Tight city budget maintains services

When planning started for the budget 11 months ago, city council and management wanted to limit local tax increases to the rate of or less than inflation.

They also wanted to develop a strategy to deal with considerable debt accumulated during the merger and increase 'pay-as-you-go' financing to reduce reliance on long-term borrowing and return to responsible financial management.

According to City officials, all three of the objectives were realized. While municipal taxes have shot up as much as 50 per cent in Westmount since the megacity mergers, this will be the first tax break in the last six years for some.

According to the budget, the Westmount portion of the tax burden for the "average" single-family dwelling for 2007 will decrease by 1.34 per cent from the year before. Total spending in the coming year will be $34.6 million — 2.4 per cent more.

"The budget reflects all known increases in operating expenses that will occur in 2007," said Councillor Guy Charette, city council's finance commissioner. "The combined effect has resulted in our respecting the budget guidelines with no decrease in services provided to Westmount residents by the city."

Mayor Karin Marks said taxes will go down for residential property owners whose evaluation increase is within the average for Westmount or below. "For people who have the average evaluation increase, which is about 36 per cent, if you have that average, then your local taxes will not go up," she said. "If your increase is higher than that, then they will."

In terms of overall 2007 taxes for the Agglomeration and Westmount combined, the effect of the adopted taxation rates of each, for the average single-family dwelling, will be $6,128 (+4.09 per cent) for the Agglomeration, $3,744 (-1.34 per cent) for Westmount, for a combined total of $9,872 (+1.96 per cent).

A summary of the budget shows that in order to achieve savings, city council allocated less for Public Security (-5.69 per cent), for water supplied by the City of Montreal (-12.5 per cent), for the library and cultural services (-4.49 per cent), and for debt and financing charges (-6.77 per cent).

The City plans to have only 216 employees on the payroll in 2007, compared to 220 last year. In addition, $1.5 million has been designated for 'pay-as-you-go' next year, compared to $1 million in 2006. The amount will be increasing by a half-million dollars every year until the fund is sufficient to pay for such ongoing expenses as maintenance of buildings and roads.

In terms of revenues, nearly $24 million will come from general property tax. Other sources of revenue will include government funding (21.94 per cent), court fines (19.1 per cent), welcome tax (15.79 per cent), recreation and library fees (13.84 per cent) and parking (4.41 per cent).

Loan bylaw regulations imposed by Quebec during the four-year forced merger with Montreal obliged Westmount to pay capital expenses through long-term borrowing. This has left the City with a $37.9 million debt, compared to $2.9 million just prior to merger in 2001. Although more than $4.7 million has been allocated in the 2007 budget for repayment, the amount is 6.5 per cent less than a year ago. The repayment schedule extends over the next 20 years.