Dear New Council: Four Asks From an Average Londoner
On Tuesday, November 17th at 6 p.m., fourteen councillors and one mayor will be sworn in at RBC Place to lead our city together from now until 2030.
After almost six months of campaigning and a two-and-a-half-week onboarding process, the ghosts of council past will be laid to rest. Jerry Pribil and Steven Hillier begin their political retirements after four and eight years on council respectively, replaced in their wards by Corrine Rahman and Jason King.
The other new faces: Tom Cull, who won Ward 4 after Susan Stevenson chose to run for mayor instead, and Jonathan Sher, a longtime former London Free Press reporter who won the race to replace Corrine Rahman in Ward 7 after her move to Ward 5. (Full results here.)
And then there's Ben Durham. Facing the kind of incumbency advantage that makes upsets rare in Ontario municipal politics, he put in the work, knocking on doors six and sometimes seven days a week, and unseated Peter Cuddy to become the new Ward 3 councillor.
Institutional knowledge is a difficult thing to replace in the public sector. Having eleven of fifteen faces return around the horseshoe will hopefully be a net benefit for the work ahead, and let this council hit the ground running.
We also live in a world where you can tag the Prime Minister, the Premier, or the mayor of a city of half a million people just by tapping "@" on your phone. Everyone has an opinion, and quantity has replaced quality.
So consider this my one (hopefully quality) contribution: a quick, open note to the fifteen people who will represent us from November 17th until November 2030.
Dear New Council,
Thank you for putting your names forward in the 2026 municipal election. It's a tall task to put yourself out there, again and again, at a time when the average Londoner seems less engaged and more angry than in past eras of civic leadership.
Rising above the contempt and cynicism toward public service that fills the social media comment sections is something I commend each and every one of you for.
You've spent the last couple of weeks onboarding into your new role, so there's nothing new or original I could add there as an outsider, except this belief from my years as a board member: good governance doesn't come from already having all the answers. It comes from being fully prepared for meetings, and not being afraid to ask questions or learn new ideas and perspectives.
As one vote, I represent 0.00000301 of all the eligible voters you serve. But as someone who isn't afraid to share his opinions, I hope you'll read this on behalf of the many Londoners who live somewhere between the left and right poles of civic discourse. I have four asks, and I think they'll mean something to all of us.
Ask #1: Remember that no matter what you do, you won't please everyone
I had a hard time for a while with the blowback that came from putting myself out there in leadership. It took a local, sometimes controversial, previously elected official to put it in perspective for me:
"The first sign you're doing something important is someone hates you for it."
No decision I made would ever come with 100 percent approval. And the internet makes it easy for naysayers to give you a piece of their mind, both barrels blazing, with total confidence and zero accountability.
Be thoughtful, but be decisive. Those who get it will back you for it. Those who hate you for it don't matter in the first place, and are probably the same sort of folks who booed Santa Claus and pelted him with snowballs in Philadelphia.
During the election, I saw complaints on social media along the lines of: "Shawn Lewis sucks because 70 people came to a public consultation and told him not to vote to approve the police budget, and he did anyway."
That's 70 people out of a maximum of 24,529, and that's if they all happened to be Ward 2 residents. Shawn gets it, and I hope every councillor does too: when you try to please everyone, you don't please anyone. We have entrusted you to make tough decisions on behalf of all of us, and we look forward to you making them.
Ask #2: Whether we like it or not, London is a big city
The most recent Statistics Canada estimate puts London at 494,785 residents as of July 2025.
Whether we like it or not, that makes us a little bit bigger than Miami, Florida, the same Miami that's home to an NBA, NFL, and MLB team.
Big-city size comes with big-city needs, and it calls for big-city thinking.
Big cities need reliable transit that matches where and when people actually work, in a variety of forms: ride share, high-frequency buses, bike lanes, safe walking infrastructure, and roads that are well maintained, and still usable while they're being maintained or upgraded.
The London of yesteryear, a sleepy bedroom community of 300,000 mostly white people, is gone. In its place is a city with vast natural resources, a superior geographic position, and unlimited untapped potential. People are seeing it, and they're relocating here in droves. I ask that you, as municipal leaders, embrace the idea that the big city is already here, and expect decision-making from staff that reflects it.
Ask #3: Remember that the little things matter
We can all agree that homelessness and affordability were front and centre in the 2026 election, with transportation and road construction a visible but distant third.
We can also agree that the City of London alone won't solve homelessness, and that if we tried, more people in need would just move here and put further strain on the municipal property tax base.
We can play a part, though.
We can be a thought and planning leader, bringing other municipalities and the province to the table. Mayor Morgan serving as chair of the Federation of Canadian Municipalities' Big City Mayors' Caucus is one example. London's Whole of Community System Response is another: it became a model when the province rolled out HART hubs across Ontario.
We can also plan strategically: prepare for things like cold weather well in advance, and make it a priority to approve and build housing across the affordability spectrum, through common-sense approaches and collaboration that remove as many barriers as possible.
But we can also help in the little areas that make a big difference.
Recreation. Mayor Morgan's campaign promise to freeze recreation fees for at least two years will help. I'm very middle class, and even I feel it when it costs over $20 to take my family swimming at a city pool. Those rates can't keep climbing the way property taxes have, or people will simply stop using them.
Music. Leaning into our identity as Canada's first UNESCO City of Music will help too. It's a given that nobody who isn't a nepo baby or a crypto tycoon can afford tickets to major acts these days. But medium-sized acts can and will make a KILLING playing in London. We have an outstanding music scene right now, working with what we have. Mumford & Sons and Noah Kahan playing here in the last two years (and The Lumineers, until the wildfire smoke had other ideas) show what's possible. Intentional partnerships with the people already working their tails off to bring acts to London, like Jones Entertainment Group and Brandon Eedy at London Music Hall, would go a long way for local tourism and the arts.
Youth sports. Hockey in London is a well-oiled machine, mostly funded by parents with the means to do so. Other sports are in high demand but lack the same infrastructure. London has a current NBA player! Yet I drive my son to St. Thomas every week for Grade 3/4 house league basketball. Right now, it takes me longer to get him from Old South to Tuesday night skills and drills in northeast London than it does to drive him to St. Thomas for Sunday afternoon house league. If you identify the doers in your neighbourhoods and help them connect and communicate, more kids will play. With some dedicated intentionality, we could probably get house league sports running in every neighbourhood, and get kids off their devices, out of trouble, and involved.
Ask #4: Think long-term, as well as short-term
Part of your job over the next four years will be shaping a new strategic plan to guide your priorities and decisions. Many Londoners don't get involved municipally because they feel like nothing changes. But it does, and decisions made around the horseshoe last for generations.
In the late '90s and early 2000s, councillors with lasting legacies like Cheryl Miller and Roger Caranci, along with the recently and dearly departed Gord Hume, made decisions that still affect us today. Their terms included a referendum on a ring road and a casino, and the votes and motions that paved the way for building or revitalizing Canada Life Place, the Central Library, and Covent Garden Market.
Big cities have to make big decisions. Toronto, under John Tory, created a City Building Fund: a separate levy on the property tax bill dedicated to infrastructure like transit and housing, apart from the regular municipal tax.
Closer to home, the north and west BRT legs that council voted down in 2019 are coming back into play. Building the three approved legs has made one thing very clear: London needs better ways to get around. Take all the frustration being shared with you about how hard it is to get around this city right now, and use it as energy to think big, get creative, and leave a legacy people will still be talking about in 2051, the way we still talk about Canada Life Place over a coffee and some fresh local produce at Covent Garden Market today.
London has kept a Aaa credit rating for 50 years running. I would love to see us leverage that into a new downtown performing arts centre, maybe even as part of the long-overdue City Hall redevelopment. Public services like arenas and libraries have clearly benefited from multi-use facilities like the StarTech.com Community Centre, YMCA and Library in Bostwick, and ditto for Sunningdale.
Right now we have Centennial Hall, which seats 1,637 for a stage performance, and that includes everyone in the second level sitting perpendicular to the stage with their heads turned for the entire show. We also have the Grand Theatre (839 seats), Wolf Performance Hall (369), and London Music Hall, which holds 1,930 but counts a significant number of standing spectators in that total.
A performing arts centre with sit-down, theatre-style concert space for around 3,500 people, rehearsal and exhibitor space for performers and artists, a library, and either a YMCA-style fitness centre or administrative offices for city services would be a GAME CHANGER for revitalizing downtown. But a project of that magnitude has to start with a willingness to change, and conversations that move the ball forward.
In closing
I hope these asks are taken with an open mind, as ideas and encouragement.
Many hands make light work, and there's no "I" in team. London has lots of boots on the ground when it comes to champions of change, if we can all come to the table knowing we have plenty in common.
We all want safety, health, wellness, and opportunity for ourselves and our fellow Londoners. We want to enjoy our community and what it has to offer. We support third places. We all get around differently. We all want to support local as much as possible, both out of convenience and out of support for our community.
We are all happy and proud of you for earning your seats around the horseshoe, and we all want to help however we can to move our shared ideas forward for the benefit of us all.
Good luck, City Council of 2026–2030. We look forward to seeing what you can do, and how you'll change our community for the better.
— Jeremy
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