Borough council presents CDN/NDG annual budget

By P.A. Sévigny , September 26th, 2012

Based upon the CDN/NDG borough's own press release, the residents of what is still the sixth largest city in the province of Québec will be pleased that the borough's political leadership has once again managed to balance its budget as required by the province's cities and towns act. As compared to the $71 million (and change) that defined the borough's previous (2012) budget, the central city gave the borough added another $3.5 million to this year's budget due to its much-discussed financial revision process which included more than a few corrective accounting measures along with a major CPI (consumer Price Index) adjustment.          
 While paychecks consume up to half of the borough's budget, borough expenses will take up the rest of the borough's $73,450,900 dollar budget. While such expenses include everything from fuel ($757, 100) to assorted contracts ($13,860,900), borough residents might wonder why the borough's development fund was reduced from last year's $653,800 to this year's $601,500.           
According to the borough's own press release, Mayor Applebaum wrote that he was pleased to announce that the borough's managers managed to balance the budget without resorting to any kind of special borough tax as has happened in several other boroughs.            
“Our sound management also enables us to improve services with respect to…park maintenance, funding for projects aimed at improving the quality of life, community groups as well as the implementation of our green plan,” wrote Applebaum.          
 “Maybe so,” said Projet Montréal's Peter McQueen, “…but why are we still among the poorest of the city's boroughs with one of the lowest per-capita ratios of money spent per citizen in the entire city”           
As the city councilor for what used to be known as the borough's old Décarie district, McQueen now sits on the city's finance committee where he can get to see exactly what the city is doing with the taxpayer's dollar. When compared with Montreal's Sud-Ouest borough, Lachine, or Outremont, McQueen told The Suburban that he thinks the mayor could do a lot more to bring in the dollars the borough needs to improve and repair bits and pieces of its working infrastructure. While he agrees with Applebaum about certain major issues as regards the city's total budget, he still thinks that a local politician should concentrate on live and local politics instead of spending multiple millions of dollars on yet another one of the city's so-called prestige projects.           
According to the borough's press release, borough operating costs will add up to $73.4 million of which the borough's leadership is pleased to declare that some 18.7 percent of that money will be invested in assorted sports, leisure and social development projects. Assorted road works will chew up another 15.6 percent of the budget while the borough's waste management plan (including garbage and recycling collection) will cost 14.3percent of the borough's money. Libraries and culture will take up 7.9 percent of the borough's budget while another 14.1 percent is expected to pay for snow removal.            
And if the mayor is good and there's not much snow, Santa Claus may bring the mayor a late Christmas present after which the snow removal money may be set aside to help finance another borough project.n