In its 2024 budget, which will be tabled on November 15, the City of Montreal will not increase municipal taxes beyond inflation, promised the president of the executive committee, Dominique Ollivier.
“The last inflation numbers I saw from Statistics Canada were 5.2% upwards. I can guarantee Montrealers that we are not going there,” she assured, on the sidelines of a press conference on Friday.
Last year, tax bills increased by 4.1% on average, recalled Mr.me Oliver. The increases were 2% and 0% during the previous two years — a freeze was decreed the first year of the pandemic.
However, inflation grew much more during this period, she noted. “We cannot absorb the full shock of inflation, because we will fall into imbalance,” warned the City’s big money manager.
Two days ago, Mayor Valérie Plante refused to commit to respecting her electoral promise not to increase municipal taxes more than inflation, at a time when several districts of the City were announcing significant increases, up to 13%, of the local portion of the tax bill.
Dominique Ollivier maintains that municipal services are currently reviewing their activities to see where they can “tighten their belts” to avoid excessively steep tax increases, while offering the “best possible services”.
“We do a review of the City’s activities, where we take each service, borough by borough,” she said. We are turning over all the stones. »
“We have at heart the ability to pay and the interests of the population, but there are realities from which we cannot escape,” she added, stressing that the value of snow removal contracts has doubled and that snow removal garbage also costs a lot more, for example.