Another difficult budget is on the horizon for the City of Peterborough, as City Staff informed Councillors during an all day meeting on Tuesday June 11th. No recommendations or debates on matters related to the budget took place during the meeting, but the main message Staff came to deliver was that any increase to their department spending would solely be to maintain the services and staffing that they are already offering while making the point that in some cases employees are pulling double, and sometimes triple duty.

In December of last year, Council passed a “course correction” budget with a seven percent increase to the tax rate after years of the rate falling below that of inflation. Councillors managed to bring the rate down from an estimated 9.59 percent at the beginning of budget discussions by drawing down on the City’s legacy fund and casino gaming reserve, while also tweaking commercial and industrial tax ratios to lessen the burden on residential property owners. 

On Tuesday, Commissioners presented broad outlines of how their divisions’ budgets are beginning to shape up with Chief Administrative Officer, Jasbir Raina, noting that “status quo is not an option in the City anymore.” 

However, early on, it became apparent that Council would not be receiving a number for a tax increase at this point in the talks. 

“Council took a very bold decision last year when they said that we have to do a course correction,” Raina said, adding that such a decision needs to be backed up by future decisions which take this into account and build on past efforts while recognizing that Peterborough “is no longer a small City—we have to think big and act big.”  

“We have to move with a sense of urgency, because others are way, way ahead of us,” he told Councillors.

That urgency was an undercurrent of the remaining presentations as Councillors heard from the Comissioners of Financial and Corporate Services, Legislative Services, and Community Services over the course of seven hours. Presentations from Infrastructure and Planning, as well as Municipal Operations, were subsequently deferred to an unknown date later this month as the proceedings fell behind schedule within the first hour.

Part of the CAO’s report included an overview of his hopes for a future centralized KPI tracking system, which would allow for a deeper understanding of how departments are functioning under his leadership and following his restructuring of the City’s administration. 

When it came time for questions, Councillor Alex Bierk pushed Raina to elaborate and possibly share some data with Council on how his changes have impacted the City. Raina responded that Council would “have to wait for about one or one and a half years” to see the impacts as they would not be immediately apparent.

Understaffed departments and inefficiencies:

Significant takeaways from the day’s proceedings included the need for greater community consultation and engagement. Richard Freymond, Commissioner of Finance and Corporate Support Services with the City, noted that part of the Strategic Communications department’s goals would be to create a community engagement charter, which, he suggested, could be done with the existing levels of staffing. 

“Obviously, there's good solid alignment with the strategic plan, and it speaks very clearly about community engagement in the strategic plan,” he said, adding later that “if Council is interested in providing more effective community engagement, that we would create a Community Engagement Specialist position.”

“I know that there's been a lot of news in the media lately about how effective or not effective, depending upon your opinion, you know, community engagement has been on various key projects in the community,” Freymond said, alluding to the upheaval over the Bonnerworth Park redevelopment. 

“We would suggest—and just to not state the obvious—but we are looking to people right now that they're trying to do that community engagement, but that is not their expertise,” Freymond continued.

The theme of staff performing multiple roles outside of their initial job description was a common refrain. Mara Vande Beek, Acting Director of People and Culture at the City, noted the fact that within her department, “everyone is becoming more of a generalist” due to her estimate of the department being approximately 25% below optimal staffing levels. 

“We're all wearing multiple hats,” she explained following a question from Councillor Keith Riel regarding staff planning and cross-training in the department. “We're all jumping in and helping and training each other in different areas of the functions so that we can cover off when there's higher work volumes, when there's vacations, when there are absences.”

Another City Staff member at the City pulling double-duty, Councillors heard, is City Solicitor and Commissioner of Legislative Services, David Potts.

Potts, who has served as the City’s Solicitor since 2018, was appointed to the Commissioner role in October of 2023, and since then has been performing both fulltime roles simultaneously.

When asked by Councillor Matt Crowley if he was happy doing so, he responded that he was capable of doing both roles and that he was “thrilled” to be appointed Commissioner. 

But as Potts went on to explain, he is “part of the problem” by which he means his having two roles spills out over on the staff he oversees in both capacities. 

“I have staff that are doing triple duty and to the extent that employee engagement is represented by discretionary effort, we're realizing that right now and the important thing is not to take advantage and not to take it for granted,” he explained.

Following Potts’ presentation, Councillor Bierk would again push Staff on the idea of how the restructuring of the City has resulted in a more efficient model for how the City operates, stating that he was struggling to understand the idea that staff are working off the corners of their desks and pulling double of triple duty,  

“A few of us on Council had the same sort of concerns last budget time when we were looking at the restructuring, and we were looking at the substantial increase we had to the Senior Administration and, what that would look like,” Bierk said. “It feels to me like this is sort of the second round of those budget talks where, in a sense, we were told, ‘don't worry about it for the best, it will be more efficient this way.’ But what I'm hearing is that it's not necessarily more efficient.”

"Sobering reality" of upper government funding:

The presentation by Community Services Commissioner, Sheldon Laidman, outlined the perennial fact that provincial funding for administration of services such as Ontario Works has been cut by 50%. While the budget is set to be status-quo in terms of maintaining services, the reality, from his perspective, is that maintaining service levels will be more expensive for the City.

“We're seeing a significant reduction in senior government funding for housing to pay for our social housing obligations,” Laidman explained. “Right now, I would—with all the reduced funding from various provincial governments and ministries—just to keep the base level of service is probably 8% on this budget.”

Additionally, Commissioner Laidman outlined a list of risks for the division. For example, the City is seeing agreements with the CMS site, Brock Mission, Cameron House, and the YES Shelter have already expired. The Trinity Shelter is only funded for year-round service until the end of 2024, while in 2025 it is set to revert to six month winter service only.  

“I'm bringing this to the attention of Council, because these aren't service enhancements,” Laidman said. “These aren't service reductions. They're things that we know we need to fund, or Council has expressed an interest in funding, or the community has, that we don't expect to be able to include in the budget.” 

Councillor Riel called the statistics contained on Laidman’s report “a sobering reality of the download from the provincial government.”

“We are mandated to provide affordable housing,” he continued. “The province has not lived up to giving us the money to do what we're going to do.”

In early May 2024, the provincial government granted Peterborough $377,641 to support the development of two supportive housing units at The Mount on Monaghan Road to help address homelessness. Earlier this year, the City received an additional $1.88M from the province in recognition of the fact it had surpassed its housing goals as part of the Building Faster Fund.

Meanwhile, Commissioner Laidman outlined for Council consideration that funding streams through the community service grants, which have historically been increased by 1.5 percent, have not been keeping up with inflation. Additionally, community consultation regarding the development of the grants to professional artists program, currently budgeted for $60,000, has garnered criticism due to it’s not being funded “at the level that it needs to be to be a useful program.”

The budget talks are set to continue later on this month, at which time Councillors will hear from the Infrastructure and Planning department, which includes asset management and capital works, as well as Municipal Operations which will speak to transit, public works, and environmental services.