The Matt Brown Podcast

Skylar Franke is currently serving her first term as Councillor for Ward 11, and serves on the boards of the Middlesex London Health Unit, Upper Thames Conservation Authority, various council committees and finally as the Chair of the London Transit Commission.

That's why she's joining the podcast today. London Transit has had some ups and downs over the past year or so. In fact, 3 council appointed LTC commissioners resigned a while back and council made the decision to remove the remaining commisioners and populated the entire leadership board with members of City Council.

Fun Fact, Councillor Franke voted against removing the remaining commissioners, but after the motion passed she put her name forward to join the commission with 6 council colleagues and ultimately she was elected as chair. During this podcast We talk about the governance decisions, the funding shortfall and the challenges LTC faces to meet the needs of our community. And, we can't talk transit without talking BRT - Councillor Franke will give us an update about that too. Including what she thinks needs to happen for the North and West routes that were cancelled during the 2018 - 2022 council. She outlines the plans and the challenge London faces to secure funding. That's because when those routes were cancelled a several years ago, the funding from other levels of government that had been secured in 2018 was cancelled too.

Thanks for listening.

Tomorrow, The mayor’s “Home Ownership Incentive Plan” that he announced at the London Chamber of Commerce State of the City address this past January is coming back to the council’s Strategic Priorities and Policy Committee, that’s council’s Committee of the Whole for a second kick at the can. The recommendation received a bit of a rough ride and a referral back to staff back in February, so we’ll have to stay tuned to see what happens next.

Today’s episode is a portion of the podcast political panel that ran shortly after the chamber of commerce’ state of the city address was held back in January. During the mayor’s address, he announced that he had used his strong mayor powers to direct staff to develop, what he called, an Affordable Home Ownership Incentive Plan. Essentially the plan would incentivize purchases of some newly built homes in London by reimbursing or rebating home buyers' the cost of development charges for homes selling for at or below the average cost of a new home - which, these, days is $630,000.

Depending on the build, development charges can run between $20,000 for a small apartment to just over $50,000 for a Single Family Home. These charges pay for the capital costs incurred and associated with the cost of a growing city. Think things like Water, Waste Water, Roads, Parks, Transit, and Emergency Services.

Developers incorporate these costs into the price of a new home, so the incentive program being considered by council would reduce the overall cost of a new home purchase, until the one time funding source is exhausted. 60% of this rebate, $5 million dollars, would be paid for by city coffers - using funding from the Federal Government’s housing accelerator budget and the remaining 40%, approximately $3 million dollars, would be covered by the home building industry here in London by way of reducing the selling price. This is one time funding, so once the money is gone, it’s gone. Staff predict that about 260 new home sales could be supported before the funding source has been exhausted.

Back in February, councillors had a lot of questions when this came forward, for their review. They sent those questions and the whole program back to staff for additional information. Tomorrow, Tuesday March 24th, the answer to those questions will be presented by staff again, for council’s consideration and possible direction.

Will the incentive program, in whatever form, be approved tomorrow? We’ll have to stay tuned.

In the meantime, this encore edition of a portion of this show’s first ever political panel can give you a better sense of the overall program and an idea of what the panelists thought of it at the time.

You might know that London was designated as a UNESCO city of music back in 2021. The initiative is currently run out of the Tourism London Office. Ward 6 City Councillor Sam Trosow is going to join us to tell us how he thinks the first 5 years of the program have gone and he’s going to tell us what he wants to see next.

UNESCO stands for United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization. It was formed in 1945 and has 194 members states today. It manages the World Heritage Centre (which designates World Heritage Sites), promotes education for all, supports scientific research and protects cultural diversity.
There are currently over 50 "Cities of Music" within this global network, and it’s been about about 5 years since London earned its designation as a UNESCO City of Music. And still today, London is the only Canadian City to have that City of Music Destination.

2026 is a milestone for London. Last week, City Council reviewed a report that detailed what the city and community partners have been able to accomplish since earning the distinction. The report also includes some information on where the City of London’s Music Office thinks the program should go from here. That second part - where they are recommending council go from here - is an important one because the distinction has a kind of “use it or lose” clause. In other words if, among other things, future strategic planning doesn’t have a central focus on investing in Music, Art and Culture. That means that London could claim to be the first Canadian city to earn the distinction and it could also be the first Canadian city to have it revoked.

That’s the background, Ward 6 City Councillor Sam Trosow joins the show to tell us all about it.

Homelessness, a towering tower, campaign donations, wider drive ways and a look ahead to the early days of the 2026 campaign.

This episode is a milestone episode of sorts - depending how you count it, we’ve just passed 30 episodes for this podcast.

As we head into spring, this podcast is making its way towards its first anniversary - we’ll celebrate that at the end of June. I don’t want to count any chickens at this point, but surpassing 30 episodes, with a growing audience is something most start up shows like this experience. That’s all because of you and many excellent guests, too - so thanks to everyone involved for that.

One thing I’ve learned is that a good podcast needs great guests and I am so grateful for all of the guests who have joined us for the past 30 plus, episodes - this included community leaders, frontline workers, past members of city council and even 3 members of our current council. Spoiler alert, by the end of March that number of sitting council members joining the show is going to grow to 4. And to the other 11 members, if you’re reading this, please know that you're more than welcome to share this space too. Drop me a line if you have something you want to talk about and we’ll find the time to hear what you have to say too. We’ll stick to the facts and make sure we’re looking at issues of the day from as many different perspectives as possible.

Speaking of great guests, local journalist Mike Donachie joined me this week on Newsmakers - That’s a news program I host over on Rogers Television. The episode today is an abridged version of that conversation and if you want to catch the whole thing, you can do so over on Roger Television.

Mike is watching City Hall closely and he’s reporting what’s happening there on a regular basis for a start up that he has just launched, It’s called “London City Hall notes” and he publishes it using the Substack platform.

As the municipal election, scheduled for late October, approaches - you can expect to hear more from Mike in the weeks and months to come. Today, he’s here to tell us all about what’s going on at City Hall - So let’s go.

Mechele Tebrake is community care worker who has 23 years experience working the front lines of the homelessness crisis. Melissa Schembri is a frontline worker who has been doing this work since 2018.

There are over 2000 Londoners who are experiencing homelessness here in London and that number grows each and every month. People like Mechele and Melissa provide support to these individuals who are living rough. We talked a bit about this during our first segment - At a recent city council meeting, members of council were considering a number of policy changes that a group of 78 frontline workers say would have made their work harder and the lives of the folx they serve harder still.

When council met to discuss the changes, These frontline workers filled the gallery too. This caught council’s attention and the changes didn’t happen.

On top of the 2200 folx experiencing homelessness in London, there are another 83,000 individuals living rough across Ontario. As Londoners, we hear about and witness the homelessness crisis on a regular basis. Mechelle, Melissa and their colleagues are immersed in it every single day.