City budget: taxes up 2%
The city budget for 2022 is out, and involves an average 2% tax hike. There will be more money for the homeless, for bike paths, for public transit – but the biggest boost will be for the SPVM.
STM services are going to be cut, -3.5% for the bus, -2% for the metro, to save money. Usage is undeniably down.
Of course Arif Salem is not happy – but then why would they be? It’s just more empty posturing from Ensemble.
DeWolf 17:04 on 2021-12-22 Permalink
Ensemble’s position is that they are very upset the city has no money, and they’re also very upset the city is not spending more to support everyone during the fifth wave.
¯\_(ツ)_/¯
ant6n 18:28 on 2021-12-22 Permalink
They’re probably also upset about high taxes.
steph 18:58 on 2021-12-22 Permalink
All year we’ve been hearing about property valies going up ~10% in value. Should’t property taxes follow these higher evaluations?
Ian 19:44 on 2021-12-22 Permalink
Not unless you want everyone’s rent going up 10%.
steph 20:08 on 2021-12-22 Permalink
It’s not a question of “wanting”, but don’t property assessors explicitly do this sort of thing? I assumed they didn’t change the tax rate, they just jacked up home values while innocently smiling “we’re not increasing taxes”. This is how my grandmother ona fixed income got pushed out of her homes, There’s nothing glorious about the system.
ant6n 20:25 on 2021-12-22 Permalink
Can’t elderly ppl use a home equity line of credit to pay the higher real estate taxes? Like, when one dies, does it matter if the bank owns 20% of the house at that point?
Tim 21:29 on 2021-12-22 Permalink
Montreal uses an averaging calculation over a total of 3 years to determine the value of a property when it is calculating taxes. In the years that I have been paying property taxes, it has appeared to smooth things out over time.
It seems like seniors in Montreal cannot defer property taxes (which they can do in some places like Vancouver) but there is a grant in place to offset property tax increases if the family income is $53,300 or less (https://www.revenuquebec.ca/en/citizens/tax-credits/grant-for-seniors-to-offset-a-municipal-tax-increase/).
Property taxes appear to be about 1% of a home’s assessed value. A HELOC could easily be arranged to cover these taxes and it would take almost 20 years of borrowing to get to the 20% example from @ant6n.
Affluent seniors who own their own houses have a wide array of options to choose from. And if Valerie Plante follows through on her election promise, they’ll be able to ride the metro for free for the rest of their lives.
Jeff 21:52 on 2021-12-22 Permalink
One time I called the police to tell them about a native canadian woman I thought was being trafficked, and nobody would hear it. Shouldn’t we be exploring alternatives to police, instead of raising taxes to pay even more for their services?
SMD 00:03 on 2021-12-23 Permalink
Mayor Plante announced during the campaign that she would freeze the tax increases due to rising property values for seniors on fixed income, and only have them pay the cumulative value when their house was sold. It will be interesting to follow this promise and see if she follows through on it.
ant6n 17:06 on 2021-12-23 Permalink
That would mean the city giving the HELOC instead of the bank.