No need to raise taxes, Plante says

No tax hikes required to balance budget, Projet Montréal candidate says

Valérie Plante says that if she is elected mayor of Montreal, she won’t need to raise taxes to balance the budget, since her administration can already see $35 million in unnecessary expenses the city has accrued at the “whim” of her opponent, Denis Coderre.

“The mayor’s whims have cost Montrealers a lot over the past four years; just think of the Formula E race or the tens of millions of dollars spent on the 375th,” the mayoralty candidate for Projet Montréal told reporters.

Plante did not summon media to the St-Hubert plaza on a rainy holiday Monday to unveil her party’s full fiscal plan. That is coming in a couple of weeks, she said. But she did want to denounce the city’s projected deficit as unnecessary.

Coderre announced last month that the city is heading for a $31.4 million deficit for 2017 — its first deficit since 2013 — which he said was mainly due to negotiated salary increases in the latest union contracts.

Plante said a Projet Montréal administration would cut more than $35 million from the budget, starting with $21 million in extra employees and contracts hired in connection with the city’s 375th birthday celebrations.

Next her administration would save $10 million by renegotiating the deal by which the city obtained the Formula E race and by moving the event to the Gilles-Villeneuve race track.

Plante noted that during his four-year mandate, Coderre has created at least eight new special offices, and hired 10 well-paid administrators. She said her administration would save $2 million by consolidating some of these highprofile issues under the aegis of the director general’s office.

“My opponent has a tendency, whenever he has a problem, to open a new special office,” she said, giving as examples the city’s new Resilience Office, to help face the risks and challenges of climate change, and the Newcomer Integration Office, to welcome new immigrants.

“We are not saying we are going to dismantle everything, but we will evaluate what makes sense.”

She said Coderre has spent $250,000 on private contracts to speech writers; $184,000 of that in the past year alone. She promised she would not outsource speechwriting if elected mayor.

And Plante faulted Coderre for spending more than $340,000 a year on two drivers, who are unionized city employees. She said as mayor she would continue to travel by public transit and bicycle as much as possible. She estimates at least $200,000 could be saved on overtime charges and by re-assigning the second driver.

Finally, Plante claims the city’s communications budget can be cut by at least $2 million per year.

Earlier, Coderre drew attention to his active transportation plan, which will include opening a new special office to implement the Vision Zero plan to reduce the number of fatalities or serious injuries involving road traffic. That approach requires, among other things, that every road repair or reconstruction project take into account the needs of cyclists and pedestrians.

Among the ways Team Coderre promises to increase cycling and walking rates in the city:

incorporate an “anti-dooring zone” into new and existing bike paths, to prevent cyclists being hit by car doors opening into their paths

implement the city’s first “bike highway” along the CP rail line

build elevated one-way bike paths on major arteries

implement more traffic-calming measures around schools

add electric bikes and bikes with carrying capacity to the Bixi fleet

Coderre also reacted to the recent death of Clément Ouimet, an 18-year-old cyclist hit by a car on Camillien-Houde Way, by promising to implement temporary traffic calming measures there, while a working group studies more permanent solutions to be implemented by next spring.

Meanwhile, Quebec’s chief electoral officer Pierre Reid launched an awareness campaign to encourage more Quebecers to vote in the upcoming municipal elections. The campaign uses humorous ads to ask people to imagine what things would be like if municipalities operated at half measures, since less than half of eligible voters exercise their right to vote.

Sunday, Nov. 5 is election day in 1,105 cities and towns across the province, and last time only 47 per cent of eligible Quebecers cast a vote, a turnout rate Reid called “clearly insufficient.” In Montreal, the turnout rate in 2013 was 43.2 per cent.