MRC des Collines municipal web pages
An online search for 2007 budget information
Mo Laidlaw

As of mid-January 2007, Cantley and La Pêche have the most up-to-date web pages. No municipal sites have working search functions so finding online information on budgets requires guessing whether the budget is filed under Information, Meetings, Taxation, Finances or what. This is not user-friendly. Links to the six municipal web pages are at <www.mrcdescollines.com>. Don’t bother click on “Welcome” here as the links are only available from the French page - “Bienvenue”.

Cantley’s web page <www.cantley.ca> is only in French. To find the 2007 budget click on Renseignements, then Budget. Despite the note at the bottom of the page that it was last modified 23 December 2005, the mayor’s summary and the budget for 2007 are available.

La Pêche’s web page <www.villelapeche.qc.ca> has up-to-date meeting reports in English but not in French.(!) To find the budget, click on English>Meetings>Council Meetings 2007>January 9 2007 budget meeting.

Chelsea’s web page is at at <www.chelsea.ca>. As of 15 January 2007, the most recent online budget information was for last year at: General Information>Services>Budget 2006.

Pontiac’s webpage <www.munpontiac.com> has no budget information. Meeting reports up to December 12 are available in French, and up to November 14 are available in English. The most recent online Bulletin is May 2006. Many parts of this site still announce “online soon”. More work is required on this website.

Val-des-Monts’ web page, <www.val-des-monts.net> has a search function, but a search on “budget” produced no result. Clicking on Citoyen>Finances produced last year’s (2006) budget. More work is required on this website.

L’Ange-Gardien has a web page at <www.ville.lange-gardien.qc.ca>, with public notices, news and other on-line services, as well as a virtual tour. This has not been updated recently as the most recent budget found in December was for 2005. (In January I couldn’t find any budget reports.) There are no reports of meetings, but a note that meetings are televised and broadcast next day. The most recent notices were July 2006. It’s time for an update.

Notre-Dame-de-la-Salette has no web page yet.

A comment
There is no point having a fancy webpage if it is not kept up-to-date and if information is not easy to find. Perhaps the municipalities should pool their resources on this as they do for police and overall planning. One bilingual person could design and maintain websites for all seven municipalities, assuring common standards for design, obtaining and uploading new information from municipal officials, and improving access to information.

Budgets in brief
Cantley’s total budget of $7.5 million is up 14.67% from last year. The tax rate goes up by only 1.9% to $8.938 per $1000 evaluation. However evaluations have increased by 32% on average from 2006. The two largest costs are Transport (roads, snow plowing) and Public security (police, fire and animal control), each taking 23% of the budget. Administration is next with 16%, followed by Hygiène du mileu (“residual materials management” - garbage, recycling, and septic tanks) at 11%. Planning, Recreation and culture, and Debt repayment each take 7%, with interest on loans being 3%. The Centre culturel et communautaire de la Rose-de-Vents will cost each household $25.73. An investment of $445,000 will be made in roads in 2007. The purchase of a 10-wheel truck will allow sector 4 to be snowplowed by the municipality, thus “paying for itself”.

La Pêche’s budget as given online is in the form of the meeting resolution rather than a table, and the terminology is not easy to understand. Is “a general tax rate of $0,4566 per hundred dollars of assessment for the residual category” the rate for residences? The following information was gleaned. The total taxable assessment of property in La Pêche is $683 million. Revenues total $8,877,482. In 2007, the charge for garbage collection will be $162.50. Recycling bins will cost $15 per household per year for 5 years.

In Chelsea taxes increase by 6.9%. The new budget is $9.1 million for 2007. The owner of an average value house assessed at $260,000, will pay $2246 in municipal taxes, $154 more than last year. Chelsea will spend $1.2 million on roads in 2007, mostly on highway 105. Chelsea’s mayor, Jean Perras says the municipality must invest in roads and infrastructure, neglected in the 1990s. Chelsea was hard hit by Quebec government policies on policing and eliminating provincial deficit. New fire stations have been built and more firefighters hired to satisfy the new standards. Bicycle lanes have been built along roads, and Mine road and other badly damaged roads have been repaired, all of which costs a lot and increases the municipality’s debt. The new agreement on financing with the Quebec government and sharing gas taxes with the federal government have both lightened the load on municipalities.

Pontiac’s budget has been covered in a separate article.

In L’Ange-Gardien the tax rate is down to $9.24 per $1000 evaluation, partly because of an average increase in property assessment of 40%. Properties that have increased in value less than 11% will see no increase in property taxes. The total budget is $3.6 million. The fee for waste management is $166.25 per residence. To reduce waste collection costs wheelie bins must be used from May 2007. The charge for the municipal program to empty septic tanks is now $78.39.
L’Ange-Gardien will start the first year of its 4-year, $1.4 million plan to improve roads. Most of the $598,760 capital budget will go on roads, but $38,000 will be spent on equipment for the fire department, and $32,000 on parks. In the last five years, 250 new houses have been built. To keep up with this growth, five new employees will be hired including assistants for the director-general and the public works director. A public market is planned for local produce. The municipality will study the advantages for its farmers of joining the MRC-Bio project for producing organic food. <www.mrcdescollines.com/MRC-Bio.htm>.

Val-des-monts - no 2007 budget information was found.

In Notre-Dame-de-la-Salette the tax rate is maintained at $9.80 per $1000 evaluation, although residents will receive another bill in the spring for updating the village water supply network for a total cost of $1.6 million. The federal and provincial governments will each pay $400,000, $298,000 will come from returned gas taxes and the remainder of $502,000 will be paid over several years, 90% by the thirty-eight households with mains water supply and 10% by all taxpayers. The total budget is $1.06 million. $161,000 of this is for capital projects including equipment for the fire service, finishing work on ch Vieux Moulin and Mont-Benoit, and renovations to the cultural centre, all of which will also receive government grants. Fees for sewer and water at $178 and $150, waste-disposal $77 and recycling $55, are all unchanged.