Community rallies to defend arts and social services from cutbacks

Update: 2024-11-15

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<figcaption class="wp-element-caption">Rhea Shahe speaks at a rally opposing municipal budget cuts to local non-profits on Nov. 12, 2024. (Photo: Will Pearson)</figcaption></figure>

Around 250 people packed onto the lawn outside City Hall on Tuesday, November 12, to raise their voices against proposed cutbacks to municipal funding for local arts and community service organizations.

Peterborough’s 2025 draft budget proposes making a 25 percent cut to the city’s community grant programs, a reduction that will impact as many as 75 local non-profit groups ranging from the Peterborough Folk Festival to the New Canadians Centre.

“I am really pissed off about this,” said Dylan Radcliffe as he addressed the gathered crowd. Radcliffe said he was “sick and tired” of having to convince city councillors “that the things that make this community special are the things that are worth keeping.”

“Our community is worth standing up for,” Radcliffe shouted over the din of the rally.

<figcaption class="wp-element-caption">About 250 people attended the rally, which organizers named “Community Not Cuts.” (Photo: Will Pearson)</figcaption></figure>

Altogether, the proposed 25 percent cut to 17 organizations’ community service grants, in addition to a 25 percent cut to the overall budget for the community project grant and community investment grant funding streams, will save the city $298,153 next year. That works out to a total savings of about $7 on next year’s tax bill for the median-assessed residential property, according to an analysis by Peterborough Currents.

The draft budget is part of an effort from city staff to respond to city council’s direction to cap next year’s property tax increase at five percent. However, even with the 25 percent reduction to community grant funding and other cuts proposed elsewhere in the budget, the tax increase remains at 7.8 percent.

Budget documents state that $2.1 million of spending cuts are required to achieve a one percent reduction to the tax increase. That means councillors would need to find $5.9 million of additional cuts to reach their target of a five percent increase. (And even more cuts would be necessary if the Peterborough Police Service is granted its full budget request of $38 million.)

<figcaption class="wp-element-caption">Su Ditta, executive director of the Electric City Culture Council, made a case for arts and social services funding. (Video: Will Pearson)</figcaption></figure>

Staff have created a list of options for further cuts that councillors might consider, and one of the options presented is to defund the Art Gallery of Peterborough (AGP) entirely, which could reduce the city’s annual expenditures by $771,000, according to the draft budget.

According to the budget, if the city chooses this option the AGP’s board of directors would then need to determine whether they could continue to operate, offer programming and run youth camps without city funding. If not, AGP would need to move out of the city-owned gallery building and find a new home for its art collection.

In a written statement responding to the proposed cut, AGP board chair Debby Keating said the gallery “cannot continue” to provide its services as a “cultural cornerstone in Peterborough” without the city’s ongoing support. The gallery welcomed 18,374 visitors in 2023 and is expecting about 22,000 visitors in 2024, according to a press release.

At the rally, a giant grim reaper puppet wielding a scythe floated above the crowd. “I’m here with the rest of the people to protest the cuts and give some visibility to the enormous slashing that they’re proposing to do,” said the puppet’s handler, Brad Brackenridge. “At 25 percent, half of these organizations that they’re looking at will probably fold.”

<figcaption class="wp-element-caption">Local puppeteer Brad Brackenridge brought a grim reaper to symbolize the impact of the proposed cuts. (Photo: Alex Karn)</figcaption></figure>

Star Fiorotto was also at the rally. She has worked for One City Peterborough and currently serves on PARN’s KT6 Crew, an advisory group advocating for harm reduction, inclusion, and belonging for marginalized community members.

“The arts are so important for us,” Fiorotto said. “They’re a radical movement that keeps us connected.”

Heath Morris, a third-year social work student at Trent University, voiced a plea for councillors to “keep in mind the most marginalized and oppressed people in our community and what they actually need.”

A common frustration expressed by speakers at the rally is that the Peterborough Police Service is asking for an 8.8 percent increase to its municipal funding while arts groups and social service agencies are facing a cut.

“When I was sexually assaulted, I did not go to the police. I went to KSAC,” said Rhea Shahe, referring to the Kawartha Sexual Assault Centre, which stands to lose $3,750 in municipal funding if the cuts go forward.

Shahe is the co-coordinator of the Community Race Relations Committee, which organized the rally and which is also facing a funding cut.

When Shahe was homeless, there was “no intervention” from the police that she could seek, she said. Instead, she went to the Community Counseling Resource Centre. “They got me housing within the month,” Shahe said.

<figcaption class="wp-element-caption">Heath Morris (left) encouraged councillors to consider the needs of the “most marginalized” in Peterborough. (Photo: Alex Karn)</figcaption></figure>

Earlier in the day, Peterborough’s police chief Stuart Betts made a presentation to city councillors and explained why his organization needs an 8.8 percent budget increase. The increase would cover the addition of six new positions including two mental health crisis intervention team (MCIT) members, two 911 communicators, and two training staff, as well as scheduled raises for existing police staff based on their collective agreements.

Betts said the MCIT team members “are the folks the community says we want intervening with people in mental health crisis, not the police officers with the guns on the hip.”

Betts explained that the new Community Safety and Policing Act, which came into effect on April 1, 2024, comes with more stringent requirements that will be more costly to adhere to. The provincial government passed the Act, but Betts said “the expectation is that the local municipalities would pay for that transition” to it.

<figcaption class="wp-element-caption">Peterborough’s police chief, Stuart Betts. (Screenshot from City of Peterborough video)</figcaption></figure>

The police are asking for $3 million more from taxpayers in 2025 compared to 2024, which would bring the municipal contribution to the police force up to a total of $38 million. More than half of that increase ($1.7 million) is to pay for raises outlined by the force’s collective agreements and the annualization of positions hired for midway through 2024, according to a report from Betts to the Police Services Board.

That report stated that the force could maintain its required delivery standards with a smaller budget increase of $2.5 million. However, the police service would have to redeploy personnel and potentially discontinue the Community F.I.R.S.T. property crime unit if it received the smaller increase, according to the report.

Later in the evening inside council chambers, a general committee meeting where citizens had the chance to address members of council lasted until around 10:30 p.m. — well after the rally outside dispersed.

“Do not give the police the budget they have requested,” appealed community member Rob Hailman during that meeting. “The police have already outlined publicly an option below the funding they have requested. Surely, they are not so cynical as to present an option to the public that they do not believe is adequate or effective.”

Representatives from many of the