Hi everyone,

It looks like winter made a comeback. I hope you are all staying warm and dry.

We had another great session in February with Dr. Martin Horak, who presented highlights from his research on campaign capital.

February meeting

One of the key takeaways was that incumbents tend to have a significant advantage because of name recognition. However, first-time candidates can still win; especially if they put in the effort by building a strong volunteer/support team and securing some reasonable funding. One advantage wealthier candidates have is the ability to self-finance their campaigns. I know some of you asked for the slides, but since the research has not been published yet, we’ll need to wait until that happens.

Knowledge Sharing

As a follow-up from our January meeting, we shared a handout about Development Charges, which is also available here. Strong Towns London already has a couple of new articles available (one about traffic in neighbourhoods and one about municipal urban growth). We will continue to build our database gradually, there are a few more in the works already. Keep an eye on the STL website, and if you’d like to suggest or contribute an article, you can join our team of volunteers working on that.

Speaking of sharing information, a great way to stay up to date with what is happening at City Hall, without having to watch meetings that can last several hours, is to sign up for Mike Donachie’s Substack (it’s free, and he promised it will stay that way, at least for the regular weekly updates). There’s lots of useful information there, with a good dose of humour too.

Resources for tenants

Something else that may be relevant to some of our members: the National Tenant Organizing Fund is currently available to support tenant-led groups that are actively organizing in their communities. You don’t need formal grant-writing experience to apply. The fund prioritizes clarity, accessibility, and alignment with organizing goals over polished language or technical proposals.

March meeting

Finally, this month’s meeting will have a different format. We heard our members and we want to be able to support you in a way that is meaningful to you. The meeting will be entirely focused on us, without external guest speakers. This will give us a chance to discuss the pressing issues and needs within our groups and explore how we can support each other. The meeting will be as good as the ideas and participation we bring to it, so I hope to see many of you there in a couple of weeks.

Thanks for all the hard work you do for your community and your city!

Kindly,

President’s Update: March 2026

February meeting

Knowledge Sharing

Resources for tenants

March meeting