Plante ‘proud’ of budget to be unveiled Thursday

This time it’s our budget, my budget, and I’m very proud of it. MONTREAL MAYOR VALéRIE PLANTE

The municipal opposition is calling on the Valérie Plante administration to limit tax increases to one per cent in its 2019 budget, to be unveiled Thursday. “Montrealers especially do not want a repeat of last year’s fiasco, when the administration raised taxes by 3.3 per cent, breaking its promise not to raise them beyond the level of inflation,” Ensemble Montréal leader Lionel Perez said at a news conference on Wednesday. Plante has promised that, unlike last year, she won’t break her vow not to raise taxes beyond the inflation rate. On Monday, she said last year’s budget was a “transition budget” based on the situation she inherited from the previous administration. “This time it’s our budget, my budget, and I’m very proud of it,” she said. The national inflation rate was 2.2 per cent in September and in Greater Montreal the rate was 1.8 per cent. The Conference Board of Canada is projecting the inflation rate in 2019 will be 1.72 per cent in Greater Montreal and 2.1 per cent in Canada, said Yvonne Squires, supervisor of corporate communications at the independent thinktank. The city will also unveil its capital works program for 2019-21, which outlines major projects for the next three years, including roadwork, water mains, sewers, parks, bike paths and social housing. Opposition finance critic Alan DeSousa said that if the city limits tax increases to one per cent, the increase for 2018 and 2019 would be “2.15 per cent over two years, which would be a little more acceptable to taxpayers.” De Sousa, the mayor of St-Laurent borough, said that would only be possible if the city reins in spending, in particular by keeping a lid on hiring. “We cannot afford to go back five years, when the total remuneration (for municipal employees) represented nearly 52 per cent of the municipal budget and the administration had practically no room for manoeuvre,” he said. Plante said last January that passing an unpopular tax hike is the last thing any new city administration wants to do, but that she had no choice after discovering a $358-million budgetary shortfall soon after taking power. The 3.3 per cent tax increase — which included a 1.1 per cent rise in the water tax — was necessary so the city could upgrade the city’s leaky water system, she said at the start of the year, when the city adopted a $5.4-billion budget for 2018. The last budget also sparked anger among suburban municipalities on the island that were taken by surprise by the increase and forced to adjust their budgets by digging into their emergency funds and cutting spending.