A challenging year for Peterborough city council

The past year saw city council, nearing the halfway point of its mandate, facing the new challenges of the coronavirus pandemic while also having to deal with the running of the city. These are the biggest stories coming out of city hall in 2020.

January: BWXT

Council heard from 28 citizens at a meeting on Jan. 27 who were concerned about the potential for uranium dust to become airborne and harm people if BWXT got approval to manufacture pellets.

“These pellets are the same size as bullets — and they’ll kill you as fast as bullets will,” Jim Dufresne, a General Electric retiree, told council.

Council resolved to write to federal officials to say citizens are concerned about how pelleting here could affect their health.

BWXT Nuclear Energy Canada manufactures nuclear fuel bundles in Peterborough and assembles uranium dioxide pellets that are manufactured in Toronto.

In late December, the Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission awarded a 10-year licence extension to the Monaghan Road

facility with provision allowing pelleting to move to Peterborough

Its licence expires at the end of 2020 and they’ve applied for a new licence with one change: BWXT would like to be allowed to start producing pellets at both the Toronto and the Peterborough facilities.

The Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission’s staff assessment recommended that the pelleting be allowed in Peterborough, pending a final commissioning safety report.

The company has said it has no plans to relocate the pelleting from Toronto, but wants to keep its options open.

February: Compost

MP Maryam Monsef announced $6 million in federal funding toward a $15.3-million organic waste composting facility for Peterborough, which is expected to open by September 2023.

It’s expected to take a few years before composting services are offered because the city needs to have the facility designed and built and acquire trucks and green bins for curbside pickup.

“It’s not going to happen overnight — we still have some hurdles to get past,” said Mayor Diane Therrien at the funding announcement on Feb. 11. “But this is going to help us do the design work so we can get this rolling in a couple of years.”

March: Shutdown

On March 13, the city announced it was cancelling programs and operations at municipal buildings and services as Peterborough went into lockdown to try to keep people safe in the pandemic.

Therrien said on that day that the closures — then expected to last about three weeks — were inconvenient but necessary. Peterborough had no confirmed cases of COVID-19 yet, but the mayor said closures had to occur immediately.

“We can’t wait until we have a confirmed case to act — then it’s too late,” she said.

Peterborough Transit was offered for free later in the month; the service was offered for no fare until the summer.

The shutdown continued until gradual reopenings of city services in the summer. Council meetings were cancelled for the rest of March, and resumed virtually in April.

April: Fountain

A divided council voted to shut down the Centennial Fountain in Little Lake for the year, which was projected to save $108,454.

Coun. Lesley Parnell also called the fountain “a symbol of hope,” adding that she didn’t think the savings would add up to much more than $25,000 since she felt optimistic the pandemic would not persist for long.

“Are you seriously going to shut down a symbol of hope for $25,000?” she asked. “That’s not going to bode well — this is a community asset.”

But Coun. Kemi Akapo said “we really don’t know” when the pandemic will be over.

“I understand that people see this as a symbol of hope, but hope can be found in many spots,” she said. “We shouldn’t place all our hope on a jet of water in the middle of a lake.”

May: Road trip

Coun. Stephen Wright told The Examiner he took a road trip to New Brunswick across closed borders to find out for himself how restaurant reopenings were doing in that province.

The trip wasn’t sanctioned or paid for by the city.

Therrien demanded an apology after New Brunswick’s premier and the mayor of Saint John, N.B., criticized the trip for putting New Brunswick residents at risk of COVID-19.

Wright apologized, admitting he made “an error in judgment” and he was being “overzealous.” But Therrien and council didn’t think it was enough: they stripped Wright of his position as economic development vicechair and dropped him as city council’s representative on the Greater Peterborough Chamber of Commerce board.

Wright said Therrien was being “very heavy-handed.”

“I didn’t commit a criminal offence here — I wasn’t incarcerated,” he said.

June: Transit

The city introduced a redesigned set of transit routs in June, meant to reduce crowding at the downtown bus terminal in the pandemic; routes now do not all radiate there.

The idea was to allow riders better physical distancing when they get on and off the bus by allowing transfers here and there across the city (and not just at the main terminal anymore).

But the number of routes was reduced from 17 to nine, and some riders said the service became less accessible because it stops in new locations where bus ramps cannot be safely deployed.

Others found the new routes confusing, and others still were concerned that the rides took far longer than ever before.

Teresa MacDonald, who uses a wheelchair and has vision loss, said she can’t use the system anymore: “Accessibility was an afterthought.”

July: Fire station

Council accepts a recommendation from Toronto-based Dillon Consulting to consider three locations for a new northend fire station to replace the aging station on Carnegie Avenue.

The sites are the closed Northcrest Arena, a green space at Sunset Boulevard and Chemong Road and Inverlea Park Dennistoun Avenue and Parkhill Road.

The Inverlea Park proposal later raised concerns with many area residents who don’t want to see a park destroyed for a fire station.

August: PDI sale completed A deal to sell Peterborough’s municipally owned electricity distribution system to Hydro One closed on Aug. 3 for $105 million after nearly five years of discussion and planning.

The sale included the wires, poles and transformers of Peterborough Utilities, which delivers electricity to 37,000 customers in Peterborough, Lakefield and Norwood.

The city was expecting to net somewhere between $50 million and $55 million once fees and debts are paid.

Council still hasn’t decided exactly how to invest the funds, but is considering ideas such as banking the money or investing it in the city’s own renewable energy company.

September: Shortfall

Council returned to in-person meetings in council chambers, newly retrofitted with glass pods for greater safety in the pandemic.

Councillors learned in September that finance staff projects about $20.8 million in losses and direct costs by the end of the year, which the city can mostly cover using stimulus funding from the federal and provincial governments and municipal reserves.

October: Shelter

Council planned to convert its empty community service building on Wolfe Street into an emergency shelter for the homeless.

The building has served as offices for the community services department since 2017. But with employees working from home, it had been empty since the pandemic broke out.

“These investments in emergency shelters and housing are a reflection of who we are as a community,” said Coun. Keith Riel.

But Coun. Dean Pappas expressed concern in the meeting that Town Ward already has a disproportionate number of social services.

“Poverty is a city of Peterborough problem, not a downtown problem ... We can’t keep stacking social services in one area,” he said.

November: Arenas

Council voted to abandon a plan to put a new community twin-pad arena on campus at Fleming College and to move it to Morrow Park instead.

But it also decided not to follow a consultant’s recommendation to then set aside any idea of also building a new major sport and entertainment centre at Morrow Park, and focus instead on a downtown location.

The consultant’s preferred downtown location for the facility is a large triangular site that includes the city’s former public works yard on Townsend Street plus Market Plaza, Smitty’s restaurant plaza and the Tim Hortons on George Street.

Coun. Kim Zippel said the city would be missing a chance to spur development downtown by not building the major arena there.

“To put two arenas in Morrow Park would be a regrettable mistake we cannot go back on,” she said.

But private landowners hold much of the property there, and Parnell said the city would have to negotiate to buy buildings and demolish them before it can build.

“Morrow Park is basically our saving grace,” she said.

So now Morrow Park is still in contention for both those arenas, though council has yet to make final decisions on where and when to build either one.

December: Pay

Council voted to hold the pay steady but to extend a series of perks to those elected to municipal office in the next term, from 2022 to 2026.

A councillor’s pay is $33,839 annually, for work that’s considered part-time.

The mayor’s pay and extras stay the same, for the full-time job: $86,384 plus car allowance, internet allowance and pay for serving on boards such as the police board.

In the next term of office councillors’ pay will to keep council pay the same, but with health benefits, a car allowance (which has only ever been extended to the mayor) and matching contributions from the city to councillors’ pension plan.

Wright said councillors’ contributions are “undervalued,” and that he didn’t want council to be the domain of the retired and the wealthy — people who have money and plenty of time to sit on council, in other words.

“This is a real job. The demands and the requirements of doing it are real,” Wright said.

Coun. Henry Clarke, who opposed the perks, said he took offence to those comments.

“I’ve served on this council for over 20 years, and I’m well aware of the hours that go into it and the dedication.”