Demerger referendum could come next spring
June 26, 2003 By Martin C. Barry
Pierre Bourque knows at last how it feels to lose a city, says Westmount
Borough President Karin Marks.
Last week, as she was watching the news on the day the Liberal government
tabled Bill 9 paving the way to municipal demergers, the former Montreal
mayor, whose vision of Œone island, one city¹ helped
instigate the PQ into passing Bill 170, the mergers legislation, was
devastated.
³Maybe he understands a little better now how we all felt,² Marks said this
week, comparing the loss experienced by the citizens of the City of
Westmount to the one Bourque now faces with the impending demise of the
megacity.
³He was on the brink of tears,² she said. ³He felt that his dream of this
city was being destroyed. That¹s exactly how we felt when they came and took
away our city. And this city¹s only been in existence for 16 months. Ours
had been existence for 127 years.²
According to the Liberal government¹s draft legislation, taxpayers in
demerged municipalities would have to make equalization payments to poorer
municipalities‹a principle Finance Minister Jean-Marc Fournier refers to as
³fiscal equity.²
After demerger, 16 basic services‹including police, fire protection, water,
public transit and security, garbage collection, roads and low-cost
housing‹would remain with the megacity. A demerged Westmount would be
contributing $5.6 million more for equalization‹an additional $993 on a $6,000 property tax bill.
aBill 9 also contains provisions for the holding of demerger referendums
which could take place as early as next spring. The government will
determine the wording of the question, announcing it 10 days before a
register would be opened for a five-day period to collect the signatures of
those requesting the referendum. The government would then conduct studies
of the cost of demerger for each affected municipality and publish them
before the referendum.
In each former municipality, 10 per cent of eligible voters would have to
sign the register for a referendum to be held. Demerger supporters would
need 51 per cent or more of the votes tOWN The government backed down on
an earlier proposal which would have required 50 per cent of citizens to
vote if the referendum was to be considered valid.
Overall, Marks expressed satisfaction with the legislation. ³We were very
happy about the fact that they were not requiring 50 per cent participation,
which would have been quite undemocratic,² she said. However, she added,
there are still concerns about areas in the law ³to be negotiated,² which
include fire and water services.
Concerning the fiscal equalization, Marks dismissed a suggestion that the
cost of demerger may be escalating. ³We paid $5 million beyond the cost of
our services to the Centre City last year‹so it¹s not a great difference
from what we were paying before,² she said.
³I think that in the end, it¹s not a question that it will necessarily be
cheaper I¹m not sure it will. And when we get to the question of looking at
what all of this will cost after the signing of a register, we¹ll do those
kinds of analyses. But I don¹t think it¹s necessarily going to be more
expensive.²
Former mayor Peter Trent said he was not surprised by the government¹s
estimated cost of equalization. The Poitras Report on demerger, which he and
other demergerists commissioned and released last March, calculated
Westmount¹s equalization payment as $4.9 million.
³A demerged Westmount will be cheaper than a merged Westmount even if we
have to pay equalization payments,² he said. ³And the actual one-time costs
of demerger, as we all know, are fairly small. The one-time cost we
estimated was $17 a head. The Minister has yet to come out with his number,
but we¹re not looking at millions of dollars.
³No Westmounter will wish to demerge for money,² he added. ³My feeling is
Westmounters primarily will wish to demerge to simply run their own show and
have a better-run and more responsive show than being part of this huge
megacity.
³However, on the financial side according to any rough calculations one
wishes to make, Westmounters ultimately will certainly not make any great
financial sacrifice in the event of demerger.
³The important thing to remember is that if we remain in the megacity we¹ll
be paying an awful lot more than that when the tax rates get so-called
harmonized,² said Trent. ³Given the fact that smaller cities cost less to
operate, and given the fact we¹d no longer have to see our tax rate go up to
that of the City of Montreal, I think on balance Westmounters are better
off... We¹d probably be paying a lot more if we stayed in the city.²
Trent conceded, however, that even if Westmount succeeds in demerging,
things will never return to the way they were before. ³We won¹t go back to
the lower taxes we had before merger,² he said. ³But the point is that being
part of the new city is going to cost us probably more than any equalization
payments.²
Links to Peter Trent
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