When I phoned Ashburnham Ward City Councilor, Keith Riel, earlier in the day on November 12th, he advised me that the Special Council Meeting that night was going to be rather packed with public speakers.

“37 delegations,” Riel told me. “five minutes each. You do the math on that.”

I did the math sitting in Council Chambers for the General Committee at 3:00 PM that afternoon.

Thirty-seven, times five, divided by sixty. One-hundred-and-eighty. Divided by sixty. Three hours.

As luck would have it, those three hours started late.

Council’s hour-long back-and-forth with Peterborough Police Chief, Stu Betts, in the General Committee wound up shunting most of the Agenda for that meeting, creating a knock-on effect whereby the 6:00 PM public delegations wound up starting around a quarter-to-seven.

This understandably left many who had come to express their discontent with the Staff Recommended 2025 Draft Budget all the more frustrated, and cross talk and murmuring abounded in the Council Chambers’ gallery before meeting Chair, Councilor Dave Haacke, called the meeting to order.

The matter at hand was specifically the contents of Draft Budget Report FCSFS24-036—the opening portion of the Budget Book—which outlines the presented all-inclusive tax rate (AIR) of 7.8%, which City Staff presented last Monday, breakdowns of the Operating Budget, Capital Budget pre-commitments, and External Organization funding requests above Staff’s preliminary estimate.

What seemed to be at the forefront of most delegates’ minds, however, was Appendix B of the report, which identifies “Staff Identified Potential Budget Reductions to Reach a 5% Increase to AIR.”

The reason for this appendix is, of course, because in August councilors mandated City Staff to produce a Draft Budget modeled on a strict 5% maximum increase to the all-inclusive tax rate. This was, as Richard Freymond indicated to the media at the November 4th Draft Budget press briefing, always a ludicrous—if not a flat-out impossible—task.

Appendix B is therefore City Staff’s way, however small, of fulfilling that obligation. The attachment details a list of discretionary expenditures totalling some $5.9 million which City Staff have identified as being a potential means to bring the tax rate down by 2.8%.

While all of the items identified are currently included as line items in the 2025 Draft Budget, Council has been provided the option to cut them (against City Staff’s recommendation) should they wish to forge ahead with a budget at 5%.

This was, in many ways, a reality check several months in the making.

Since the August decree, the discussions of service cuts was an inevitability. City Staff presented council with a number that the city would need to hit to maintain status quo operations and council said “no, that’s too high.”

Now, we find ourselves here, three months and 37 delegations later.

In the intervening period between the November 4th presentation of the Draft Budget and the November 12th Special Council Meeting discussing it, many in the arts scene have taken the framing of this Appendix as “cuts” and run with it.

Infographics have been posted, demonstrations rallied, and dozens upon dozens of delegations registered, written, and aired.

It’s not that community members are entirely wrong for perceiving the reports as cuts—they are, in the strictest sense, potential cuts. But then potential is the operative word here. These are not even cuts in principle until council indicates their desire to do as such and, as it stands only two meetings into the time-sprawling budget process, council has given no such concrete indication as of yet.

But nonetheless “cuts” were the matter of discussion of the nights, and any reporting of the delegations must necessarily reflect as such.

“We don’t applaud, we don’t boo, we don’t cheer,” Councilor Haacke said, explaining decorum to the members of the public. “Tonight won’t be a debate. Council will be asking questions, and that’s about it.”

With no other items on the agenda beside public delegations, Haacke called up speakers in order of registration and accorded them each the requisite five minutes of speaking time.

As the night progressed, in general, three particular themes seemed to emerge from those delegates presenting to council. The first, and most pronounced was of course, the matter of service reductions. 

While delegates invariably expressed their concern about such-and-such an arts organization or not-for-profit service group being included in the list of potential discretionary spending amputations to be undertaken in the quest for the 5% budget, these presentations spanned the gamut from articulate, well-reasoned demonstrations of a particular agency or group’s benefit to the community, economy, or social fabric of Peterborough to what might charitably be described as “pleas for money.”

While I’m sympathetic to the fact that money is, in many ways, the lifeblood of the arts, I could hardly find myself surprised to see the weary faces of councilors as Haacke had to ask delegates to refrain from repeating themselves after multiple organizations saw several individual presenters come to plead their case.

The second of these thematic trends, albeit with markedly fewer evangelists, was the matter of the exorbitant 8.8% budget increase asked by the Police Board. Consensus among those who spoke to it was fairly well unanimous—that number was way too high.

Third and finally of course in this city, was the matter of Pickleball. Though few in number, critics of the Bonnerworth Park Redevelopment project were stalwart in their spirited opposition to the capital project—even as this week saw city workers break ground.

“It’s tough times sometimes, that bring everyone together,” Su Ditta, Executive Director of the Electric City Culture Council and one of the first delegates of the night, remarked.

“Things have changed since the 1970s,” she continued. “It's laid out very well on Page 2 of the city's strategic plan. We need great natural heritage, great built heritage, working infrastructure—and that working infrastructure includes real solid, productive and healthy arts organizations.” Those organizations, Ditta added, “need real solid sustained city funding.”

“If we move forward with these cuts, we’ll eradicate a decade of investment in the arts,” she concluded, overcome with emotion.

While among the first to speak to this point, Ditta was but one of many that night who had come to hammer the point home. Posting delegation were representatives of the Kawartha Youth Orchestra, Artspace artist-run centre, Showplace theatre, Market Hall, and the President of the Art Gallery of Peterborough (AGP) board.

Councilors listened—some intently, some absent-mindedly nodding—while impassioned arts and culture enthusiasts and workers told them that every dollar invested in the arts translates to $25.00 in potential revenues.

Ditta’s observations about the City’s own self-proclaimed commitment to the arts were seconded by New Stages Peterborough’s Marck Wallace, who told councilors he hoped to persuade them “that these cuts will be more damaging to the city than any savings they represent.”

Wallace argued that the City is hypocritical for admitting the value its arts community provides in its public-facing messaging, yet routinely identifying them as means of potential savings come budget time.

“We are important enough to be on the first page of the city’s strategic plan,” he noted. “So what’s going on; why are we on the block?”

There is a certain art to posting delegation to city council. When playing council’s games one must learn to speak their tongue, and for those who do not spend every Monday in the municipal chambers this can prove a tall order.

Certain councilors respond well to certain lines of argumentation. One would be hard pressed to find disapproval from councilors Beamer or Haacke for presenting an argument of economic efficiency, for instance.

Conversely, individual councilors equally maintain certain personal sticking points. At Monday night’s meeting, Kevin Duguay relished the opportunity to pounce upon any delegates of organizations who admitted to providing services to Peterborough County residents, asking them whether they received financial support from the County Council.

Invariably, Duguay would treat the reply of “No” with a solemn nod and the occasional interjection of “No follow up questions,” leaving the implication that this was not council’s fault but the county’s hanging heavy in the air, and the delegate feeling as though their last five minutes of presentation had fallen upon deaf ears.

In this way, delegation becomes a sort of dance. One must say the right things in the right terms, but not cede any lines of argumentation to council upon which they might seize.

Long-time City Hall delegate Rob Hailman is well-versed in these intricacies. Despite the bluntness of his words, he was careful to present his grievances in ways that engaged directly with the content of the budget.

“Put plainly, the 2025 Draft Budget is a shameful document,” Hailman declared to council. 

While City Staff were responsible for putting together the budget, he noted, “They were doing the work that is the product of misguided and inadequate direction from this council.”

“You, the mayor and council of this city should be ashamed,” said Hailman, “and to be blunt, I am here to shame you.”

Hailman singled out the police budget ask as his primary grievance with the process to date.

“The police have already outlined, publicly, a [funding] option below the funding they have requested.”

Hailman told council, decisively, “Do not give the police the budget they have requested.”

He pushed back on the City’s excuse that saying “No” to the police could lead to arbitration that would see the City on the line for millions more dollars if the police won, citing a 1999 case where the City of Guelph refused the police their requested budget increase. Of the contested $450,000 in that case, Hailman told council, police only received 40% of that amount.

Hailman added that “To support the growth of the police budget faster than the rest of the city services would be foolishness at best, and at worst it would be cruelty.”

“The budget is a vision of the future expressed in dollars,” Hailman continued. “And the vision expressed in this budget is profoundly grim.”

“It is one where the suburbs roll while downtown crumbles. It is one where paving parks is called climate change mitigation.”

“What I’m asking you to do;” Hailman concluded. “Abandon the guideline. Abandon this budget. Have real discussion about priorities, provide real guidance, and start again.”

Another person well-versed in the comportment of council was former mayor Diane Therrien-Hale, who devoted the first portion of her delegation to reading a letter from her friend—the artistic director of the Children’s Chorus—to councilors.

“Speaking as myself,” Therrien-Hale added after finishing the letter. “I'd like to stress that I understand the budgetary challenges this council is facing. In fact, I overstand.”

“It is important to acknowledge that the financial situation facing Peterborough is not unique,” she continued. “It is the direct result of the provincial and federal governments’ historic downloading of programs and ongoing hollowing out of key public services.”

The former mayor told council that the Federation of Canadian Municipalities is in the midst of asking the federal government to implement a new framework for municipal funding, as the current one “is from literally two centuries ago.”

“Our provincial government has removed rent caps and continues to ignore any policy changes that would improve the lives of anyone aside from the rich,” she continued.

“We need to keep the pressure on those senior levels of government as well as our local officials,” she concluded. “To you, I simply say ‘invest in our local community.’ It is crucial and I implore you to do the right thing.”

After Therrien-Hale’s delegation, council recessed for a five-minute break with 16 delegations still to come.

On their return, they were greeted with more of the same. Councilors listened with increasingly visible disinterest to concerns with arts funding and the Bonnerworth redevelopment project. 

“We’ve had some wonderful presentations tonight; I hope you were listening,” Resident Margie Sumadh prodded council at the start of her delegation.

“Who made these recommendations?” she asked. “It’s staff—it’s their jobs. But it’s councilors—it’s you who decide. You’re the ones who are responsible in the end. You’re the ones who really have to listen to the presentations.”

Sumadh drew attention to a few details which delegates had not yet mentioned including, crucially for her, accessibility—specifically sidewalk snow removal.

Where Sumadh lives, at the corner of Dublin and Aylmer, is “surrounded by city sidewalk.” She said that accessible infrastructure is critical to her—“I walk everywhere.”

In addition to her points about accessibility, Sumadh echoed previous delegations’ concerns with the Police budget.

“Why Police?” she asked. “Why do they always win?”

“You are elected to represent the people of Peterborough,” Sumadh concluded. “I want you to take it seriously.”

Sumadh’s sentiments were echoed by Ontario Public Interest Research Group (OPIRG) Peterborough Co-ordinator, Nico Koyanagi, who thanked previous delegates for their time and presentations, before asking council members again to challenge the 8.8% police budget.

“I think that council really need to look into what is actually required for effective and adequate policing in our city,” Koyanagi told councilors.

“I really want to make sure that we’re not confusing safety with discomfort,” Koyanagi added, saying that she sees it as “a dogwhistle to conflate poverty with danger and crime.”

“We need to stop criminalizing poverty,” she implored.

Koyanagi argued that in the context of 2024’s large police budget grant, this year’s 8.8% ask feels exceptionally high. “We see that they’ve been able to do this in the past, with 1% or 2% increases,” she observed. “I’m asking you to be courageous and stand up to the police.” 

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After Koyanagi’s presentation, Haacke observed that council was fast running out of time, and would require ⅔ majority approval to extend the meeting. After a motion was submitted by councilor Riel, the extension passed with an 8–3 majority, with councilors Beamer, Haacke, and mayor Jeff Leal voting against.

I have never, in all my time at council, seen a motion to extend council pass with anything other than unanimous approval, and much discussion was had in the gallery as a consequence.

Despite an increasingly dour mood among council members and onlookers alike, Resident Cormac Culkeen managed to bring a moment of levity with the declaration “We are proud to live here. We love it here. So please raise our taxes.”

However the meeting quickly regained composure as Rhea Shahe and Patricia Wilson from Peterborough’s Community Race Relations Committee—who had organized the demonstration outside City Hall earlier that night—spoke to council members decisively against the prospect of service reductions.

In their presentation Shahe outlined the myriad local organizations who receive Community Care Grants that have supported them over their time in Peterborough, and serve as “lifelines for Peterborough’s most marginalized communities.”

“Organizations such as Kawartha Sexual Assault Center (KSAC), the Community Race Relations Committee (CRRC) and Peterborough Drug Strategy have unique skills and expertise in harm reduction, trauma, informed care, cultural sensitivity, restorative justice practice practices and mental health crisis intervention that manage harm in a non carceral community,” Shahe told councilors.

She contrasted these organizations with the Peterborough Police service, questioning the Police’s role in effectively supporting the community.

“When I was homeless—there’s no intervention through the Police—I went to CCRC and they got me housing within the month,” Shahe said. “I am living proof that these organizations work within our communities.”

Wilson picked up after Shahe’s delegation, telling council that she was “here, this time last year, urging you not to cut our essential programs; and here we are again.”

She noted that the CRRC has been around and working in Peterborough for over 40 years, and has been providing “advocacy, supports, consultation services, public education initiatives for the purpose of supporting, of greater, greater understanding of race relations” all the while.

“Today you had a rally,” Wilson added. “It took us four days to organize a rally and we got over 250 people to show up. That was huge. That shows our community cares. These programs are essential.”

As the speakers list neared exhaustion, the topic of presentation once again turned to that of perennial interest to Peterboroughans: pickleball.

“I'm here to talk about the Bonnerworth Park redevelopment project and your ability to stop it,” John Gerelus told council members, claiming that council had the ability to save “upwards of $2 million” if the project were to stop.

“Where are we now?” Gerelus asked. “Four words: shovels in the ground.”

He would repeat these four words—”shovels in the ground”—apparently for emphasis, multiple times throughout the remaining four-odd minutes of his presentation.

Shovels in the ground, he claimed, “despite over 8100 people signing a petition, and public outrage for spending millions of dollars on a recreational project which—let’s be clear, is a private club.”

“All remnants of Bonnerworth park will be gone forever,” Gerelus claimed, bemoaning the fact that construction had proceeded and the backstops had been torn down the day before, on Remembrance Day.

Gerelus did not elaborate on his claim that the construction of open-air pickleball courts represented “a 400-person private club.”

Gerelus also gestured towards the impending injunction from the Friends of Bonnerworth Park—which, despite beliefs that it was to be heard on November 25, 2024, may now not be heard until the spring of next year.

As the final few delegates said their piece, Chair Haacke indicated that two of the remaining speakers had indicated that they no longer wished to speak.

After thanking the spectators in the gallery “For being so respectful to the presenters and to council,” Haacke indicated that a motion was in order to adjourn, letting a grueling day of city council come to end just before 11:00 PM.