Sometimes you can fight city hall and win.
Peterborough city council has voted against a proposed 25 per cent across-the-board cut in funding for 75 arts and social services organizations in the city’s draft 2025 budget.
While meeting as general committee on Tuesday (November 19) to continue a review of the draft budget that began on Monday, Mayor Jeff Leal put forward a motion to maintain 2024 funding amounts for all 75 organizations.
City staff had proposed a 25 per cent cut to the city’s community projects grants and community investment grants program, including existing service grants to Hutchison House and Kawartha Food Share, as well as a 25 per cent cut to 15 organizations that receive annual funding from the city.
Those organizations are Artspace, Kawartha Sexual Assault Centre, Peterborough AIDS Resource Network, Community Care Peterborough, Peterborough Musicfest, Peterborough Folk Festival, Native Learning Program, Community Race Relations Committee, Council for Person with Disabilities, Showplace Performance Centre, Peterborough Lions Club, Peterborough GreenUP, New Canadians Centre, Market Hall Performing Arts Centre, and Peterborough Drug Strategy.
The savings to the city from these cuts would be $298,153, which represents only .0007 per cent — less than one per cent of one per cent — of the city’s $411 million operating budget, yet would have a potentially devastating impact according to local organizations.
A rally under the banner “Community, Not Cuts” was held outside city hall last Tuesday (November 12), attended by around 250 people, prior to a public meeting that evening when general committee heard impassioned pleas from 33 public delegations objecting to the proposed cuts, including representatives from 17 community organizations that would be affected by the cuts.
After Mayor Leal made his motion at Tuesday’s general committee meeting, councillor Alex Bierk spoke against the proposed cuts, adding that he has worked with city staff to find $100,000 from two separate reserves that could be used to help fund arts and social services organizations.
Councillor Joy Lachica also spoke against the proposed cuts, noting that while cuts to community organizations were proposed in last year’s budget, “this time was different” in terms of the scope of the cuts.
“I believe that it’s shameful that we continue to do this to our arts organizations when we have a proposed budget,” she said.
After she continued speaking about the importance of the arts and culture to the community, she abruptly stopped when she overheard “a councillor to my left” say that she was “lecturing,” and later asked for and received an apology for the comment from Mayor Leal.
After questioning whether the mayor’s motion to restore the funding included all the organizations whose funding would be cut, councillor Kevin Duguay proposed that council review the funding for each of the 17 organizations on the list and vote for each separately.
In support the mayor’s motion, councillor Gary Baldwin noted that he, “like many councillors over the last week or two,” had met with some organizations and people and received emails about the proposed cuts.
“I think it’s a critical step and it’s the right decision for council to restore the full 2024 funding for those organizations,” he said.
Councillor Keith Riel also spoke in favour of the mayor’s motion, noting the number of phone calls, emails, and meetings he had about the proposed cuts.
“The in-person meetings weren’t really that great — I can tell you I got a pretty good whipping,” he said, adding that the arts community is an economic driver for the community.
As for councillor Duguay’s proposal to review the funding for each of the 17 listed organizations individually, councillor Bierk “absolutely strongly” disagreed with the proposal, pointing out the list is not comprehensive of the 75 organizations that receive funding.
He said the reason city staff had proposed a 25 per cent across-the-board cut was because it “was way too complex of a process” to go through all the organizations’ grants to determine which ones would be cut, and that council doing this would undermine the criteria and process that determined which organizations received a grant and why in the first place.
“The simplest way to do this is to clear the entire page and restore the cuts to the 2024 levels in all categories,” he said.
In later comments, councillor Bierk questioned whether councillor Duguay’s proposal to review each organization’s funding was a good use of time.
“We’re going to spend hours to go through this, to save what? A hundred grand?” he said, reiterating that he had identified $100,000 in reserves that could be used for 2025 funding for the organizations.
“So the ask would be for $198,000. Okay, so you want to spend an afternoon to shave off and whittle away on a $198,000? What is that going to do? Save one per cent of one per cent of one per cent, and get a whole bunch of people frustrated, and maybe have a decision made that’s going to drastically affect a group that needs the money? … We don’t need to waste our time on this ”
At one point during the meeting, the city’s commissioner of community services Sheldon Laidman shed some light on why city staff had proposed a 25 per cent across-the-board cut to the organizations.
He explained the differences between community project grants, community investment grants, and the 18 organizations that council determined in the past should receive annual funding for the city. He said the city generally provides an inflationary increase in funding each year for these organizations, and city staff don’t scrutinize the funding provided to each organization.
“That’s why it was a difficult exercise for staff,” Laidman explained. “We looked at trying to look at each one of those individually (but) because there’s been no criteria, we just took a blanket approach to the funding of all the agencies at one time.”
Councillor Lesley Parnell said council should consider removing any of the 17 organizations on the list that is receiving less than $15,000 and have them apply for a community investment grant instead.
As for councillor Don Vassiliadis, he pointed out it doesn’t make a “lot of sense” to go through each organization’s funding line by line.
“We flip through our pages (of the budget), and each page has millions of dollars on it, and now we’re going to go through line by line for something that has less than $300,000,” he said. “This money won’t get us where we need in the budget. A better use of our time is to vote on it and move on.”
In the end, councillor Duguay’s motion to review each organization’s funding line by line lost 6-5, with Mayor Leal and councillors Haacke, Beamer, Duguay, and Parnell voting in favour.
Two votes were then held on Mayor Leal’s original motion to keep funding the 75 organizations at 2024 levels, with the first vote on funding for the Kawartha Sexual Assault Centre alone — after councillor Haacke had declared a pecuniary interest with the organization — and the second vote on funding for all the remaining organizations.
The first motion passed unanimously, with only Haacke voting against the second motion.
This story has been updated with a correction to the outcome of the second vote on Mayor Leal’s motion.
