Somewhere in the middle of all the talk about Omicron, the city of Montreal has presented its budget for 2022.
Watch the mayor fulfill some electoral promises, while generating frustration in the dismembered cities of the island.
“I feel like in this budget, we are acting responsibly,” Mayor Valerie Plante said while presenting the budget at a press conference on Zoom.
It is her first budget since she was re-elected in November, and the first with Dominique Ollivier at her side as the new president of the Executive Committee.
“It is coherent and it is very connected with what the citizens have expressed,” said Ollivier about the budget.
The city plans to spend $ 6.46 million in 2022, a 1.3 percent increase from 2021.
An average home tax increase of two percent is on the way, something Plante had promised.
“We are limiting the non-residential tax increase to 1.5, and we have also increased their tax relief,” he explained.
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Plante said she is very proud of the way her budget addresses the recent surge in firearm crime in Montreal.
“We have all been affected by the increase in violence that includes weapons in recent months,” he said.
Public safety accounts for 17.7 percent of spending, more than anything else.
The city has increased the police department budget by $ 45 million, bringing it to a total of $ 724 million. 103 new police officers will be hired.
The body cameras will begin rolling out gradually in 2022 with trials and pilot projects worth $ 500,000. A wider deployment is expected in 2023.
“We want to work with everyone and it starts with SPVM and community groups,” he said. Community groups will also receive new money in order to prevent violence.
There will be $ 111 million to create 12,000 new affordable and social housing units. The city has doubled the amount it will spend to address homelessness to $ 5.9 million.
Ensemble Montreal, the opposition party in the city hall, found much to criticize, with the amount of debt and reserve spending among its main complaints.
“It’s almost as if the administration is giving us a lump of coal in our Christmas stocking,” said Alan De Sousa, financial critic for Ensemble Montreal. “There is more than $ 112 million of past reserves that are used to balance this budget.”
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The separate cities are having trouble reaching the amount they will now have to pay to access city services.
“We have an average increase of 10.9 percent, and that is very frustrating,” said Beny Masella, president of the Association of Suburban Municipalities.
Masella feels that the city could have reduced the burden by spending less on personnel.
“I don’t see any effort made by the city of Montreal to try to curb some of that spending,” he said.
The city said that in the context of COVID spending, the increase is reasonable.
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