected me and hit me directly uh I've had the pleasure of volunteering and working with individuals over the last 25 years in the areas of mental health and addictions and uh it is a great pleasure and honor to work with complete strangers and develop these bonds and these friendships and to watch people really successfully turn their lives around unfortunately not everybody does and not everybody has that success so those that I've seen lost over the period of time it's my drive to try to do something about it so I'm hoping and I'm confident that our our staff and our staff the city staff that they will do a good job I'm just asking for someone to really sort of oversee that and to really um aggressively approach that like the Burgoyne bridge for example an issue in St Catharines um ironically I sent this letter last week I was on vacation and and today I opened the paper or read on the review site about St Catharines and some of the counselors views one of the counselors views was we'll give money for either or you know money for the barrier or money for mental health we know that the province needs to be doing more and bringing more money and in addition to that it's not just about the money and how it's being administered and how it's trickling down and the actual help they're getting because I work with these people and advocate for them all the time I'm sure NHS is doing a lot of things right and there are some things that need to be improved and I'm sure they get tired of hearing from me advocating with these people but I'm just hoping that we can move that forward and very in a quick Manner and try to get some results from them we'd be happy to know myself and Senior staff met with with OPG this past week and we did address this issue with them so even before this is being recommended that staff start to deal with this we've already started the wheels in motion so it was well received they're very they're very supportive oh that's great thank you okay so thank you very much Kathy thank you move by councilor Peter Rancho second by Council okay counselor thank you Mr Mayor is Drummond Road the only one that's open that can now goes so what other streets would be open like that should we look at all of them Lundy's Lane Mcleod Road well we met with OPG about all of them Whirlpool yeah uh yes well kind of yeah but they get offensive they have fencing up there though they just put new fencing in too as a matter of fact okay thank you so we would address all of the crossings yeah um so did we so we had the motion the second I'm sorry lost track not emotional oh yeah did you want a second night oh yeah that's where I got lost okay uh we'll call the vote all those in favor okay and that's approved thank you um okay item 10.2 the zonta club wanting the flag raising on May 23rd moved by Council strange second by counselor Thompson all those in favor okay it's approved uh the Niagara Regional Housing fourth quarter report motion to receive moved by counselor uh the Coco second by counselor Peter Angelo all those in favor okay that's approved uh 10.4 snow removal bylaw recommendation that the correspondence be referred to staff for report back to council moved by counselor Thompson seconded by a counselor Pier Angelo all those in favor okay that's approved 10.5 special occasions permit request from the ride to camp Conquer Cancer it's moved by counselor dubrowski seconded by counselor strange all those in favor and that's approved item 10.6 special occasions permit request from Niagara Men's Basketball Association moved by counselor Peter Angelo second by counselor Cario all those in favor that's approved item 10.7 is the this Rotary Club regarding their Sunrise Rib Fest for special occasions license moved by counselor Peter Angels second by counselor Rococo all those in favor that's approved 10.8 special occasions permit for Studio Vine glass um on Slater Avenue looking there looking for permission counselor dubrowski moves it seconds by counselor strange all those in favor okay and that's approved request for uh oh this is what councilor Thompson we were speaking with earlier request for fee waiver regarding the committee of adjustment for Mr Mario castrilli uh motion by councilor Thompson second by second by counselor dubrowski all those in favor okay thank you item 10.10 noise bylaw exemption request from Taps on Queen Street moved by counselor de coco second by counselor dubrowski all those in favor that's approved thank you uh item 10.11 Proclamation request by the Niagara Regional labor Council yep that national day of morning April 28th moved by councilor Peter Angelo seconded by counselor Cario all those in favor thank you uh item 10.12 Township of Wayne Fleet with uh one of their motions on governance I don't know if you want to receive them file that that's one file move by counselor Carrio to receive and file second by counselor Peter Angelo all those in favor and that's approved thank you item 10.13 was an addition uh the office of the fire marshal Emergency Management asking for us to host uh Community Support moved by counselor Peter Angelo second by counselor Cario all those in favor that's approved item 10.14 did you want to hold the Sundowner 50th Anniversary yes counselor Thompson I got a I got a call on this uh just a day or two ago and I said write a letter I'll get it on the agenda and this is for a special occasion permit and for the activity that are going on on Sunday June the 9th but so this is a special occasion a Hermit and I would still move okay good so it's moved by counselor Thompson second my accounts are strange that we move the recommendation to support them for their 50th Anniversary all those in favor okay and that's approved uh we've got the bylaws a motion uh to give the bylaws the first second and third reading by counselor Peter Angelo second by counselor Thompson all those in favor okay and new business oh wait was there any uh was there anything else uh no resolutions we did from your business yes one of them has to be our adult entertainment one yes yes counselor Thompson yeah we had a meeting previously the adult entertainment committee and uh there were two individuals who were looking for a decision of counsel and uh we made this decision to permit them until they get to court so I would still move okay moved by counselor Thompson second by counselor strange that we approve the uh decisions made by the adult entertainment appeal Committee just for clarification for those that weren't a part of the committee um I'll just read off what the what the motion would be and that it's the the two individuals the two appellants be allowed to apply to the Niagara Regional Police Services Board for their adult entertainment licenses for 2019 and that the existing charge is not impede the issuance of said license locations it's pretty pretty much what counselor Thompson said I think cable more you did are you definitely all those in favor okay and that's approved unanimously any other new business councilor curio just quick when you worship uh was just sent to me that in tomorrow's paper it's too bad Mr Nicholson son's away are gone but he's announced that he will not be running in the last election and I thought that it might be good for the council to pass a resolution to recognize his service he's he's uh it doesn't matter what party you're affiliated with he's given the city a service for many many years and uh achieved a very high position in our government probably the highest position that anyone from our community has ever achieved in the government I think we should recognize Mr Nicholson for his years of service regardless of Party politics did you wanna how did you did you want to do that here in Chambers invite him down why don't we do that so so including inviting him down yeah okay great that's motion by counselor Cario second by counselor Peter Angelo that we invite our MP Rob Nicholson here to council to be recognized for his years in government representing the city all those in favor that's approved unanimously thank you for that that's a great one uh counselor is strange yes Mr Mayor um our part in the city committee has actually was here earlier uh today and we actually had a meeting a couple weeks ago and there was some concerns brought up about uh some of the uh um the emerilash for trees have been taken down and if they're being replaced or not then it comes I know we I think we put about 280 000 into our budget this year for in that tree program and I was just wondering I don't know if we've ever had it where we had a presentation by um uh Charlie Smith or someone or or come back just of what our inventory is like as far as I know we would take a tree down I think we're supposed to put two or three up yeah um and is there a program where they count the trees that are putting up and uh some of that effect like a tree inventory yeah exactly and I'm just wondering if we might be able to get either a report back uh motion video report back or make them come to come and make maybe a presentation to come and just uh give us a an update on what our trees are like in the City and surrounding areas okay so we have most of my counselor a strange second my counselor Peter Angelo that we invite that we do a tree I'm just going to finish the motion that we do a tree inventory and report and presentation uh for Council that's been moved by Council strange second by Council Peter Angel you want to speak to a consult your angel yeah and the only thing I was going to add to worship uh because I'm on the committee with councilor exchange was that it would be interesting to know what our tree canopy is at right now and whether or not we have any Targets and how we're moving towards those carpets and I think that's what the people on the committee are very interested in so how do we get there and how do we help as a committee as well so Does it include uh tree canopy and targets yeah and we would probably invite the park in the city committee so that they can come up with that as well and we'll invite the partnership committee and the Peter Angelo family no no okay we'll call that vote all those in favor okay thank you for that okay secondly I just wanted to uh bring up our our third level you know for kids that boxing event is coming up this Friday um our first two years are very successful last year we raised over 67 000 that went towards pasadstone mental health and the bottro and charitable Foundation when it goes to uh Ronald McDonald House and stem cell research at McMaster University um every year uh seems to be getting more and more applications to box and to compete in this and part of our committee we have here is counselor dubrowski and counselor Thompson and we're we have a meeting every month and it's very busy we decided to move the event uh this year to the spring at the Scotia Bank Center so it is uh this Friday we had over 100 applicants uh want to be involved this year so we had to limit it down limit it down to 21 boxing matches we have 40 42 boxers it's amazing they've been going through such a journey both teams well creators still won't fight you anytime well next year next year but um it's been great and part of part of our uh process is we like to to reach out especially to some children that have KO uh cancer and um you know one of these little girls uh Brookie Isaac um she was one of her heater's Heroes a few years ago she was diagnosed with neuroblastoma and had a tumor in her abdomen and she was only five years old and her nickname is the Warrior Princess and uh yeah you can look here she's just a a little cutie so um she's uh was battling she went through a major surgery and she's been cancer free for over three years now amazing so this year we decided that she is going to to start the event off and ring that opening uh Bell to show that she is a child of cancer free and I thought what an idea would be great to escort her would be yourself mayor Jim do you guys who would love to have you escort young Brookie and as you've just gotten the green light recently and the value that you've gone through in the last year so we'd love to have you out to start the event you know some of these uh these boxers there's their bucket list and uh um you know they're stepping up for the bigger cause for for kids for yourself what you've gone through and and you can just imagine what you've gone through and imagine a child going through that so we're looking forward to it and a special thanks to uh councilor Thompson councilor dabrowski and Kim Rossi from Pasto and mental health for for selling out the first time in three years so we're sold out no general admission tickets we are sold out no standing tickets because of fire code and things carrier buying a VIP table too so appreciate that one so but uh I want to thank you and if you're accepting the invitation to walk around there's also have to fight her okay I'm sure that's that's one drill you don't want to I know thank you very much and if she's the Warrior Princess do I get a nickname too I'll think of one all right then work on it you work on it that's great thank you very much any other new counselor Thompson of course yes I have two topics that have been concerning me um I think we've done a good job I think the region has done a good job sending out to the public and social media about uh what the provincial government is going to do with respect to Niagara and I'm really concerned that we're not working as a council sitting down and working with our staff to try to determine uh what we can do to make sure that Niagara Falls is not totally damaged I think we're the most vulnerable in the entire region we got the lowest debt we have the OLG funds we've done infrastructure throughout the city we've really done a job and anything that happens with amalgamation with one city we're going to be the huge loser the tax base in this city are going to be the big losers and I'm just thinking you're looking for people to respond to make comments Express themselves but we're not getting a plan of action with respect to the council and the city staff about what we can do to do whatever we can accomplish to have the least effect on this municipality and I would like to suggest that we refer this to staff and that we come together with a plan so when the premier comes out with his statements about and I keep hearing it's going to come really quick and it's going to it's going to have a huge damage on the city of Niagara Falls what do they have what if they have one municipality what are they going to call it Niagara it's not going to be Niagara Falls the the biggest brand that we got in the world everybody knows Niagara Falls and we're going to throw that away or let them throw that away I tell you I'm very very concerned about this and I think we got to have a plan of action so regardless of what happened so I would I would just make a motion that we refer this to staff to come back and so we're all on the same path with respect to trying to save this municipality because we're the biggest losers if that happens I can tell you when we our CIO and myself we met with the two provincial facilitators that was one of many points we made we said we've got the biggest brand name of any municipality in the country more important than Toronto's when it comes to the global to the global approach and we said you can't lose that because you lose the name Niagara Falls Niagara Falls New York's gonna pick up all the slack and we said that's just way too valuable forget the billions of dollars of GDP just the brand value I said my exact words is I said Niagara Falls is the Coca-Cola of municipalities and I said they would never give up the name Coca-Cola ever and if they even if they were bought by another company Coca-Cola brand would remain and that's why this brand they need to treat it just like corporate mergers and Acquisitions this has to be maintained and that was part of our dialogue and you're exactly right we're in great physical shape and I know a lot of places would love to get their hands on but we you've never brought it up we've never discussed it here we've never had a special meeting to have a plan of action with respect to what's happening and I think we have to do that well and and to just to address that so the province had three steps the first step they came around and wanted to meet with heads of councils in the different regions that they're looking to change the governance and we did that and then the second step they opened up to anybody that wanted to make public comment you could go online and send in your feelings and now the third step they're meeting with special interest groups so I know our surge fella said here director of Veteran development has lined up our bias and they're all going to be able to give input into this into the problems we're still responsible as a council and I want us to be on track with what we want to do and how we want to accomplish that you mean once the announcements made whatever they're doing how we do go then I mean we haven't even discussed it here as a council I think you know you told us you met with the two people that the premier has set aside but we don't know there's no discussion about it yeah I think we have to really be careful because we're the big losers in this situation anyway I'll refer to staff and let's have a dialogue and report back on what we should be doing and how we can save the municipality well I think tomorrow's the deadline I think president to book right to book a presentation today today is the deadline today was the deadline yeah so we do have our Bia so I'm just wondering I'm not sure exactly I know what you're saying but I don't know exactly what staff would be doing at this point did you want to weigh in well if I could Mr Mayor so today was a deadline for individuals or organizations to put their name forward like ABIA or a not-for-profit to speak to the two advisors they're going to be here in Maine May 5th I think sometime early made they're going to be only very short five minute presentations so it doesn't give you much time but there is an opportunity for anybody to make submissions up to the advisors up until uh the camera exactly I think it's the end of May so there is time to get written submissions in but we've missed the opportunity and be quite honest when you review the material they they weren't wanting to hear from councils they were wanting to hear from uh individuals business bias Chamber of Commerce special interest groups not-for-profits however councils can still still submit uh dialogue or information in through to the advisors by the enemy so that's still and they just extended that time frame to do that so your motion is to ask staff to come back with what we would submit to the province yeah is that right yeah okay yeah okay so we have a motion by counselor Thompson seconded by counselor Carrio okay yeah that refers to staff go ahead just a quick comment I understand counselor Thompson's concerned we're all the same concern yeah but I think the decision is going to be made no matter how we kick and scream and holler the big thing is going to be the representation that our city gets right they pitch it so I don't know if we're gonna have any say about that but I think that's crucial that we have good representation or as much representation as we can get at the table Yeah at the new board table yeah and it was noted too that uh after the uh Berkeley report done at the region around 2000 Niagara Falls was one of the only councils that actually took heed and reduced its numbers from 12 down to eight and they said that was because that was because of Mayor Wayne Thompson's leadership that's you know exactly okay May 21st is the deadline so we've got lots of time to get that done yeah anyway I had to move up my appointment for my colonoscopy you had to move it up yeah didn't you didn't hear that yeah boards cut cutting out oh the yeah the anesthetic yeah yeah so you got to be awake now so I'll pay for the anesthetic so uh okay we've got the motion second by counselor Cario all those in favor and you heard that right here first book your colonoscopy now well you still got coverage for anesthetic good you have another name hi yes um and I just looking for some direction on this also I was driving down Portage Road two weeks ago and I got stopped by the train at the tracks and I sat there and I usually count them but anyway I was there for five minutes and the cars were going by was unbelievable and then all of a sudden in the middle of it there was another engine pushing and pulling another 200 vehicles or trained it twice as long as I have ever experienced where do we stand at with this are are we making any Headway or you know this this was ridiculous yeah so uh well we can get Matt billado can give us a little update on that yeah yes of course uh we met with our project team last week we have a report coming forthcoming to council regarding the update for phase one and then at that time we'll be bringing a proposal forward to discuss phase two and what the recommendations are at that time as well phase one and phase two phase one is is nearing completion and phase two is uh proposed to occur anyway I think we should be really brought up to date on this and uh to know what's going on yeah anyway that's what they're doing they're making a longer bigger so date the what date what's the date sir we're tentatively scheduling to bring a report to Council in May May okay next month that's good that's great so no other new business announcer Peter Angelo oh thanks you worship uh you worship I just wanted to mention that the Niagara Falls cannot beat the Saint Catherine's Falcons last night and a thrilling game seven um I think final score was 7-6 they kept going back and forth and the Canucks scored with uh 21 seconds left of the game I think so um they're now Golden Horseshoe Conference champions and they're going to the semi-finals of the Sutherland cup so I think it'd be appropriate to send him a letter of congratulations maybe put a little icon on the website so that we can advertise when the home games are yeah and then hopefully we can get some local content out to the games during the month how was the crowd was it Crow good not bad yeah getting better you worship okay so as sansick have to learn a Niagara Falls Comics we didn't make that back we didn't make it we should have though we should have so um uh the motion by counselor Peter Angelo that we invite um that we send uh congratulatory note to the team yes and to put her their scheduling the scheduled games home games on the web site so we get more fans out to those games Moon bikes counselor strange all those in favor okay thank you for that is there any other uh new business all right then we are adjourned we are adjourned thank you