Montreal City Weblog

Kate 18:13 on 2025-04-24 Permalink Reply  

• Ian 19:25 on 2025-04-24 Permalink

  Blaming collective agreements, metro costs, and a lack of provincial funding is always the go-to but it seems a bit weak…

  For context, this artcile from 2020:
  “Several questions have gone unanswered. The City informed us that it would be running a deficit of at least $105 million for the 2020 fiscal year. However, to date, it is refusing to cover this shortfall with the $251 million surplus. It’s inconceivable and unacceptable. It has some explaining to do,” said Stéphan Meloche, the administrator of the Syndicat des cols bleus regroupés de Montréal (CUPE 301).

  How did we go from a 251 million surplus to a 215 million deficit in 5 years if not in part due to mismanagement? is this the whoel picture or liek 2020 a question of one pot not counted against another? Some transparency would be nice before making these big statements. Maybe we could cut the police budget (821 million 2024).

• PatrickC 09:27 on 2025-04-25 Permalink

  Well, there was Covid, too (the article is dated April 28, 2020)…

• Kate 09:43 on 2025-04-25 Permalink

  Ian, everything has become more expensive since 2020. I’m surprised the budget hole is as modest as $215 million, actually.

  And although I’d love to see some of the police budget reduced, we both know this would result in immediate and loud claims that Projet doesn’t care about law and order.

• Ephraim 10:02 on 2025-04-25 Permalink

  There are just so many ways to make up for some of the shortfall. The city always goes to the same well, rather than look at other ways of bringing in funding.

  Here are a few ideas:

  Time -based permits: The longer the time you request on the permit, the higher the cost. You want a permit that uses the sidewalk for 30m for 30 days, it’s X on day 1, But on day two it’s X+10%, for example. So if it was $100 on day one, day two is $110… the longer you are on public property, the longer it will take.

  Permit Abuse Fines: When you request a permit to use the street and you put up a no-parking sign, the sign must carry a permit number. That permit number is publicly available to be verified online. If a citizen checks and see you are violating the permit, you will be fined, double the amount of the permit. (I don’t know how many times people on my street have individually called the city to verify permits only to find that they got a permit for 100m on one side but put up their signs on BOTH sides for 200m or more.)

  Process savings: Pay cities employees a bonus of 10% up to 25% of the savings to the city, in the first year if they can suggest a process that will increase the speed and costs of the city. They get paid, the city gets the work done faster and cheaper.

  No Free Parking: Put a cost to every single parking spot in the city into the budget, including all the spaces used by the STM, the police, and the fire department. Every damn spot. Add the cost of those parking spaces to the budget of those departments, so that on year 0, there is no change in the overall budgets. If the space is worth $150, your budget gets a bonus of $150, but a bill of $150. But now, you have a value to each spot and if you want to ask for an extra spot, you know you need budget approval. And if you can audit your spots and not use as many, you can therefore keep the money and the city can put the spot back into the usage of citizens… which increase spots available for resident permits and/or parking meters and tickets, which would increase costs.

  Electronic parking ticketing: Have a car/truck that runs up and down the streets and processes the licence plates of cars. It can track those who have tickets to pay (and send the boot people), cars that are abandoned or stolen, cars that violate the timed zones and finally print the tickets. It won’t allow the city employee to give preferential treatment to construction workers, for example. — Important — There is a button for the employee to hit to mark cars that are temporarily parked for loading/unloading, or have a handicapped placard etc. This will also keep people from being ticketed who do have a resident permit as it can access the database. Among the advantages, the city can track licence plate to handicapped placard and by looking at it, it may be able to adjust parking if the handicapped space is used all the time… or change to have loading/unloading zones, etc, from the data collected.

• Ian 12:06 on 2025-04-25 Permalink

  “(SPVM) received a $63 million budget increase for 2023, after overspending their budget by $50 million in 2022.” link

  Worth noting, the police budget was already $679M in 2021 – which of course they went over, by about 30 million.

  I can imagine where some of this budget shortfall might be coming from.

  That said, yes, I realize everything is more expensive than in 2020… but have bookkeeping methods changed, too? Not counting the surplus against the deficit in 2020 as an excuse to not increase wages for city workers was a misdirection, an accounting shell game. Projet was in charge then, too. I’d like to see a fuller picture, I don’t trust these simple (or more appropriately, simplified) statements – nor should anyone. Fool me once, et cetera.

• Kevin 15:33 on 2025-04-25 Permalink

  Ephraim
  I just went through the process for a parking permit this week.

  First off, the process is clear as mud and involves tracing a map on a city website about how much space you need, possibly including sidewalks. (There is no “I need a parking space” option.)
  Second, once the borough has issued the permit, a person needs to hire a third party to get and set up the no-parking-you-will-be-towed signs.
  Third, the permit holder must fill out a form and email the city 12-14 hours before the permit is in effect, and do this every single day.
  Somewhere in this process you get a permit number that you have to print up and stick on the vehicle’s dashboard so you don’t get towed.

  If your job finishes early, you need to email the city to say the job is done. The city tells you the cost upfront but only bills after the fact in case of changes.

  There are way too many places for errors to creep in, too many unnecessary steps, and too many people and companies involved.

• Ephraim 15:38 on 2025-04-25 Permalink

  Kevin – Which is why it needs to be simplified but also searchable. They frequently film on my street. They frequently violate the permits. They frequently have the residents calling the city to complain because they take so much of the permit parking area. Which is why it needs to be an open database and the city needs to get a better system in gear. You are also supposed to use certain signs….

  And we have all seen people put up chairs or signs trying to reserve spaces on the street… only to have them removed, because without a permit… they mean nothing.

• Kate 16:09 on 2025-04-25 Permalink

  The only chairs I ever see reserving space are when people are moving house, which is a rare enough occurrence that it seems to be generally agreed that it’s a reasonable exception. Do you see people doing it for other reasons, Ephraim?

• Ephraim 17:07 on 2025-04-25 Permalink

  @Kate – Yeah, mostly students who don’t realize we don’t do that in Montreal… like trying to reserve a parking space in the snow.

• CE 18:53 on 2025-04-25 Permalink

  People definitely do the chair thing for moving and it’s very much respected. I’ve probably done it 15 times in my life (including just the other week when I needed a spot to make a large delivery).

• Kevin 23:28 on 2025-04-25 Permalink

  When I was finding third parties to put up signs there were FOUR options: with and without permit. Putting up the signs themselves or DIY. SO MUCH WASTED EFFORT.
  But the people putting up signs have to rely on trust because they don’t have access to the permits, only the permit number. It’s so stupid, so quebecois. Le sigh.

• Ian 11:41 on 2025-04-26 Permalink

  You can’t solve rules being poorly enforced by adding another layer of rules.

  That said, it is clear that even borough-level coordination of permits is mostly non-existant.

  I still say trimming the cop budget to finance other essential services is an easy win and important first step in getting the grotesquely inflated city budget in order.

  Parking tickets are already almist double what they were 5 years ago, for example – there’s only so many ways for the city to raise new money.