Peterborough city council is now proposing a 7.38 per cent residential property tax hike instead of the nearly 10 per cent proposed in the original draft 2024 budget.
After three days of meetings as finance committee this week, city council concluded it budget deliberations on Wednesday night (November 21) recommending a series of changes to decrease the proposed property tax rate increase by more than two per cent.
The proposed 7.38 per cent rate hike it is still more than twice as much as the 3.15 per cent rate increase last year. It would add $10.72 per month, or $128.65 for the year, to residential taxes for each $100,000 of property assessment. For a home assessed at $600,000, this would be an increase of $771.90 for the year.
City staff say a substantial property tax hike is needed to maintain existing levels of service affected by inflationary increases as well as to support investments in infrastructure, policing, city employee compensation, transit service improvements, municipal law enforcement services, snow removal operations, and customer service improvements.
Finance committee recommended several changes to decrease the originally proposed property tax hike, primarily by shifting around $3 million in taxes from residential properties to commercial and industrial properties by increasing the tax ratio for both commercial and industrial property classes from 1.5 to 1.65 — reversing a trend of decreasing the ratios in previous years.
Other recommendations include using $800,000 in investment interest generated from the sale of Peterborough Distribution Inc. to Hydro One, using $200,000 in gaming revenue from the Ontario Lottery and Gaming Corporation (OLG) that the City of Peterborough receives for hosting Shorelines Casino Peterborough, and creating a new service fee for unplugging sanitary sewer lines on private property to generate an estimated $85,000 in annual revenue.
Finance committee also decided to reverse course on proposed reductions of around 3.6 per cent in funding for community organizations including Artspace, Community Care Peterborough, Peterborough Musicfest, Peterborough GreenUP, New Canadians Centre, and more. Instead, grants to certain organizations would increase by 1.5 per cent compared to 2023 as a cost of $43,800 with additional monies coming from the city’s general contingency fund.
The three days of finance committee meetings followed a series of public meetings in the last two weeks on the proposed budget. City council is scheduled to consider approving the 2024 budget at its meeting on Monday, December 11th, when registered delegations can present to council.
For more information about the draft 2024 budget, visit peterborough.ca/budget.
