How to reduce taxes for all Montreal residents

Once more Montrealers are being hit by excessive tax increases and it is even worse for the suburbs whose residents will pay 38% of the Agglomeration tax increases even though they make up only 12% of the island’s population. Yet there is a simple way to reduce all residents’ taxes, eliminate unnecessary expenses and improve democracy.

In May, 2006, as a newly elected Mayor, I started the boycott of the Agglomeration Council. It had become apparent that Montreal was taking full advantage of the unchecked power that they had over the suburbs. Even though the suburbs paid about 20% of the costs of the Agglomeration services, we got back much less than our fair share. For example, only 2% of the money paid for arterial roads went to the suburbs while 98% was spent in Montreal boroughs. In May of 2006, Baie D’Urfe’s Mayor, Maria Tutino, joined me in leaving the Agglomeration Council. Then every month more and more Mayors joined us until by December none were left attending the Agglomeration Council meetings. Almost immediately the Quebec government called us to a meeting to discuss our grievances.

This triggered 18 months of negotiations between Montreal, Quebec and the suburban mayors. In June of 2008 we reached a deal that was much fairer to us and there was an understanding that there would be further discussions on resolving the remaining issues.

Sadly, there were no significant additional discussions and while the situation today is much better than in 2006, it is far from fair or acceptable. Montreal totally controls the Agglomeration Council. If a single person from Montreal attends an Agglomeration meeting, he/she gets 87% of the votes and whoever attends from the suburbs gets 13% of the vote. Not surprisingly, there has never been a decision favoring the suburbs. So, you may ask why do we need an Agglomeration Council? We don’t.

Of course, we will still need island-wide services and someone will have to pay but there are fairer alternatives than through Agglomeration taxes. Here are some examples:

Police – each city should pay based on their potential use of the service. This could be based on population or number of personnel assigned to a territory with the costs of island-wide squads spread equally over all the cities.

Fire – again it should be based on population.

Waste management – this could be based on the tonnage of waste collected. That would lead to less waste (and more composting, recycling, and reusing). That would be good for the environment.

Water – this is billed based on consumption now but central sewer lines and central water main costs are based on property taxes. All should be based on consumption and, again, this would be environmentally friendly.

Public transit – Quebec pays part of the cost and users cover part but the rest, which is currently paid for by municipalities, should be based on the amount and level of services in each city.