Ensemble Montréal raises alarm: Plante administration’s borough budget cuts to impact local services

At a press conference Wednesday morning, the mayors of Ensemble Montréal boroughs denounced upcoming cuts to borough budgets, which will directly affect essential local services. The Plante administration has decided to slash central transfers to the boroughs while also imposing significant additional costs related to collective agreement renewals. To make up for the shortfall, boroughs will be forced to either significantly increase local taxes or reduce services to citizens, such as hours at sports and cultural facilities.

“Despite inflation, outdated infrastructures, rising compensation costs, and a growing payroll, Projet Montréal is applying a one-size-fits-all solution: cuts across the board in every borough. The 19 boroughs will need to perform fiscal acrobatics just to maintain services,” said Christine Black, borough mayor of Montréal-Nord.

The Official Opposition insists that the Plante administration should first re-examine its own spending before dipping into the boroughs’ budgets. Since coming to power, the central city’s workforce has grown by 2,115 person-years, compared with an increase of just 692 person-years for the boroughs. Over the same period, central services spending has risen by 41%, compared with 24% for the boroughs. 

“These cuts are not designed to improve services for the central city but are meant to finance the Plante administration’s excessive spending. The boroughs cannot bear the burden of these decisions. We provide essential local services, and we have already done our part,” added Laurent Desbois, mayor of Outremont and vice-chairman of the Commission sur les finances et l’administration.

The central transfers should also be increased to cover additional costs arising from the new collective agreements and that they be indexed annually to inflation, with a minimum increase of 2%.

For the past two years, Ensemble Montréal has been sounding the alarm about the underfunding of boroughs, which are increasingly forced to dip into their reserves to balance their budgets, with significant repercussions for the population.