"We're disgusted by this," said Montreal West Mayor Beny Masella. "With every budget that they put out, it's more and more obvious to us that they have absolutely zero respect for us as duly elected officials."
The mayors of the island suburbs are using words like “abusive,” “disgusting” and “disrespectful” to describe an average increase of over eight per cent in their payments to the agglomeration next year, and they say Montreal city hall is camouflaging a $225-million leap in its spending on island-wide services in the 2023 municipal budget it tabled on Tuesday.
“Every year, when its operating budget is unveiled, the municipal administration of Montreal demonstrates its insensitivity to taxpayers and to the population of suburban cities, but this time it has crossed the line,” Montreal West Mayor Beny Masella, who is president of the Association of Suburban Municipalities (ASM), said of the latest increases.
Sign up to receive daily headline news from the Montreal Gazette, a division of Postmedia Network Inc.
Thanks for signing up!
A welcome email is on its way. If you don't see it, please check your junk folder.
The next issue of Montreal Gazette Headline News will soon be in your inbox.
“I think the right word might be disgusting. We’re disgusted by this. With every budget that they put out, it’s more and more obvious to us that they have absolutely zero respect for us as duly elected officials, they have no respect for us as partners of the agglomeration.”
The agglomeration’s 2023 operating budget, which Mayor Valérie Plante’s administration tabled with the city of Montreal’s operating budget this week, presents a $101.5-million net increase in expenditures over this year, indicating a 3.6 per cent increase for such island-wide services as the police and fire departments and public transit.
But the Plante administration is in reality boosting agglomeration spending by $224.9 million, or 8.75 per cent, which is above inflation and unreasonable, Masella said. The ASM represents the 15 island suburbs that demerged from Montreal in 2006.
The lower figure of $101.5 million — which is presented in bold in the budget — includes the subtraction of this year’s $211-million one-shot payment to mop up the whopping deficit the agglomeration amassed at the end of 2020. The agglomeration ended last year with a deficit as well, but the agglomeration budget has only to absorb that smaller deficit of $87.9 million in 2023.
Showing the difference in deficits, which are non-recurring costs, as a savings next year is disingenuous and distorts the reality of how much the administration is increasing spending on services, Masella said. Montreal city hall is rewarding itself for having a less massive deficit to mop up this time, he said.
The new budget also misrepresents the increase that the suburbs will have to pay in transfers to the agglomeration in 2023, Masella said. Every municipality on the island, including the city of Montreal, makes an annual transfer payment to the agglomeration from its local operating budget to cover the budget. All residents on the island get one tax bill from their municipality, which covers local and agglomeration services. The transfer payments to the agglomeration make up roughly half of every suburb’s local operating budget.
The calculation of transfer payments follows a complicated formula that is based entirely on the total property value in each municipality on the island.
The new three-year municipal valuation roll that was tabled in September saw property assessments in the suburbs increase more than the island average, while they increased below the island average in the city of Montreal. As a result, the formula to calculate agglomeration transfer payments for 2023 shifts a large portion of the higher agglomeration budget to the suburbs.
So while the suburbs are getting hit with an 8.1 per cent increase on average in their 2023 transfer payments, the city of Montreal’s transfer payment is increasing by just 2.7 per cent.
Yet the suburbs won’t be getting more police patrols, bike paths or public transit service for their higher contributions, Masella said.
“I’m not getting five cents more worth of service than I was before,” he said. For example, Montreal West is paying a 12.5 per cent increase in 2023, Masella said, which means his town will pay $800,000 more to the agglomeration from its nearly $17-million local budget.
However, there are disparities among the suburbs as well because of the uneven impact of the new valuation roll. For example, Westmount is getting a 0.34 per cent increase in its transfer payment. Côte-St-Luc is getting a 10 per cent increase.
“A lot of my colleagues are going through the same thing,” Masella said. “They’re going back to the drawing board and saying, ‘What can I cut locally?’ It’s not like it’s a one-year thing. That 12.5 per cent will always stay there. Sometimes I say I want to bang my head against the wall. How long can they (Montreal) take advantage of this overtly inequitable situation?”
The administration at Montreal city hall establishes the agglomeration budget without input from the suburbs. In fact, Montreal’s finance department presented the 2023 agglomeration budget to the suburban mayors several hours after they had presented it to journalists on Tuesday and after its content had already been reported in the news.
Dida Berku, a city councillor in Côte-St-Luc, contends the Plante administration “took advantage of the situation and pushed the limit of what extra costs it could dump on the agglomeration” because the suburbs are footing 38 per cent of the spending increase resulting from the new valuation roll. The suburbs are home to 12 per cent of the population of the island.
“The roll gave them a tremendous advantage this time around and they took advantage of subtracting the huge deficit (payment) of last year,” Berku said. “No municipality would declare an 8.75 per cent increase in spending. So they hide it in these accounting manoeuvres and call it a 3.6 per cent increase.”
Still, in a departure from previous years’ budget squabbles between Montreal and the suburbs, the Plante administration declared it’s open to looking for a new method to calculate transfer payments. The suburbs have called for an overhaul of the Quebec-imposed formula to calculate transfer payments for at least five years.
“I understand the shock that you’re feeling with these increases,” Montreal city executive committee chairperson Dominique Ollivier, Plante’s right hand at city hall, said at an agglomeration council meeting where the budget was tabled on Tuesday.
“I think it really shows the current model that relies on transfer payments calculated on fiscal potential has perhaps had its day.”
Ollivier noted that the city of Montreal still foots over 80 per cent of the agglomeration budget, and said the tables in the budget are transparent enough.
That said, Ollivier noted the new assessment roll is causing a distortion in the increases in each municipality.
“It’s really time … that we sit down, that we work and that we redefine equity and that we work together to see how we can arrive at a distribution that’s fair for everyone.”
lgyulai@postmedia.com