Mayors of Montreal suburbs who feel their cities were shortchanged by $20 million in the 2009 island council budget have taken their complaint to the provincial government.
But the head of the city of Montreal’s finance committee says the mayors were a part of the budget process from the beginning and knew that costs in next year’s budget would be higher.
“These were increases that were known,” executive committee member Alan De Sousa said. “We said for five years that we were increasing water (treatment) costs by $20 million a year, (increases) to the Montreal Transit Corp. budget were known.
“There were a lot of issues that were known (by the mayors). But I just guess it crystallized when they saw (the budget).”
Westmount Mayor Karin Marks, head of the association that represents Montreal’s 15 suburbs, sees it differently, however.
“I told (Montreal) Mayor (Gerald) Tremblay during (Thursday’s) budget meeting that if the budget was passed, we would ask for an investigation by the municipal affairs minister to see whether or not the budget met both the letter and the spirit of Bill 22," she said.
Adopted in June, Bill 22 is a provincial law that gave the city of Montreal more powers to tax its residents, and the suburbs a perceived break of $20 million to $25 million on their contribution to the Montreal agglomeration budget for island-wide services.
The city of Montreal receives $25 million annually from the Quebec government to make up for the reduction in the suburbs’ contribution to the budget, which is applied to island-wide services like policing and public transit.
The dispute between the suburbs and the city is found in an agreement to remove about $107 million of expenditures from the budget of the Montreal island council and place them in the budgets of island municipalities.
About $20 million of additional expenses, much of it for maintenance of major roads, found their way into the budgets of the 15 suburbs.
As a result, the mayors expected the island council budget — and their contribution to it — to drop by about six per cent.
In fact, the budget shrank by less than one per cent, a move the mayors contend violates the spirit of the provincial law.
jmennie@thegazette.canwest.com
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