Is it time to reduce our residential speed limits?

Our homes are our refuges from the pressures of a hectic life.  So, it should be reasonable to expect that the neighbourhoods in which we live would provide us with calm and protection from those daily stresses.  The single most frequent inquiry or complaint I receive as a councillor involves speeding in residential neighbourhoods. Whether the request is for traffic calming measures, increased enforcement, or installation of stop signs, each of these requests comes as a result of the perceived speed of vehicles moving down their street. 

Did half of all Londoners really not flush their toilets for over a year?

In 2012, the City of London commissioned the polling firm Environics to explore citizen satisfaction.  The results were mostly as one would expect. Londoners ranked employment as their top concern and they were generally satisfied with the city’s livability. They saw parks, open spaces and the ability to walk to important places as key to that livability.  Where things got interesting, however, was that when asked if they’d used a municipal service in the past year, only 54% of respondents said that they had. 

National Volunteer Week – April 7 to 13.

April 7^th marks the beginning of this year’s National Volunteer Week.  In Ontario, 44 percent of those aged 15 and older volunteered each year in some capacity.  For London, that translates to just over 140,000 volunteers.  StatsCan reports that volunteers put in an average of 166 hours of service each per year meaning that, in our city alone, volunteers contributed over 23 million hours of their time to our community. That’s the equivalent of nearly 13,000 full-time jobs! This is nothing short of phenomenal.

The Future of Farquharson

Since 1954, Farquharson Arena has been an important place for recreation in Old South. Nestled between Tecumseh Public School and London South Colligate Institute, countless children and adults alike have laced up their skates over the years and enjoyed the arena’s twin rinks. My family and I have also been frequent visitors. I have watched in awe as my daughter honed her skating skills, quickly surpassing my own (admittedly limited) abilities on ice.

Strategic Planning and the 2019 Budget Update

As the new council settles in, amongst the first orders of business are developing a strategic plan to guide our actions as a city for the next four years and updating the final year of the city’s multi-year budget.  Much of this process will be guided by the discussions my colleagues and I had on doorsteps with Londoners leading up to October’s election. There will also be opportunity in both of these processes for residents to weigh in on the priorities for our city over the next couple of months. 

As one term ends, another begins…

Over the past few months, I had the pleasure to speak with many of you as I knocked on several thousand doors in our ward during the recent election. I value the conversations we were able to have about our progress as a city over the last four years and about our collective vision for the future. I’m honoured to have the chance to serve another term and I’m looking forward to working with colleagues old and new around the council horseshoe. 

The Green

Many of you may have been involved in consultations held over the past couple of years to rehabilitate The Green behind the Normal School. The Green has long been held close in our community as a focal point and gathering place where neighbours stroll lazily across its grass or families can kick a soccer ball around.  It has been the site of Gathering on the Green, Halloween in the Village, and open-air movies, to name but a few. 

Wharncliffe Road South Underpass

Recently, I was approached by several business owners who were concerned about the upcoming work in 2020 to widen the underpass at Wharncliffe Road and Horton Street. As some of you might be aware, the City is currently widening Wharncliffe Road from Oxford Street to Western Road including a similar project to widen the underpass at the CP rail line. 

Policy and Sausages (and the Springbank Dam)

They say there are two things you never want to see being made: Policy and Sausages. 

Ever since arriving at City Hall, this maxim is oft repeated in my mind.  In this era of instant access to news and information, citizens get an intimate look into the window of the government policy process…and the view isn’t often pretty.  While what we see portrayed in the media is but a snapshot in time along that process, we react to what we saw at that moment without having the full context. 

Rapid Transit is But Just One Part of Building a Great City

(As published in the London Free Press on December 1, 2017) 

With one of the highest riderships per capita outside of Toronto, Londoners are amongst the most prolific users of transit in Ontario.  More than 23 million trips are taken by bus in London each year. However, London Transit Commission (LTC) receives one of the lowest municipal subsidies of transit services in the province.  This has left us with a system that is bursting at the seams, requiring investment, and long in need of an overhaul.