City’s COVID-19 revenue loss hits $10.4M
Transit fares not expected to be reinstated until later this month
The city will likely lose $10.4 million in revenues by the end of August due to the COVID-19 pandemic, according to a new city staff report.
A previous report estimated that between March and June, lost revenues had been expected to add up to $6.9 million.
But a new report released Thursday estimates losses until the end of August and expects $10.4 million will have vanished by then.
City councillors will discuss the new report at a committee meeting on Monday.
The lost revenues are in areas such as forfeited transit fares, for example.
In March, riders started boarding from the back doors to maximize the distance between riders and drivers — but that precluded drivers from collecting a fare, so rides have been free.
Although new Plexiglas barriers are being installed for the drivers on buses, fares aren’t expected to be reinstated until later this month.
Between March and June, forfeited transit fares were expected to mean $1.5 million in lost revenues; by the end of August, the losses increase to $2.2 mil
lion, the new report states.
Lost parking fees are also on the increase: by the end of June, nearly $760,000 was expected lost in parking fees, but that’s now expected to climb to just over $1 million by the end of August.
And lost revenues from the Peterborough Shorelines Casino (closed since March) will have added up to $2.75 million (the city gets to share in the casino’s revenues as the host municipality).
Meanwhile the city treasurer outlines in the report ways the city could potentially find as much as $6.2 million to start making up for losses.
Council already set aside $1.5 million that wasn’t spent last year, for example, and is taking back 75 per cent of a nearly $500,000 surplus from Peterborough Police’s 2019 budget.
Added together, that makes $1.8 million — money that council had previously decided would put toward refunding the city’s losses.
The city can take nearly $1.2 million from various uncommitted reserves — meaning council won’t need to pay those back, the report also states.
Given that some city services have been scaled back for greater safety in the pandemic, the report explains that the city has $3.2 million in its 2020 operating budget that it can “redirect” toward paying back the loses.
That all adds up to about $6.2 million that the city could use to start compensating for lost revenues.
Meanwhile the report also points out that the provincial and federal governments may offer later grants to municipalities to deal with losses in the COVID-19 pandemic.