MONTREAL – Boulevard René Levesque is emblematic of a dilemma that West Island mayors know all too well.
Primarily a Montreal street, it cuts through Westmount, where it’s called Dorchester, and is considered an evacuation route in case of emergency.
As a consequence, 20 per cent of its maintenance costs are borne by the demerged cities of the island.
“Proportionally speaking, the demerged suburbs pay more than their fair share for the services they use,” said political analyst Karim Boulos.
Boulos estimated that about 13 percent of the Island of Montreal accounts for about 20 per cent of its tax load, numbers that don’t always equate to value for money.
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“If you travel to Montreal on a regular basis and work in Montreal, then you kind of feel that ‘I’m taking advantage of Montreal services,'” he said.
“If you don’t, then you’re buying a ticket to a show you’ll never see.”
With several mayors taking office soon on the Island of Montreal, the future of the big city – and its relationship to the demerged suburbs – is an anticipated issue.
Nowhere is this truer than in the city of Pointe-Claire, which has an agreement in place to administrate a water treatment plant that serves tens of thousands of West Island residents in jurisdictions like Senneville, Kirkland, Beaconsfield, Baie d’Urfé and parts of St. Anne’s and Dollard-des-Ormeaux.
The agreement is usually signed on a yearly basis, but there are indicators that the plant is about to be turned back over to the big city.
Incoming Pointe-Claire Mayor Morris Trudeau is making re-signing the agreement a top priority of his first two months in office.
But his counterpart in Montreal, Denis Coderre, is keeping his cards close to the vest.
“We are part of the same team, in a way. I know there’s issue’s regarding water, regarding security and transport, so I’m open to discussing them with an open mind,” Coderre said at his first presser in City Hall.
Agglomeration taxes are a sizable chunk of a municipality’s coffers – about 50 per cent of the tax revenue that a demerged city collects.
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