City councillors went through the 2024 draft budget page by page and line by line last week. By the end of the process, they'd whittled the proposed property tax increase down from 9.59 percent to 7.38 percent. But they accomplished that by shifting some of the tax burden away from residential property owners and on to business property owners — they didn't make any major cuts to the 2024 spending proposed by city staff.

The budget process reveals so much about the city and how it works. In this episode of our podcast series on the 2024 municipal budget, we're covering five stories that came up during councillors' budget deliberations.

Why is the city's airport losing millions of dollars every year?

Why are city staff taking a "calculated risk" with funding for social assistance medical benefits?

Will bus riders see any transit improvements next year?

Is the city's bureaucracy too "top-heavy"?

And why are the City of Peterborough and Trent University still at loggerheads over the development of campus employment lands?

In this episode, Sebastian Johnston-Lindsay and Will Pearson will answer these five questions and share what your city councillors had to say about them as well.

PRODUCED AND HOSTED by Sebastian Johnston-Lindsay, Abbigale Kernya, and Will Pearson

MUSIC by Will Ward

TIMESTAMPS:
0:00 — Intro
2:44 — Peterborough Transit
6:26 — Social Assistance Discretionary Benefits
11:12 — The Organizational Structure of the City
20:10 — Cleantech Commons
27:40 — The Peterborough Airport

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