2024 Budget

2024 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

The 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:

1. Housing/accommodations
2. Social issues
3. Health/public health
4. Cost of living
5. Physician recruitment
6. Environment/climate change/sustainability
7. Economy/jobs/economic issues
8. Health and vitality of the downtown
9. Arts, culture and heritage
10. Infrastructure/transportation
11. Crime/criminal activity
12. Governance and transparency
13. 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:

• Municipal service importance
• Service delivery
• Issues facing the City
• Options for balancing the budget
• Property tax changes
• Where did you hear about the survey
• Familiarity with the budget
• Interest in the budget process
• Ways to engage with residents

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

  
  

  

Survey 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

Participants 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):

1. Housing/accommodations (4.3)
2. Social issues (4.79)
3. Health/public health (5.49)
4. Cost of living (5.75)
5. Physician recruitment (5.97)
6. Environment/climate change/sustainability (6.92)
7. Economy/jobs/economic issues (7.33)
8. Health and vitality of the downtown (7.35)
9. Arts, culture and heritage (7.49)
10. Infrastructure/transportation (7.52)
11. Crime/criminal activity (7.56)
12. Governance and transparency (9.48)
13. Provision of recreation facilities (9.91)

Participants 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

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%

“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.

Participants 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?

Participants 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.

Participants 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")