Montreal to refund $4 million to demerged 'burbs, sort of

West Island municipalities and remaining reconstituted towns on Montreal Island will be getting money back on their share of about $4 million spent so far in paying up for arterial road debts incurred since 2006 after the agglomeration council's cancellation of a bylaw regarding the debt's calculation last week.

"Rather than face the Quebec Municipal Commission, and because the provincial government appointed someone to look at the costs, the city of Montreal decided that the quickest way around would be to cancel the original bylaw and give us our money back," said Beaconsfield Mayor Bob Benedetti, whose city will be collecting payments already made on its now-cancelled load of $429,215.

When Montreal's agglomeration council adopted its budget for 2009, reconstituted cities were in an uproar over how their share of arterial road debt was calculated. Two of them, Kirkland and Montreal West, filed complaints to the Quebec Municipal Commission, asking for a withdrawal of the debt.

"It's the principle of the thing," said Montreal West Mayor Campbell Stuart, admitting the original debt his city was slotted to pay, $14,794, is a small amount compared to others on the island.

"Montreal just came up with a number that they decided the demerged towns are just going to have to swallow," Stuart added, "rather than going into those numbers and seeing which ones actually apply to which town."

The bylaw was cancelled at an agglomeration council meeting where many reconstituted city representatives opted to keep it alive instead, since they interpreted the move by Montreal's executive committee as a way to escape an embarrassing appearance in front of the commission.

"The only way to get out of the ruling, which would have been against them, I'm sure it would have been against them, was to annul the bylaw," said Ste. Anne de Bellevue Mayor Bill Tierney.

According to Montreal's agglomeration council budget document for 2009, Ste. Anne's debt would have been $320,564, but Tierney estimated it should be closer to $100,000.

All three mayors said Montreal simply added up the total amount of work that was done, including technical, consultation and engineering services island-wide, and divided it among all 15 cities based on the amount of kilometres each city had repaved or reconstructed.

"We had very little work done and they're assessing us with very high engineering costs," said Dollard des Ormeaux Mayor Ed Janiszewski.

"I don't know if we'll be getting a fairer deal (with the new calculation)," he said, but he added he hopes that is the case.

As of Monday, the Quebec Municipal Commission had yet to close its file on the complaints sent by Kirkland and Montreal West. "I know that Montreal had to adopt a bylaw to cancel the bylaw (on calculations)," said Céline Lahaie, a notary at the commission. "We're waiting for confirmation from the city to close the file," she added.

Meanwhile, the Quebec Ministry of Municipal Affairs has appointed an independent arbiter to re-assess how much is owed by each city, assigning André Bourgeois, a former treasurer and director of finances in Laval, to the task.

Responsibility for arterial roads returned to reconstituted cities this year after they signed an agreement with Montreal last June.

Montreal claims the original debts assigned to each city were provisional. "There were a number of shares in the budget, and the only that wasn't definite was the one for arterial roads," said spokesperson Patricia Lowe.

"At the time the budget was calculated, the real shares for that work and the real debt couldn't be calculated exactly," she added.

"The city wants to keep working with the municipalities to come to an agreement," she said, and decided to cancel the bylaw as a gesture of good fate so everybody could start off with a clean slate.