Clean and angry in
Côte-des-Neiges

>>A citizen’s strange fight against the
borough comes to an uneasy resolution

POWER TO THE POSTERERS: Nick Babeau (left),
image of Micheal Applebaum and Alex Montagano

by PATRICK LEJTENYI

There’s no denying Alex Montagano cares about his neighbourhood. The 39-year-old businessman and founder of the Côte-des-Neiges-NDG Residents’ Association loves it so much, he wants to topple the local government. And he specifically wants the borough mayor, long-time councillor Michael Applebaum, gone.

The fight is an old but weird one. It starts on June 19, 2004, when Montagano, fed up with the city’s department of public works ignoring his three-month plea to clean his neighbourhood, dumped a load of garbage on city hall’s steps. A few months later, he founded his residents’ association, with the explicit aim to pressure the borough government to improve cleanliness and safety. In February 2005, Montagano put up posters around the borough announcing the association’s general assembly, with the meeting’s address, date and time. A month later came the reckoning.

Montagano opened his mailbox on March 17 and found 22 municipal fines, totaling $2,110, and were issued for creating clutter. Unusually, they charged Montagano personally, not the residents’ association. Montagano took this as a gauntlet dropped, and decided to fight the charges.

“I view these actions of the borough mayor as essentially a crackdown on freedom of expression,” says Montagano.

Nick Babeau agrees. The 23-year-old Concordia student and music promoter says he was issued 25 tickets, at $105 each, that October for putting up posters for the “Fear and Loathing in Montreal” event he was organizing. Rather than fight, he had his lawyer cut a deal with the city, eventually settling on a $1,200 repayment. “I had to take a payment plan with the city,” he says. “I’m almost finished.”

Last month, he found out that the city had dropped its charges against Montagano—only a week before the case was to go to trial. “The city dropped them ‘for administrative issues,’” says Montagano. “So I called the city, but they won’t answer my requests.”

Montagano has his supporters. Constitutional lawyers Julius Grey and Michael Bergman called the anti-postering law unconstitutional, and last month, Henry Aubin, the Montreal Gazette’s regional affairs columnist, called l’affaire Montagano “the most outrageous court case that the city of Montreal has launched against a citizen in memory.” Aubin points out that the only two spaces where citizens are permitted to poster legally, in the entire 20 square-kilometre borough, are inside Accès Montreal offices. “What vehicle do we have to communicate with residents?” Montagano asks the Mirror.

But the dismissal has not stopped him from remaining outraged. He still says the city’s bureaucracy is unresponsive and potentially vindictive. “If you look at the actual number of fines [issued in 2005], you’ll find that 26 per cent of them—49 out of 183—were issued to me and Nick Babeau.”

While no one from Applebaum’s office returned a call from the Mirror asking about the issue, Gilles Berger, an Applebaum aide, wrote in an e-mail that “these are administrative dossiers. Inspectors make sure that bylaws are respected and the administrative process is followed and controlled by Center City’s legal department. Mr. Applebaum does not intervene in any of these procedures.”

So Montagano is vindicated, but still unhappy. As for Babeau, he says, “As much as I’d like to kick up some shit, I don’t think it’s worth the effort. There’s no way the city’s gonna refund my money.”