Councillors agree that new police station be downtown

Consultants will be hired to assess potential sites for $68-million build

City councillors are hiring a consultant to assess possible downtown locations for a planned new Peterborough Police station, which is expected to cost $68 million to build.

The consultants — Shoalts and Zaback Architects Ltd. of Kingston — will be expected to make a recommendation by January so that council can choose a site in February.

“We are unanimous it should be downtown,” Coun. Henry Clarke said.

For years council and the Peterborough Police Services Board have been considering a replacement for the outdated and crowded 53-year-old police station at Water and McDonnel streets.

Two years ago, an initial architect’s report pegged the cost at $46.9 million. That report found that the current police station, which is on a 1.6-acre site, is outdated, overcrowded and lacking in both training and storage space.

The consultant will be expected to identify up to seven potential locations and then assess them based on potential benefits, impacts and risks while consulting with other agencies.

Public meetings will be held to review each potential site.

Also at Monday’s meeting:

Affordable housing

The city took a first step toward establishing a new corporation to build 1,100 affordable apartments: the accounting firm KPMG has submitted a draft business case to the city that will be finalized by fall.

“This is a move we absolutely need,” said Coun. Keith Riel, the city’s housing co-chair and interim chair of the board for the forthcoming new corporation.

The corporation will be expected to apply for up to $327 million in federal funding to build 1,100 new affordable apartments.

It will leave Peterborough

Housing Corporation (PHC) — which now manages rentgeared-to-income and builds affordable housing for the city — to focus solely on social housing. The draft business case proposes that the new corporation have a president and CEO, but no other employees: instead, there would be shared staff arrangements with the city and with the PHC.

Next steps toward creating the corporation include consultation with Peterborough County politicians and with the public. A final draft of the business case will be reviewed by city council in October.

Financial recovery

The city is facing a shortfall of $3.7 million in the first half of 2021 due to revenue losses and additional costs in the COVID-19 pandemic.

This is the net loss the city faces after program-specific grants from the provincial and federal government to help cities deal with lost revenues in the pandemic are applied.

The payback plan, according to a new city staff report, includes using city reserves, other grants and surpluses in city services that weren’t impacted by the pandemic.

Lost revenues occurred in areas such as transit and parking, states the report.

Furthermore, the city lost money from a revenue-sharing agreement with Shorelines Casino Peterborough: the loss is calculated at about $727,000 for the first half of this year.

But the casino reopened Friday as Ontario’s COVID-19 safety restrictions loosen and a city staff report expects the city’s share of revenues to resurge soon.

Summer Games

Councillors gave preliminary approval to host the Ontario 55+ Summer Games in 2022, since this summer’s games — which were supposed to be in Peterborough — were cancelled for a second year in a row due to COVID-19.

Hosting the 2022 games is expected to cost the city $175,000. Most of that money — $135,000 — was already set aside to host the games this year and the remaining $40,000 is expected to come from city reserves.