Mayor Valérie Plante and city staff presented Montreal's budget on Wednesday at the new Centre des mémoires montréalaises.
Plante says the 2024 budget is a "responsible" plan to account for inflation without decreasing city services. The $6.99-billion price tag is up around 3.6 per cent from last year.
The biggest change this year is a larger than normal property tax hike. Residential buildings' taxes are going up by an average of 4.9 per cent. For non-residential buildings, whose tax rates have been separated since 2019, that figure is 4.6 per cent.
But it's not too long ago that property valuations saw a steep increase on the island, going up by roughly a third between 2022 and 2023. Taken together, these measures will be felt by most Montrealers — since landlords typically pass on tax increases to tenants too.
In terms of spending, public transit is seeing the biggest bump. The city is investing $48.4 million extra in the sector, mostly to pay for free transit fares for seniors, which launched July 1. That program is seeing a $34.3 million investment from the city, just under the $40 million predicted last year. Plante promised that funding will increase as more seniors take advantage of the program.
What wasn't included in the budget: funding to cover the over $100 million shortfall awaiting the ARTM, Montreal's regional transit authority, next year. That money remains unaccounted for after the province announced they would cover only 70 percent of the 2024 deficit.
Policing saw the second biggest spending increase, with the SPVM budget going up by $35.5 million. This further solidifies its status as Montreal's costliest service: security takes up over 18 percent of municipal spending.
City staff say much of the increase is for salary hikes, but they also want to hire 225 more cops by the end of 2024, with target areas of traffic enforcement in school zones and a larger goal of ending expensive overtime pay in the force.
For Dr. Ted Rutland, an associate professor at Concordia University studying policing in Montreal, this year's increase is a case of déjà vu.
"They increased the budget by $65 million last year in order to hire 150 more police officers. The police didn't hire 150 more police officers. They spent all their money anyway, and they went over their budget by $47 million," he told CKUT.
With a bigger hiring target and less of a budget hike, Rutland said the same will happen this year. The SPVM "go over their budget by an average of $35 million a year, every year... They're the only police force in Canada that does this."
You can hear CKUT's full interview with Rutland here:
Wednesday's press conference took place under the shadow of a recent departure: Dominique Ollivier, who this week resigned from her role as chief of Montreal's executive council over a spending scandal during her time as president of the OCPM, Montreal's body for public consultations.
Listen to the full story below: