By Kevin Woodhouse
www.thesuburban.com
The borough of Lachine’s budget for 2015 will be adopted this week and taxpayers can expect an average increase of 1.9 per cent for the coming year. However, roughly 20 per cent of homeowners, due to increased property value evaluations, will see increases larger than 2.5 per cent.
Regarding the average increase, Mayor Claude Dauphin noted that “we are reaching the promised objective of maintaining increases near the rate of inflation, which is generally fluctuating around the two percent mark. And although I would prefer there to be no increases at all, I nevertheless note that 10.7 percent of our residential property owners will see a reduction in their tax bill.”
The borough will see an increase in its operational budget, about $200,000 in new spending per year over the next half-decade. But regarding the capital works budget, Dauphin told The Suburban that more will be needed for Lachine. “Some of our streets are finished and there are canal walls that need to be redone.”
“While we want to maintain the waterfront, the walls need to be rebuilt and while that budget is increasing, we are talking tens of millions required to repair the canal walls and to fix our streets and pipes,” Dauphin said.
The city of Montreal will be taking back more responsibility towards arterial roads which will make repair work easier for the borough with Montreal sharing more of the burden than in past years.
And while taxes will be going up in Lachine, Dauphin explained that for more than two thirds of homeowners, they “will be subject to just a slight increase ranging from zero to 2.5 per cent, which boils down to the fact that in the Borough of Lachine, taxes will be reduced or increased closely in keeping with the inflation rate for over 73 per cent of owners.”
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