City Council Meeting Wrap-Up – October 10, 2023

The City Council meeting on October 10 included updates on local housing targets, introduction of a new policy to address frivolous or vexatious complaints, and direction to provide additional options for cutting costs in the 2024-2025 budget.

Housing Targets for Greater Sudbury

Staff updated Council on the provincial government’s housing targets for Greater Sudbury. In 2022, the Province identified the need to create 1.5 million new homes in Ontario by 2031 and assigned housing targets to the 29 fastest growing municipalities. This past August, the Province assigned targets to 21 additional municipalities, including Greater Sudbury. The Province has established Greater Sudbury’s housing target at 3,800 new homes by 2031.

The City regularly tracks and reports on the number of building permits issued to create new residential units in the City. During the previous 10-year period from 2012 to 2022, the City issued permits to create 4,076 new homes in Greater Sudbury for an average of just over 400 per year. Since 2020, the City has seen an increase in new home creation, with an average of 450 permits for new residential units issued per year over the last three years. From 2022 to the end of June 2023, the City issued permits for 774 new residential units, or 20 per cent of the 2031 target.

The Province has also introduced its new Building Faster Fund, which will provide up to $400 million a year for three years to help municipalities meet or exceed their targets. Potential funding will be contingent on a municipality committing to and meeting its targets and will be based on a municipality’s percentage of the total goal of 1.5 million homes.

Frivolous and Vexatious Complaints Policy

City Council was presented a report on the development and implementation of a Frivolous and Vexatious Complaints Policy, which recognizes that customer service is everyone’s responsibility and must be provided in an environment of mutual respect. Repeated unreasonable, frivolous or vexatious complaints can have significant resource implications for the municipality, and many municipalities have adopted formal policies for dealing with these kinds of complaints.

This policy supports efforts to respond to all service requests and complaints equitably and efficiently, and to protect staff from unreasonable behaviour. It will serve as a guide for employees to identify situations that meet the criteria of frivolous, vexatious and/or unreasonably persistent complaints, and the associated actions that may be undertaken. It also ensures that any restrictions would be applied as fairly and consistently as possible across the organization.

As next steps, internal processes and training will be developed. Public communications will take place once the policy is officially in effect. 

Operational Efficiencies in 2024-25 Budget

The 2024-2025 draft budget is scheduled to be tabled at the Finance and Administration Committee meeting on November 15, 2023. Council directed staff to ensure the draft budget includes options for operational efficiencies that would not impact service levels or introduce new user fees, in addition to the other potential approaches previously identified for presenting a budget that meets Council’s budget directions.

Greater Sudbury Development Corporation (GSDC) 2022 Annual Report

Council was presented with an overview of the 2022 Annual Report for the GSDC, the economic development arm of the City of Greater Sudbury. A more detailed news release with highlights of the annual report will be shared on Wednesday.

For more details on these and other items from this week’s meetings, visit www.greatersudbury.ca/city-hall/mayor-and-council/meetings-agendas-and-minutes.