Plante promises to hire 250 more police officers in 2022

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The leader of Projet Montréal, Valérie Plante, promised to hire 250 additional police officers by the end of 2022 if she is re-elected mayor on Sunday.

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The hires would be in addition to the annual replacement of retiring officers, which would mean a net increase in the number of police officers in Montreal. The promise comes as security concerns have come to the fore in the municipal election campaign amid an increase in shootings in the city.

The promise echoes one made in October by mayoral candidate Denis Coderre, who promised to hire 250 officers immediately if elected to make up for a decline in numbers that occurred during Plante’s tenure. Projet Montreal said it had already promised to hire more agents at the end of September when it promised to spend $ 110 million on public safety, but there were no figures on the number of agents to be hired at that time.

New hires would still be within the maximum of 4,800 police officers the city can hire at one time.

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Eighty new officers would be hired in February, Plante said, as part of a campaign announcement Tuesday outlining the party’s main goals for its first 100 days in office. They included keeping property tax increases by two percent in the first year of his tenure, improving access to affordable housing, and creating a landlord registry to counter rent increases, increase green space, and renovate downtown. Montreal.

Mayoral candidate Balarama Holness presented his Montreal Movement party’s “action plan for the housing crisis” on Tuesday. It would require that all new residential developments with eight or more units should include 30% social housing and 30% affordable housing.

Under the proposal, half of the affordable housing units would have to include two or three bedrooms, to prioritize families, and the affordable housing units would cost tenants a maximum of 30 percent of their total monthly income before taxes.

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Movement Montreal said its plan would better address affordability issues than Plante’s affordable housing initiatives because families have seen themselves excluded from the market for family-size units.

“Although Plante committed to creating 20 percent family housing units in new developments, those units were not subject to affordability standards, making them completely inaccessible to most Montréal residents,” Holness said in a release. “This plan puts the two- to three-bedroom units within our affordability guideline, ensuring that families can afford to live in the city.”

Projet Montréal also promised to take advantage of major infrastructure repairs to be carried out on the Metropolitan Expressway in 2024 to improve the area around and under the causeway that bisects the city. The party proposes, if elected, to install skate parks, outdoor gyms and other sports facilities under the overpass, to add greenery and lighting and increase wait times at traffic lights to make it safer for pedestrians and cyclists. pass under approximately a dozen intersections.

The party said it would allocate five sections in particular for improvements: the area around the Crémazie metro station; the region near CEGEP Ahuntsic and the Claude-Robillard sports center; the Papineau-Frédéric-Back Park sector; the region around the National Circus School and the St-Michel school corridor on 6th Ave.

This story will be updated.

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