Court Services is responsible for administration, courtroom support and municipal prosecution of the Provincial Offences Act (POA) offences as well as municipal bylaws within the City and County of Peterborough. The POA office ensures compliance with the Act, the Memorandum of Understanding with the Ministry of the Attorney General and the Inter-municipal Service Agreement.

The $1,692,491 budgeted revenues for Court Services is comprised of Gross Budgeted Revenues of $1,849,000 less the County’s share of Court Services Revenues, $156,509.

The number of charges issued is the primary driver of the POA Court system, however, the Court has no influence on the number of charges filed by enforcement agencies. The number of charges fluctuates and the composition of the dollar value of the charges impacts the revenue generated. POA revenues are only realized by the payment of fines.

Staff continue to pursue collections initiatives with the goal of increasing fine revenue. Net revenues are divided between the City and County of Peterborough based on the prior year's relative weighted assessment. Based on the 2024 figures, the County's share for 2025 is 55.3% and the City's share is 44.7%.

Defaulted fines include any fine where the defendant has failed to pay the amount imposed upon conviction by the due date. A fine is considered defaulted when it remains unpaid 15 days past the due date. Once in default, the City will start collection activity that may include Final Notices, orders to suspend driver's licenses and plate denials, addition of defaulted fines to tax rolls and legal proceedings.

The 2025 budget includes increased expenditures for approved salary and benefits and inflationary increases in other expenses, however these increases are offset by decreased collection fees, court operations costs and court interpreter costs.

Interactive Budget

Explore the City's budget using the interactive OpenBook feature, including expenses by department and division as well as a breakdown of what a typical residential property taxpayer pays per $100,000 of assessment.

The full budget information is available in the Draft 2025 Budget book.

The OpenBook budget tool enhances the transparency of the City's Budget by allowing us to share financial information visually in accessible and easy to understand formats. View our budget data using charts, tables, and graphs. We hope you find this helpful.

Through our OpenBook reports, you can start at the organizational level then click on a department to go down to the division/section/service level as you explore the financial information for the City. Flip between charts, tables and graphs to display the data in a way that visualizes the information based on your preference.

In OpenBook tables, all column headers labeled as "Current Year" refer to 2025; "Previous Year" refers to 2024.

Please note: The 2025 Budget is the first year that the City has used this budget tool to enhance how it shares information with residents. We're learning how to use the new platform and will be adding features and reports as we explore the tool's capabilities.

OpenBook budget tool