MONTREAL – Christmas is exactly one month away and it seems Montreal Mayor Denis Coderre is in a festive mood.
The city unveiled its 2016 fiscal budget Wednesday morning.
READ MORE: Taxes and spending up in Montreal’s 2015 budget
Residential property taxes are increasing in 2016 by an average of 1.9 per cent – that’s lower than the 2.3 per cent rate of inflation, as listed by the Conference Board of Canada.
Last year, residential property taxes increased by an average of 2.2 per cent in Montreal on a $4.89 billion budget.
In 2016, four of the 19 boroughs will see their property taxes increase above the rate of inflation:
- Plateau-Mont-Royal: 3.7 per cent
- Outremont: 3.3 per cent
- Côte-des-Neiges-NDG: 2.5 per cent
- Lachine: 2.4 per cent
For the first time, the city’s overall budget has broken the $5 billion dollar mark.
It is now almost $5.1 billion, an increase of $120 million – or 2.4 per cent.
Coderre attributed the increase to higher investments in capital work projects.
One of the tenets of the Coderre administration is to rebuild the city’s crumbling infrastructure – that’s made obvious in the budget’s spending increases.
$138.1 million will be spent on road repair in 2016, an increase of $1.7 million.
$382.5 million will be invested in repairing and rebuilding Montreal’s water network, an increase of $5.6 million.
READ MORE: Montreal spends millions on transit studies and not enough on transit: critics
There are also increases in mass transit systems, another cornerstone of Coderre’s efforts to encourage more people to use public transport.
The STM is receiving an additional $20.7 million in 2016, a 5.1 per cent increase, for a total contribution of $429.8 million.
The AMT’s budget is increasing to $64 million, an increase of $400,000.
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