Under pressure due to inflation estimated at 5.6% for a second consecutive year, the City of Quebec is tightening its belt to propose “a moderate increase in municipal taxes” which represents, despite everything, the steepest increase since 20 years. Residential owners will see their tax bill increase by 3.9% in 2024; traders and industrialists will pay more with an increase of 4.7%.
The budget presented Wednesday provides for expenditures totaling $1.9 billion, an increase of $132 million compared to the previous year. A sign that inflation is hurting public coffers: just maintaining existing services requires an additional contribution of $118.1 million from the City.
“It’s unheard of since 1991 that inflation, for two consecutive years, reached 11.2%,” explained the City’s Director General, Luc Monty. We are being hit hard in all our purchases of goods and services. »
The bill to maintain services in place includes various “additions to citizens” which total $22.5 million. In a context where Quebec is grappling with an increase in crime, the lion’s share goes to urban security and support for services provided, two budget items which swell by 4.2 million and 6.7 million dollars in the 2024 budget.
The City generalizes the tax increase to 3% for the entire population, but adds an adjustment to the “pricing relating to water and residual materials” to the increase. For residential owners, this adjustment adds 1% to the bill. For merchants and industrialists, this adjustment amounts to 1.7% — an increase that non-residential owners billed by volume will be able to moderate by reducing their water consumption or their waste production.
The City is reducing the tax relating to the debts of former cities by 0.1%, which reduces the increase by the same amount for residential owners. For an average single-family home, the 3.9% increase expected in 2024 represents an average increase of $120, to total $3,182.
Mayor Bruno Marchand qualified the increase, the largest since the municipal mergers of 2002. “Eleven years out of fourteen between 2007 and 2021, the City charged a tax increase higher than annual inflation. Today, it is at the bottom of inflation. »
New eco-fiscal measures
Despite the economic pressure exerted by inflation, rising interest rates and wages and the disruption of supply chains, the City is maintaining the pace and adding $30 million to the envelope reserved for adaptation to climate change, already filled with $15 million in 2023. The administration’s ambition is to have a coffer of $300 million by 2028.
“If we want to prepare for the future, we must have the resources to adapt,” insisted the mayor. The 2024 budget provides for several eco-fiscal measures, including a tax on large parking lots which provides, in the city center, for a levy of $2.75 for each m2 of impermeable surface beyond the first 30 parking spaces. This measure, the City predicts, will add $1.7 million to its coffers. The cost of the parking sticker for the second vehicle from the same address will also increase from $150 to $225.
“People were led to believe that a parking space costs the City nothing. Each space costs $500. To be fair to those who do not need a sticker, we need to get closer to what it really costs. There are costs associated with having unused parking lots on the City and water management. »
“It’s a signal. These are not revenue collection measures, added the director general. It is mainly to influence behavior. »
The 4.7% increase imposed on the non-residential sector totals an average of $4,600 for a building worth two million. “It is a gesture that we are taking which is based on the user-pays. Non-residential, in the vast majority of cases, has power over its tax increase,” explained Mayor Bruno Marchand.
The measure aims to encourage the reduction of consumption in a context where “the average company consumes 1,800 m3 of water and emits 27 tonnes of waste per year,” underlined the mayor. An owner who reduces his water consumption by 27% and his production of residual materials by 7%, for example, would limit his increase to 3.9%.
The tax increases and the adjustment relating to the consumption of water and residual materials make it possible to add $57.7 million to the City’s coffers. To balance its budget, the City reduced its lifestyle to save $23.8 million.
The 2024 budget provides for savings in all administrative units: three million in the maintenance of traffic routes, including snow removal; $487,000 in reductions in travel and office supplies; 1.3 million dollars in saving energy consumption. Payroll control represents the largest source of savings, at $8 million.
This “optimization of administrative management” doubles the savings already made in 2022, underlined Luc Monty.
The City is pleased to reduce the weight of its debt on its finances despite the difficult economic context. The latter will decrease by $5.1 million in 2024, a reduction which will reduce the debt burden in relation to operating revenues from 89.1%, in 2023, to 86.9% in 2024.