Council approves early negotiations with Petes
Drivers near Westmount Public School to face no-stopping restrictions
The Peterborough Petes want to renegotiate their Memorial Centre lease agreement with the city a year earlier than planned, and city council voted a final time Monday to allow that to happen.
The Petes have a 20-year lease with the city to last from 2003 until 2023, with the option to begin negotiating a new agreement as early as 2021.
But the Ontario Hockey League team has asked to start renegotiations with city staff now, and council gave it final approval Monday (after giving the plan preliminary approval at a previous meeting).
In a letter to the city, Petes president Dave Pogue states the team must renegotiate now so they can continue to thrive in the COVID -19 pandemic (which cut short the 2019-20 hockey season in March, with games not resuming since).
Also approved at the council meeting Monday:
Parking tickets
Council voted a final time to set up a new adjudication process for motorists to dispute a parking ticket in Peterborough, rather than going to traffic court.
Using the new system, a screening officer would review the ticket and decide whether to cancel it, reduce the fine or to extend the deadline for payment.
Simcoe parking garage
Council voted a final time to pay a Toronto firm $494,000 to design and oversee repairs on both the Simcoe Street parking garage and the Jackson Creek culvert located beneath it.
Repairs have been projected for next year; construction costs will be $6 million.
The garage will get weatherproofing, as well as fixes to its deteriorating concrete. The culvert was damaged in the 2004 flood and needs an overhaul.
The project could be the ready for tender in April 2021.
Finance software
Council gave final approval to continue improving the city’s new SAP finance software — which has cost $6 million to implement so far — but to trim a contingency of $600,000 from the next two phases of the project.
The first phase of the project replaced the city’s current systems such as payroll with SAP, at a cost of $6 million over more than two years.
The next two phases — which will cost $1.6 million each to implement — will add new electronic services that were previously done manually.
Although councillors voted to hire a firm to carry out those next two phases, they deleted a $600,000 contingency fund for the project.
Smart cisterns
Council gave final approval to have city staff apply for grant money from the Federation of Canadian Municipalities to pay up to half of a project to install 50 “smart cisterns” on 25 private properties in the city’s west end.
Although it’s still unclear how much the project may cost, city staff says the grants pay up to half of a $1-million project.
The new cisterns are rain barrels hooked up to the internet that compile electronic data on the volumes of rainwater collected.
The cisterns will be used on private properties near Cedargrove Park (off Sherbrooke Street at Glenforest Boulevard).
Internal mail delivery
Council voted a final time to extend a contract for internal mail and parcel delivery for another five years, for $353,399.
The contract will be transferred to the Peterborough firm Hartrans Cartage Services; that’s because the firm that previously held the contract, Hartnett Transit in Cavan, went out of business.
Briarhill Road
Council approved no-stopping restrictions along Briarhill Road after city staff said that parents have been unsafely using the road to drop off children at nearby Westmount Public School.
Briarhill Road is a cul-de-sac off Wallis Drive that dead-ends in a short walkway to Westmount Public School on Sherwood Crescent. Parents use it to drop off their children, according to a city staff report, and in the process often block the roadway, park on the boulevard or even park in residential driveways.
Edinburgh apartments
Council voted a final time to allow a four-apartment house on Edinburgh Street to soon have eight apartments.
The house is located at 265 Edinburgh St., and was built with four apartments but has room to add four more apartments on the second storey and in the attic.