Coderre says he’s confident he could keep property taxes within inflation

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Taxes will rise no more than two percent next year if Denis Coderre is elected, the mayoral candidate promised on Wednesday. After that, taxes will not rise more than the level of inflation, he said.

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Coderre said the city cannot afford another four years of Projet Montréal, and said Valérie Plante’s party “spends without counting.”

“When I was elected in 2013, we inherited a financial mess; now we have to start over, ”Coderre said at a press conference at the Westin Hotel downtown, along with his election for executive committee chair Nadine Gelly and Ensemble Montreal spokesperson on financial affairs Alan DeSousa.

Coderre said the city’s finances have seen “rapid degradation” since Plante came to power, where the debt-to-income ratio is now 120 percent. Spending has risen by $ 1 billion in the past four years and the province has had to plug holes in the city’s budget to the tune of hundreds of millions of dollars, he said.

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“The city is effectively under the fiduciary administration of the provincial government,” Coderre said. “They don’t know what they are doing. We need to have the right people in the right place. “

He said he is confident in his promise to increase property taxes, because when he was mayor between 2013 and 2017, property taxes increased by an average of 1.8 percent per year.

Coderre said that as mayor he would analyze all the “dogmatic” projects launched by Projet Montréal to see which ones will remain and which ones should be canceled. Among those projects is an office to study the extension of the subway promised by Plante in the last elections, called the Pink Line.

“It costs $ 1 million and the project will not take place. (Plante) said it herself publicly, ”Coderre said.

This story will be updated.

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