Mayor parks foot in mouth

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by RINA CALABRESE

Recently Mayor Pierre Bourque announced that the surtax on Montreal's downtown parking lots should be raised by 10 per cent. But Saulie Zajdel, executive committee member responsible for economic and urban development, says the mayor was just "musing out loud." In other words, talking out of his ass.

Though the city passed a surtax in 1994 that doubled taxes for parking lots, François Lemay, communications officer for urban and economic development services, admits the Bourque's newest proposed tax hike would be illegal. "Taxes are governed by La Loi sur la fiscalité municipale and you can't have selective tax," he says. Zajdel says Bourque's frustration at the lack of new building development on downtown's vacant lots was the cause for his off-the-cuff remark.

The mayor has likened Montreal to a bombed-out city, claiming parking lots "shamefully disfigure" the city's downtown core. An existing bylaw requiring owners to landscape parts of their lots has been widely ignored, Lemay admits. But with the new rules, the city will be able to withdraw parking permits of non-compliant operations, he says.

Upcoming bylaw amendments will see lot owners directly fined for infractions and forced to deposit money until landscaping is completed. Though in the last five years the city has--according to Lemay--issued few new parking lot permits and has closed 15 illegal operations, Zajdel reports that there are still over 100 vacant downtown lots, 80 per cent of which are used for parking.

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