The assessment of the first 100 days of Valérie Plante’s second term at the head of Montreal seems to have been thinned by the pandemic, which gave the opportunity to her administration to “buy time” to materialize its electoral promises, note the experts consulted. through The duty. However, the mayor has found herself in the hot seat a few times in recent months, while the challenges ahead for her administration are numerous.
“Almost intuitively, I would give it 8 out of 10,” said Rémy Trudel, visiting professor at the National School of Public Administration, when asked about the mark he would give to Ms.me Plante for the first 100 days of his new mandate at the head of the metropolis. The expert mentions in particular a “much better hold on the municipal council and the management of the City” by the re-elected mayor, who had lost several members of her party at the end of her first term at the head of the metropolis.
Valérie Plante also avoided this time the scandal that marked the start of her first term by respecting her commitment to limit the increase in the property tax imposed on citizens to an average of 2% in her 2022 budget, which was much better. received than that of 2018.
“I found that very positive and that it repaired an error of the first 100 days of the previous election,” underlines Danielle Pilette, professor and specialist in municipal management at the University of Quebec in Montreal (UQAM).
In terms of housing, the City intends to double the number of households eligible for its residential acquisition support program by revising upwards on February 16 the amounts eligible for it, in the context of soaring prices. in the Montreal real estate market. Mme Plante has also reached out to private developers, on whom it is counting in part to achieve its objective of allowing 60,000 affordable housing units to emerge in the metropolis in the coming years. A new regulation on the right of first refusal will also be presented next Monday at the municipal council meeting to facilitate the purchase of land and buildings as part of this project, learned The duty.
“I think his determination to want to make affordable housing a reality, that’s the good thing” by Mme Plante, since his re-election on November 7, believes Mr. Trudel.
This second victory in a row also gives him “free rein” to enforce the City’s By-law for a mixed metropolis on the inclusion of social and affordable housing in real estate projects, even if this “does not necessarily consensus,” analyzes Jean-Philippe Meloche, professor at the School of Urban Planning and Landscape Architecture at the University of Montreal.
Crisis management
Many commitments made by the mayor of Montreal in anticipation of the first 100 days of her re-election, however, are slow to materialize. This is particularly the case of the rent register promised at the scale of the metropolis, the new “Downtown Strategy” and the promised tax on foreign real estate investments.
However, voters will not hold it against the mayor for the delays caused in the realization of some of her promises, in the context of the pandemic which has been exacerbated in recent months by the Omicron variant, believe the experts polled by The duty.
“The pandemic has allowed him to gain time to make his mark,” summarizes Bernard Motulsky, professor in the Department of Social and Public Communication at UQAM.
The biting cold in January and the multiplication of positive COVID-19 cases among homeless people also gave Valérie Plante’s administration a hard time, which notably mobilized a hotel in the center of city, then a soccer stadium to house homeless people with the virus.
“The stadium was the oxygen the city needed,” says Old Brewery Mission president and CEO James Hughes, who believes the city government has “really done [des efforts] regarding the intense stakes in homelessness in December and January”.
Obstacles
The start of this new mandate for Mr.me Plante, however, did not go smoothly. After promising a net addition of 250 police officers to the ranks of the Service de police de la Ville de Montréal (SPVM) by the end of 2022, she quickly had to agree that this addition will in fact take into account many retirements. . The actual addition by the end of the year should thus amount to about sixty new police officers, according to the director of the SPVM, Sylvain Caron.
The REM de l’Est also caused headaches for the mayor, because of the numerous criticisms that this project raised, both from residents of the sectors concerned and from the Regional Metropolitan Transport Authority. In this context, “M.me Plante had no choice but to ask for modifications “to this electric train project, believes Mr.me Pilette.
“To stand up to the CAQ government, in today’s Quebec, there are few politicians who are capable of doing it. So, I think that his electoral victory allows him today to stand up in front of Quebec and say: “If it is not good for Montreal, I do not support it”, adds Mr. Meloche, on the subject of the Mayor of Montreal.
As for the economic recovery of the city center, it has been overshadowed in recent months by the return of several health restrictions, which the Legault government is now working to lift. “I have the impression that it is not the 0 to 100 days that will have to be analyzed, but the 100 to 200 days”, in the context of the return of workers to office towers, estimates Michel Leblanc, president and CEO of the Board of Trade of Metropolitan Montreal.
“The great challenge for the municipal administration will be to be able to put in place all the necessary measures to encourage the return of people to public transport and the return of economic activities to the city center,” also analyzes Ms. Meloche.
With Jeanne Corriveau