The Association of Suburban Municipalities is comprised of mayors of the 15 suburban cities in the agglomeration of Montreal. The municipalities are Baie- D'Urfé, Beaconsfield, Côte-Saint-Luc, Dollard-des-Ormeaux, Dorval, Dorval Island, Hampstead, Kirkland, Montreal East, Montreal West, Mount Royal, Pointe-Claire, Sainte-Anne-de-Bellevue, Senneville and Westmount.
Beny Masella, president of the Association of Suburban Municipalities and Mayor of Montreal West, is calling on the parties running in the October 3rd provincial elections to state their commitments to improving the financing of municipalities, establishing rules for better cost-sharing for the services of the agglomeration of Montreal, and modernizing their application, in particular through the expansion of the user-pay concept.
The Association believes that the sharing of costs for island-wide services (police, firefighters, public transit, water production and treatment, etc.) supplied by the City of Montreal should better represent the reality of the services received and paid for by each city.
"The 250,000 citizens of the metropolitan municipalities are being penalized by a major inequity. This injustice must be corrected, because taxpayers should pay according to the services they use and receive, in a fair and equitable way," says Mr. Masella, speaking on behalf of the mayors of the 15 suburban municipalities linked to the City of Montreal in the agglomeration.
"The revision of the fiscal pact with the provincial government, which has been underway for two years, must be completed. It also presents an ideal opportunity to begin a review of the current political management of the Montreal agglomeration and to give all the suburban municipalities real decision-making power and influence,"Masella continued.
The mayors of the metropolitan municipalities have been speaking out for years against the injustices imposed on their taxpayers by the current rules; "Our taxpayers are paying more than their fair share, without any real means to influence the decisions of the agglomeration of Montreal," Mr. Masella explains.
SOURCE: The Association of Suburban Municipalities
