London: A smoking hot city

I considered not going to the Community Services meeting on Monday. The agenda didn’t look all that promising, not much on it other than the request by the Middlesex- London Health Unit to amend the smoking by-law to include public outdoor areas. The legitimate media would be interested, looking for fireworks, or at least a couple of sparks, on this issue, since it has been a hot topic in the past. My observations would probably be superfluous.

A chilling effect

It was a gruelling eight hours of budget debate as the Strategic Priorities and Policy Committee looked for ways to cut spending by $7.6M so that the mayor’s campaign promise of a budget freeze could be realized for the second year. But for those who had come to observe the proceedings from the public gallery, the most irritating part came when after half an hour of presentation from the finance department, the council voted to eject the spectators and moved into confidential discussion.

SWAP: Planning or politics?

Members of the community who had come to have a look at the revised Southwest Area Plan (SWAP) got a big box full of surprises.

Five White Oaks Malls? Four Hyde Parks? Four Exeter and Wellington Roads?

That’s what it would take to fill up the commercial land along Wonderland  Road south of Southdale Road if the alternate proposal for developing the southwest area of London  demanded by the new Planning and Environment Committee (PEC) is adopted.

A tale of two boards and a committee

In politics, timing is everything. So learned the agencies, board and commissions coming before the Strategic Priorities and Policy Committee last week.

The clock is ticking

A second attempt to re-write history came with the effort by three councillors to intervene with staff’s following through on a decision of council a few years ago to relocate the wild animals from Storybook Gardens to more suitable environments as these became available. 

Generating heat, not light

Although there were a lot of items on the agenda for this week’s council, I didn’t see much that should have generated a lot of discussion. If council focussed on the task at hand, it shouldn’t take all night. But it did, the better part of it, anyway. It was nearly ten when the council embarked on the in camera portion of the agenda.

One factor that creates this problem is the tendency of some members to revisit matters already decided.

Fluoridation: Power in the bureaucracy?

It’s doubtful that many hearts or minds were changed as a result of the meeting on fluoride last week. Most of the several hundred people who attended the public participation meeting in Centennial Hall came to cheer or jeer depending on what side of the argument each of the 59 delegations was taking.

Some not so capital ideas

"Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it," wrote the philosopher George Santayana.Say it isn't so, because a couple of councillors' short memories could spell suffering for all of us when it come to the capital budget.

Sealing the deal

The final meeting of the day, the meeting of the Community Services Committee (CSC), was also concluded in almost record time, finishing in about an hour. The agenda was relatively light, with only one delegation and few items for debate or direction. That was good news for the dozen or so visitors in the public gallery who had come to view the proceedings. They got to witness the debate and the committee recommendations that followed and still have a couple of hours at home before bedtime. The media managed to file their stories in reasonable time.

Monday, Monday, sometimes it just turns out that way

I had anticipated a busy day, with three back to back meetings from 1 p.m. until some unspecified time in the evening. But fortunately or not, it was not to be.

That’s the problem with the new committees and schedules; the timing seems to work well for the councillors, perhaps even for the staff. But for the public and media, it’s just plain awkward.