2024 Budget
The City engages with residents to gather ideas and feedback as it drafts the budget each year for City Council’s consideration.
The City consults with the community throughout the budget process – at the beginning when setting the guidelines for the drafting of the budget, when the draft budget is released, and before Council considers approving the budget.
Each year, Council considers the needs of the community, expected service levels, and legislated responsibilities as it sets the operating and capital budgets for the City of Peterborough.
As part of the community engagement, Council holds casual drop-in-style meetings where residents can talk to Council members and City staff about budget priorities ahead of setting the guidelines for drafting the next year's budget. This year, for the first time, Council will also be holding drop-in style meetings after the draft budget is prepared to provide an opportunity for more casual conversations about what's in the draft budget as an alternative to the more formal Council meetings where residents can also appear as delegations to Council.
A brief survey was provided as another way for residents and businesses to share ideas and give feedback that can help inform the creation of the guidelines for the 2024 Budget. A summary of the input provided through the brief survey will be provided to Council before Council considers setting the guidelines for the creation of the Draft 2024 Budget.
You can find previous years' budgets in the Document Library area in this project page.
Visit peterborough.ca/budget to explore budget information, including information on revenue and how the City spends money on infrastructure and services. For the capital budget, the City provides an interactive map to explore the various capital projects happening around the City.
We'll continue to update this project page throughout the 2024 Budget process. Check back for updates and details on other opportunities to engage throughout the budget process.
Thank you for joining the conversation on the 2024 Budget.
The City engages with residents to gather ideas and feedback as it drafts the budget each year for City Council’s consideration.
The City consults with the community throughout the budget process – at the beginning when setting the guidelines for the drafting of the budget, when the draft budget is released, and before Council considers approving the budget.
Each year, Council considers the needs of the community, expected service levels, and legislated responsibilities as it sets the operating and capital budgets for the City of Peterborough.
As part of the community engagement, Council holds casual drop-in-style meetings where residents can talk to Council members and City staff about budget priorities ahead of setting the guidelines for drafting the next year's budget. This year, for the first time, Council will also be holding drop-in style meetings after the draft budget is prepared to provide an opportunity for more casual conversations about what's in the draft budget as an alternative to the more formal Council meetings where residents can also appear as delegations to Council.
A brief survey was provided as another way for residents and businesses to share ideas and give feedback that can help inform the creation of the guidelines for the 2024 Budget. A summary of the input provided through the brief survey will be provided to Council before Council considers setting the guidelines for the creation of the Draft 2024 Budget.
You can find previous years' budgets in the Document Library area in this project page.
Visit peterborough.ca/budget to explore budget information, including information on revenue and how the City spends money on infrastructure and services. For the capital budget, the City provides an interactive map to explore the various capital projects happening around the City.
We'll continue to update this project page throughout the 2024 Budget process. Check back for updates and details on other opportunities to engage throughout the budget process.
Thank you for joining the conversation on the 2024 Budget.
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2024 Budget Guideline
Share on Facebook Share on Twitter Share on Linkedin Email this link2024 Preliminary Budget Guideline
In June 2023, Council approved requesting presentations from department Commissioners in August on options for a 3%, 5.59% and 7% Guideline for each of their departments, which is a new, additional step in the budget process to present additional options for Council's consideration.
Setting the 2024 Budget Guideline gives direction to the City on putting together the Draft 2024 Budget, which is then reviewed by Council prior to considering approval of the final document toward the end of the year.
Consultation on the 2024 Budget was conducted through two drop-in style sessions that were part of a community engagement approach that also included a survey and the traditional interaction between Council, City staff and the community that takes place outside of organized consultation.
The current draft 2024 Budget Guideline information reflects that the current estimate for setting the 2024 Budget to maintain current levels of service and meet previously approved directions from Council would require an all-inclusive rate increase of 5.59% in 2024, which would add $97.45, or $8.12 per month, per $100,000 of assessment for residential properties.
Factors related to the potential increase include employee compensation, annualization of new police hires in 2023, general inflationary costs, insurance costs, fuel prices, the new Green Bin service (source separated organics collection and composting) and the Transit budget.
Personnel costs are a major component of the operating budget. Contracts for ATU L169, CUPE L126, CUPE L504, and CUPE L1833 are currently under negotiation. Contract increase placeholders have been built into the budget to facilitate the budget process. As contracts are settled the contract rates will be incorporated into the budget.
Next steps:
- August, date to be determined - Finance Committee meeting to consider 2024 Budget Guideline
- August/September, date to be determined - City Council considers approving 2024 Budget Guideline
- November 6 - Draft 2024 Budget presented to Finance Committee
- November 9 and 14 - Public engagement drop-in sessions
- November 14 - Public meeting on Draft 2024 Budget
- November 15 - Outside organizations attend Finance Committee Budget deliberations
- November 20 to 23 - Finance Committee deliberates on the Draft 2024 Budget
- December 11 - City Council considers approving the 2024 Budget
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2024 Budget Survey - What We Heard
Share on Facebook Share on Twitter Share on Linkedin Email this linkThe City engages with residents each year as it prepares the draft budget for Council’s consideration. The City consults with the community throughout the budget process – at the beginning when setting the guideline, when the draft budget is released, and before Council considers approving the budget.
The annual budget survey is one way the City engages with residents alongside other consultation opportunities, including public meetings and interactions between the community and Council and City staff through in-person conversations, phone calls and emails. Input from the community engagement is considered with other budget inputs such as legislated requirements and financial pressures.
The budget survey is a consultation tool – a way for residents to provide their opinions and comments for Council’s consideration. To reduce barriers and to encourage participation in the survey, registration was not required. It is not a scientific sample survey that is statistically defensible. It does not necessarily reflect the opinion of the population. The survey should be considered as a feedback tool that assists the conversations around budget priorities, City services, levers the City can use to pay for municipal services, and service level expectations.
The budget survey was open from March 28 to April 21, 2023. The survey offered broad, high-level topics and questions as one way for residents to engage in the budget process at this early stage of drafting the budget. There were 415 responses to the survey, up from 274 in 2022.
The survey was hosted on the City’s online community engagement platform, Connect Peterborough, at connectptbo.ca. To date, there have been approximately 1,200 visits to the 2024 Budget project page, with about 450 visits arriving from direct traffic from people who entered the website address, about 640 from social media links, about 85 from referrals from other sites, and about 30 from search engines. Hard copies of survey were available upon request and were available at the in-person, drop-in meetings held on April 13 and 21, 2023.
The budget survey and budget drop-in meetings were promoted through local media with coverage through television, radio, newspaper and online news outlets as well as on social media and through the City’s website.
Survey participants were asked how much they value various municipal service groups using a scale of very important, important, moderately important, slightly important and not important. Results showed that across all categories respondents find municipal services to be important, with the following categories receiving the highest number of Very important responses.
- Enabling affordable housing
- Social services
- Sewers, water, stormwater management
- Fire prevention, police, paramedics
- Environment protection, support for green projects
When asked to rank a list of issues, the average rankings placed the options in the following order:
- Housing/accommodations
- Social issues
- Health/public health
- Cost of living
- Physician recruitment
- Environment/climate change/sustainability
- Economy/jobs/economic issues
- Health and vitality of the downtown
- Arts, culture and heritage
- Infrastructure/transportation
- Crime/criminal activity
- Governance and transparency
- Provision of recreation facilities
Participants were asked to consider some of the broad tools that the City has available for balancing its budget, as required by law. They could select multiple options (previous year’s response in brackets).
- Introduce new user fees for some City services that currently have no fees – 49.2% (54%)
- Increase user fees for City services that currently have fees – 48.5% (47%)
- Increase property taxes – 40.4% (30%)
- Reduce service levels – 34.6% (38%)
Respondents indicated what they think the property tax change should be in 2023 based on their expectation for infrastructure and service levels. Based on the information available at the time, assumptions were made on what each option meant in terms of increasing, maintaining, or decreasing service levels to help inform the selection by participants.
- Generally, maintain existing levels of service, 3.5% increase – 27.5%
- Increase investments in infrastructure/services, 3.6% to 4% increase – 22.7%
- Reductions in services and infrastructure when accounting for inflationary increases, 1% to 3.4% increase – 14.9%
- Greater investments in infrastructure/services, greater than 4% increase – 10.9%
- Other (please specify) – 10.9%
- Substantially reduce services and infrastructure maintenance, 0% increase – 8.6%
- Drastically reduce services and investments in infrastructure, decrease property taxes – 4.5%
Outside of the specific questions in the survey, the survey included several opportunities for respondents to provide other comments on the budget. Respondents provided comments on topics such as the cost of living/inflation, housing, addictions, mental health issues, setting strategic goals for the City, the health of the downtown, reducing City expenses, finding efficiencies, maintaining infrastructure, police services, transit, roads, the environment and nature areas.
In addition to the Budget Survey, the Finance Chair and Vice Chair along with Council members hosted two casual drop-in style meetings and April 13 and 20 for residents to share their comments and ideas as an alternative to the more formal consultation option provided by appearing as a delegation at a Council meeting. About 30 people attended the two meetings. New to the budget process this year, the Finance Chair and Vice Chair will also be hosting two drop-in meetings after the Draft 2024 Budget is released to provide another opportunity for conversations and questions when the details of the draft budget are available.
Attendees at the two drop-in meetings in April spoke about priorities road conditions, sidewalks, cycling infrastructure, the trail network, arts funding, arts grants process, housing, homelessness, climate change, a social innovation centre for marginalized people, empowering marginalized people, the economy, and the downtown.
Summaries of survey questions are posted on the 2024 Budget project page:
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2024 Budget Survey - What We Heard - Municipal service importance
Share on Facebook Share on Twitter Share on Linkedin Email this linkSurvey participants were asked how much they value various municipal service groups using a scale of very important, important, moderately important, slightly important and not important. Results showed that across all categories respondents find municipal services to be important, with the following categories receiving the highest number of Very important responses.
- Enabling affordable housing
- Social services
- Sewers, water, stormwater management
- Fire prevention, police, paramedics
- Environment protection, support for green projects
How important do you think the following services/programs are to the community? Very important Important Moderately important Slightly important Not important Sewers, water, stormwater management
214 144 41 12 1 Fire prevention, police, paramedics
194 121 59 27 7 Arts, culture, and heritage (e.g. libraries, museums, art galleries, heritage preservation and associated programs)
183 104 80 27 19 Garbage and landfill
130 188 78 10 3 Recycling
164 164 53 19 9 Household organic waste collection (the new Green Bin program starts fall 2023)
147 120 85 34 27 Providing access to recreation facilities and delivering recreational programming (e.g. arenas, sport fields, and swimming lessons)
59 167 113 46 26 Providing and maintaining parks and green spaces
180 147 65 15 5 Enabling affordable housing
276 79 32 11 12 Permits, inspections, and enforcement (including building permits for renovations, business licences, etc.)
52 124 149 56 29 Social services (e.g. client program and supports, costs to deliver financial assistance, homelessness services, and children's services)
245 106 36 16 9 Planning for and managing residential, commercial and industrial development
73 143 130 41 23 Providing active transportation infrastructure for walking and cycling (e.g. trails, sidewalks and cycling lanes)
166 110 87 33 17 Providing transportation infrastructure for transit and vehicles (e.g. roads and bridges)
132 146 88 32 14 Environmental protection, support for green projects (e.g. grants, waste reduction programs, low-impact development, energy efficiency)
199 103 60 34 17 Managing tax dollars
183 105 76 37 7 Promoting economic development (i.e. public, business and non-governmental sector partners working collectively to better conditions for economic growth and employment generation)
72 155 113 54 16 Providing information, customer service, and public engagement (e.g. responding to phone calls and emails in a timely manner, holding public consultation meetings, sharing information on website)
91 150 113 43 14 -
2024 Budget Survey - What We Heard - Service delivery
Share on Facebook Share on Twitter Share on Linkedin Email this linkSurvey participants were asked to rate municipal services based on how well they think the municipally-funded services are being delivered by indicating their response using the following scale: very satisfied, satisfied, neutral/neither satisfied nor dissatisfied, dissatisfied, and very dissatisfied. The following categories received the most very satisfied and satisfied responses:
- Garbage and landfill
- Sewers, water, stormwater management
- Recycling
- Fire prevention, police, paramedics
- Providing access to recreation facilities and delivering recreational programming
Please rate the following municipal services based on how well you think they are being delivered Very satisfied Satisfied Neutral/neither satisfied nor dissatisfied Dissatisfied Very dissatisfied Sewers, water, stormwater management
60 205 121 13 12 Fire prevention, police, paramedics
60 176 120 45 11 Arts, culture, and heritage (e.g. libraries, museums, art galleries, heritage preservation and associated programs)
35 114 124 94 41 Garbage and landfill
39 232 101 34 5 Recycling
36 213 110 42 6 Providing access to recreation facilities and delivering recreational programming (e.g. arenas, sport fields, and swimming lessons)
35 186 149 35 4 Providing and maintaining parks and green spaces
30 180 106 71 22 Enabling affordable housing
7 26 67 132 177 Permits, inspections, and enforcement (including building permits for renovations, business licences, etc.)
14 85 268 29 11 Social services (e.g. client program and supports, costs to deliver financial assistance, homelessness services, and children's services)
8 46 112 125 118 Planning for and managing residential, commercial and industrial development
14 65 231 71 25 Providing active transportation infrastructure for walking and cycling (e.g. trails, sidewalks and cycling lanes)
24 136 124 92 32 Providing transportation infrastructure for transit and vehicles (e.g. roads and bridges)
19 87 142 98 63 Environmental protection, support for green projects (e.g. grants, waste reduction programs, low-impact development, energy efficiency)
14 71 175 114 35 Managing tax dollars
15 63 174 87 68 Promoting economic development (i.e. public, business and non-governmental sector partners working collectively to better conditions for economic growth and employment generation)
20 66 235 60 25 Providing information, customer service, and public engagement (e.g. responding to phone calls and emails in a timely manner, holding public consultation meetings, sharing information on website)
23 110 206 51 18 -
2024 Budget Survey - What We Heard - Issues facing the City
Share on Facebook Share on Twitter Share on Linkedin Email this linkParticipants were asked from their perspective, and recognizing that not everything is within City control, what are the most important local issues facing the City at the present time (On a scale of 1-13, with 1 being the most important)? The average rankings placed the options in the following order (average rank for each option in brackets):
- Housing/accommodations (4.3)
- Social issues (4.79)
- Health/public health (5.49)
- Cost of living (5.75)
- Physician recruitment (5.97)
- Environment/climate change/sustainability (6.92)
- Economy/jobs/economic issues (7.33)
- Health and vitality of the downtown (7.35)
- Arts, culture and heritage (7.49)
- Infrastructure/transportation (7.52)
- Crime/criminal activity (7.56)
- Governance and transparency (9.48)
- Provision of recreation facilities (9.91)
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2024 Budget Survey - What We Heard - Options for balancing the budget
Share on Facebook Share on Twitter Share on Linkedin Email this linkParticipants were asked the following question:
To balance the 2024 Budget as required by law, the City of Peterborough has a number of options to consider. Which of the following options would you prefer the City use to balance its budget? (Note: User fees are monies you would pay to the City to access specific services, facilities and utilities, such as licences, permits for using City-owned facilities such as arenas and recreation centres, and sewer surcharge for stormwater management.) Please select all options that you think should be used. You can select multiple options.
Summary of responses:
- Introduce new user fees for some City services that currently have no fees – 49.2%, 195 responses
- Increase user fees for City services that currently have fees – 48.5%, 192 responses
- Increase property taxes – 40.4%, 160 responses
- Reduce service levels – 34.6%, 137 responses
- Other – 24.2%, 96 responses
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2024 Budget Survey - What We Heard - Property tax changes
Share on Facebook Share on Twitter Share on Linkedin Email this linkRespondents indicated what they think the property tax change should be in 2023 based on their expectation for infrastructure and service levels. Based on the information available at the time, assumptions were made on what each option meant in terms of increasing, maintaining, or decreasing service levels to help inform the selection by participants.
- Generally, maintain existing levels of service, 3.5% increase – 27.5%
- Increase investments in infrastructure/services, 3.6% to 4% increase – 22.7%
- Reductions in services and infrastructure when accounting for inflationary increases, 1% to 3.4% increase – 14.9%
- Greater investments in infrastructure/services, greater than 4% increase – 10.9%
- Other (please specify) – 10.9%
- Substantially reduce services and infrastructure maintenance, 0% increase – 8.6%
- Drastically reduce services and investments in infrastructure, decrease property taxes – 4.5%
“Other” responses included suggestions such as increasing development charges, charging tolls for use of roads, comments on the residential tax rate level, City staffing levels, and finding efficiencies.
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2024 Budget Survey - What We Heard - Where did you hear about the survey
Share on Facebook Share on Twitter Share on Linkedin Email this linkParticipants were asked a series of voluntary questions about their knowledge of the budget process, how they found out about the budget consultation, how they prefer to get information about the budget, and demographic information to help inform how the City engages with the community about the budget.
How did you find out about the 2024 Budget survey?
How did you find out about the 2024 Budget survey?
Responses
Percentage of responses
Facebook 112 27.2% Friend/Family (e.g. word of mouth) 101 24.5% News media 61 14.8% Twitter 59 14.3% Other (please specify) 31 7.5% peterborough.ca 22 5.3% Don't know/can't remember 13 3.2% A community event 7 1.7% Other website 6 1.5% -
2024 Budget Survey - What We Heard - Familiarity with the budget
Share on Facebook Share on Twitter Share on Linkedin Email this linkParticipants were asked a series of voluntary questions about their knowledge of the budget process, how they found out about the budget consultation, how they prefer to get information about the budget, and demographic information to help inform how the City engages with the community about the budget.
We would like to understand how familiar the community is with the budget; this way we can work to provide the information people want and need.
We would like to understand how familiar the community is with the budget; this way we can work to provide the information people want and need.
Very familiar
Somewhat familiar
Not at all famiiar
How familiar are you with how the City develops the annual budget? 61 228 121 How familiar are you with how the City makes decisions about spending on programs and infrastructure each year? 70 214 123 How familiar are you with the services and programs funded by the City of Peterborough annual budget? 107 240 62 -
2024 Budget Survey - What We Heard - Interest in the budget process
Share on Facebook Share on Twitter Share on Linkedin Email this linkParticipants were asked a series of voluntary questions about their knowledge of the budget process, how they found out about the budget consultation, how they prefer to get information about the budget, and demographic information to help inform how the City engages with the community about the budget.
How closely do you follow/how interested are you in the creation and approval of the City's annual budget? (Scale of 1-5 with 1 being "Not at all" and 5 being "Extremely closely/extremely interested")
How closely do you follow/how interested are you in the creation and approval of the City's annual budget? (Scale of 1-5 with 1 being "Not at all" and 5 being "Extremely closely/extremely interested")
Responses
Percentage of responses
5 - Extremely closely/extremely interested 75 18.3% 4 162 39.6% 3 113 27.6% 2 43 10.5% 1 - Not at all 16 3.9%
Key dates
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March 28 2023
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April 13 2023
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April 20 2023
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April 21 2023
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May 23 2023
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May 31 2023
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June 26 2023
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August 16 2023
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August 17 2023
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November 06 2023
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November 09 2023
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November 14 2023
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November 14 2023
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November 15 2023
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November 20 → November 23 2023
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December 11 2023
Who's listening
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Treasurer and Commissioner of Corporate and Legislative Services
City of Peterborough
Budget process timeline
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Budget guidelines consultation
2024 Budget is currently at this stageThis is the first stage of the budget process - hearing from the community on priorities, sharing information about factors that could affect the budget, and talking about the drafting of next year's budget.
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Budget guidelines approval
this is an upcoming stage for 2024 BudgetCouncil considers setting guidelines for the drafting of the budget documents.
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Drafting the 2024 Budget
this is an upcoming stage for 2024 BudgetAfter consulting with the community and Council setting guidelines for how to draft the budget as part of the first phase of the budget process, the City uses the information to inform how it puts together the draft budget documents.
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Draft budget consultation
this is an upcoming stage for 2024 BudgetAfter presenting the draft budget documents to Council, the City holds another round of consultation to hear from the community and to share information about the draft budget before Council considers the documents.
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Finance Committee review
this is an upcoming stage for 2024 BudgetCity Council's Finance Committee reviews and considers changes to the draft budget documents.
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2024 Budget approval
this is an upcoming stage for 2024 BudgetCouncil considers approving the 2024 Budget.