2025 Budget Survey results overview

In-person budget consultation meetings were held on April 22 (presentation and opportunity for questions and answers) and April 26 (informal, drop-in session for conversations with the finance team) with about 50 people attending the two sessions.

An online consultation project page is available on the City’s online community engagement portal, Connect Peterborough, with almost 800 visits to the site so far.

A survey on the 2025 Budget was open from March 28 to April 26 with 220 responses submitted.

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 to submit a response to the budget survey. 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.

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 (previous year’s response in brackets).

Sewers, water, stormwater management (3)
Enabling affordable housing (1)
Managing tax dollars (6)
Fire prevention, police, paramedics (5)
Providing and maintaining parks and green spaces (7)

When asked to rank a list of issues, the average rankings placed the options in the following order (previous year’s response in brackets):

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

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 – 48.6% (49.2%)
Increase user fees for City services that currently have fees – 50.4% (48.5%)
Increase property taxes – 34.1% (40.4%)
Reduce service levels – 29.1% (34.6%)

Respondents indicated what they think the property tax change should be in 2025 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.

1% to 3.9% increase – Will require reductions in services and infrastructure investments when accounting for inflationary increases and legislated requirements – 20.2% of responses chose this option
4% increase – Generally maintain existing levels of service, keeping pace with inflationary increases and legislated requirements – 19.7%
4.1% to 5% increase – Increase investments in infrastructure/services – 19.7%
Other (please specify) – 17%
Greater than 5% - Greater investments in infrastructure/services – 10.6%
No property tax increase – Substantial reduction in services and infrastructure maintenance – 7.8%
Decrease property taxes – Drastically reduce services and investments in infrastructure – 5%

Outside of the specific questions in the survey, the survey included several opportunities for respondents to provide other comments on the budget. Examples of provided comments include:

Raise property taxes and fix the roads
Praise for cycling infrastructure, consider adding more cycling trails including along Lansdowne Street
Request for an indoor city-operated field house and more outdoor sport facilities
Property tax levels
Staffing levels and pay rates
Fix the roads
High crime rate
Spend less on social programs
Invest in affordable housing
Add and improve baseball diamonds in the City
Comments related to Bonnerworth Park project
Invest in arts and social services
Spend more money on infrastructure as the city grows