This was explained Thursday by the president of the executive committee of the City of Montreal, Benoit Dorais, on the sidelines of a press conference concerning a federal-provincial investment in water infrastructure.
Aware of the fact that the Legault government is showing little openness to its request to draw up a deficit budget for 2021, Mr. Dorais has been realistic about the alternatives that are presented to him.
Raise taxes beyond inflation? The question is among the options offered to Montrealers these days. Gold, I would be very surprised if, in the pre-budget consultations, people choose this option
, dropped Mr. Dorais. On the contrary, people told us that we should review certain expenses
, he said.
Quite a bit, everything is on the table, except raising taxes beyond inflation.
In the absence of sufficient financial assistance from other levels of government, the chairman of the executive committee suggests that the frequency of household waste collection could drop from once a week to twice a month, as has been done. mentioned Wednesday the new master plan for the management of residual materials of the agglomeration of Montreal.
Public security could also be involved, he said.
The City could also ask for changes in collective agreements, continued Mr. Dorais. Several municipal employees already working telework, the Municipality could take the opportunity to get rid of expensive leases and repatriate certain services within its own building stock, he illustrated.
COVID-19 has hurt the finances of the City of Montreal, which has already carried out cuts of $ 123 million in April. At the current rate, losses from the pandemic could approach 300 million, insinuated Mr. Dorais on Thursday.
Laforest blows hot and cold
A few minutes earlier, Minister of Municipal Affairs Andrée Laforest, who was attending the same conference as Mr. Dorais, had half-heartedly acknowledged that his government was not considering amending the law to allow municipalities to run deficits.
We do not have the right to adopt deficit budgets; that is in the law, and then we cannot adopt deficit budgets
, she repeated. However, there are municipalities that may be running deficits.
To come to the aid of cities in difficulty, his government has instead undertaken to reimburse certain expenses related, for example, to day camps, or to compensate for the drop in revenues of public transport companies. To her only, the ARTM anticipates a shortfall of nearly $ 870 million over three years.
Because we don’t want to change the law completely, but at the same time we understand that there has been a lot of revenue loss in the municipalities
, declared Minister Laforest, who had already indicated the day before, during the study of the budget appropriations, that her government born [voulait] not that the municipalities run a deficit
.
