Say No to 0%
On Thursday, February 9th, London’s City Council put forward a number of substantial budget cuts, with the goal of reaching a zero percent tax increase for 2012. Today at the UnLab, a group of citizens met to share information and discuss the cuts. There were three cuts that the group focused on:
1. Reducing the Affordable Housing Reserve Fund by 1 million dollars. Here is an excellent post summarizing the impact of the cut.
2. Diverting 1.3 million dollars from the city’s strategic reserve funds to the current budget.
3. Reducing funding for the Accessibility for Ontarians with Disabilities Act (AODA) budget by $500000
The complete list of cuts can be found here:
How councilors voted. http://www.london.ca/Newsroom/PDFs/BListVote.pdf
Most of votes to approve these cuts were passed by one vote, 8-7.
Council will meet on Tuesday, February 21st to give final approval to the budget. That will be the last opportunity for any of the proposed cuts to be changed or reversed. You have the chance, over the next 8 days, to add your input to the final budget.
-Talk with your friends and neighbors about the proposed cuts and their effect on London.
-email city council and let them know what you think of the proposed cuts. These are the email addresses for the members of city council :
bpolhill@london.ca
barmstro@london.ca
jswan@london.ca
sorser@london.ca
jbaechle@london.ca
nbransco@london.ca
mbrown@london.ca
phubert@london.ca
dhenders@london.ca
pvanmeer@london.ca
dbrown@london.ca
husher@london.ca
jbryant@london.ca
sawhite@london.ca
jfontana@london.ca
Indicate which ward you are in in your letter.
*make sure to cc: csaunder@london.ca and request that your email be included in the agenda.
Other resources:
Local budget app - Make the cut http://zoeandgavin.com/makethecut/
James Shelley’s Municipal Taxation Increase Request http://jamesshelley.net/MTIR1.pdf
TWILT EP. 23 – Citizens Engaged with Glen Pearson
Twilt Episode 23 - Citizens Engaged with Glen Pearson [ 1 h 26 min 56 s ] Play Now | Play in Popup | Download (35)
Welcome to This Week In London Tweets sponsored by Orpheum Hosting Solutions
You can find us on Twitter at @twiltpodcast
We livestream at livestream.com/twilt during the show usually Mondays at 7pm est.
Our guest this week is Glen Pearson returns again as our guest this week. As well as a former member of parliament Glen is a volunteer executive director of the London Food Bank for the past 20 years.
We spent quite a bit of time talking about the City Council meeting where the budget will have it's final approval. A survay was released by Councillor Hubert and the results have been posted. Many concerned citizens plan to be at city hall for this council meeting. The meeting starts at 3 but the budget portion will not start until 6pm at the earliest.
We also discussed a local project which Gavin Blair a developer with rtraction is working on. Called Keeping an Eye on City Council and it is described as follows;
We want to build an app that lets you keep track of how your councillor voted in each council meeting. Something like open parliament, but on the municipal level. Also, it should help you figure out who your councillor is, and how to contact them. It should also have some quality templates for messages to your councillor.
In just over a week the application is almost 50% towards it's funding. Transparent government is an great goal no matter what side of the political fence you are on.
We then touched briefly on City Symposium which was held the previous week. Several speakers and a classical quartet called It's a String Thing rounded out the evening.
Finishing up we each provided some comment on the Drummond Report which was was released this week.
TWILT EP. 22 – Abe Oudshoorn
Welcome to This Week In London Tweets sponsored by Orpheum Hosting Solutions
You can find us on Twitter at twiltpodcast
We livestream at livestream.com/twilt during the show usually Mondays at 7pm est.
Sorry for the poor audio quality at the beginning of the show.
Our guest this week is Abe Oudshoorm who's blog is at http://www.abeoudshoorn.com/blog/ Abe is a professor of Nursing at The University of Western Ontario. His practice and research are in the area of homelessness and health. He founded the London Homelessness Outreach Network in 2010.
We talked about Abe's work in nursing and why he chose to focus on homelessness and health. We then touch on the various myths and inaccuraces that exist around the housing and homelessness issue and why cutting from the housing reserve fund is a bad idea. The main takeaway from this. Building affordable house is better and less costly for all in the long run.
We also talked about last weeks meeting involving EMD workers and the community.
We moved on the lastest issue at LHSC regarding a 465k severance from a Doctor well respected by staff. Stuart thinks's there something between the lines...
TWILT Ep. 21 Slightly Shorter
Welcome to This Week In London Tweets sponsored by Orpheum Hosting Solutions
You can find us on Twitter at twiltpodcast
We livestream at livestream.com/twilt during the show usually Mondays at 7pm est.
Sean started the show with a prerecorded piece in relation to the EMD shutdown as he was away this week attending a citizen's panel in relation to the shutdown. We will have a full report next podcast.
Helping Stuart this week was Jon Pilon who is a student at Fanshawe and unlab member. Jon also did quite a bit of work in getting the unLab iMac set up as a podcasting machine so he was the perfect choice to help with things in Sean's absence.
We talked about Jon's latest project with several other folks. The Squib Network. It's description says " A podcast network full of satirical, witty and opinionated shows that may or may not express true facts. This podcast network is produced by a legion of committed geeks." of that I can't argue. Also Jon is leading a twitter campaign to get a co-op placement at local web firm rtraction using the hashtag #pilonatrtraction
We then moved on to the latest from EMD, as everyone knows now Caterpillar decided to shut down the plant, putting over 400 out of work.
We also talked about 3 companies, TSC, Mark's Work Warehouse and Tuckey Home Hardware who have pulled Caterpillar related products off their shelves.
Moving onto City Council issues we discussed the different reception the Police Service Board and the London/Middlesex Health Unit received at Council. Gina Barber had a great blog on the issue.
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- “@Martycus: Affordable housing officially cut” #ldnont #ccldn 19 hours ago
- Mayor Fontana should have listened to some our our podcasts. #twilt #ldnont #ccldn 20 hours ago
- TWILT is here at Council with quite a few of our past and future guests! #ldnont #ccldn 22 hours ago
- Twilt Ep.23 "Citizens Engaged With Glen Pearson" is now available for your listening pleasure. http://t.co/aCsbvIVp #ldnont #twilt 1 day ago
- TWILT EP. 23 – Citizens Engaged with Glen Pearson http://t.co/xEoq0XkE 1 day ago