The Council Round-Up (April 2025)
A snapshot of what's happening in council chambers around Waterloo Region
Kitchener’s Rockway Centre will be redeveloped into a “welcoming, comfortable and social” space after receiving community input.
The top features residents would like to see in a new ‘older adult centre’ are:
Space for socializing, like a café or coffee shop
Fitness room
Outdoor features, such as seating areas
Other important site features included onsite parking, a pickup/drop off zone, and accessibility features (e.g., washrooms, handrails).
Now staff need to find a development partner to build the mixed-use facility with an older adult recreation centre on the ground floor. Staff will develop mandatory criteria for a Request for Proposal and consult with members of the Rockway Advisory Committee before presenting the plan to Council later this year.
Read the full report online at www.kitchener.ca/rockwayredevelopment or pick up a copy in the Rockway Centre lobby. You can also subscribe to regular updates on the Rockway Centre redevelopment project at engagewr.ca/Rockway.
Cambridge Council considers their housing needs assessment while local housing advocates say there’s no time to waste. Staff note several housing gaps, including: housing options for households at various life stages, a need for diverse housing options, and more affordable rental options.
I shared details of a meeting from last November when staff first shared preliminary data from the assessment, which you can read on Bluesky. The above is an image from that slide deck.
The City of Kitchener has completed all of the Housing for All Strategy actions. The strategy was aimed at increasing housing options across the housing continuum, from supportive housing to market home ownership and everything in between.
A few examples of the 44 actions completed through the plan include:
Provided parcels of city-owned land to local non-profits for affordable housing on three sites throughout the city.
Waived development fees for non-profits and introduced a not-for-profit affordable rental and co-op housing incentive grant.
Implemented policies and new bylaws that will support lower-cost housing options and affordable housing projects such as inclusionary zoning, a lodging house bylaw and a rental replacement bylaw.
Established a Lived Expertise Working Group, ensuring that individuals with first-hand experience of housing precarity and homelessness could advise and inform policy decisions.
More information about the Housing for All strategy can be found on the project’s web page. Information about Building Kitchener together can be found here.
After initially proposing a 50% property tax increase, Wilmot Council has brought that down to 18%. Council also decided to spread the capital budget increase of 26% over four years and asked staff to reduce their day-to-day departmental budgets by 5%.
Key decisions from the February 2025 Kitchener Council meeting:
Council directed City staff to proceed with phase one of the two-phased construction of a new quad gymnasium at RBJ Schlegel Park to support a wide diversity of community activities and events, as well as fast-growing sports such as basketball, volleyball and pickleball.
Staff will bring a renoviction by-law report back to Council for consideration at the June 2 Planning and Strategic Initiatives committee meeting.
Mayor Berry Vrbanovic has asked staff to explore a ‘buy Canadian preference’ for procurement of goods and services, where legally permissible, and encouraged residents and businesses to buy Canadian, and buy local where possible.
Key decisions from the February 2025 Waterloo Council meeting:
Council received the 2024 Drinking Water Annual and Summary Report with a final inspection rating of 100 per cent.
An update on the Speed Management Plan states that reduced speed limits on residential streets “continues to have a positive impact on driver speed and staff are pleased with the speed reduction shown based on the introduction of new speed limit signs.”
Council is reducing the parking requirements for new housing developments with a substantial affordable housing component.
Council approved the purchase of the former St. Columba Church property at 250 Lincoln Road in Waterloo with the long-term goal of building some affordable housing there. In the meantime, the existing building can be used to support the needs of local arts organizations for up to three years.
Of course, not everyone is excited to see more housing come to the neighbourhood.
Key decisions from the March 2025 Waterloo Council meeting:
Council approved funding for an online parking system that will see the city’s parking options combined in a single system which can be used for monthly permits and hourly parking, with flexibility to allow for different options for customers, such as offering permits for a few days or a few weeks.
Council approved funds to support the reconstruction and urbanization of Beaver Creek Road and a portion of Conservation Drive, as well as the construction of two new sanitary pumping stations to service the area.
Following Kitchener’s lead, Waterloo has deferred the implementation of its Inclusionary Zoning (IZ) policy and have asked that staff report back in June 2025 with recommendations for a new implementation date. This is in response to a consultant report stating “the economics for development have become complicated in recent years, and introducing IZ now could potentially further slow the recovery of the housing market, and make it more challenging to build in transit-oriented sites.”
Key decisions from the February 2025 Regional Council meeting:
Regional Council has extended its partnership with Neuron Mobility until 2029 to provide access to e-bikes and e-scooters for residents. This year, Neuron will add new adaptive vehicles so more people can benefit from the program.
Regional Council has approved final changes to the 2025 budget with newly added reductions, which include spending less on maintenance work, road salt and travel, and slightly delaying paramedic hiring.
Regional Council has approved funds and resources as it transitions to a new waste collection system to begin next March. “These resources will help roll out the cart-based system for garbage and organics to over 165,000 residential properties and 1,500 locations in Downtown Business Improvement Areas.”
Quick links:
CUPE Local 1656 members recently ratified an agreement with the Region of Waterloo, bringing an end to an almost month-long strike by outside workers. “The union stated the agreement includes a 3.5 per cent increase and $1 per hour in 2025, three per cent in 2026, and three per cent in 2027, as well as increases to shift premiums and payment for being on call.”
While Canadians love to joke that we have just two seasons, winter and construction, lately we need to add a third to that list - election season. We just finished a provincial election and now we are heading back to the polls this month for a federal election. Click for a list of the candidates running locally.
Photo by Cyrus Crossan on Unsplash North Dumfries must decide whether to proceed with their plans for a second ice pad at the community complex after their request for a federal grant fell short by $6 million.
Regional council has adopted a provincially mandated diversity plan to help guide future appointments to its police services board, beginning in 2026. (I have thoughts but I’ll save those for a future post!)
School Board Updates:
Community advocate and WRDSB parent, Lauren Weinberg, is back again this month to provide an overview of recent WRDSB meetings - and there is certainly a lot to stay on top of right now.
Last month's most surprising school board news came from the WCDSB, whose trustee Conrad Stanley presented a notice of motion to ban the Pride flag and all other "political symbols or slogans" from being displayed outside or inside schools. The ban would even apply to stickers (You can read the motion starting on p. 84) Stanley's motion claimed flying the Canadian and Ontario flags should be sufficient, since the former "perfectly represents a nation that is now, and will forever be, glorious and free" and the latter "perfectly represents a founding Province of Canada that is strong, prosperous, and compassionate."
Hundreds of WR residents including numerous WCDSB students and staff disagreed, holding a rally outside the Catholic Education Centre in Downtown Kitchener during the board's March 24 meeting. “I think [the Progress Pride flag] stands for more than what it actually stands for,” teacher Greg Cinti told CTV News at the rally. “When people see it, they know that it’s a safe place for anybody to walk into and there are people in there that will accept them for who they are, where they’re at and whatever journey they’re on.”
Trustees will vote on the motion at their April 28th meeting. In the meantime, Robert Sikora has resigned as WCDSB board chair for unknown reasons, though he remains a Cambridge trustee.
WRDSB director Scott Miller assured 570 NewsRadio his board won't reverse its 2016 decision to fly the Pride flag every June, which was a relief, given that trustee Cindy Watson repeated her recurrent claim that students are being "indoctrinated with identity politics and ideologies" at the March 17 board meeting. Trustee Carla Johnson called Watson's accusation "inaccurate and problematic." Trustee Scott Piatkowski noted that what Watson called "indoctrination" and "ideology" was actually the WRDSB following the Ontario Human Rights Code: "When people come to us and say, 'You are indoctrinating our children by telling them LGBTQ people have a right to exist,' no, we are following the law," said Piatkowski. "When we recognize the National Day in Recognition of Islamophobia, that's not an ideology. Ideology is what caused a graduate of the board next to ours to take his truck and run down people because…they were dressed in an Islamic fashion. It caused a recent graduate of the University of Waterloo to go into a gender studies classroom and stab people. That is ideology. Equality is not an ideology; it is in fact the law of the province of Ontario and we are bound to follow it."
Trustee Mike Ramsay countered that Jewish students were recently "afraid to attend school" because of activities approved by a school administration that he wouldn't name, adding, "If we're going to address Islamophobia, we should address antisemitism, but it was explained away." As a Jewish WRDSB parent, I consider pitting Jewish and Muslim students against each other profoundly harmful, and if the event Ramsay referred to was supporting Palestinian students, that does not make it antisemitic. Conflating Jews and Israel, however, is antisemitic.
Watson appeared frustrated that most trustees opposed hosting a public town hall where WRDSB families could, in her words, "share concerns," which she and trustees Ramsay and Bill Cody had recommended after Luisa D'Amato suggested it in a Record column. Although no one mentioned former WRDSB director jeewan chanicka by name, his mysterious departure was what inspired D'Amato's column—but, as other trustees pointed out, D'Amato proposed that the town hall address questions about chanicka that the board is legally forbidden to discuss.
The trustees instead approved Johnson's motion for a community "consultation" involving "a variety of engagements such as town hall meetings, virtual and asynchronous methods," all aimed at developing a new WRDSB strategic plan. Though D'Amato, in a March 20 Record column, claimed this move proved the board doesn't "want to hear about any problems," most trustees countered that the consultation is specifically intended to solicit community feedback.
Other WRDSB news:
The board is worried about a change to provincial legislation, scheduled to take effect in September 2025, which stipulates that a trustee who misses even one Committee of the Whole (COTW) meeting—no matter the reason—will lose their seat. Trustees agreed to write to Minister of Education Paul Calandra about this lack of flexibility. They also approved a motion from trustee Joanne Weston, which called for an ad hoc committee to revamp the board's committee structure so as to minimize the number of COTW meetings, as some Ontario school boards already do.
Elizabeth Ziegler Public School will remain closed through the 2025–26 academic year. Students have been relocated to new on-site portables as well as Brigadoon, Sandowne, and J.W. Gerth Public Schools.
At the March 24 board meeting, WRDSB staff provided an update on the Math Achievement Action Plan (MAAP). In November 2024, Ministry of Education representatives observed math lessons and met math facilitators at three of the 26 WRDSB schools that the MoE had identified as needing interventions, and the feedback was "highly positive" according to Siobhan Watters, a System Administrator and Math Lead for the board. Staff have been surveying educators, administrators, and students at the Ministry-identified schools to gauge the MAAP's effectiveness. They reported that approximately 95% of educators agreed the new MAAP resources are "clear and easy to use"; just under 75% said they "had an impact." Student confidence seems to be increasing: By the middle of the 2024–25 academic year, 63.5% of Grade 3 students and 54.8% of Grade 6 students reported they were "good at math," compared to 60.3% and 51.9%, respectively, at the beginning of the year. Watters explained that the MoE provided just one year of funding for the MAAP, and the board is waiting to hear whether that funding will be renewed in 2025–26.
Krishna Aarya Trivedi from Cameron Heights and Kinjal Kaur from Galt Collegiate Institute will be next year's student trustees.
As always, a huge thank-you to Lauren for writing these summaries (which involves watching a lot of meetings!)
Upcoming Events:
Tomorrow is the day to fill up on the sweet and sticky deliciousness of local maple syrup at the Elmira Maple Syrup Festival.
On Tuesday April 8th (3pm), the Region of Waterloo Community and Health Services Committee will consider a motion that:
a. Regional Council formally requests that the Province of Ontario provide immediate funding and support to ensure continued operation of the Kitchener CTS site during the injunction period, in compliance with the court’s decision.
b. Regional Council further requests that the Province grant approval under Section 3 of the Community Care and Recovery Act to allow the Regional Municipality of Waterloo to support and maintain CTS operations beyond the injunction period if necessary.
Expressions showcases “student artwork from the Waterloo Region, highlighting perspectives and experiences of young artists in our community. This year, artists explore their community through an intergenerational lens, sharing their dreams for the future while acknowledging the past.” The exhibit runs until May 4th at the Kitchener-Waterloo Art Gallery.
Cambridge Moves for Mental Health, Saturday May 10th. Walk, roll, or run in support of Porchlight which has been offering accessible and affordable mental health supports in Cambridge and North Dumfries since 1940. Their services include counselling, group therapy, addiction services, addiction recovery homes, in-school programming for youth, and rural community outreach.
Queer Sports Drop-In, Saturdays from 4:00 pm - 5:30 pm at the Downtown Community Centre. “It's the gym class you wish you had in high school! For ages 18+. Join us in the gym for an hour and a half of basketball, volleyball, badminton, floor hockey, dodgeball and more! This will be a beginner friendly safe space for every BODY!”
Exhibition: Keeping Time curated by Alix Voz at the Cambridge Art Galleries. “Keeping Time is a collaboration between Laura Peturson and Andrew Ackerman and reflects their shared experience as parents, their feelings on the insularity of family and the nature of time, which is often made so evident in the rapid and dramatic changes of children.”
EngageWR Updates:
Redevelopment of places of worship for housing: Waterloo proposes to create a Place of Worship Inventory and to permit multi-unit housing as-of-right on Places of Worship properties. “The initiative will help streamline the development approvals process and remove barriers facing faith communities in moving forward with redevelopment projects.”
Kitchener’s Places report: Places is part of the City of Kitchener’s Parks Master Plan that influences the quality of park experiences and the final draft will be presented to Council’s Community and Infrastructure Services Committee on April 14th.
Cambridge’s Churchill Rocketship renewal: Check out the final design of this playground renewal project which “incorporates the five fundamental motions of play: rocking, spinning, climbing, swinging, and sliding, to help the children of Cambridge develop vital motor skills, coordination, and spatial awareness.”
Cambridge’s plan for Form Based Residential Zoning: Cambridge is reviewing its Zoning By-law and is proposing Form Based Zoning for residential areas to help the City simplify its zoning regulations. “Form Based Zoning focuses on the physical form of development rather than the separation of use and dwelling types.”
Thanks for reading this week’s #CitifiedWR post!