Boroughs talk budget cuts, mergers

With only two days until deadline left for a Montreal-enforced $20 million cut to borough budgets due to the economic recession's effects on the city, Ile Bizard/Ste Geneviève officials are looking for where to cut while Pierrefonds/Roxboro just managed to figure it all out.

"We're cutting into the overtime," borough mayor Monique Worth told <@Ri>The Chronicle<@$P>.

She said council looked long and hard at its $30.5 million 2009 budget to find out where to cut the necessary $685,000. "We've looked at all the items we had on the budget," she said.

Pierrefond's decision to cut back on its employee overtime hours spreads across all sectors of the town, from public works to maintenance and administration.

In administrative services, for example, Worth said council is cutting between $7,000 to $9,000.

Council will also cut about $2,000 from the library's technical services, Worth said.

She added professional services to the borough in general would be cut by about $70,000 in overtime hours.

Worth also said the borough council will have to be more careful this year in choosing which local charity fundraisers to attend. Traditionally, municipal politicians are known to attend a number of these events per year, all expensed to taxpayer money.

At its March council meeting, Pierrefonds/Roxboro approved the purchase of 10 tickets to Montreal's Conseil des Arts Grand Prix 2009 event, four tickets for a benefit performance last week, two tickets at a total cost of $400 for participation to a golf tournament at the Ile Bizard/Ste. Geneviève borough, and two tickets for Volunteer West Island's Golf Tournament.

"We won't be able to accept all invitations (from now on) unfortunately," Worth said.

As for Ile Bizard/Ste. Geneviève, borough mayor Richard Bélanger said Monday that his council has not quite decided on what to cut yet. "What I can certainly tell you is that I'm not cutting in any of the services to residents," he said.

That borough will have to cut around $277,000 from an $11.1 million budget.

Both borough mayors shot down any possibility of merging their boroughs together to form a single one. Such talk circulated Montreal media circles last week, when Cosmo Maciocia, borough mayor of Rivière des Prairies-Pointe aux Trembles and a member of Montreal's executive committee, suggested cutting down on the size of boroughs as a way to trim the city's budget. His idea was quickly repudiated by Montreal mayor Gérald Tremblay at the time.

"It doesn't happen in one morning, you don't just get up and put it in the paper," said Worth, adding Pierrefonds is doing just fine as it is now, merged with Roxboro since 2006.

"It's certainly not something that ever came up for discussion in the Montreal caucus," said Bélanger, adding he was as taken by surprise as anyone else by his colleague Maciocia's suggestion.

"We could talk about merging certain services with nearby boroughs," he added, but said Ile Bizard and Ste. Geneviève were doing just fine together for now.

Bélanger added any final decision on such matters would be made at the provincial level.

Ile Bizard/Ste. Geneviève's fate as a borough remains to be seen, as demerger activists last year led by former mayor Norman Marinacci managed to overturn the 2006 referendum results in Quebec Court. The City of Montreal is appealing the court's verdict.

Chronicle, file photo