No word on Agglom refund as budget time looms

In a 32-page report on the dispute between Montreal and the suburbs issued last June, Montreal was told it must give back $41.4 million in Agglomeration Council budget funds — a lot less than the $105 million the suburbs were claiming. Westmount and the other cities complained that the City of Montreal, which dominates the Agglomeration with its overwhelming population, compiled the island council's nearly $2 billion annual budget last January without consulting them.

However, only 20 per cent of the $41.4 million owing is actually coming back to the reconstituted cities. Montreal is supposed to get the rest. The issue resurfaced recently during a Westmount city council meeting, when a resident questioned Mayor Karin Marks about the overdue repayment.

"That's a very good question, and if you have an answer I'd like to hear it, because I haven't heard anything directly and neither have any of the other 14 cities who were involved in the appeal," she responded.

Marks said the last time the suburbs heard anything from the province was when Municipal Affairs Minister Nathalie Normandeau spoke publicly when the Noel report came out.

"We've never received a letter of confirmation; we never received any indication of how this would be compensated to our residents," she said, noting that Normandeau had mentioned the possibility that the refund could take the form of tax credits.

"But we don't know how that's going to work, when it's going to work, if it's going to work," Marks added. "And we have written to her and asked her to please confirm."

With Westmount's and the other cities' budgets due to be tabled soon, Marks agreed the refund would have a significant impact. "It's still a great deal of money and it belongs in the hands of our taxpayers and not in the wrong hands," she said.

In two detailed studies released last February, a coalition of the 15 demerged cities claimed they had identified many serious anomalies in the Agglomeration budget. As a result, they alleged taxes were at least $105 million above what they should have been. The suburbs filed appeals with the Municipal Affairs Ministry in accordance with the law.

The City of Montreal had withdrawn its budget in December 2005, in order to fulfill electoral promises to not increase the tax burden on Montrealers. Montreal subsequently did not include the suburbs in the budget preparation process.

The demerged cities claimed that the 2006 Agglomeration budget made inappropriate transfers of local City of Montreal expenses to the Agglomeration, did not respect criteria permitting the distribution of common expenses (particularly administrative costs), imposed unduly heavy Agglomeration taxation through inappropriate allocation of expenses, and imposed an overall fiscal structure that unfairly transferred tax burdens from Montreal to the suburbs.