During a marathon six-hour meeting on Monday night (February 3), Peterborough city council approved the city’s 2025 budget.
Despite a number of motions by individual councillors on specific items, council approved the budget with no additional changes — although both of the city’s finance co-chairs voted against it.
With the budget approved, residents will see a property tax increase of 6.72 per cent in 2025, which equates to to $10.44 per month per $100,000 of property assessment for the typical residential property.
That increase includes two items that council discussed and approved at its January 20 general committee meeting: restoring $150,000 in funding for the Electric City Culture Council (EC3) and allocating $141,692 for an additional paralegal position at the city. Prior to these two decisions, the property tax increase would have been 6.6 per cent.
During Monday night’s meeting, council also discussed a number of items not related to the budget, including deferring the inclusion of the trails and bikeways network plan in the city’s official plan pending a review by city staff or trail and network planning, and whether to include a requirement for electric vehicle charging stations as part of the city’s comprehensive zoning by-law.
A number of public delegations first spoke to council about these and other items on the agenda.
As for the budget, councillor Andrew Beamer — co-chair of the city’s finance portfolio along with councillor Dave Haacke — said he would not be supporting the budget because of the 6.72 per cent property tax increase, repeating some of the same criticisms he levelled after council adopted the 2024 budget with a property tax increase of seven per cent.
“The justification for the 2024 seven per cent tax increase was that it was going to be a one-time course correction increase,” Beamer said. “We needed a one-time larger tax increase to make to make some key strategic investments in the community to ensure we were moving forward.”
“Six to seven per cent tax increases could not become the norm,” he said, adding the many city residents cannot afford these increases due to the cost of living crisis. “We needed to look at a four to five per cent tax increase — that was a fair balance between investing in the community and respecting the taxpayer’s ability to pay.”
Reflecting comments he said he had heard from residents, Beamer asked city CAO Jasbir Raina why the city can’t do “a better job finding efficiencies or more effective ways to run the corporation.”
Raina replied that he “knew this question would come” and read from prepared notes, indicating he would be bringing forward a budget request for the 2026 budget to hire an “independent subject matter expert, third party, to undertake a detailed, grass-root level, service delivery needs evaluation as well as service delivery efficiency and effectiveness review.”
“Each department, each division, each section will be scrutinized and evaluated with a laser-sharp focus on efficiencies, lean delivery, as well as return on investment,” he said.
Raina added that, if the budget request is approved, it would take six to eight months in 2026 to complete the detailed review, with city staff bringing a report back to council with recommendations in January 2027, which will help the next council set its priorities.
Council voted 8-3 in favour of the 2025 draft budget, with councillors and finance co-chairs Beamer and Haacke voting against it along with councillor Keith Riel.
After voting on the budget as a whole, council also discussed specific recommendations from city staff to reduce the property tax increase in the budget, including eliminating a lifeguard at Rogers Cove to save $40,000 and no longer maintaining the skating rink on the Trent Canal in 2024-25 to save $100,000. All city staff recommendations were supported by council.
Council spent considerable time discussing whether to defer the inclusion of the trails and bikeways network plan in the city’s official plan pending a review by city staff or trail and network planning.
Councillor Kevin Duguay had introduced the original deferral motion, which was endorsed by general committee, out of his concern about introducing bike lanes on major arterial roads and the potential for duplication. Duguay said he was withdrawing his support for the motion after he was reassured by city staff that councillors would be able to review projects proposing new bike lanes, adding that “I am not against bike lanes — I support multi-modal transportation.”
Councillor Lesley Parnell expressed concerns that there was no written procedure to ensure that projects with bike lanes come before council and proposed an amendment with such a requirement, specifying the intention of reducing “duplication of service with on-street and off-street bike lanes/trails.” Although several councillors argued the amendment was not necessary as city staff would identify any such issues, council voted 7-4 in favour of the motion, with councillors Joy Lachica, Alex Bierk, Gary Baldwin, and Keith Riel voting against it.
Council then voted 10-1 in favour of the main motion, without the deferral item and with Parnell’s amendment, with only councillor Bierk voting against it.
On the matter of whether to include a requirement for electric vehicle charging stations as part of the city’s comprehensive zoning by-law, councillor Matt Crowley proposed an amendment that city staff “consider opportunities to require electric vehicle charging facilities in the city’s land use regulatory tools such as the forthcoming community planning permit by-law.” Council voted 9-2 in favour of the amendment, with only councillors Haacke and Beamer voting against it.
Taking the meeting well past midnight, council then discussed a motion by councillors Bierk and Riel to allocate $150,000 from the social services reserve to create a temporary emergency shelter for unhoused people during the remaining months of winter.
Prior to the council meeting, both Bierk and Riel had shared a joint public statement supporting the motion, after which Mayor Leal shared a public statement objecting to the motion that was signed by several other councillors.
After a heated discussion by councillors, the motion lost 4-7, with councillors Lachica, Bierk, Crowley, and Riel voting in favour.
