Council Preview
By John Swartz
Orillia council meets at 2 p.m. Monday, January 27. Soldiers’ Memorial Hospital CEO, Carmine Stumpo is scheduled for a deputation off the top of the meeting. He will giving an update of hospital activities during the past year.
Notable from the Powerpoint material is what is contemplated for the existing hospital once a new site is selected and built upon. The words on the slide say, “Housing and Community Based Health Services.” The artist conception shows a number of new buildings on the land presently occupied by the hospital, which would presumably come at some time after the hospital vacates.
What this also confirms is the board is not keen to redevelop the site in stages. Their initial publication of plans showed building in phases, first on the parking lot, and then the rest of the site as parts of the old buildings were emptied.
What is not part of the presentation is any indication a site has been selected. There is a rumour floating that land has been offered just beyond City limits on the other side of Oro-Medonte Line 15, which if the City’s boundary expansion plan is realized will be in the City. There is only one site in the central core that was suitable, the former Dorr-Oliver-Long land on West Street opposite the Orillia Recreation Centre; this parcel fit the size needs of the original requirements for 20 acres (that land is about 22 acres), but the criteria change to a requirement of 25 acres.
That leaves the West Ridge as the obvious choice, which could
spell disaster for the local economy. Taking that many employees and secondary
service away from the central core will not be good and it is likely the City
will take years and millions to counteract the loss.
Weighed against the provinces propensity to build on farmland rather than spend
a few million more cleaning up abandoned industrial land and the cost of who
knows how many millions to keep central business areas viable, the house money
is on staying centrally located as the least costly to the community when all
is taken into account.
The presentation also shows province will pay 75% of building costs, which means there will numerous fundraising drives and events as there was for building the addition which opened in 2006. This breaks down to the community is expected to raise 10% of construction costs. Along with construction, there are costs beyond bricks, namely the stuff inside, which the community is expected to pay 100% of the cost, or 15% of the total cost. The hospital will eventually be asking council for the municipality to pony up some money, and the County as well, which means beyond any donations people make local taxes will be funnelled into the project.
The presentation also includes information that the hospital had a $3 million operating surplus from their last fiscal year. This comes with the highest occupancy rate of all medium and large hospitals, somehow attaining 110%.
Following the deputation is the public forum and then council will go into closed session to discuss two items. One is regarding a sale offer on land, the other to appoint people to various boards and committees.
Interestingly Councillor Ralph Cipolla has a notice of motion further down the agenda that at the next meeting he will be asking to reconsider a motion related a closed session item from last week about personnel.
Reports
The transportation and parking working group has a reports asking council to approve having staff report about having a permanent bus stop at Lakehead University.
Currently the northbound bus only goes into the campus after 5:45 p.m. The West Ridge is the only area which has two routes travelling essentially the same path in and out of the terminus downtown. It was decide at the outset the northbound bus would not turn into the university in the evening because there was no traffic light and traffic was too heavy to make a left hand turn going in and out.
There is a traffic light there now. Somehow it’s the case there is no transit stop for that route on the far side of University Ave. and everyone has to walk to the stop at Costco.
The next report has staff responding to an enquiry by councillors Janet-Lynne Durnford and Jay Fallis about reducing, or waiving rental fees to Lakehead University for use of council chambers as a classroom.
Council did waive fees for two dates last October and the university would like to continue using the chambers in the next academic year. Staff say there is no reciprocal agreement with the university for facility use and the City would lose normal rental fees of $350 which includes use of the space and staff time. Staff are not recommending changes to the rental policy.
Our Gain, Their Loss
Staff are recommending the City join a venture the County of Simcoe is starting. It’s municipal insurance pool to be run on a not-for –profit basis among all municipalities in the County.
The county states the combined premiums paid for insurance by all is $20 million and after 5 years of being a member of the quasi-self-insurance pool the City would save 26% on insurance costs by the 5th year.
Waterloo Region and Durham already have established municipal insurance pools. The Simcoe County pool would also be open to municipalities outside the county to join.
The City of Orillia would save 20% right away by joining, but the County is saying Orillia, and other municipalities would effectively see costs go down by 10% in the first year, with the other 10% being used to set up initial reserves which would be phased out within 5 years.
The City needs to join the pool by March 31 in order for coverage to be effective June 1. The insurance would cover liability, auto and property damage. Staff say the savings would amount to $845K over 5 years and the City would have equity in the pool of $710K. The City would keep its environmental pollution and cyber insurance as it is at a current cost of $81K annually.
Orillia’s insurance premiums increased by 82% since 2020.
Garbage In…
The next two reports relate to garbage and specifically recycling. The first is to adopt a recommendation from the City’s 2021 Waste Minimization Plan. The purpose is to have development plans take into account aspects of garbage and recycling collection in a standardized way as they apply to medium and large intensity housing.
One of the things infrequently in mind to many is how does garbage get handled in apartment complexes. Many people who do live in apartments can appreciate it’s different in every existing building. One area of contention is adequate bin storage and access for pickup vehicles. Of course the weak link is people putting stuff into the stream; it only takes one tenant to gum up the works.
To that end, if approved, some standardization of waste management systems in new construction will encourage tenants to recycle and have simple methods everyone can follow.
The other report relates to events. Staff are proposing some changes to policy for how garbage and recycling is handled at events, mostly by taking out fixed prices and replacing market condition wording.
There also is a change from using the word required to mandatory for organizes to have recycling plans. Orillia probably has the best and longest in place event criteria thanks to the Mariposa Folk Festival, which developed many of the practices others holding events in town, and elsewhere in the province follow.
Beer Me
The next report is asking council to approve expansion of the area at Rotary Place where alcohol can be sold and consumed. The expansion seems logical and leaves one to wonder why that didn’t exist to begin with.
The report also asks council to approve staff investigate and report on allowing alcohol in City parks. Don’t get excited, that’s all there is in the report related to parks, no indication of what is driving the request is offered.
Grants
The next two reports relate to grants for sports events. The first is to approve granting $5K to Twin Lakes Secondary School to host the Ontario Federation of School Athletic Association’s AA Boys Volleyball Championship from the municipal accommodation tax operating budget.
The next is to change the grants policy to include sports events. Following the 2006 cultural study a grant fund was created for cultural events because there was little available for groups previously, and not often given thought to. The current fund starts out each year at $32K. It has remained at that amount for several years.
The creation of the fund and a system of making grants has been a huge benefit to many groups.
There have also been one or two requests for grants for sporting events each year and some councillors have wondered why the grants could not be made from the grants fund instead of from some other source like the MAT account or tax rate stabilization account.
That illustrates the problem. The fund was created in the first place to fill a gap in cultural funding, which inherently means artistic activities. It was not intended to be a catch all for every event.
One could argue, and this publication agrees, sports is a cultural activity and supporting events is important. However it must also be pointed out sports already enjoys much more municipal funding than arts and culture does in the form of facilities scattered throughout the City and subsidized sporting leagues, which until the grant fund was created one could only point to the Opera House, the Aqua Theatre and the Leacock Museum as being cultural facilities.
The City should have a fund for sporting event/tournaments, and the fear is by including it into the grants program cultural activity will eventually take a back seat when it comes to portioning out the money.
At least staff are recommending the grants fund be increased by $18K by transfer from the MAT account. Care should be taken that the proportion of grants to cultural and sports organizations do not change over time. As it is there are some groups who are not cultural/artistic related who get access to the grant fund, simply because the original intent of the fund has been lost.
Council also will be making two appointments to the new medical clinic working group. They are Jillian Fenik, executive director of the Couchiching Ontario Health Team and Melanie Delion community physician recruiter of the Orillia & Lake Country Physician Recruitment.
Motions
Other than the one noted above by councillor Cipolla, there is only one enquiry motion from councillor Tim Lauer to have staff report on the feasibility, estimated costs and logistics of establishing an outdoor artificial ice surface, both covered and uncovered, as well as updating the existing Skate Trail Plan for Centennial Park; to prepare an updated costing for the refrigerated trail project as part of the 10-year Capital Plan.
Council meetings are open to the public or can be watched on the City’s Youtube channel.
(Photos by Swartz – SUNonline/Orillia)
