After close to seven hours, the 2023 Peterborough City Budget was approved by Council well after midnight on January 31st, 2023. The meeting, which began at 6:00 PM the previous evening, was meant to formally adopt each of the previous motions of council which had arisen from meetings of the finance committee. In the process, Council has pared down the initial tax increase proposed by staff at the outset of deliberations from 4% to 3.15%. 

Major measures which allowed for this decrease was Council’s decision to freeze transit funding at 2022 levels for a savings of over $1M, deferring funding for a Eastern Ontario Cell Corridor (which was ultimately reversed and paid off out of the city’s reserves), and the deferral of  $800,000 for providing further services to the Peterborough Airport until such a time as the land it sits on can be annexed by the city.     

Everything from pickleball to paramedics was discussed during dozens upon dozens of hours of meetings over the course of the entire month of January. Arthur was on the ground at every single one of these meetings in order to get a sense of this new Council’s priorities and to see how Councillors and City Staff work together towards solutions, especially on sensitive issues such as the Police Budget, Public Health, and of course, the ongoing homelessness and drug poisoning crises. 

What follows is an in-depth account of the highlights and sticking points that arose alongside some commentary on how this might affect the Peterborough community and students writ large. While many of these issues have previously been covered by Arthur over the past month, this will serve as a one stop go-to primer on the Budget and the fiscal environment and contexts the City finds itself in. 

Buckle Up. 

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Police Budget:

Possibly one of the biggest pieces coming out of the entire budget process was the way in which Council approached the police services budget presentation. In the end, the proposal that the service go back and review the budget under new Police Chief Stuart Betts came to nothing more than having the force hold fast to their original plans of a 4% increase to the operating budget including the hiring of eleven new staff members in the second half of 2023 - six of those being civilian positions. 

When it came time to consider the budget as a whole on January 30th, Council decided to accept the police budget without further discussion.

A single delegate came to speak specifically to the question of the Police budget. Melissa Higgs, who identified herself as a recovering addict and harm reduction professional, spoke passionately about the ways in which the Police and Council’s response to the ongoing crises of homelessness and drug poisoning through increased policing doesn’t represent the interests of the people living through these crises.

“All of us on the frontlines are doing our best to help those who need it and who the city does not provide supports for,” Higgs said  

Higgs asked Councillors to consider where we can divert funding in order to support citizens in a more appropriate way that doesn’t re-inscribe their issues, stating that “we have some hard discussions about what money is actually going to be useful.” 

In the end, the delay in receiving the police budget allowed for little more than an opportunity for Council to hear the informed opinion of the new Chief. Council never did hold a discussion on the motion beyond the question period following each presentation. 

Later on in the January 30th meeting, Ashburnham Ward Councillor Keith Riel mentioned that he had met with Chief Betts and had what he characterized as a very stern but productive two hour conversation concerning how the City and the force can work together. He mentioned that he expects that Chief Betts will likely be reaching out to and meeting with the remaining members of council in the coming weeks for similar conversations.

We can expect that this increase to the police budget is small in comparison to what it will be in future years. Indeed, Bob Hall of the Police Services Board himself mentioned that this budget is merely delaying much more substantial increases in future years - something councillors had no doubt already caught on to. The service’s intention to hire an additional forty-nine staff over the next five years is the main contributor as over 90% of the police operating budget is allocated to personnel.

Ultimately it is unsurprising that the council didn’t touch the police budget. While concerns around the implications of this year’s spending and hiring on future years was palpable during the presentation both by members of the Police Service Board and by Chief Betts himself, many of the Councillors who spoke to Arthur said privately that in the grand scheme of things there wasn’t much to be done on the issue given what they understood as a pressing need for more staff and capacity that the service outlined in their budget.

However, as we continue to explore the budget and the implications of it it becomes clear that in many ways the way that the police budget was gently, even quietly, shepherded through the various meetings of council stands in stark contrast to various other matters of community concern.  

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Homelessness: 

The growing homelessness crisis has constituted a major point of concern for residents and Council alike for years. Therefore it is unsurprising that discussions on the topic and its related issues have pervaded almost every point of budget discussions. Despite this, any form of immediate action to address the crisis in any meaningful way was shut down due to what can be best summarized as ideological differences amongst members of Council. 

As Arthur has previously reported, in December of 2022 Council repeatedly voted against allocating $100,000, approximately 5%, from the Social Services fund to address the crisis. The final vote on the issue on December 12th ended the hope of a winter strategy for 2023 when a split vote of council ended a motion supporting a coalition of community based organizations to open a warming room at Trinity United Church. 

The initiative, it should be noted, has gone forward without financial support from the city. 

At an earlier meeting of the finance committee on January 18th, following a decision by council to axe the hiring of a Systems Navigator for the Downtown Business Improvement Area (DBIA) Councillor Alex Bierk swiftly moved to allocate $200,000 for two new staff positions at Wolfe Street overflow shelter mission as per a recommendation arising from a report to Council from City staff. 

The $200,000, the motion notes, will be funded from the Social Service Reserve for 2023. 

This motion passed 8-3 on the 18th, with Councillors Parnell, Haacke, and Beamer voting against it. When it came time to discuss the motion for the second time on the 30th, some rather spirited debate on the nature and future of the overflow shelter at Wolfe Street ensued over it and a previous motion to accept the report on homelessness, which called for a 5.7% increase to  homelessness funding for 2023. 

After bringing up the fact that he had mistakenly voted for the homelessness report for inclusion in the 2023 budget while also noting that the motion would have passed regardless, Northcrest Councillor Andrew Beamer went on to say that Council was effectively making the Wolfe Street overflow permanent without public consultation. He went on to say that the businesses and residents in the area need to be respected and made it clear that he could not support the continuation of the overflow past April. 

After Councillor Riel made it clear that he recognizes the fact shutting down Wolfe Street would exacerbate the issues associated with tenting which a number of his fellow Councillors were bringing up, Otonabee Councillor Lesley Parnell effectively made his arguments for him. 

“It’s the activity outside the shelter that is of concern,” she said before going to state her concerns surrounding public works employees being abused when they have to go in and clean up “bio-hazardous waste.”

Given her obvious concerns for the safety and well-being of city staff, one might think that Parnell would have supported a motion from Bierk which called for a study of the costs of one month of cleaning the areas surrounding encampments and comparing it to the costs of providing garbage bins and portable toilets for those living in tents around the city.   

This line of reasoning, however, proved misguided as the motion was lost 8-3 with only Town Ward Councillors Alex Bierk and Joy Lachica alongside Monaghan Ward Councillor Matt Crowley voting in favour. 

Bierk was clear that this motion stemmed from his concern that the city is implementing a “punitive approach” to the homelessness crisis, mentioning that the police are involved in overseeing the removal of waste from encampments alongside city workers. He reminded his colleagues that just a week prior Chief Betts himself had spoken to the fact that they will not arrest their way out of this issue and that while he is willing to keep assigning officers to monitor the cleaning of encampments, he doesn’t see it was the best use of the service’s resources. 

The suggestion of providing some basic resources and perhaps some dignity to those living in tents in our community reminded Councillor Riel of the fact that the Council had attempted a similar solution in the summer of 2019. 

"I will not be supporting this because I went through the summer of 2019,” he said before adding that he “will not go through the winter of 2023 doing the same thing.” Later on, Councillor Beamer suggested that the legacy of the previous Council was Tent City - in reference to the large encampment which developed downtown at Victoria Park that summer. 

Councillor Lachica stated her firm support for the motion and referenced a recent Ontario Human Rights Commission statement on encampments which states that “a rights-based approach requires access to basic services, such as clean water, sanitation facilities, electricity, and heat.”

The deliberations on the topic of homelessness show a divide amongst the members of the City Council, but the outcomes demonstrate that there is a balance to be found and that overall this Council leans towards and is open to providing increased support to those in need, while remaining cautious of the potential implications.

Through his short time on Council, Councillor Bierk has emerged as a skilled navigator of the political process. Alongside his Town Ward counterpart Councillor Lachica, he has managed to pull off some measured wins on some of the major issues his campaign specifically dealt with, especially around homelessness.

Finding ways to come together on certain issues has been a strong-point of this Council thus far and while there remains wide gaps in approaches and feelings on pressing issues, those gaps are not always insurmountable. 

Motions surrounding the homelessness crisis in this city were met with infinitely more scrutiny than anything in the police budget beyond some of the staffing measures. Indeed in many ways, the acceptance of one on face value contradicts some of the issues outlined by the Chief of Police himself, especially as it pertained to the involvement of police in the cleaning of encampments. 

There is always more to be done - and I want to be clear that much more should have been done - but ultimately we are left with the realities of the slow, painful, often self-sabotaging, grind of democracy.

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Public Health:

Peterborough Public Health (PPH) made it clear during their budget presentation that they were in a crisis and that without the intervention of the City in the form of a 22% increase or $287,780, to their 2023 ask, then they would fall into a deficit, an option that would have legal consequences as well as lead to an incredible disrepair of our social fabric as we continue to face down a global pandemic. 

In the end, the funds for PPH were found within the City’s general contingency fund as well as needing to dip into the Public Health reserves in order to cover the shortfall. 

Ashburnham Councillor Gary Baldwin brought the motion back up for discussion after it had previously been voted down by council at an earlier meeting of the finance committee. Follow some amendments, the motion also confirmed that PPH would turn over any excess funding they might receive from provincial sources back to the City and that Councill would draft a letter to Ontario’s Minister of Health Sylvia Jones alongside other members of the Association of Municipalities of Ontario calling on the province to better fund Public Health services. 

By and large, councillors agreed that PPH was in a bad spot and that chronic underfunding from the province lay at the root of the issue.

“I have seen no evidence yet that the health unit has really sharpened their pencils. We’re boxed into a corner that we should be boxed into,” Otonabee Councillor Kevin Duguay said, noting that he had requested a list of every service provided by PPH and had yet to receive it. Duguay’s comments came despite the fact that when asked for the list of documents, Peterborough’s Medical Officer of Health Dr. Thomas Piggott assured council that everything accounted for in the budget was mandatory under provincial legislation.  

Duguay would go on to say that “the province should be paying up…it shouldn’t be up to council” - the first part of this statement is absolutely true, the second, unfortunately for everyone involved, is not.

In what promises to be a deeply informative session, Peterborough-Kawartha MPP, Dave Smith, will be in attendance at the February 13th meeting of Council. Councillor Lachica stated that if Peterborough is to be a progressive city, it needs to provide the basics, which obviously includes a viable public health service.

Northcrest Councillor Dave Haacke openly worried about the possibility of taxing the city into debt while saying that “it’s a very well intentioned motion” but one he ultimately would not support alongside Councillors Riel and Beamer.  

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Transit:

Council made their decision to freeze transit funding at 2022 levels for 2023 official. As Arthur has previously reported, this effectively saves the city nearly $1M over the course of the year and was done in order to reduce the overall tax levy. 

The single delegate on the transit motion, Rob Hailman, made a succinct and logical argument about how a funding freeze effectively means a cut given the current economic climate. 

“Ultimately I would rather be here speaking in favour of an increase to funding, but I’m here speaking against a cut,” Hailman told councillors. 

Hailman also spoke to the fact that reduced or undependable transit represents a loss of quality of life to those most vulnerable in our community and noted that freezing funding is a bad idea through the lens of climate change. He reminded councillors that the city has declared a climate emergency, pointing out that fighting climate change depends on action from both governments and individuals and that transit is a place where these two ends meet.

During discussion, Councillor Bierk noted that “door knocking is ancient history, I’m dealing with the here and now” in response to numerous councillor’s statements that constituents had told them during the campaign that transit wasn’t working. 

Instead, Councillor Bierk said he would be basing his vote and decisions concerning transit on previous discussions at the Council table, noting the fact that during meetings in December he had understood Council to have decided against taking any action that might impact transit’s service levels before receiving a staff report. 

When Commissioner of Infrastructure and Planning Services, Jasbir Raina, told council that the report would be and “extensive” document reflecting the city’s need for a “progressive plan” he was careful to point out that such a plan comes at a cost. 

“So it sounds like we won’t actually be saving money if Staff comes back with a plan or recommendations for increased spending,” Councillor Bierk responded, implying that saving the bottom line now during the budget to reduce the tax levy will probably result in having to spend more later than otherwise would have been anticipated. 

The fact also remains that the City has a responsibility to Trent and Fleming students to not take any action which would interrupt service during the academic year. Richard Freymond, Commissioner of Corporate and Legislative Services made note of this and, in as much as a member of City Staff can direct Council, suggested that they consider the broader implications should they finalize this. 

Conspicuously absent from the final budget proceedings were any members of the Trent Central Student Association (TCSA). In a piece published in Arthur approximately a week prior to the approval of the City Budget, TCSA President Zoe Litow-Daye made it clear that in her estimation the TCSA had “defeated” a previous motion to revert back to the hub and spoke system. In another article, she wrote to Arthur about the Association’s disappointment concerning the choice to freeze funding, but in the end it was not enough to come and defeat the motion which if city staff are to be believed might end up having a more dire effect on the state of transit in the city than the hub and spoke system ever would have had.

The final discussion on the motion wasn’t at all surprising and in the end it still passed by the same 9-2 vote with only Councillors Bierk and Lachica voting against.