BRENDA O’FARRELL
The 1510 West

As West Island demerged cities enter into a new year on the heels of approving their annual budgets for the coming 12 months, the growing burden of the cost of shared services controlled by the Montreal agglomeration is put in sharper focus. But this year, the accelerating pace of those costs and the seeming trend to shift a greater weight of the financial burden on to the suburbs is hitting a breaking point.

“Enough is enough,” is the message being levelled by the Association of Suburban Municipalities, a coalition that represents the 15 demerged cities on the island of Montreal, including eight West Island municipalities.

“This injustice is a true abuse of power, and in the name of fairness and respect for all taxpayers, it must absolutely stop,” said Beny Masella, president of the association and mayor of Montreal West, in a recent statement. “We call for an urgent and genuinely effective response from the city of Montreal to address this blatant fiscal injustice for our citizens.”

According to the association, residents of demerged cities now pay about 65 per cent more per capita for services managed by the agglomeration than citizens of the city of Montreal. And in many cases, they receive what is described as “significantly fewer” of those services, including police presence and public transportation.

In the West Island, this has translated into taxpayers in almost all demerged cities forking over about 46 to 62 cents of every tax dollar they will pay in 2024 to the Montreal agglomeration.

See COSTS, Page 2.

Also see Editorial, Page 6.

COSTS: Kirkland mayor calling for end to agglo

From Page 1

And in every demerged city – from Senneville to Dorval – the amount being charged to taxpayers has increased this year.

In Dorval, the city will be paying $84.3 million for agglomeration services this year. That is $4 million more than the municipality was billed in 2023.

In Pointe Claire, the agglomeration charges will reach $85 million – about $5 million more than last year.

In Kirkland, the agglomeration bill this year has hit $38 million. It now represents more than half – 52 per cent – of the municipality’s annual budget.

While the cost of services are going up across the island, the proportion of the growing burden is shifting, the Association of Suburban Municipalities says. This means the rate of increase assessed taxpayers in the suburbs is increasing more compared with taxpayers who live in the city of Montreal.

More specifically, the association claims that between 2019 and 2023, the inequity continued to grow, with demerged towns seeing a 28.2-per-cent increase in costs, while Montreal saw its burden rise only 19.3 per cent.

The situation has pushed Kirkland Mayor Michel Gibson to call for the abolition of the agglomeration.

“The agglomeration is something that should be eliminated completely and we should look at a more democratic way of being able to share expenses,” Gibson said in an interview with The 1510 West.

In Beaconsfield, municipal officials continues to pursue a court action initiated against the agglomeration in 2019.

Beaconsfield Mayor Georges Bourelle has called the agglomeration “a joke.” And does not hide his disdain for its practices of shifting the cost burden onto the suburbs.

This year, more than half of Beaconsfield’s $59.9-million budget – $30.6 million – will be handed over to the agglo.

In a report by the Association of Suburban Municipalities submitted to Commission on Finances and Administration of the City of Montreal in December, the demerged cities claim that despite efforts to address the growing disparity in the assessment of costs, substantial “disagreement persists” between affiliated municipalities and the city of Montreal regarding the fair sharing of agglomeration expenses.

The association even goes as far as to accuse the city of Montreal of making “no concrete effort to resolve this situation and evidently prefers to continue benefiting financially from these fiscal inequalities.”

“This is socially and morally unacceptable,” Masella stated. “We cannot accept that there are two classes of citizens on the Island of Montreal.”