With Peterborough voters deciding who will represent them at city hall for the next four years, a free website created by a local software developer offers another tool for evaluating the records of incumbent candidates.
“Peterborough Vote Tracker” at peterborough-city-council.ca collects recorded votes from Peterborough city council and committee minutes, allowing users to search votes by issue, browse meetings, and review the voting history of individual councillors.
The website was created by Steve McMurtry who, in addition to being a software developer, is a data scientist and data visualization specialist. He grew up in Peterborough, graduated from Peterborough Collegiate and Vocational School in 2005 and Trent University in 2009, and returned to the city in 2021.
Turning council minutes into an accessible public resource
After moving back to Peterborough, McMurtry wanted to better understand what was happening at city hall but found keeping up with council proceedings time-consuming.
“I wanted to better understand what was going on at city hall but I didn’t have time to watch all the video recordings of the meetings or to read through the minutes,” McMurtry told kawarthaNOW by email.
“But I’m a software developer, so I thought I might be able to build something to solve that problem.”
McMurtry noticed council minutes recorded how individual councillors voted and began developing software to extract that information and place it into a database.
“I have written some software that downloads the new meeting minutes automatically when they get posted, and extracts the data and updates the website,” he said.
McMurtry began working on the project in November 2021. The site went live in 2024, although he continued developing it before deciding this fall he was ready to be share it more widely.
The site describes itself as unofficial and independent and says it is not affiliated with or endorsed by the City of Peterborough. Its data comes from city council meeting minutes published publicly on the city’s website, with the database updated after new minutes are posted.
Website helps residents explore voting records of incumbent candidates before election day
The timing makes the resource particularly relevant for the October 26 municipal election.
Seven of Peterborough’s 10 incumbent councillors are seeking re-election in their wards: Gary Baldwin, Andrew Beamer, Alex Bierk, Matt Crowley, Kevin Duguay, Joy Lachica, and Lesley Parnell. In addition, incumbent Ashburnham Ward councillor Keith Riel is running for mayor.
For voters considering those candidates, the site provides a way to move beyond campaign platforms and examine how incumbents actually voted during the current council term.
Each councillor has an individual page where users can browse their voting record and filter votes according to whether the councillor voted for or against a motion. The website also highlights significant votes and close decisions.
Votes are also organized by subjects including budget and finance, housing and homelessness, roads and infrastructure, transit and active transportation, zoning and planning, parks and recreation, and other municipal issues, and users can also search by keyword.
McMurtry has also curated what he calls featured votes, on topics including council’s decision to commit approximately $57 million as the city’s one-third share of a proposed new events centre, its approval of a six-month winter shelter response plan, a pilot project for surveillance cameras in selected parks and public spaces, changes to development charges, and decisions involving cycling infrastructure, housing, and the police budget.
Users can drill down into an individual vote to see the motion, the result, and which councillors voted on each side.
For example, when council voted 8-3 in May to commit one-third of the approximately $171-million cost of the proposed events centre, the tracker shows Baldwin, Beamer, Crowley, Duguay, Dave Haacke, mayor Jeff Leal, Parnell, and Don Vassiliadis voting in favour, with Bierk, Lachica, and Riel opposed.
It also shows that Parnell had voted against the motion when it was considered earlier at general committee, before supporting it at council.
Meeting pages on the website collect all the recorded votes from a particular meeting together and provide access to the minutes behind the data.
How councillors voted when council was divided
With most council decisions being unanimous, McMurtry also used his database to look specifically at occasions when councillors disagreed.
He analyzed 218 final votes at city council during the current term where at least one councillor voted on each side. He excluded procedural votes such as approving minutes and adjournments, as well as general committee votes that would result in the same issue being counted twice.
In his analysis, McMurtry only included votes when both councillors and the mayor participated. He found the mayor was on the winning side in all but 18 of the 218 divided votes.
Of those divided votes, Baldwin voted on the same side as Leal 88 per cent of the time, followed by Duguay at 87 per cent, Parnell at 82 per cent, Vassiliadis at 81 per cent, Beamer and Crowley at 76 per cent each, and Haacke at 71 per cent.
There was a substantial drop after that, with Riel voting on the same side as the mayor only 53 per cent of the time.
Town Ward councillors Bierk and Lachica were the only two councillors who, on divided final council votes, ended up on the opposite side from Leal more often than on the same side. Bierk voted with the mayor 48 per cent of the time and Lachica 42 per cent.
The numbers also show significant difference in the voting records of the two Ashburnham Ward councillors during the current term, with Baldwin siding with Leal on 88 per cent of divided votes compared with only 53 per cent for Riel.
The percentages are not measures of how frequently councillors agreed with the mayor across all council business, since McMurtry deliberately excluded unanimous votes.
Understanding the limitations of recorded votes
The percentages also do not provide any information about why councillors voted the way they did. That is a limitation of the vote tracker website, but one that results from how the City of Peterborough documents council decisions.
While the minutes of meetings published by the City of Peterborough include a description of agenda items and indicate how councillors voted on each item, they do not include any of the discussion or debate that occurred during the meeting.
For that information, voters will either have to watch the recorded video of a meeting or read coverage of individual council meetings by media outlets like kawarthaNOW.
Although McMurtry is encouraging voters to use his website to help inform their vote in advance of this year’s municipal election, he says he intends to keep working on it “for the foreseeable future” — so residents will be able to monitor the voting records of members of the next council as well.
Online voting for Peterborough’s municipal and school board election is already underway and remains open until 8 p.m. on Monday, October 26.
Accessible in-person voting and an internet voting kiosk are available at Peterborough City Hall through Friday (October 23). On election day, in-person voting will take place from 10 a.m. to 8 p.m. at ward-specific locations, with accessible voting equipment also available at City Hall for voters from all wards.
For more information about voting in the City of Peterborough and to vote online, visit www.peterborough.ca/vote.
