[Updated 2x] Special Civic Works Committee Meeting Set for March 15th, 2021

[Update: March 3rd, 2021] At the Civic Works Committee meeting on March 2nd, 2021, committee members acknowledged that a special meeting had been set for March 15th to hear delegation presentations, voted to accept all of the correspondence received and approve five requests for delegation status (although only four were on the agenda). It was also noted that the clerk would attempt to group delegations from residents from the same area to help make the delegates as coherent as possible to accommodate what is expected to be a longer meeting.

[Update: March 1st, 2021] An updated agenda for the regular Civic Works Committee (CWC) meeting on March 2nd, 2021 has been posted on the City of London’s Council and committee meetings web page. Of note is that, in addition to the 32 letters and 4 petitions included in the original CWC agenda, copies of a further 23 letters and 4 delegation requests have been appended. This is on top of the 29 letters and 21 delegation requests that were included in the Council agenda for February 23rd, 2021 and the 20 letters and 7 delegation requests that were included in the CWC agenda on February 9th, 2021; at those meetings, all 28 parties who sought delegation status were granted it.

[Original Post: February 25th, 2021] On February 24th, 2021, the Civic Works Committee sent out emails notifying those granted delegation status to the committee. In the email, Audrey Pascual, Committee Clerk for the City of London Clerk’s Office, wrote that, “Due to the significant interest in [the matter of sidewalk installation], Council has directed delegations to be heard at a special meeting of the Civic Works Committee to be held on Monday, March 15 [2021] at noon.”

Pascual’s statement was part of an email that was sent to neighbourhood residents who had requested delegation status to the Committee prior to the application cutoff of February 22nd at 9:00 a.m. Delegation status allows the named individual the privilege of making a presentation to the Committee. This special meeting of the Civic Works Committee will be for approved delegations only, as it is not a public participation meeting.

The meeting is to be held both virtually and in person at City Hall, although due to COVID-19 protocols, in-person attendance will be limited. The email said that those that have been granted delegation status can indicate their preferred method of participation but gave no indication how the limited in-person space will be allocated.

According to the City of London Council and committee meetings website, the regularly scheduled meeting of the Civic Works Committee is still being held on March 2, 2021. However, the meeting agenda has not been updated to remove the sidewalk issues that were originally scheduled to be heard. No meeting notice or agenda for the March 15th special meeting has been posted as of publication time but presumably those items will be included in the new agenda.