Residents of Montreal are being warned to brace for a noticeable increase in their upcoming tax bills. Numerous boroughs are pushing up local taxes, laying the blame squarely on the encroaching menace of inflation and rising contract prices. Many borough mayors have also alarmingly hinted that these tax hikes may be far from over.
Drowned in the escalating costs of essential services like snow clearing, road painting, and pothole repairs, borough mayors argue that the spending bracket is necessarily expanding to keep pace. “For street marking alone, executed by the City of Montreal, we are being levied $143,000,” disclosed Luis Miranda, the Mayor of Anjou.
Of the 11 boroughs that have solidified their budgets, average local taxes reveal a significant upward trend of 9.3 per cent. The percentage rise, however, oscillates from borough to borough. Downtown Montreal residents, where Valerie Plante proudly adorns the title of mayor, will experience a relatively softer blow with a tax increase of only 5 per cent. In stark contrast, the most substantial climb of 15.3 per cent is scheduled for Anjou’s unfortunate denizens.
While boroughs lobby the city with pleas for financial replenishment, Mayor Plante maintains that Montreal is grappling with escalating demands from Quebec and Ottawa, but without the cushion of additional fiscal backing.
Mayor Plante emphasized the gravity of Montreal’s new responsibilities, among which are pressing issues like handling homelessness, the opioid crisis, mental health challenges, and a burgeoning housing crisis, all unfortunately without prospective financial assistance.
The mayor also clarified that it is the boroughs, not her, to make the hard choices — whether to hike taxes and delineate the areas where funds will be redirected. The tax increase in Ville-Marie, for instance, is allocated to bolster the number of inspectors, primarily targeting older buildings to circumvent the chances of tragedies akin to the catastrophic fire in Old Montreal last spring.
In a stark criticism, Alan DeSousa, the Saint-Laurent borough mayor and a member of the Ensemble Montreal opposition party, suggested that the least the city can do is keep borough payments consistent with inflation. Many residents have expressed their concerns about what they perceive to be reckless spending from Montreal’s end.
Mayor Miranda from Anjou echoed these sentiments, highlighting the importance of reevaluating measures to cut back on expenses as the burden is invariably borne by the citizens.
While borough taxes constitute a minor fraction of a resident’s cumulative bill, Montreal’s budget due in November is holding up a red flag. Observers are predicting that the local tax hike could be just a foretaste of the fiscal challenges looming around the corner.
