The City of Montreal will significantly tighten, starting next month, its spending rules for restaurants and alcohol, in particular. Discretionary executive expenses and bonuses will also be abolished.
This will make it possible to avoid certain excesses in spending such as those revealed by the Bureau of Investigation this fall.
The general director, Serge Lamontagne, made the announcement at the executive committee meeting on Wednesday morning.
Thus, from January, city executives will no longer have an envelope for “functional expenses” of several thousand dollars annually.
This money was mainly used for employee recognition or mobilization activities, such as Christmas or farewell parties, underlined Mr. Lamontagne.
These activities are not expected to disappear, since funds for them will now be “redistributed per unit according to the number of employees”. Employee committees could thus decide on their management.
The executives who obtained this now abolished envelope enjoyed great freedom. This gave rise to sometimes questionable expenses. The former president of the executive committee, Dominique Ollivier, had also justified her oyster dinner in Paris at $347 in 2016 by this discretionary fund which allowed her to recognize the “exceptional contribution” of an employee.
While she was president of the Office de consultation publique de Montréal (OCPM), Mme Ollivier had shared this meal with his former business partner, Guy Grenier, to mark his birthday. The latter had then been a collaborator at the OCPM for around two years.
Alcohol prohibited
Expenditures for meals and meetings will also be tightened.
No more exceptions for alcohol reimbursement will be permitted outside of protocol activities, announced the general director.
Last month, our Bureau of Investigation revealed that Montreal taxpayers had paid for eight bottles of wine served during a meal for Mayor Valérie Plante and eleven other guests in Vienna.
After our revelations, Mme Plante was quick to announce that the amount would be reimbursed.
In addition, any expenditure on meeting, hospitality and representation costs of more than $100 must be approved in advance, underlined the general director.
They can no longer be paid immediately with the City’s credit card and subsequently approved.
No more performance bonuses
The Director General also announced that City of Montreal executives would no longer be entitled to a performance bonus starting in 2024.
That of 2023, which will be paid to them in the spring, will therefore be their last. These bonuses represent an annual expense of approximately $7.8 million.
La Presse revealed this fall that the Plante administration had paid a double bonus to its executives this year in order to compensate them for the year 2020 when they were deprived of it.
In addition, there will no longer be a car allowance for new executives. As for those who already have one, there will be reviews of the relevance for each of them.
The slimming cure does not stop there, warned the general director. Two committees continue to look at all the directives with a view to “refining” them, Mr. Lamontagne said.
“Acceptability of expenses”
Mayor Plante did not want to make the link between the new releases in the media and the revision of the frameworks.
“We had already been reviewing budget items for several months. It’s part of the same logic,” she declared at a press conference on Wednesday.
The president of the executive committee, Luc Rabouin, however, justified these administrative adjustments by “acceptability of expenses”.
“Beyond the amount [qu’on peut économiser]it’s the acceptability of spending,” he said.
Mr. Rabouin could not quantify the potential savings for the City. “There are no small savings,” he said.
After the November budget in which Montrealers saw their residential property taxes increase by 4.9% on average, the mayor said she wanted to demonstrate that the money is spent responsibly.
“We wanted to show how important Montreal taxpayers’ money is and we want to spend it well. Today, I wanted to show Montrealers again that we are looking at every line of the budget,” she added.
The opposition, Ensemble Montréal, welcomed the end of performance bonuses for executives in a difficult financial context for the City, but judged that Valérie Plante was saying one thing and doing the opposite.
“While the mayor defended in the fall the double bonus of $6 million paid to executives, here she is today announcing that she will put an end to this bonus as of next year. I invite the administration to explain itself in the face of these contradictions,” said opposition leader Aref Salem.